The Ice Apartment Project: Phase 1

March 18, 2007

Today, I filmed the first iteration of "The Ice Apartment" in a studio apartment on the East Side (thanks to Heather McPherson). A series of actions between four characters are shot from the four walls of the room. They will be projected, in an uncut, one-shot fashion, onto a small-scale ice room this Tuesday.

Here are some screenshots of the footage:

I had to fight the urges to do close-ups. There were some aspects of the scenes that warranted this kind of attention. I repeatedly reminded myself during the shoot: "alternative narrative. Don't cave into the conventions. Don't cave in..."

Posted by scribblepop at 11:45 PM| Comments (0)

Update II: Current Projects

As an extension to the experimentations with film narrative technologies I made during last fall, I am currently exploring the spatiality with two new projects.

Project 1: Bike Camera

Modes of transportation have always been an integral part of filmmaking, whether functioning as dollies or characters in the story (especially since the popularization of road movies). Just like how everything we see is filtered, the visual experience of watching the road fly by through a car window is a manipulated image. Time and space are both redefined by the car's velocity, shakiness, directionality, and the relative speed at which other objects pass by.

(click on image for details)

I first conceived of the idea of rigging up a film camera to the wheel of a bicycle when I was brainstorming for the most symbolic way to connect documentary narratives to the environment. I started with the idea of a motor scooter - but the machinery is far too complicated for the result I wanted. Eventually, I felt confident about the physical resemblance that a simple bicycle has to the film magazine. The two wheels of the bicycle, in rotation, functions just like the feed and take-up reels of a celluloid film camera. Where for the bicycle, the road is being treaded, and for the camera, the perforated film.

My experiment would proceed like so:

1. A vintage bicycle light power generator (aka. dynamo) is installed to the front wheel, so that it makes a rotation proportionally to the turn of the wheel and the distance traveled by the wheel.

2. The axle of the dynamo is connected to the axle of the take-up reel of an 8mm film camera.

3. As a result, every turn of the wheel = x amount distance traveled = y number of rotation by the dynamo = z amount of film exposed. Distance dictates the shooting frame rate of the camera instead of time.

4. ...and as a result, when the bicycle travels slower, the wheel rotates slower, the film is exposed slower, despite time being constant.

5. ...and as a further result, during playback, which proceeds at a normal rate of 24 frames per second, the speed of the objects moving past the bicyle on screen is inversely related to their movements in reality.

(click on image for details)

The project, with a projected finishing date of 04.30.07 (Monday), will consist of two iterations: film and DV. The bicycle mounted with the film camera will serve as a stronger physical metaphor for the tangibility of a "film world." The DV version (process elaborated in the paragraph below) will support multiple users to experience the disparity between time as perceived as a real life witness (the bicycle rider) and a projected, altered time that is "real" nontheless.

The process of digitally portraying the mechanism should be straightforward. Instead of directly connecting the dynamo to the rotation of the film (in this case, the miniDV tape), the voltage generated by the dynamo is recoreded by a microcontroller. This numeric data set is then transposed into editing programs, either AfterEffects or Final Cut Pro, to time-remap footage shot by the DV camera. The reason for a DV iteration of the project is my desire to emphasize on the equal importance of both the content and the process. I want the physical relationship between the witness/audience to the environment to be just as important as the viewership mediated by the moving images within a movie projection.

I have recently acquired an analogue 8mm film camera, whose mechanical components and operational concepts are analogous to that of a 16mm film camera (hopefully, my final product). I have also purchased some dynamos. The first actual testing of the project will take place during late March.

Project 2: Ice Apartment

The Ice Apartment is another experimentation with physically representing the spatial quality within a film narrative. Blocks of ice are welded together to form rooms, and multiple footages of characters moving within a similiarly configured interior space are projected onto the various faces of the ice archiecture.

I am fascinated by the self-decaying quality of ice. As it constantly re-structures itself in response to the atmosphere, it also changes in opacity to reveal its inner facets, cracks, bubbles, and tensions. Furthermore, our familiarity with ice liquifying makes us expect its disappearance - the story of the "Life of an Ice Cube" is teleological. We know how it's going to end.

Since this project is a large undertaking in terms of scale, I will first test out the nature of the ice with only one room, or four walls of ice. A door will be cut to make the projections' overlapping more interesting. The construction of this iteration, in its must rudimentary form, consists of four 30 inch x 20 inch blocks of ice, joint to form a rectangular space resting on a wooden platform with a drainage pipe. Projectors are installed from all four sides of the architecture.

(click on image for details)

Four films of different actions, shot within the same room, will be projected. As the ice melts, the narrative, too, will change.

The first testing of this installation will take place on 03.20.07 (Tuesday), in the early evening. I am not certain of its outcome due to temperature. However, I believe that the atmospherical variable will make the project more interesting.

The test will be thoroughly documented.

