Year of the Cicada Projection Mapping

I created a piece called Year of the Cicada, a one-minute looping, audio-reactive projection mapping graphic that lights up to the beat of any MP3 added to the project. This piece is a personal reflection tied to my upbringing. The pharaoh cicada hibernates for 17 years, emerging all at once after their long cycle ends. One of these emergence years was 2004, the year I was born! When I turned 17, I experienced the cicadas alive and buzzing, which sparked a fascination that has stuck with me ever since. I dedicated this piece to those vibrant (and very noisy) flying insects. This piece was projection mapped in a larger projection mapping event at Kumler Chapel on Western College Campus in Oxford, OH.

Since this piece was digital, much of what I used was digital. The software I used for this project were Procreate, for the still illustration, MadMapper for the video mapping and to create the raster image, and TouchDesigner for the audio reactive portions and TouchDesigner's kantanMapper for the projection mapping output. Also, of course, This project also needed a fairly heavy duty projector.

At the event, we collaborated with the other projection mapping artists to create a raster image of the projection area. The first step was finding the right spot for the projector, which was tricky because the chandeliers were always in the way of the projection no matter where we positioned it. Instead of trying to avoid them, we decided to work with the obstacles. Once we finalized the projector’s position, we connected a digital camera to serve as MadMapper’s “eyes,” placing it as close as possible to the projector lens to ensure accuracy. To create the raster image, we set up the MadMapper file and let it run for about 20 minutes, capturing multiple raster images to ensure accuracy. This process required some patience since Kumler Chapel is a public space, and we had to make sure no one walked in front of the projection area while the raster was being processed. If you'd like a visual explanation of how a raster image is produced, here's a helpful video from MadMapper's YouTube channel: Spacial Scanner.

Since Kumler Chapel wasn’t always accessible or practical to visit whenever I needed a reference for my mapping, we took photos of the space beforehand. After preparing the spatial mapping images, I used those photos as well as the raster image to create masks for each area of the chapel that I wanted to map separately.

With all my materials ready, I was finally able to start creating my project. To get a feel for how it would look, I began by adding some test patterns to visualize the textures. From there, I moved on to illustrating the central elements of the piece, starting with the cicada. I focused on capturing the intricate details of its wings, which I find particularly stunning. Their iridescent quality reminds me of butterfly wings, adding a touch of elegance to the design. I also incorporated motifs of ginkgo leaves, inspired by one of my favorite trees. Much like cicadas emerge from hibernation all at once, ginkgo leaves fall all at once in the fall, a phenomenon I find beautiful and fitting for the theme. I also needed to pay careful attention to each separate layer of this piece. The outlines all needed to be separate, the windows needed to be separated, the dome needed to be separate, as well as each individual element I wanted to be backlit when I import the illustration later on into TouchDesigner. These details became key elements of the visuals. For a closer look, I added a timelapse of the illustration process!

For a previous project, I had created a set of motion graphics, including generative fireworks in TouchDesigner. Rather than starting from scratch with new lighting, I repurposed the bottom graphic from that project. I detached the nodes that turned the firework generator into particles, leaving just the spheres with a feedback node. These spheres randomly shifted positions, giving the appearance of being newly spawned. To refine the effect, I added a few more nodes—mainly delay, feedback, bloom, and color-enhancing post-effects. This transformed the spheres into blob-like spotlights that spawned randomly. I layered these lights behind the illustrations I wanted to glow and subtracted the lights from those illustrations. Then, using a duplicated illustration layer, I combined the two with a quick "over" node. This created the glowing effect I was aiming for. I repeated this process for different layers, including the ginkgo leaves, the cicada, and the window panes. After combining all the layers into a final composition, I added a few more post-effects to make the outlines of the illustrations look like they were influenced by the glowing backlights. With the visuals complete, I moved on to making the piece audio-reactive. This part was straightforward: I added "level" nodes to the lights and linked their brightness modifiers to the kick in the audio file. Using an audio analysis node, I parsed out the high, mid, low, kick, and bass frequencies. The kick was the cleanest and most noticeable, so I used it to drive the brightness.

And just like that, the composition was finished—visually dynamic, rendered in real-time, and fully synchronized to audio!

Next, I needed to create advertisements for the projection mapping event! I designed some quick posters, printed them out, and put them up around campus. I also coordinated with the administration in the building where I take my classes to have the poster displayed on the building’s monitors. Finally, I shared the poster with the social media manager for our department's virtual production set to post on social media to spread the word even further.

After three weeks of process, iteration, and countless hours in the lab, I was finally able to present my project in Kumler Chapel alongside 19 other talented projection mapping artists! One of them was kind enough to record the entire performance and share it on YouTube. Here’s the link to watch it: Kumler Chapel Projection Mapping.