Anthony McCall 'Line Describing a Cone'

Another clever use of mist.
McCall's 1973 work 'Line Describing a Cone' was pivotal in terms of defining structural film and the viewer's interaction.




Anthony McCall Line Describing a Cone 1973
Installation view at the Musée de Rochechouart, 2007
Solid light installation, 30 minutes
16 mm film projector, haze machine

Alternative video projection ideas

I'm exploring the idea of projection of a moving image onto mist, dust or fog, drawing attention to the illusion of cinema. This in turn would help create a space which viewers can navigate through and around, making the whole viewing process more of an experience.

Here are a couple of artworks I discovered which deal with projection onto impermanent surfaces:


Carsten Nicolai 'Fades' (2006) Installation in lightproof auditorium, video projection (16:9 ratio), mist, sound
the projected light hitting the mist particles create a light sculpture in three dimensional space.

Primal Source (video documentation) from haque d+r on Vimeo.
Primal Source (2008) is an outdoor interactive/performance installation. The piece is projected onto a large water/mist screen and responds to the sound waves produced by the audience.

The Liverpool Culture Company 'City of Light' (2005) video projection onto water
This also utilizes the large outdoor water screen and coloured laser lights, creating a 30 minture video.

Bjork 'Wanderlust' in 3D

Video for Bjork's 'Wanderlust' available in 3D on Wired.
Even quite beautiful without the aid of 3D anagylph glasses.

Daguerreotype Stereoportrait

A visit to the Otago Settlers Museum introduced me to the world of stereography as it existed long before the plastic viewmaster.
The Daguerreotype stereoportraits were often placed in special viewing kits, with lens that you could fold out and look through.



The most beautiful were the 'french tissue' ones, which were hand coloured and had little holes pierced into places on the subjects' clothes, so when held up to the light it appeared as though the image had jewel-like embellishments.

This is the viewer we used to look at various the images:


photo by Max Oettli Stereoscopic viewer and stereo Cyanotype

Siggraph - Touchable Holography

Presented at the 2009 Siggraph Emerging Technologies conference, this is just the beginning of something pretty revolutionary in the way we understand 3D imaging.

"Researchers at the University of Tokyo are working to create holographic displays that mimic the sensation of interacting with solid objects....researchers place a reflective marker on a person's hand and use Nintendo Wiimotes to track the position of the hand relative to the hologram. As the hand gets near the hologram, the display triggers a feedback mechanism, which feeds acoustic radiation pressure to the hand, creating the sensation that the person is touching an object. At the same time, the hologram reacts to the hand's position, and can be batted, grabbed, or floated based on the hand's position." -from I09

Got my milk, got my cookies, got my Viewmaster

Ever since I was little I was fascinated by the 'real' appearance of images inside of a Viewmaster.

Somehow those little discs could make everthing jump out, like you were actually in the image.

Stereoscopy (the technology utilized by the Viewmaster) is any technique capable of recording three-dimensional visual information or creating the an illusion of depth in an image.

The illusion of a 3D image is made possible by the viewmaster device which allows each eye to see a different image, distorting our binocular vision.

Under the umbrella of Stereoscopic imagery there's a bunch of things I find exciting. While the Viewmaster works in a Spacial or Cross-converged way, there's also complementary colour Anaglyphs (which you use those retro-looking red/blue glasses for) and Autostereograms (magic-eye type illusions), Lenticular printing and Holography.

While it is possible to create 3D stereoscopic images, we still seem to rely on a viewer to see the illusion. You can create your own 3D film (though this still requires 3D glasses), or you can spend ages squinting your eyes at pictures of cats on YouTube, like I did.
I'm just beginning to understand this and get my head around it, but definitely something to go on and explore within my work.


Want to see a guy inside a giant viewmaster? YES PLEASE.

Xavier Chassaing 'Scintillation'

Xavier Chassaing creates a film from over 35,000 photographs and a combination of live projection mapping techniques.
The use of single frames to describe movement is almost seemless here, and what I first notice is the extremely short depth of field which moves along a single close-up object, changing the focal point in a very photographic way.

SCINTILLATION from Xavier Chassaing on Vimeo.

How is it done?

