Projects
Projects
Teresa Parod Murals
Painter Teresa Parod has created over one hundred works of public art in the United States, Cuba, Bali, Nepal, and Istanbul. In Cuba, she was honored to work with mosaicist José Fuster, whose work inspired her creation of art in unexpected and underused spaces. These as well as her vibrant, luminous oil paintings can be seen at teresaparod.com..
Teresa and her husband, composer and software developer Bill Parod also work together on multi-media installations. The following video is a screen capture of the “Teresa Parod Murals” companion app to some of Teresa's public works. Using Augmented Reality, it activates a layered spatial audio-visual experience around selected murals.
The app responds to 11 murals—mostly in Evanston, Illinois, and one in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Nine Evanston murals line the eastern half of the alley behind the 2300 block of Thayer Street in Evanston, IL, USA. Their 3D scenes interconnect to form a listener- and viewer-driven immersive environment. Characters from different murals wander the alley, and the soundscape shifts as you move. Stand close to hear a mural’s inner details, or step back to feel how its voices blend naturally with others.
Below the video are image of the supported murals. If you're unable to visit the murals, you can point the app at the images here to activate the augmented reality.
We are preparing a version of the app for indoor installations using projected images of the paintings in configurable custom spatial layout.
The next eight images are of the nine murals in the eastern half of the alley behind 2300 Thayer St, Evanston, IL.
This A/R scene is over “Trianon”, a mural named for a cafe in Alexandria, Egypt and reminiscent of one in New Orleans. Crowd sounds, passing motorbikes, restaurant sounds of plates and cutlery and New Orleans music are part of the soundtrack. The music was recorded in a Bywater vacant lot after an unofficial parade in New Orleans during Carnival season. The combination of its "New Orleans Sound" and Arabic scales makes it a perfect music for this New Orleans / Alexandria mural. If anyone recognizes or participated in the music, please contact me. I would love to know who to credit. (Thayer St alley)
Solar System by Teresa Parod
The owners of this garage wanted a space theme and liked the proposed image. The A/R was looking for a universal message and it is translated here into 8 languages by Google Translate and spoken in various voices from AWS Poly.
Bali by Teresa Parod
This mural patron wanted a scene with palms. The mural by Teresa Parod depicts a Balinese landscape. The soundscape is made from various sounds recorded in Bali, including a stream, frogs, motorbikes, a cremation procession, and bats.
2319 by Teresa Parod
This mural, "2319" is on the garage of our house and is a painting of the front of our house. The A/R app uses image recognition to place home movies from our early days into the mural's windows. More recent photos of the family ride on roller-coaster cars around the outside of the house, up and down the trees.
The action on the inside shows our story time upstairs. Downstairs is Sereana and then Julius dancing to Stevie Wonder in the living room. And both are working in the kitchen on lower right. Unfortunately, for copyright reasons, we had to mute the audio from the living room video - which was joyously blasting Stevie Wonder's "Songs In The Key of Life".
Sunflowers by Teresa Parod
For Sunflowers the patron wanted flowers on her door. Birds always sound great and those that feed on flowers are especially wonderful to watch. Here we use hummingbirds an and butterflies with sound formed from buzzing dissonant flutes.
Stella by Teresa Parod
Stella was the beloved family dog for this patron. She's wearing lipstick for her sitting here. Her animation barks off the harassing crows as other dogs in the neighborhood join in her alarm.
Monarchs by Teresa Parod
Adjacent fences are painted with beautiful monarch butterflies. Their animated flight is accompanied by violin melodies. Each section is independently responsive to its image recognition in the app.
Elephants by Teresa Parod
These purple elephants step out of the mural to parade up and down the alley. Watch out!
Birds on a Wire by Teresa Parod
These crows like to enjoy the full moon from the electrical wires, but these wires are faulty. Watch out, birds! This mural is in the alley of the 2700 block of North 90th Street in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Homage To Sondra by Teresa Parod
Homage to Sondra is about historic cottages on the street where I live. I use the term historic loosely as it seems all the neighbors have a different idea of their history but no one knows exactly what that history is. We all agree that they are charming and unique. Sondra was a long time resident of one of the cottages and a true eccentric character. When she began talking, it was impossible to leave as she never stopped. Her words were at times brilliant, funny, petty, inspiring, mean, fun, thoughtful, dramatic, loving, ridiculous, sad, epic, joyous but always interesting and definitely non stop. She told me she had lunch with Picasso, inspiring him when she held up the skeleton of a fish she had just eaten. She ate lobster in the White House and gave the president’s advisors advice, She hugged John Travolta in our alley, which was very embarrassing to her because she wasn’t wearing a bra. I always considered her a genius of some kind,
She was beautiful, though she told me she hadn’t taken a bath in 12 years, wore the same torn black dress with falling apart shoes everyday, and probably hadn’t combed her hair since the Carter administration. Sondra passed several years ago and I often miss the old girl. What I would give to hear one of her extended conversations. I picture her biking in heaven, because she told me often she wished she could still ride a bike.
The mural is at the rear of Endoscopy Center of the North Shore, 1732 Central Street, Evanston, IL. Or visit the mural image.