DIA to screen ‘(plant) 3D,’ a video that explores abandoned Packard factory
When Paul Kaiser was commissioned by the University of Michigan to create a 3D installation about Detroit, he and his creative partners were attracted, as a lot of artists are, to the ruins of the city and its industry.
"You get a sense of the past lives that were here," says Kaiser, who focused on the abandoned Packard auto factory on East Grand Boulevard for "plant (3D)," his immersive, 20-foot video projection that will have its Detroit Institute of Arts unveiling Friday. "There is evidence of human and natural activity everywhere; it's far from a no-man's-land."
The video exhibit was fashioned by computer from more than 10,000 images taken by U-M grad Kaiser, along with colleagues Mark Downie and Shelley Eshkar, at the site last July. The soundtrack mixes ambient sound recorded during the shoot.
The video, which begins screening at 1 p.m. Friday and will show continuously during museum hours through Feb. 5 in the DIA's Kresge Court, takes viewers on a 15-minute tour of the plant. Kaiser calls the images "more painterly than realistic. ... They give you a ghostly feeling of the people that were here in the past."
Special glasses are required to experience the 3D effect. Rather than show a single image, "plant (3D)" employs side-by-side screens that focus on different scenes from the plant. Kaiser believes this approach promotes viewer interaction. ...
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