Installation at 911 Media Arts Gallery
Documentation:
Video
Studio Sketches
Install Process
Source Media and Software
Finished Installation
Source Media and Software
The audio was recorded separate from the gallery space in a studio environment. The musicians played improvisational music based on the general concepts of the piece, randomness, gestalt, biomorphic forms and drawing from a large pool of musical influences. The music was improvised with a random, multi-layered sound environment in mind, and was kept in similar aesthetic veins to create continuity within itself. The audio ranges in timbre, volume and rhythm while staying within roughly the same key signatures. In this way the music samples match with themselves and the visual component, in philosophy and general aesthetic sensibility.
The recordings were then broken into smaller chunks, slowed down or effected, remixed and mastered.
Audio Sample 1
Audio Sample 2
Video, as a medium in general, is usually thought of as a rectangle of light forming a recognisable image on a screen or similar two dimensional surface. The medium of projected video is, in fact, a pyramid/cone-like structure composed of photons travelling from the lens of the projector to a surface on which they are either reflected or absorbed. Within this pyramid/cone is a near-infinite possibility to create shapes of various colour and brilliance. Objects within the projectors cast light reveal the otherwise invisible forms and distorts those forms depending on the angle of the surface to the projector's standard picture plane. In recent years artists have been taking advantage of this property, of particular note is the artist Tony Oursler.
After the entire sculptural portion of the installation is complete and the projectors have been placed for maximum coverage of the surface with light a series of drawings are created in photoshop using a drawing tablet and a laptop connected to a projector as a second monitor. In this way drawings can be made directly on the surface of the sculpture with the light from the projector. The process is similar to using actual paint, but the entire toolkit of photoshop is available to create and alter the images. The individual pieces of paper can also be coloured separately using this technique to develop deeper chiaroscuro than the already sculptural surface provides, creating a hyper-dimensionality otherwise unviewable. Six such images were created for the 911 show for each projector.
A custom piece of software, dubbed aXiMaL, written in Flash Actionscript, loads these images as .jpg files, along with .mp3 files, and manipulates their properties using low frequency oscillators written into the software. All of this is notated using XML, which for those super-nerds out there an example is available to view right here.
The software can actually be seen running to the right on this page (embedded as a .swf file) as it is set for one of the projectors in the 911 installation. You can see the flat images created in photoshop slowly fading in and out. The particulars of the image actually line up directly with the elements of the sculpture when the light from the projector is lined up correctly.
Documentation:
Video
Studio Sketches
Install Process
Source Media and Software
Finished Installation
Source Media and Software
The audio was recorded separate from the gallery space in a studio environment. The musicians played improvisational music based on the general concepts of the piece, randomness, gestalt, biomorphic forms and drawing from a large pool of musical influences. The music was improvised with a random, multi-layered sound environment in mind, and was kept in similar aesthetic veins to create continuity within itself. The audio ranges in timbre, volume and rhythm while staying within roughly the same key signatures. In this way the music samples match with themselves and the visual component, in philosophy and general aesthetic sensibility.
The recordings were then broken into smaller chunks, slowed down or effected, remixed and mastered.
Audio Sample 1
Audio Sample 2
Video, as a medium in general, is usually thought of as a rectangle of light forming a recognisable image on a screen or similar two dimensional surface. The medium of projected video is, in fact, a pyramid/cone-like structure composed of photons travelling from the lens of the projector to a surface on which they are either reflected or absorbed. Within this pyramid/cone is a near-infinite possibility to create shapes of various colour and brilliance. Objects within the projectors cast light reveal the otherwise invisible forms and distorts those forms depending on the angle of the surface to the projector's standard picture plane. In recent years artists have been taking advantage of this property, of particular note is the artist Tony Oursler.
After the entire sculptural portion of the installation is complete and the projectors have been placed for maximum coverage of the surface with light a series of drawings are created in photoshop using a drawing tablet and a laptop connected to a projector as a second monitor. In this way drawings can be made directly on the surface of the sculpture with the light from the projector. The process is similar to using actual paint, but the entire toolkit of photoshop is available to create and alter the images. The individual pieces of paper can also be coloured separately using this technique to develop deeper chiaroscuro than the already sculptural surface provides, creating a hyper-dimensionality otherwise unviewable. Six such images were created for the 911 show for each projector.
A custom piece of software, dubbed aXiMaL, written in Flash Actionscript, loads these images as .jpg files, along with .mp3 files, and manipulates their properties using low frequency oscillators written into the software. All of this is notated using XML, which for those super-nerds out there an example is available to view right here.
The software can actually be seen running to the right on this page (embedded as a .swf file) as it is set for one of the projectors in the 911 installation. You can see the flat images created in photoshop slowly fading in and out. The particulars of the image actually line up directly with the elements of the sculpture when the light from the projector is lined up correctly.