360 Light Painting-A new world-Part 1
360 Light Painting
Since the beginning of art, technology has been giving artists keys to new, unexplored worlds. One of the few ways left to be original in art, if to be of the first into some new technology. 360 Light Painting is still fresh, unmarked ground to most of us, so I am positive that what I saw a couple of days ago in Facebook will be inspiring a lot of people into new territories.
Its been more than a year that I have been wondering how long it will take till I see something like this. Always wanted to try but trying to find the time to fit all your creative ideas is challenging.
So a couple of days ago I run into a post of Mafu Fuma, a member of the Aurora Movement.Â
360 degrees light painting! VR ! A beautiful, dreamy light painting image that you could spin around. Although I didn’t have a VR glasses set to try it, I bet its gonna look great!
I have heard of 360 light painting before in some exhibition but this was the first one I ever saw online! I couldn’t help myself and wrote to Mafu to ask him some questions about this. Check this out below!
Great project! I bet it will be an inspiration for a lot of people. Tell us a bit more about it. How did it start, who is involved, how long are you working on that? How did you get the idea about it?
MF: Thanks a lot my friend!
It´s a new interesting terrain and I feel a lot of excitement with the viewer of my 360 light paintings. I got already so many requests to explain how it works, but all I can say, it´s the same light painting as I always do. Just in 360 Degree. So go for it! It´s wonderful how you can discover your own light painting skills in a new way. I hope to see many different approaches in the near future.
My 360 light painting Project is only a few weeks old. I brought it as inspiration from my family trip to Russia. 70Km near to Moscow, where my Russian part of the Family lives, I met by coincidence this guy called Anatoly. He is doing live 360 Degree Broadcasts as self-employed Media service and we started talking about light painting. The interest on both side for a collaboration was born immediately and 30 Minutes later we sat with all our gear in his car on our way to a well know lost place from his childhood. In this night I got blasted by inspiration what could be possibly done with this 360-degree technology.
What kind of new technologies are involved? What gear did you use?
MF: Most of the 360 Cameras are specialized on filming, except a series from Ricoh. The Theta Series. A little handy 360-degree camera that fits very well in every existing photographer Backpack. At the moment, the Theta is the only camera on the market that provides a long exposure option up to 60 Seconds and I think that is the hardware limit anyway because the sensor gets noisy as hell if I use the full 60 Seconds. Hopefully, Ricoh or other manufacturers will keep the focus more on night photographer and provide a longer Bulb function, but even with this limits, it’s really fun to create a Virtual Reality with light painting and watch it after with some VR Glasses.
Tell us a bit about the Aurora movement. Is it your primary work? What else you do?
MF: I founded Aurora Movement 2015 to get people with the same interest in one boat. I am a big fan of joint light painting and for the most of my ideas, I need more than one Person. I started a meeting every Friday with my closest friends and infected more and more people with the light painting virus. Honestly, I have to say for the most of the peeps it was a short time infection, but since about one year we have a fixed constellation of three Members. Gunnar Heilmann, Sebastian Vogel and Me and we are ready to conquer the world with light painting.
Unfortunately, Aurora Movement is not our primary work till yet. With that few Photobox requests, or Studio booking it’s not possible to make a living by now, but I´m looking forward to getting more options.
My official profession is a Sound engineer, but I´m the operator of a property in the middle of Berlin as well and offer creative space to rent for Musicians, (Light)Painter, Actor, craftsman, or to other people with a creative approach. Till 2015 I was running a house music club with an indoor and outdoor area at that place, but since we had a problem with some concessions, we had to close the doors. Now we use the Dancehall as our Aurora Movement Studio and still use the benefits of a club.
What are your plans with 360 and VR? Was it an one time project or just the start?
MF: I am an explorer. I love to search for new ways. 360-degree light painting is one of them and it offers me new ways of being creative. As long as it rains 360-degree concepts in my mind, I will keep going on with it. I´m looking forward to the development in the technology sector because seeing your art in virtual reality gives you a completely different kind of inspiration.
 Where can we see more of this project and some of your work? (Links, photos, etc)
MF: Find Mafu Fuma on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/mafufumalightart/
Find Mafu Fuma on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/mafufuma/
Find Aurora Movement on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/auroramovementlightart/
Find Aurora Movement on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/auroramovement/
All images in this post are by Mafu Fuma.Â
Since in the blog we don’t have yet the possibility to display 360 photos, to have the proper experience please watch them in Facebook or even better with VR glasses 😉
In Part 2 of this 360 Light Painting article, I will return with more info about 360 and more people who have been exploring it for some time now… Â Stay tuned!
Thank you for the interview!
I would like to invite you to share or discuss your 360 light painting art. Today Mafu and me (together with Andreas Tichon) both started light painting groups with different concepts:
– https://www.facebook.com/groups/360lightpainting/ (including the optional #PleaseRemix option for interested photographers, read more in the description)
– https://www.facebook.com/groups/1922639417994670/ (Mafu’s group without the #PleaseRemix option)
Mafu and me are in good contact over this. Let us grow this topic together.