“Scintillation” is an extraordinary and beautiful example of what can happen when an artist stows away in his apartment for eight months with nothing but his computer, a digital video projector, a DSLR and his imagination. French director Xavier Chassaing mounted his still camera on a homemade motion control rig capturing images as it moved 1mm per second. With multiple passes at varying exposures, the final piece uses 35,000 digital images. Chassaing then rendered 3D particle systems onto 3D models of the real life objects that would later act as a canvas for the projected visuals. Chassaing adds, “The shooting is 30 times slower than reality, resulting in having to gather as much material as for a feature film.”
from Stash Magazine online

Röyksopp 'The Girl And The Robot'

A few frames from the opening scene of The Girl and the Robot music video, I just love the lighting so much here!

motion//picture//cature

Link to my theory essay 2009 here.

SyFy 'House of Imagination'

Yes. I want to live HERE.

Rosemarie Fiore 'Bonus Round Exposure'

Caputuring the whole duration of gameplay. One of those 'I wish I had thought of it first' ideas.

"These photographs are long exposures taken while playing video war games of the 80's created by Atari, Centuri and Taito. The photographs were shot from video game screens while I played the games. By recording each second of an entire game on one frame of film, I captured complex patterns not normally seen by the eye." -Rosemaire Fiore


"Tempest 1" 2001 digital c print 4 ft x 6 ft

"Quantum 2' 2002 digital c print 36 in x 40 in


"Gyruss 1" 2001 digital Lamda print 30 in X 30 in

Marco Brambilla 'Civilization'

I can't say too much except OH MY GOD THIS IS SO COOL. The fact that the piece is installed in a elevator works simultaneously with the ascending imagery too. I wonder if you could call this video montage? Like cut and paste video segments.
The embedded version is just from YouTube, but you can view it on Motionographer and check out the write up behind the work too.

Polar Panoramics

Been having a bit of a look at polar panorama photography and video.

2.5D - Polar Panoramic Video from Valentijn Kint on Vimeo.

Keith Loutit 'Bathtub IV'

Tilt-shift miniature videos! ..who knew..
Keith Loutit combines the miniature faking with time lapse in his little videos.

Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Microsoft // Photosynth

Taking photographs of the same scene or object then automatically stitched together into one big 3D interactive piece. It's kind of a visual mixing tool which moves us through a space and time... and can essentially trasform the way we view and experience still images.

Slinkachu 'Little People' A Tiny Street Art Project

For more images check out Slinkachu blog

'Wonderland' Battersea Park, London

'Vandalized Cash Machine'

'They're not pets,Susan' Primrose Hill, London

Aaron Hobson 'Cinemascapes'

Aaron Hobson is the star of his own hauntingly beautiful photos. His different take on traditional panoramic photography is something I would like to try. Our focal planes are shifted, and there is more than the eye can see.
There is also an open-ended narrative that provokes us to ask- what exactly is going on here?
I almost see Hobson's work as resting in the space between Sam Taylor-Wood's Revolutionary Seconds, and Gregory Crewdson's Twilight or Beneath the Roses.


'a decisive moment'


'visitors'


'answer the fucking phone'


...and a photograph from his new work-in-progress series 'Femme verite' which continues to follow Hobson's personal narrative through self-portraiture while introducing a female alter.


'complacent'

*They even have the black bars to emphasize the cinematic feeling!*

Amy Bennett 'Neighbors'

wooooah, these are actually really awesome. I have to admit, I'm a bit of a photography snob, and I. don't. like. painting.... not very much anyway. Probably because the best paintings were the ones I did when I was about 3 or 4 of the 'Dangerous 'O' Houses' series, and the only things I've tried to paint at art school have failed miserably. Anyway, I'm usually more drawn to cool bright sparkley paintings-Ruben Patterson, Sara Hughes etc.. or old dramatically dark staged ones which remind me of narrative photography. But I'm learning..

Amy Bennett's series 'Neighbors' are studies of small models which she has constructed herself.

Losing It, oil on panel,2006

Someday You'll Long for This, oil on canvas,2006

We Can Never Go Home Again, oil on panel, 2006

They're kind of reminiscent of Gregory Crewdson, in the way they're little staged urbanscapes,
or the photos I took of the Pegasus model...

