Capitalizing on the St. Johns
Outdoor Multimedia Stimulation at Riverfront Plaza
Good thing we recently bulldozed the oaks living at Hogan Street and Independent Drive to accommodate the former Landing site’s currently under construction community services building and children’s playground. The live oaks’ location would have interfered with our projecting images onto the Performing Arts Center, an entertainment idea brought to us by Downtown Investment Authority (DIA).
Whether or not this local effort fits the exact definition of “projection mapping”—turning objects and building facades into video display surfaces—apparently projecting images onto outdoor surfaces is all the rage the world over.
DIA joined the party in March 2023, authorizing $2 million to purchase film projection equipment to be installed at “Riverfront Plaza,” with the expressed purpose of projecting a “multi-media production show consisting of synchronized visuals, lights and sound . . . nightly” onto the Performing Arts Center’s eastern facade.
Capitalizing on the St. Johns
In justifying this decision, staff and board members claim nightly riverfront multimedia shows will help us capitalize on the “aesthetic beauty of the St. Johns River,” and “maximize interactive and recreational opportunities . . . to create waterfront experiences unique to Downtown.”
Wonder why the St. Johns’ natural “aesthetic beauty” isn’t enough? Do we need this distraction, these human-produced artificial images projected onto a building facade, drawing our eyes and ears away from the river?
Psychologists tell us we are in desperate need of a deep connection to Mother Nature’s majestic beauty, that we spend too little time appreciating the outdoors unencumbered by human-made inventions. Yet, when presented with the opportunity to develop this connection in historic downtown Jacksonville, we simply cannot help ourselves. We must project images of our own making in what otherwise could be a natural nighttime setting. No wonder we are the crazy species, our consciousness constantly bombarded by human-produced video, light, and sound. Heaven forbid we be able to enjoy the stars. The ones in the sky.
Questions Abound
Since DIA’s decision is now a fait accompli, one wonders who gets to decide what images will assault our collective consciousness on a nightly basis? What criteria will they establish? Will full-length movies be permitted?
Beyond the projectors themselves, what exactly will be required to mount the projectors? How tall? How wide? Where located? Who will design it?
When exactly will someone in charge recognize that whatever houses the expensive film projectors—a fixed “tower”—no doubt will further junk up open space the public has been promised. Not to mention the four buildings scheduled for the Landing site.
Sunshine State
Look on the sunny side: if full-length movies are permitted, John Sayles’ 2002 Sunshine State should get first showing.
Filmed a generation ago in Fernandina and American Beach, Sunshine State explores local government’s determination to commercially develop pretty much every inch of our natural landscape, pitting local small businesses and home owners against economic forces they cannot control because their elected officials know the “price of everything, the value of nothing.”
It’s a never-ending Florida story, though Sunshine State’s comically absurd closing frame suggests we might make other public choices if we had the foresight to imagine where our insatiable commercial developer’s appetite will take us.
If only.
Sources:
https://sherrymagill.substack.com/p/anyone-really-know-what-time-it-is
https://dia.coj.net/getattachment/54a5a8f3-ca5f-4abc-b779-5e08668f183b/.aspx
https://dia.coj.net/getattachment/0638dc4a-d1a8-4df8-88f4-d4dcc31134e6/.aspx
https://www.heavym.net/what-projection-mapping-is-and-how-to-do-it/
https://www.scottfleary.com/blogs/projection-mapping-is-this-the-next-big-leap-in-public-art/
DIA should think about relocating the projection idea to the new James Weldon Johnson park location, leave our river view alone.
Perhaps the projector will be focused into the dining room of the brilliant water's edge restaurant.