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Wisdom of Atlanta

August 2025
Role: Artist in Residence, Creative Technologist
Client: ATL DTN

Wisdom of Atlanta is an interactive, projection-mapping, public art installation designed to bring together the Atlanta community through shared wisdom.

Scroll down for more details on how I made it.

How?

First, I gathered pieces of wisdom through QR codes displayed on social media and on digital signs around the city. The QR codes were linked to a form, where participants could input wisdom, advice, or words of encouragement they’d like to share with their community.

I then VR sculpted my assets in Adobe Medium, composited and animated the scene in Cinema 4D and After Effects, coded the interactivity in TouchDesigner, and set up the projection mapping using TouchDesigner’s native projection mapping tool, KantanMapper.

I recruited some help to build, paint and decorate an actual booth to make the experience more immersive.

When you step into the physical booth, there is an Xbox Kinect peeking out behind a curtain, sensing your skeleton. Once you’re seated, the text on the screen prompts you to “Raise your hands for 3 seconds”. When you raise your hands above your head, a timer node starts. If your hands have remained above your head once the three second timer is done, the next animation is triggered. A “random” piece of wisdom is then selected from the data table and is displayed inside the crystal ball.

I also connected a Novation MIDI keyboard for an extra interactive element. When you press the keys and buttons on the MIDI, it changes the hues of the animation.

As for the projection mapping, I used two projectors to cover the 3840x1080px wall. In KantanMapper, I created two 1920x1080px rectangles to be outputted to each projector, with the final output as a texture across both. Since the projectors overlapped on the wall, I went into each rectangle and aligned the masks until they were aligned properly on the wall. The area where the projectors overlap was still too bright, so I cropped each image again, added a ramp to each side so it’d become transparent in the middle, and reassigned the outputs to each projector. Since the wall was brick, and the projectors weren’t perfectly even, I used Stoner to add a grid with multiple points to warp the content and tweak the mapping more precisely.

Click here to watch my process video.

Fun fact: The music playing inside the booth was a song I made when I was 17 using Ableton. I also used Ableton to create the sounds that played when the animation was triggered and when the wisdom appeared.

WORK

PLAY

Shelly Boehm

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