GMU:Breaking the Timeline projects

Projects from the course Breaking the Timeline, a Fachmodul by Max Neupert, Gestaltung Medialer Umgebungen Summer Semester 2010:

Jeffers Egan:

Theory

Viewing Live AV as a platform for experimentation, my live sets explore the inscription of visual culture in time. By utilizing custom algorithms and animation software and without the use of prerecorded video or still footage, these works result in a hyperreal fluidity of visual mutations, ranging from tightly synchronized passages, to moments of free improvisation. Developing the concepts of digital as organism and software as ecosystem, my sets create a focused, personal aesthetic, finding commonalities in tone, texture and movement between audio and visual elements.

Practice

I have been invited to perform Live Visuals with vidderna, http://www.myspace.com/vidderna at ROJO/NOVA, a multimedia event this July in Sao Paulo, Brazil. We will play a 1 hour show together at an event alongside other AV acts.

Technically I am building a visual instrument in Touch Designer, www.derivative.ca. For the performance with vidderna, I plan to add a HD multi-movie stream compositing system(with alpha), a 3D timeline, and build/consolidate some GLSL shaders into 2D filters I can use in the compositing system.

I will also create new artwork specifically for this performance.

Matthias Breuer:

Besides doing some research and experimenting I am trying to do one smaller project:

The project focuses on the truth and reality of the images we see. Taking any kind of video source as input, the stream's audio channel is continously played back. The corresponding frame is calculated from similarity to all previous frames. The most similar frame will be displayed. Each new frame is then placed in a database for comparison with forthcoming frames. This creates a steadily growing and learning mass which—after some time—can replace reality with frames from the past. At that point no clear distinction between reality and fiction can be made anymore.

Similarity between frames depend on an amount of chosen factors. Most commmon are histogram, structure etc. but always depend on the features one sees as important in an image. It's not important to match the look of a frame as close as possible but to match a frame in a given set of interests.

Maureen Anderson:

Working with stories concerning certain sexual experiences where I hope to transform explicit stories (not sexually explicit per se, but explicit in terms of talking about a definite sequence of events) into more elusive or meditative. I hope to echieve this through the editing and piecing of the stories. I have some stories collected already. I normally work with appropriated images, collecting and arranging still photos and text. With a few exceptions, I have never worked in appropriated moving images, and have very little experience in working with audio but would like to work in seeing what I can do with stretching my work of appropriation with the added element of time.

Sebastian Wolf:

Thoughts

• stretch and/or bend sensors x Arduino x video manipulation in PD
• stretch it with your hands to bend time
• wrap it around your chest and manipulate the timeline with your breathing
• footage? flowing water? a forest fire? (fire + "breath-control")