The Omni Dallas Hotel will display more than a dozen animated clips – produced by the University of Texas at Dallas students – on its 23-story LED facade on nights throughout April to celebrate Dallas Art Month.
The 16 featured projects are 90-second animations, each produced by a student in the Projection Mapping Lab class (ATCM 3356), taught by Andrew Scott, associate professor at the UT Dallas School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology (AHT).
“It’s a wonderful feeling when you can get the work out of the classroom and into the community,” Scott said. “We often talk about it, but we try to be about it at the 3D Studio with what it is that we do. I personally like big stages and I like big stages for our students because I think what they do is important. I think what they do is wonderful. I think what they do is very creative and people need to see it. Being able to facilitate getting their work on that stage makes me feel really good for them.”
The program – titled Cosmic Trailblazing: Comet Artistry takes over Dallas Skyline – will start around 8:30 p.m. and run in a loop until 11:30 p.m. on selected nights through the month.
April is Dallas Arts Month, a month-long celebration of the city’s flourishing arts and culture featuring countless opportunities for visitors to enjoy the local art scene. For this year’s observance, The Omni Dallas Hotel sought to help local artists share their work with the entire city, said Ruth Andrews, content and public relations marketing manager at Omni Dallas Hotel and 2020 graduate of the UT Dallas’ Jindal School of Management.
“We believed this partnership would be a great opportunity, not only for the students to learn about project mapping on a real life display, but also give them the platform to display their art on the ‘largest billboard in the south’,” Andrews said. “When Professor Scott reached out to us earlier this year, we knew this would be the perfect collaboration to celebrate Dallas Art Month. These student’s shows are definitely one-of-a-kind, and nothing like it has been displayed on our lights.”
Ocarina “Rina” Harrison is a senior seeking a BA in Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication with Design and Production. She’s aiming to graduate next December and is already preparing for an audio-visual technician career by working at various events and concerts. Her animation involves two primary symbols that have become part of her identity as a design student: an original design of a wing and a roller skate.
“Before this class, I wasn’t aware of all the stuff that could be done, but projectors are a really interesting medium to play with and can really enhance an event and give it a much grander, larger-than-life kind of feel,” Harrison said. “I’m really excited about having my work at the Omni and I am going to tell everyone about this. This is an insanely good opportunity for getting my work out there. But also, I really just like having people being able to experience things that make them happy.”
The Omni Dallas Hotel façade has over four miles of multicolor LED lights distributed throughout its 23 stories and is among the most prominent digital art displays in the D-FW metroplex. Almost every student who produced work for this project had to go through revisions to prepare their projects for display on the facade.
“Project-based education is paramount to what we do here at UT Dallas, at AHT, and in our art and technology program. Because no matter what discipline our students are in or what they choose to study, we have to prepare them for a life of projects, and a life of projects deals with a life of dealing with clients,” Scott said. “The Omni and Ruth Andrews have been very rigorous and very keen and know what works on their canvas. They have provided wonderful, insightful critiques to help our students prepare work for display on their board.