image processes

:(

science and art

I happened across this page just now and it reminded me of some of the discussions that we had about science and art and the future of such things. Well, the future is now! :)

https://dna.familybuilder.com/

I think this would be totally cool if I had 59.95 to spend on something like this... :)

Tracy

Project 4 after images

Here are some of the after images from project 4, I used a tripod, so they're hard to tell apart...not much I can do about that.

-Jason

Microscopics

Took a while but here are the images from when Alyce and I did our microscopic projects!!!

Lens stuff

Upside down tree

sunlight refracted

underside of a mushroom

the side of a dime

gravel

stuff that i didn't post from the first lens assignment. Bascia and I.

More more Project 4 Process

I believe the reasons I chose to relate this project to snow obvious, but for the blog's sake I shall explain them. Not only is snow a most common characteristic of the holidays, but I was fond of its play on words in relation to the static that overtakes the screen. My my main intenbt for choosing to relate my video to snow was to use in in an effort to comment of the foggy replication of tradition from generation to generation. As each generation attempts to repeat the same holiday activity, the sentimental purpose is layered upon each other with slight alterations that each generation adds with its own experience, a blurred collection of imitations. The layered song also helps to emphasize this eerie time warp.

More project 4 processes

The piece I have created is based on an observation of family tradition. Every Christmas my grandmother watched Christmas in Connecticut with my mother and my mother's sister and played Andy William's Let it Snow while cooking Christmas dinner. My mother did this with me. More than likely I will do this with my daughter. My piece is a comment on how my own experience with this media is an faded echo in relation to my own grandmother's experience.

Project 4 Process

Originally I had intended to do a completely different project than the one I turned in. It had been a long time since I had attempted a stop motion and it seemed to fit the guidelines of "lo-fi" technique. Although I was thrilled to revisit this idea, I was having difficulty coming up with a way to fulfill the conceptual requirements for the project. This seems to happen to me all the time. Because the concept of an art piece is its backbone, this is a serious problem. Therefore, I decided to abandon this notion and move on to an idea that would have more meaning to me.

More Project 4 Process

So unfortunately, I never ended up finding those images I was looking for (the ones of the art pieces of projections at weird angles). I suppose that's okay though since that's not really what I ended up doing.

However, before I get into what I ended up doing for this project, I'd like to briefly mention a few more things that I was thinking about for my previous idea. As I mentioned before, I had started thinking about projecting the NES Mario game t weird angles and/or onto multiple walls. During in-class discussion, Katerie mentioned that, while the idea didn't really convey my concept very well (which I agree with), it did make her think about being in a particular place at a particular time, epeically considering the use of the Wii remote and its association with movement and the placement of a player at any certain time. Also, she mentioned the possible use of some kind of historical video to be projected (be it a movie, game, photos, etc). This would possibly help convey the message I was trying to get across to the audience. I thought about this for a while, but didn't come up with anything... The only possibility I could manage was to use an old Nintendo game, Mario's Time Machine. This could possibly fulfill the "historical" element of the piece. However, this was not nearly good enough. That was the last I thought about this idea until before I came up with my final idea.

I wish I could say more about how I arrived at this final idea, but I honestly don't know; it just popped into my head all of a sudden, so there wasn't really a mental path that I followed... It was more like a came to a giant wall in the middle of the road saying, "HEY!!! DO THIS IDEA!!!" I immediately loved the idea. On top of that, it had a very obvious sense of degradation. So here's what the project was: I had six video cameras (four of which I checked out from the cage). I also had four tripods and two projectors. Originally I was thinking about using a combination of the cameras, the projectors, AND a few computers/monitors. So for this, I would point the cameras at either another camera's pop-out viewfinder, the monitor of a computer (displaying what the camera the computer was connected to was seeing in real time) or a projection on a wall. I would alternate between these mediums and ultimately display the resulting video feed onto the wall in the crit room via one of the projectors. So consider this example set up --camera 1 would point at a wall where people could go in front of it; camera 2 would be looking at the viewfinder of camera 1; camera 2 would also be connected to a computer which would display what camera 2 saw in real time; camera 3 would be looking at the computer monitor in effect seeing what camera 2 was seeing; camera 4 would be looking at the viewfinder of camera 3; camera 4 would be connected to a projector (which would display what camera 4 saw in real time); camera 5 would be looking at the displayed video from camera 4's projector; camera 6 would be looking at camera 5's viewfinder; camera 6 would also be connected to a projector which would project onto the wall of the crit space.

