Resided in a sports arena, Blue Hour offers its audience a 24-min multi-sensory journey that reflects the internal experience of human circadian clock. Divided into multiple groups under the overall artistic leadership from French artist Romain Tardy, artists from around the globe were selected to design and realize this installation in Prague, Czech Republic.

I was one of the video designers that worked on the design and the creation of the projection video content and the implementation of the projection system. For my part I created all my content in TouchDesigner which was played back in realtime driven by SMPTE.

This installation was on display during Prague Quadrennial, 8th June - 16th, 2019

Projection Mapping on the F. Loren Winship Drama Building, celebrating the achievements of the UT College of Fine Arts Community, and introducing the creative artworks and community to the general public.

Artistic Director: Mingxiang Ya

Projection Designer: Kaiwen Fa, Mingxiang Ya, Austin Shirley, Alex Gendal, Jesse Easdon

d3 Programmer: Kaiwen Fa

Content shown here are made by me with Cinema 4D, Adobe After Effects, and Photoshop.

“Polluted Playground” is my graduate thesis project. It is an immersive experience that includes a projection mapped geodesic dome. The experience focuses on addressing the environmental issue of plastic pollution in the ocean.

The graphics for the dome was rendered in real-time with Unity, and was sent to TouchDesigner for mapping via NDI.

Art Director: Kaiwen Fa

Set Designer & Projection Designer: Kaiwen Fa

Unity Developer & Interactive Engineer: Michael Bruner

Lighting and Sound Designer: Griffin Hanson

3D Artist: Rogelio Bautista

This is an independent study I did on how to use perspective tracking to manipulate the camera’s position and perspective projection in 3D world, to achieve the similar illusion you can see on your iPhone screen when you have one of those “3D wallpaper” and move your phone around. What it does here essentially is taking the tracking data from a Microsoft Kinect and using that to move the camera around, and manipulating the projection matrix in Unity of that camera to get the correct perspective for the rendered image displayed on the screen.

“Cobra” is an automated animal sculpture that physically reacts when people get closer to it. It is driven by an arduino system that includes a servo, an ultrasonic sensor, and 2 led lights.

I was in charge of the arduino development for the cobra’s movement and the sensor triggering mechanism.

Digital Fabricators: Chun-Kang Chen, Vanessa Lopez, Sam Cole

Co-physical Programmer: Jiajing Qi (in charge of LED lights)

This project was showcased at the Austin Maker’s Fair in 2019.

"The Mountain" is the MFA thesis project by Jon Haas. I am luckily invited on board as the projection content creator for this amazing project and beautiful journey.

Producer & Projection Designer: Jon Haas

Tracking Engineer: Jaxter Kim

Playwright: Drew Paryzer

Scenic Designer: Iman Corbani

Costume Designer/Set Dresser: Caitlin Graham

Lighting Designer: Matthew Smith

Sound Designer: Jose Martinez

Photo Credit: Jon Haas

“Winship Project” is a digital experience design pitched to the College of Fine Arts at University of Texas at Austin. Started with research and interviews, this design aims to incorporate digital structures and content onto the existing architecture of the F. Loren Winship Drama building, in order to make the outside of the building reflects its inside creative identity.

This is a conceptual design for the scenary of a VJ Battle. Drafting was done in Vectorworks and the colored renderings were done in Cinema 4D.

“The Glacier” is a pitched project to Coachella Festival 2019. It is designed to be an outdoor installation utilizing multiple layers of glasses with “Smart Tint” films, which is essentially dimmable privacy glass that can be customized to be controlled via DMX. The design aims to create an impression of a giant glacier melting, and therefore advocates for environmental friendly actions while providing visual amusement.

Here are a few snapshots of some of the visuals and UIs I created in TouchDesigner.

You can find videos of them on my instagram page here: https://www.instagram.com/kaiwenfa/

This is a side project exploring and recreating the “well-known” interactive topological map. This project uses TouchDesigner, A Kinect 2.0, and a box a rice.

An interactive 3D project of a detective’s office made with Maya and Unity. The project is designed with 2 scene. One with the lighting of dawn, the other with the lighting of night.

Co-3D Artist: Jason Cheon