Monument Valley to Silicon Valley
Live Virtual Mural Painting
de Young Museum, Oct. 7, 2016

World’s first 40′ wide virtual Touchjet POND mural painted live on museum wall in 2.5 hours!

On Friday, October 7th, 2016, at the de Young Museum, San Francisco, myself and fellow artist Peggy Gyulai used multiple Touchjet POND projectors and the art app ArtRage to paint a forty foot wide virtual mural from scratch across the breadth of the Wilsey Court main wall (formerly home to the monumental Gerhard Richter “Strontium” painting). Our virtual mural, titled From Monument Valley to Silicon Valley, was inspired by the exhibition Ed Ruscha and the Great American West, which was showing for it’s last weekend at the time of this performance.

The POND projectors are innovative cutting-edge Wifi enabled Android projectors that projects onto any surface and turn it into an interactive wall. This projected digital paint interactive technology was generously provided by Touchjet. We used Infra Red emitting styluses to communicate with the projector as we painted on the wall. The only condition imposed by this technology is not shadowing the stylus as you paint, which you get used to after a while. We started with a 40′ wide by 4′ high blank canvas and I worked from the left (Silicon Valley end of the mural) and Peggy from the right (Monument Valley end of the mural).

This live performance event was part of the de Young Museum’s on-going Friday Nights public program – free Friday night cultural events open to all. Visitors were able to experience first hand painting with the Touchjet POND projector and the ArtRage app in the Piazzoni Murals Room while Peggy and I painted in the Wilsey Court. The Touchjet POND is great technology not only for art performance, as in this case, but also anytime you want to have a more interactive meeting and for classroom situations.

Big thanks to Renee Baldocchi and the De Young Team, to Catherine Woo and the Touchjet Team and to Uwe Maurer and the ArtRage Team! The version of the song (Get Your Kicks on) Route 66 featured in the video at the top of this page is by Natalie Cole from her 1991 album Unforgettable.