However, I decided that, even though using this method would result in more degradation, that it would be better if I stuck with only one medium (the cameras). That way it felt a little more connected and less disjointed.

So I went about setting up all of the cameras around the Digital Media room and the crit space. I wanted to make this kind of like a series of dominoes, spinning around obstacles and being in weird places yet having it all be connected throughout the series of cameras. So with that in mind, I manipulated the directions that the viewfinders where pointing in order to place the cameras all around the two rooms, both at different angles and at different heights. Ultimately, the final output was given by the projector in the crit space which was connected to the final camera. In all, there where six camereas --4 in the Digital Media space and two (plus the projector) in the crit space.

Now I'll talk a little about some comments from crit. I think the main issue that was brought up was from Katerie who asked me how I would set this up in a gallery. The emphasis being on what the cameras would be set on. I don't think I clearly understood the question at the time, but I think I have more of a grasp on the question now. Ideally, I think I would use tripods to hold all of the cameras rather than pedestals, chairs, pizza boxes, etc. There are a few reasons for this. One is because tripods are the easiest way to set up a camera in the desired direction at the desired height at the desired angle and so on and so forth. Another reason is because I don't really want the cameras to be seen as anything but cameras --just something that people view as they walk by them. I believe it was Joel who mentioned the possibility of hanging the cameras from the ceiling or some other structure. While that's a neat idea, I would rather have them closer to the ground so that people could walk up to/ walk around the cameras and see what the cameras see as well as where they are pointing, what they are looking at, and through that freedom of sight be able to understand the connection between all of the cameras. As long as we're talking about ideal situations, I'd also like to have many more cameras set up in a much bigger space. I can't really decide whether I'd like to have the cameras set up in more of a hallway-like environment or a big open room. I like the hallway idea because it would force (at least more so than the big open area) the viewers to walk along the path that the cameras follow, and would hopefully help to establish the connection between the cameras (I'm a big fan of people following the path for this). However, I think that might be a little too obvious, and that the open space might provide a more suitable environment. Regardless of where the cameras would go, I would still place them in a non-linear fashion (not one behind the other) and spread them out in the space at different heights, angles, etc.

As for the context of the piece, I found it hard (personally) to stray away from a negative connotation... Although I liked the piece and its outcome, I was not a big fan of the internal discussion going on in my head. I was stuck on the idea of degradation in relation to time. And because these where cameras (devices meant to capture moments in time), the idea seemed much more sensible. Also, cameras are often used to take videos of people (films, home movies, for fun etc.), and because the first camera was placed so that someone could stand in front of it (thusly being the subject of the cameras view and the degraded figure in the final projection), this made me think about aging and the degradation of a person over time. While I fully realize this could be one interpretation of the work, I didn't especially like it (although I always like to entertain the possibilities of my works). A more digital sense of the work could be the degradation of technology over time. This is a much more neutral (emotionally) interpretation. For this, one could talk about either degradation of technology in terms of electronic files being constantly compressed over and over as they are sent here and there (for example, the compression of real life into a video camera, the compression of the electronic data on the camera to a file type that a computer understands, another compression from the computer to get the file into a type used on the internet, another compression for the computers of others viewing the online file, and so and and so forth). Or it could be associated with the degradation over time (for example the degradation of discs such as CDs or DVDs). This interpretation is especially interesting because of the constantly enforced belief that digital copies will last forever, particularly longer than older technologies such as VHS, beta tapes, film, and others. The fact is, however, that it is usually the exact opposite with digital copies either becoming damaged in some way or degrading to the point that they are unusable.

Overall, I really liked this project and ideas that went with it. However, I would like to possibly work on it further in the future.