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Live Projection Muralists Take Over an English Woodland

'Into The Woods' is the first chapter in artist duo Stylus' newest projection mural escapades.
Screencaps and GIFs by the author, via

Clambering around a picturesque Derbyshire woodland, artists Rebecca Smith and Peter Barber set the scene for their latest live "projection mural" endeavor, Into The Woodswith hefty rolls of shrink wrap. As with their previous collaborations under their co-founded projection mural label Stylus, Into The Woods combines Smith and Barber's respective vocations of digital art and modern mural painting into a fast-paced behind-the-scenes film, complete with designer Jimmy Power's customized soundscape and a brief cameo from Milo the dog.

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The project marks the first in the duo’s STYLUS Shorts series, a self-declared “new chapter” in their lives of “projection mural escapades.” In these site-specific mapping performances on the ready-made stages of nature, the pair bring the agency of graffiti art to the practice of projection mapping. For Into The Woods, the pair chose to shrink wrap a "little oasis of quintessential, bluebell covered Britishness," Smith tells The Creators Project. As the sun set on the Stylus' 3D plasticine screen, cans of spray paint replaced the rolls of wrap, and the team lined and coated its surface with paint. When the work was done and the sky was dark, the lights came on and the paint, illuminated by the projection's beams, displayed the multi-layered image of a glorious, anamorphic buck.

The film's quick and partially-glitched format captures the breakneck speed and hectic energy of the project, which was executed in its entirety in a single evening. As Smith describes, "The whole piece was created, from start to finish, in around 6 hours (it would have been way less if it wasn't for the gale force winds when we started. Thankfully these died down after a couple of hours!). It was the intention, as with many Stylus pieces, that [the work was] created very fast and fluidly, following wherever the direction takes us."  Stay tuned for the next in the STYLUS Shorts series on our site, and below, catch Smith and Barber's infectious energy in Into The Woods:

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See more of Stylus' projection mapping escapades on their website.  Related:

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