Posted by scribblepop at 12:33 AM| Comments (0)

Update Part I: The Past

March 07, 2007

It's been a while. I'm going to give myself a welcome back.

I want to open this "General Update" blog with the work of a nostalgic artist, Thomas Heatherwick.

This work, which is installed in London, is a "hydraulic bridge across a canal feeding the River Thames that can curl itself into a ball to make way for passing boats."

Above my attraction to the aesthetics of this bridge's design is the fascination with the nostalgia presented with the work. The drawbridge is such a antiquated archicture that it almost exists the realm of fantasy for modern day people. However, its obvious social implications and its physical connection with landscape makes it relatable to children. I remember reading a children's book when I was very young. It was about practical applications of logic (yes, a geek since the very start) through strings, trading, and drawbridges.

Ever since then, I've loved the idea of drawbridges. I soon fell in love with various other objects not seen around me. I aspired to build them when I grow up...but my dream realizing these fantastical architectures was eventually muted by practicality.

Recently, I felt these urges coming back to me again. And Heatherwick's work reaffirmed these desires.

I'm going to make a list of things that I've always wanted to make, even the most grandoise ones. And then I'm going to try to make them.

Over wintersession, I decided to make a guitar in the shape of a classical violin. The guitar would be built from scratch (with some purchased parts, such as tuners, bridge, pickups, etc.), but everything would be shaped, crafted, carved, and constructed by me. Here is my process, in a nutshell:

The plan came from blowing up the template of a classical violin, and fitting guitar electronics into the shape.

Snippets from a very involved construction process:

The semi-finished product (sans strings):

Posted by scribblepop at 09:38 PM| Comments (1)

Multifocal Camera: Final Crit & Documentation

December 19, 2006

I've recently had my final crit of the semester. During the last stages of development, I decided to take a different approach to its presentation and build a panorama as to draw a stronger connection between the physical experience of peripheral vision and the viewer's receptive experience of the work.

The panorama measures about 8 feet in diameter and 3 feet tall. Within the space, I installed two separate tracks of audio, one depicting the realistic first-person perspective, the other the schizophrenic.

Click on the still below to see the video documentation of my presentation:

The screen of the panorama allows both frontal and rear projection. Arranged on the screen space are the three different videos I shot for the project. They are arranged as follow (from right to left):

Schizophrenic First-Person
Third Person (which can be seen from the gap in the panorama, before the viewer enters the immersive space)
Real First-Person

I constructed 3 wooden mounts for the three projectors and suspended the apparati from the ceiling.

Here's a picture of myself, presenting. With lots of hand gestures.

A pdf. documenting the entire process can be downloaded by clicking here.

In addition, I've also designed a Russian Constructivist inspired poster that roughly outlines my grand proposal - the multiple module, open-ended camera device.

Posted by scribblepop at 03:39 AM| Comments (0)

Multifocal Camera Fiction: My Progress, Pt 1

December 05, 2006

After the documentary made in Boston, I took the Multifocal Camera device in a slightly more creatively abusive direction and made a fictional narrative with the same device. In a nutshell, the film, tentatively titled "Inside the ___ Mind of a ___ Man," tells the story of a man's walk home at night. I called the man Marley, but there's really no way of referencing that during the film. During his walk, he becomes disturbed by something he sees. He hears screams, gunshots, that may or may not be there.

The work is present in both third-person and first-person POV's. While the third-person actions are projected in cinematic 2.35:1 format on one side of the projection screen, the first-person POV is projected onto the flipside of the screen, interchanging between a calm reality and a schizophrenic and horrific illusion (or maybe not illusional?). I storyboarded all three narratives so that they would synch up in real time, and made a MAX/JITTER patch to allow webcam enabled motion detecting. When viewed from some distance away, the first-person shows the schizophrenic reality, but with a closer look, that reality fades away and becomes unapparent. My purpose is to make the credibility of either reality as ambiguous as possible, and to let the separation between the third-person action and the mind's eye force the audience to interpret the stories, which is rather challenging to understand on their own.

Here's a screengrab of my MAX patch in the works...before it finally worked:

Here are some of my storyboards:

Here are two screencaps of the third person portion of the narrative (click to see them in their NTSC dimensional wonder):

Posted by scribblepop at 12:13 PM| Comments (0)

Media Mashup: Two Towers

November 30, 2006

After Douglas Kahn came to speak at our lecture series, I did the following media cut-up for an assignment. It's pretty self-explanatory, basically the expression of a alternative opinion towards prevalent issues through the reshuffling of media in any form. Trailer re-edits are popular at the moment, and I need an excuse to play around with Final Cut.

I took the tracks used for the Two Towers trailer, spliced them according to the real trailer, sans dialogue.

