Peace, love and communication: Dataton’s WATCHOUT provides the perfect platform for Bart Kresa’s projection designs

Linköping, Sweden, 25 June 2012: With its ability to co-ordinate and control multiple display devices and computers hosting countless layers of video, graphics and other content files, Dataton’s WATCHOUT™ is the technology of choice for multimedia show designers all over the world. At InfoComm 12 Dataton showcased the work of one designer in particular: Bart Kresa.

Born in Poland and currently based in Los Angeles, Bart Kresa travels the world creating innovative large-scale projection environments. His work is at the cutting edge of digital art, transforming skylines and creating stunning backdrops for events of all kinds, from concerts and corporate parties to political and cultural happenings of great symbolic and historic importance.

“Advances in technology have turned simple 2D art projected onto a wall into dynamically mapped, digital artwork that can virtually transform any space into a different one, or bring 3D life to an architectural site,” Kresa believes.

“While the principles behind this art – light and space – are fundamental, their application and results can be quite complex. Every projection is driven by its content; engaging, relevant and technically proficient design is essential. It’s the starting block on which everything else is built.”

For much of his 20-year career in projection design, Kresa has been using WATCHOUT™ as a means of seamlessly combining the output of multiple projectors together and mapping them across surfaces of different sizes, shapes and surfaces.

“WATCHOUT is an essential part of the kind of work I’ve become known for, and I can’t imagine using anything else,” Kresa says. “You can throw almost anything at it: video, still images, audio, lighting-control commands, in multiple layers and multiple formats. Yet given its complexity, the program is simple to learn and use. It gives me exactly the kind of straightforward, hands-on control and real-time, on-site adjustment capability I need in order to perfect my designs.”

Two of Kresa’s favorite recent projects show the power and diversity of his work. The Warner Brothers Upfront party saw him transform 12 buildings on the film studio’s lot in Burbank. California, into a surrealistic realm of Afro-Asian mysticism, using no fewer than 20 WATCHOUT channels that worked to combine computer graphics and motion-captured images. Meanwhile, a Coldplay concert at the Hollywood Bowl also saw 12 WATCHOUT channels being deployed, this time to ‘paint’ the interior ribbing of the Bowl’s domed stage with added motion and color, while integrating with the existing art and iconography of the band’s Mylo Xyloto world tour.

“When you can literally stop traffic with your work, you know you have power,” concludes Kresa. “Used properly, technologies such as WATCHOUT can be harnessed to create powerful messages that promote peace, love and communication throughout the world. It doesn’t get any better – or more important – than that!”

At InfoComm 12, Bart Kresa presented his approach to visual design and technology, and highlighting some of the benefits of the latest version 5.2 of WATCHOUT.