work experiments

audio
the audio track I'm using is written by a Norwegian songwriter, Kate Havnevik. The song I'm using, Sleepless is not on her homepage but it's a good reference point for her musical style.

animations
I've been working in quartz on animating some household objects to animate the screen, and looking into Chromakey patching in max/msp to enable certain colours as transparent, creating a better video montage in the performance.

Some quick and rough examples of quartz work-
having trouble with the browser and uploading videos- will come back to do this.



things to consider with the animations- I need to find a way to make them less two-dimensional (this may be in the drawing style?) and I want to experiment with colour (animating the colour- perhaps similar style to Waking Life?


max/msp
This week's experiment has been setting up something similar to a 4 channel mixer for my media samples, each connecting to an IR rangefinder- at the moment they change the opacity of each media sample. Will play around with them also changing the framerate of the media and saturation.

work sample

here's a sample of some of the film editing I've been doing.

read + respond

Live Cinema: language and elements, Mia Makela.
Media Lab, Helsinki University of Art and Design
April 2006

The most interesting section of this reading for me was 4.4 Composition.
I have viewed live cinema (until now) as pure output- a circumstantial experience of layers of video and animation against audio; I hadn't considered it for its many layers of input and that there are structures to these inputs. Even though Live Cinema can appear as though it has been freed from all structure- it has in fact been liberated from linear coordination but still holds an inherent framework that binds these pieces of input footage together (be it audio- or visual- governed).

"As live cinema artists tend to use various clips or visual layers simultaneously, mixing them
together is similar to musical composition, in which various instruments are meant to be
played together, in different combination of rhythms, volumes and patterns. Abstract visuals
could be better analyzed as if they were music, including their compositional strengths and
weaknesses, rhythmic structure, beauty etc...Unfortunately, we are not used to listening to
visuals but rather to watching them attentively, looking for a story." p60

The point I'm trying to make is that unlike [most] traditional film, the binding structure of a Live Cinema presentation does not have to be narrative but can be its almost musical qualities such as rhythm, intensity and hierarchy.

How this will affect my project is I wish to analyse the footage samples I'll have in terms of their structure: rhythm/flow, intensity, speed, brightness, position, clarity; perhaps even create a manuscript language for them, so that whilst their live mixing may be improvisational, it can be a better crafted collaboration of imagery.

precedent imagery

I've been collecting images and videos of work that have similar imagery I wish to achieve in my project.

Here's a sample
one.
VJ Anyone.
(in particular 0:14-1:17)
This mix uses a nice trace and layering effect of the footage in a vignetted frame, suggesting a dreamlike displacement.

two.
VJ Bolverk.
I really enjoy this presentation's ability to take the viewer on a journey with very limited disclosure of context or reality. There is just enough detail offered in places to evoke an industrial setting and enough frame movement and overlaying of imagery to evoke a sense of discovery in the viewer without discovering much at all.


three.
VJ Sayuu.
I'm not a fan of the use of text in the mix, it seems there could have been a more critical approach to its purpose but I love the way animated graphics have been used to frame and 'house' underlayed media.

progress

Feedback from tuesday's session was helpful- the main consideration to be addressed was the audience intervention- as the project is being presented in a cinema style venue, not gallery, the space and expectation for the sort of interaction I was hoping for is not feasible so discussions suggested moving the project toward a performance.
this is the direction I will head and am getting a few friends on board to partake. The "sleeper" will also be an actor to add another dimension of movement: the IR rangefinders will be embedded in the sleeper's clothes so as the sleeper moves, so do the IR rfs so that they are not always in the same place.

















Film footage:
I have decided the footage will be of an artistically shot bike ride, overlaying sketches and doodles of imaginative 'dream irrationality' when the max patches are activated- illustrative examples of this to be uploaded soon.

max:
I'm as green as it gets to this programme, at the moment I'm still playing around with tutorials laced with a bit of trial and error investigation.

Project Two: expressing irrationality

The concept for project two stems from the notion of dreaming [sleep, not aspiration].
Dreaming has a particular fascination- it is universally common yet its purposes and meanings are- while largely conjectured and speculated over- unknown. What I wish to express in this experiment is how everyday rational actions become irrationalities, transforming the banal into a world of rousing possibility.

First thoughts on realising this idea is that the audience is the controller of rationality.
(While this may abstract, for the sake initial scheming...) I imagine there being a sleeper lying on the floor that senses (via infrared sensors planted on the body) the proximity of an audience member: the closer the observer is, the closer they move away from the rational world and into the sleeper's world of the illogical by way of their altering the visual projections on a screen above the sleeper. However- getting too close to the sleeper may cause them to wake, terminating the connection to the dream.


It's important, to me, to be able to control the visual experience without touching or physically manipulating an object to illustrate the sometimes weak threshold between reality and dream and that dreaming itself is generated by non physical stimulations of memory and thought.

audio will also be a large consideration in the project- certainly as an output, perhaps it could be an input controller also...

inspirations for visual interfacing styles:

Imogen Heap [particularly from 1:47]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uryUCVhjtr4&feature=related

(Clip from:) Waking Life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km5YGCRb0WM

Ralph I Steeds (sketching)