Gregory Crewdson, Untitled from the series 'Twilight', 2001

Jad Oakes 'Preserving Time'

"If we were able to condense, or squeeze a period of time in to a single static image, what would it look like? Compressing and layering seconds, a sequence of events, or movements in chronological order giving a static image a journey. These are moments preserved of a point in time, that take place over a period of time. Preserving an existence or a memory." - Jad Oakes



This is good to look at as an example of a way in which linear time can be interpreted through a static medium and works in contrast with the time-based work of Hiroshi Sugimoto. Sugimoto's long exposures of theatres and seascapes appear fluid and transcendent, rather than layered actions like Oakes'.

When reflecting on some of the experiements I did last year, I was working in a similar way to Oakes, layering action upon action in attempt to build a narrative story and simultaneously show the development of time.

Yves Medam

"Art is a lie that permits us to unveil the truth." -Yves Medam


Yves Medam, L'aube, 2005, Impression jet d'encre / Inkjet print


Yves Medam, Louvre 2, 2005, Impression jet d'encre / Inkjet print


Yves Medam, Regards, 2005, Impression jet d'encre / Inkjet print


Medam seems to illustrate time passing through the construction of a 'scene' from images of the same place, but from various angles.

AES+F // Last Riot

"In this new world, real war looks like a virtual-reality game, and prison torture appears as the sadistic exercises of modern valkyries. Technologies and materials transform the artificial environment into a fantasy landscape of the new age. This paradise is also a mutated world where time is frozen, where all past epochs neighbour the future, where inhabitants lose their sex and become closer to angels – a world where the most severe, vague or erotic imagination is natural in the fake, unsteady 3D perspective." -from artist statement



Last week Dr. Erika Wolf presented the single channel digital video work 'Last Riot' by Russian artists AES+F. Their work is something I have looked to for inspiration many times, but until now I have only viewed and understood them as still photographic works. Seeing them now as moving images they become something completely different.
A few key things to recognize from the presentation:

-The work is not just a simple continuous video. It utilizes a program which morphs still photographs into one another, making the work appear as though it is stopping and starting, or moving backwards at times.

-The disjointed flow narrative does not progress, and moves in circles in a way. There is this constant anticipation of action, and you can’t help but wish that there was some kind of impact or resolve.

-“Group isolation” of subjects and actors. Interplay between people is somehow strained and unnatural, there's almost moments of contact, but not quite.

-“Movie Realism” plays on concept of violence, though there is no impact, no blood. Reminiscent of the virtual gaming world.

-Post, post photography and a return to academic painting techniques (Baroque painting, Caravaggio, Michaelangelo).

YooouuuTuuube: Alice in 36 rows, 36 columns

This is crazy. You can upload any video of your choice from You Tube and watch multiple frames at one time.
Transform vids here

For The Love Of Wispa

Following a huge public driven fanbase via Facebook, Cadbury recently decided to reinstate their famous Wispa chocolate bar which was popular back in the 80s. The enthusiasm was so great, that an ad campaign was launched to promote this, asking fans to pledge or 'donate themselves' to the cause.

There was an overwhelming response of 2,281 pledges by fans of the chocolate bar, and a few were selected to star in the final TV advertisment which aired only once on public television.

The result? A massive choreographed montage of fans, hundreds of simultaneous actions, and a wee film filled full of love. awww....

the making is also worth looking at...

Serial Cut//Pop-up

There's something fascinating about pop up books. I don't know what it is, but I've always found them exciting. When I think about it, perhaps it's the 2D representaion of a 3D situation (a photograph) which is then arranged to provide an imitation of 3D depth. Or the faceted image which may be a 3D object, but only readable from a 2D perspective. And then what if the pop up image is then re-photographed?

I found these works, which are actually advertisments by Serial Cut for the Renfe train service in Spain...

Wolf and Pig

Carousel: A Cinema 21:9 Production

Rachel showed us this advertisment for Phillips' new 21:9 television yesterday, The ratio 21:9 is common of many films seen in theatres nowdays. So in tune with the idea of being a cinematic tv, Adam Berg (Stink Digital) wanted to create something which reflected this idea. In 'Carousel' I think there is a strong sense of distortion of time... It deals with a narrative story whose motion is frozen into stillness, then layers movement on top as we as viewers are propelled through and around this stillness. Kind of like moving through a three dimensional photograph of a captured action. If that makes sense.
It is also mentioned in behind-the-scenes that the 21:9 ratio works with your peripheral vision, so we get the whole story.

