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Typically “projections” at Palo Alto City Hall tend to involve budgets and numbers, which is undeniably essential work, but not likely to draw an enthralled crowd.
Starting Oct. 16, a different kind of projection — eight stories tall and in constant motion — will temporarily transform the façade of Palo Alto’s seat of government.
Palo Alto City Hall is getting a unique new look courtesy of Code:ART, the city of Palo Alto’s biennial interactive media festival. The event takes place Oct. 16-18, featuring interactive digital works of art placed throughout downtown Palo Alto.
Artist Jeff Dobrow is one of three digital 3D projection mapping artists who have created pieces that will be a centerpiece of Code:ART. Work by artists Alessio Cassaro and Yann Nguema will also be featured.
The projections will be on extended display at Palo Alto City Hall through Oct. 25. Each artist was given the parameters of a diamond-shaped space on the building’s façade to project their works onto.
Dobrow’s piece, “Tempest,” is an abstract work that explores humans’ ever-evolving relationship with technology. A technology-based visual artist and creative director, Dobrow has created projections for venues and events in 17 countries around the world. He lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia.
“Tempest” is set to music by French EDM producer and DJ CloZee, in a collaboration with LSDream. CloZee is an artist whose music Dobrow noted he has licensed for the majority of his projects. “It’s kind of been the narrative by which I’ve decided to walk this path and this career,” he said.
We spoke with Dobrow ahead of Code:ART to learn more about his work. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Embarcadero Media: Let’s start with the basics: What is 3D projection mapping?
Jeff Dobrow: Technically it is what it is, right? I don’t want to put myself in the position of being the definitive point of ‘what is projection mapping,’ you know.
Projection mapping is taking an image or video or content of some sort, and projecting it onto a three-dimensional surface, like the side of a building or a cube or a car or something, anything sort of nonconventional, not a flat screen.
I consider it more so, though, to be establishing a relationship between the content and the object you’ve chosen to work with. So the surface, or the building, in my case, it’s kind of a partner in it. That collaborative union, the paying of respect, looking for opportunities to work with the architecture and all that, to me is what makes projection mapping great.
Embarcadero Media: You’ve created projections for a variety of places, including UNESCO World Heritage Sites. What have been some of your most unusual or challenging projects?
Dobrow: I would probably say my most challenging project — I hate to say the word “challenging” — but I guess it would have been my first time mapping Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. Because nothing had ever been done like that on that site before, in any capacity of digital art or otherwise, projecting light onto the building – a UNESCO heritage site. Just the gravity of being responsible for messaging that was going to be seen on this building. And it was all an internal challenge.
Embarcadero Media: What is typically your process for creating a piece?
Dobrow: Often there’s an idea or a principle from the project originators. Whether it’s maybe a spring celebration, or it’s a winter celebration, or it’s to honor something, occasionally it is just absolutely wide open. So if you have something, a tidbit or a spark, that is the essence of what this event is about, you’ve got that. Then you have what the building is going to be, so you have that physical partner. At that point, you start ideating. You start thinking about the architecture. I personally always like to do a deep dive on the architecture and the building and read about it. That’s not so much that I’m saying I really have to know everything about what an architect did in order to do my piece. It’s more like it gets you into a headspace of everything about this project.
That, along with what topics feel relevant? What’s something cool that I can then think of and interpret in a completely unexpected or different way? How can I take a simple message and then wrap it into something really unexpected or thought-provoking, or that you don’t see for five times of watching and then it hits you, or you see the relationship. So that’s kind of the framework.
Then, based on what the taste is, I fill it in: Maybe it’s lush and elegant and flowing. Maybe it’s techy and chattery and vibrant. But a lot of it is just about the relationship between the building, the subjects, the energy of the place, the surrounding history, or aspects, all of that, and then it just kind of inspires.
Embarcadero Media: You’re based in Blue Ridge Mountains, and in the case of Code:ART, your eventual “canvas” is here on the West Coast. How does that work?Dobrow: This is where technology helps itself. Because in this wonderful day and age, all the information about the building — (even ) standing on the streets and looking around in Google Street View so I can get context — but more so in these cases, a technical diagram of the building is always provided. I have dimensions and I have a template that I know will match that building. I’m not putting it up on the building. I’m not touching projectors. That’s all done by (event company) A3 Visual, so as long as the project can provide me with a template of the building, which in this case is, to a large degree, a vertical, rectangular façade with vertical striations on it. Many others are big, ornate, statue-laden buildings and then they have to provide (dimensions for those embellishments) as well. But once I have that in the computer, technically, then I create a 3D model of the building, and I can do everything I’m going to do in that virtual state, including generate my final art, which then goes back to the location, wherever it may be, and they put it on the building.
Embarcadero Media: Tell us about your piece, “Tempest,” that we’ll be seeing at Code:ART.
Dobrow: “Tempest” is an abstract narrative on our state of affairs with technology, in a way, and it’s just a high-level view of the fact that everything has happened so incredibly fast, and we’ve gone so incredibly far. It’s been a non-linear curve of just exponential growth.
This piece has three acts: “Void,” “Disruption” and “Being.” “Void” is simply us before, “Disruption” is where we are now, and have been sometimes, probably since the beginning of the Industrial Age — and please, no historians argue with me — but this is all sort of where we are now, which is the blink of an eye. And we’re on the verge of handing over the technological reins to really a fractal infinitum of our own creation, AI. That will result in “Being,” at some point, there will be a post period to what has been this technological boom, whatever that will look like, we will see that as “Being.” We are currently in “Disruption.” But that’s the general essence, is that, yes, technology has come into play, affecting us, you know, first at industrial levels, then in our personal lives and it’s accelerating.
From my perspective, having gotten into computers at a very young age, the age of 12 and being 56 now, and having been abreast of tech deeply my entire life, I mean, you can see the iterative patterns and the speed at which it’s going. And it’s just truly I have no idea. I have no clue. Probably one of the first times in my life I would say I have no idea how this will all end up.
Perhaps some of the best experts were the science fiction authors of the ’50s, because a lot of what they wrote, ironically, seems to be a little bit of a script of our modern times. And knowing that we still follow (that script) … what could go wrong?
This piece is designed to illustrate that, to interpret it a bit and to maybe make you stop and think. It’s full of very bold and unexpected imagery. So I think when things are often out of context, even something as simple as scale — a small image of an animal on a building on YouTube looks one way and if that same thing were projected on the side of the 15 story building, and that animal is six stories, your entire interpretation will be different, right?
Projections by Dobrow, Cassaro and Nguema will be on display Oct. 16-25, 7-10 p.m., at Palo Alto City Hall, 250 Hamilton Ave., Palo Alto. The Code:ART festival takes place Oct. 16-18, 6-10 p.m., at locations throughout downtown Palo Alto. Admission is free. For descriptions and locations of all pieces featured in the festival, visit tinyurl.com/PaloAltoCodeART2025.
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