Here are the trailers/footage I used to reconstruct the trailer:

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
The Fog of War
Black Hawk Down
Apocalypse Now
Hotel Rwanda
Flag of Our Fathers
Farenheit 911
The Assasination of the President
Saving Private Ryan
Blood Diamond
Constant Gardner
Deep Impact
...and more

I've also incorprated YouTube video clips and Google Videos

Posted by scribblepop at 04:04 PM| Comments (1)

How to Make Microwave Brownies

Jeanne and I were intrigued by this item, briefly introduced to us previously through Reality Bites.

Posted by scribblepop at 10:43 AM| Comments (0)

Development on M-Cam

November 19, 2006

After a flurry of assignments, I finally constructed a 3-camera mount, hopped to Boston, and did a test shoot to figure out how exactly to make multiple depth-of-fields overlap and deliver a logical narrative.

Here are a few screencaps of my footage.

This is more a demo of my concept than anything else. The next step is a fictional narrative, which, hopefully, I can shoot during Thanksgiving.

And in other news, I got a new phone, which takes 2.0 megapixel pictures. Needless to say, it's brought the Japanese tourist out of me.

Check out some pictures on flickr.

Also check out Nathaniel Katz' blog space. I recently shot an 11:30 min video performance piece that explores his relationship with computers [and beyond].

I will end this entry by saying that I will update more frequently these following weeks. I promise.

Posted by scribblepop at 11:35 PM| Comments (0)

New Idea for M-Cam Module

October 24, 2006

Maybe I'm ahead of myself here, but I just thought of another idea for a second module for M-Cam last night in studio. I want to make 4 or 5 remote controlled flying cameras the size of ping-pong balls with an adhesive side that the user can place anywhere in a space. There will be a visible LED behind each of these cameras for locative purposes (which can be toggled on-off). The machanism for flying can double up as a grabbing hand for these little chipmunks.

What I would need for this project to fly are:
Small and light pastic board cameras
Shock-absorbing shielding material
Ping-pong balls
Claw/Wing mechanism
Power supply for mechanism and camera
Remote control for movements and lens adjustments (the latter is a second step)
Microcontroller for various motions
Wireless video feed
Monitors

Comments welcome. Thanks.

Posted by scribblepop at 04:39 PM| Comments (1)

The Camcorder Hacking Project Update

October 22, 2006

I successfully hacked the camera this Friday. Since then, I've been playing with its mechanisms. After I realized that it has a fixed focal length, I had been trying to find other 1/3 in CCD lenses that I can replace in order to do a prototype for my Multifocal Camera Module project. However, I was a little frustrated with the pricing of the varifocal lenses I found online. So I thought to myself, oh well, it's a prototype, it's better to put the process out there instead of being stuck on the mechanism, which is obviously doable with a little bit more money.

And then I realized that with some cutting and twisting, I could easily screw off the lens from the imaging board.

And then...I realized that by screwing the lens in at different lengths, I have already adjusted the focal lengths.

Now I can take macro video footages at sharp focus 2cm from my lens, as well as focus it to infinity. All I have to do is screw the lens in at different depth.

Why have I not figured this simple action out earlier? Maybe it was it initial intimidation I had toward this awesome little machine. Maybe it was the fear that I'd get shocked with 120 volts again.

But nontheless, now the possibilities are nearly endless. I'm still going to investigate into purchasing other types of lenses (telephoto, wide, varifocal). But also, I can begin writing a Jitter program that will take care of the image overlapping process. If I can find a way to cheaply connect the lens into a motor that twists and turns very finely, I can program different focii...and control the four depths of fields on four separate lenses. I can build my Multifocal Camera prototype!

Here are some stills to illustrate the various focal lengths achieved by my manual lens alterations:

The lens mounted as-is from the store - In focus from about 20 inches to infinity

Alteration 1: From 15 feet to infinity

Alteration 2: 30 inches

Alteration 3: 12 inches

Alteration 4: 1 inch

The tweaking is very maticulous...which suggests that I should eventually switch to an actual varifocal lens, but for the time being, I can start with this setup. Another aspect this test suggests is how much the imaging quality can improve. The motion clips are actually a lot more clearly resolved then their stills, as expected for DV footage. Right now, the resolution of the image is 382 pixels wide, I did hear of ways to change that to 640. I'll be looking into that once the focus aspect is complete.

I feel happy.

Posted by scribblepop at 10:39 PM| Comments (0)

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)

Web of Free Associations

September 19, 2006

Last Thursday, we were given the assignment by Bill Seaman (our Department Chair and professor) to create a web of free associations, stemmed from a few initial words that sparked our interests. We were supposed to then bridge these words with bridging words on an arbitrary basis, as to instigate ourselves to link matters with very little superficial connections. Then we were supposed to present this work visually. So I did this in Illustrator and then printed it out on satin photo paper, measuring approx. 27x20.

Posted by scribblepop at 12:50 PM| Comments (0)