Image Beyond the Screen

Introduction

It is generally agreed that projection mapping consists of applying light whose geometry corresponds to a more or less complex surface made of heterogeneous materials on which it is projected. Is it really that simple? The practice of projection mapping has developed since the 1990s, particularly in the artistic field, by supporting the dynamics of digital technologies. This practice has now become almost commonplace, while paradoxically, research in the social sciences and humanities pays little attention to it. Certainly, projection mapping could be understood as a simple hybridization of cinema, animation and scenography, but that would miss the essential questions that this practice stimulates.

First of all, the very concept of projection mapping needs to be clearly defined: is it a tool, a device, a technique, a medium, a discipline, a practice, a trend or a movement? Can an image do without a connection to any surface? Projection mapping is synonymous with spatial augmented reality, video mapping and spatial correspondence. While the words video, projection, reality, augmented, spatial and correspondence have found their French equivalents, the word mapping presents itself as an obstacle to translation. Few say that they do “video cartography” or “projected cartography”. The term “mapping” refers to dressing, coating, texturing, covering, transposing and tuning. A rigorous translation of projection mapping as a medium in our context could then be “projection ...