Scroll of Everything

October 12, 2006

This is another concept I have for interactive visual learning machines. I'm tentatively calling it the "Scroll of Everything," because I believe that everything we see is made of foundamental elements that make no literal sense standing independently. They include color, light, lines, shapes, direction, texture (a result of light), and movements.

Click on the thumb below to access the intial diagram I've sketched for this mechanism:

The viewer will have full liberty to control the qualities of each element and see the immediate result in the composite image sequence. The “story” within the sequence is non-literal; while it contains movement, it is detached from any textual story so that the work will only trigger reactions resulted by the user-controlled variables. The construction of the work will also exercise the most fundamental of motors and toggle switches, and the compositions are simply the overlapping of multiple translucent images, each a frame from a rotating scroll.

As a follower of science, I believe that our reactions are quantified and somewhat predictable. What is intriguing about our physiological similarities is the mystery that they bring to our differences. I hope that my rather scientific structural breakdown of a visual story will lend insight to why we think the same, and how we think differently.

The implementation for this mechanism is quite straightforward. Long continuous strips of transparent paper will be printed with color spectrums, shapes, lines, and sprayed with semi-transparent to opaque paint. The layers will be punctured with perforations in order to enable speed control. Four axis in the arragement of a square are placed on plates that motorize concentric film rollers, on which the film layers are loaded. The motors are connected to potentiometers controlled by the viewer.

Finally, a projection of the most basic of actions, a figure eating, sitting, reading, and walking, overlaps onto what becomes a composition of the film layers.

Posted by scribblepop at 06:09 PM| Comments (1)

Multifocal Still & Motion Cameras

For a long time, I've felt sabotaged by the traditional studio filmmaking method. My main objection is that film can actually be made cheaply - not by cutting down on production, or taking advantage of the crew, etc - but by re-inventing the techniques of imaging with the camera. This had been what great storytellers did to deliver their ideas...if Renoir's grand illusion was made by pushing his cinematographer around the city in a camoflauged cart, what stops people nowadays from confidently doing so and truly believing in the sensibility of their audience?

Anyway, I digress.

For my D+M seminar end-of-the-year proposal, I am going to present something that I tentatively call "M-Cam." I've just dived into the research, so I don't have much to say about it yet. But here are some possible "components" for it.

The Multi-Focal Motion camera:

and as an extension, the Multi-Focal Still camera:

Proposals for the Multi-focal Motion Camera & Multi-focal Still Camera

1. Mutli-focal Motion Camera

The Multi-focal Motion Camera is the first "module" that I want to test for my eventual, possible thesis project, M-Cam. As one of the most basic visual modules for the M-Cam, it captures an action set in a three-dimension space as four separate sequences with four separate focal distances.

As illustrated by the graphic at the beginning of the entry, the resulted output through this camera module will be a set of four action sequences of the exact same "time" and "space," with emphasis directed by their different focii.

The goal for this mechanism is two-fold (aside from aesthetic choices):
1. By breaking down the action into multiple planes of sharp details, filmmakers and animators can easily access the visual information in these separate sequences and create layered juxtopositions to imply various 3D effects, ala cell animation and rotoscoping, or even just to experiment with the power of a camera's perspective.

2. We tend to let space and time dictate each other. We feel that to get to point B, there's a linear time difference that defines this travel as well, making the concept of destination very limiting. By portraying an action with multiple destinations (defined by focii), we can get a new sense of what it is like to be engulfed by a wide expanse of time and space. (Hope this made sense)

Implementations of the Multi-focal Motion Camera

I've recently purchased one of CVS's One-Time Disposable Camera, made by PureDigital, Inc.. I plan to hack into the camera and connect it to a USB output. If this works out successfully, I plan to purchase three more of the same camera, hack all of them, and connect the four USB's through a hub. I will then secure all four cameras together into a square and lock them within an enclosure that allows for power, control of focii through switches, and handling.

The recorded sequences will be loaded into Jitter, where they will be overlapped according to their similarities, as the visual incongruousness of the four sequences are then automatically cropped out. This process basically eliminates the displacements that occurred between the four cameras.

You will be left with four sequences that recorded the same time and space, with four different sets of customizable focci.

2. Mutli-focal Still Camera

The Multi-focal Still Camera shares the same goals as its motion counterpart. The primary differences between the two, aside from the obvious, is that it is triggered by sound and/or motion. This also affects its use, which can be used for surveillance, or a more conceptual portrayal of a particular space. The fact that pictures are only driven by the first frame of movement or sound of a particular set of actions will convey a stronger sense of something happening, and provide only the most sparse visual information for animators and filmmakers to play with.

The construction of the camera is very similar to that of the Multi-focal Motion Camera. The four shutters for the four lenses are connected to the motion and/or sound sensors, with off as shut, and on as open. With similar enclosure build, the four images are also transferred via USB to jitter, where the incongruousness are removed by the program.

Posted by scribblepop at 12:47 PM| Comments (0)

Yang Fugong - No Snow on the Broken Bridge

October 09, 2006

Over this past weekend, I trekked down to New York City (again) to see some friends. I also visited the Marian Goodman gallery to check out a recent multi-channel film installation by Chinese artist Yang Fudong.

Here is what ArtForum had to say about the installation:

Those who have seen this Chinese artist’s earlier films will find familiar imagery scattered throughout No Snow on the Broken Bridge, 2006: a freeze-frame tableau in which seven young men and women, dressed in a haberdasher’s finest, look outward from a rocky outcrop; boats slowly drifting across placid waters; lush, unpopulated landscapes dominated by mountains. This eleven-minute black-and-white work, which premiered last spring at Parasol Unit in London, is Fudong’s inaugural foray into multichannel presentation. A viewer’s slightly antic attempt to take in images from eight screens, here hung in a seamless semicircle, marginally diminishes the arrested-moment quality that characterizes all his films—it’s plain he trained as a painter—but Fudong aids the viewer by occasionally letting objects slide from one screen to the next or by nestling similar images side by side (ants threading through rivulets of bark; men hiking a narrow path up a hill). Like all of Fudong’s work, the narrative is loosely structured, favoring centripetal forces over linear paths. Here, glamorous young men and women are slowly pulled together as, alone or in pairs and quartets, they wend their way toward the eponymous bridge to catch a last glimpse of winter snow; the rabbits, parrots, and stubborn goats on leashes that accompany them hint at the dandyish excess of a bygone era. Some women make their way, in heels, along flat boulders set in a babbling brook; others wear suits and painted mustaches. A man in a trilby puffs contemplatively on a pipe while being conveyed across open water. Not much of significance transpires, but in a film this beautiful, this suffused with atmosphere, not much needs to.

After visiting the space, I had mixed feelings about the effectiveness of the piece. More later...

Posted by scribblepop at 01:08 PM| Comments (0)