Image Beyond the Screen

3Projection Mapping: A New Symbolic Form?

3.1. Introduction

This chapter presents the dawn of research on projection mapping as a “symbolic form”, based on the concept forged by Erwin Panofsky (Panofsky 1975), as well as the notion of “apparatus” developed by the contemporary philosopher Jean-Louis Déotte. From philosophy to aesthetics, from cinema to the fine arts, we will envisage projection mapping by considering its elements (surface, volume, projected images, projector) and its technical conditions to draw a landscape of its specificities.

3.1.1. Symbolic form and apparatus

The concept of “symbolic form” was forged by the German philosopher Ernst Cassirer. According to him, “the activity of the mind is a symbolic activity” (Rieber 2008, p. 1) within the field of culture. In 1927, art historian Erwin Panofsky approached the notion of symbolic form by applying it to a defined object. He was interested in perspective as a technical tool: starting from its geometric conception, he analyzed it as a founding element of a science and philosophy of space. From a mathematical representation system to the Cartesian model, perspective ultimately became a “mode of meaning for understanding the world” (Rieber 2008, p. 2). That is to say, an indication of the relationship existing between man and the world which is no longer interpreted as a religious key, as the manifestation of the power of God, but invented by man, and therefore “de-theologized”. This presupposition would be developed, ...