When you watch it here at the Phillips website it becomes an interactive experience.
You can move through the looped sequence at your own speed, stopping at embedded hotspots to see a bit of behind-the-scenes stuff. You can also watch the beginning credits which are quite Sin City-ish...
aaaand you can see for yourself whether or not real people are used!! So so awesome.

The Battleship Potemkin // Odessa Steps

Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 silent film The Battleship Potemkin presents a dramatized version of the naval mutiny on the Russian battleship Potemkin in 1905, and still stands as a fundamental film in the exploration of Soviet montage and political influence. It is perhaps most well known for it's 'Odessa Steps' sequence in which a bunch of innocent civillians are massacred by a heavily armoured tirade of Tsarist soldiers. The whole scene takes about 7 minutes, and through various cuts and layered action,tension and emotion build as the scene decends an seemingly endless set of steps....

While this particular scene is fictional and never actually happened by any account of the Potemkin mutiny, it IS representative of attacks which did happen, and it has been said that Eisenstein's intention was to provoke response and emotion by condensing events into one dramatised incident. Baring in mind that this type of scene was unfamiliar and quite shocking for the time, the juxtaposition of violence against innocence, predator against prey effectively does this.
It's here that I see some potential in exploring this further. The manipulating of real-time events in order to create heightened emotion fascinates me, in the same way many constructed narrative photographs have done.

Also, the way the scene is constructed through many different quick cuts, building and embedding individual battles within the overall attack, it gives the impression that the actual timespan last much longer. Time is not completely linear anymore and it really does appear drawn out, as I mentioned before, it takes FOREVER for them to descend the steps.
So I have a couple of ideas, but we will see how these pan out...

Lyndon Wade

Room 107 Twelve stories on the ground level.
This is where people come and leave; leave wet towels on the bathroom floor, leave half-full beers on the nightstand, leave the bed unmade, leave hair on the toilet seat, stains on the ceiling, glitter on the carpet, holes in the wall, leave their wives, their lives, a mess for the morning maid. And after an hour, a day, a month, they all leave that they have left.

And you check in.

'Cinematic'???

After the seminar last thursday on Cinematic Undertones and Overtones, all I wanted to do was go have a nice big glass of wine and forget all about it. The thing is, I was completely overwhelmed by everything, trying to make sense of the not only the relationship between cinema and photography, but what each of these actually are.
Up until then, I think my understanding of what 'cinematic' meant was being tied to what is narrative. And while I believe that there can be a strong connection between the cinematic and narrative, I don't think they're strictly synonymous with one another.
In her lecture, Rachel loosely described

photography=documentary

while cinema=narrative

then still photos that are narrative in style

are viewed and understood as cinematic

Ive just been having a massive discussion with someone about whether or not this statement is true, and after much debate we decided it was. my previous understanding was that cinema did not need to be narrative; it could be structural, non-sensical and abstract... but then I realized maybe I was thinking of all moving image as cinema.. some of which is not narrative. But perhaps what makes a moving image 'cinematic' is narrativity (even if it non-conventional and non-linear, it just has to engage with the concept of narrative time).
Viewing it in that way essentially means that other works (photographs, music etc) could be more cinematic than some moving image.
Then there's cinematic aesthetic qualities such as lighting which can also allude to the idea of cinematic.. so something which lacks narrativity but has some aesthetically cinematic values could in essense also be cinematic...? maybe.
Blah, so confused, but i think my mind is slowly sorting itself out. Here's some of my mind's scribbles on paper...

Dick Laurent is dead

I watched David Lynch's Lost Highway last weekend. . I think the film is about the psychological transformation of a man whose jealousy leads him to kill his wife, though this could all be in his mind, i THINK.



The only way I manage to even make sense of the story now is to let go of conventional narrative, and think of it as a dreamlike sequence or nightmare you might have. Just snippets of time, places and people who transform into other people for no apparent reason. Its insane, brilliant, and noisy! While I was prepared for the visual masterpiece it demonstrated,(the lighting, the darkness, the colour), I was surprised by the intensity of the sound; it heightened the whole feeling of uneasiness in the film, and put you on edge right down to the last minute.



It is surreal, and wrong and confusing to say the least,
The first lynch film I've seen, and definitely not the last.