LIVE VISUALS

I have always been fascinated by the slitscan technique, ever since I found out that its how they did the psychedelic bits in 2001. Douglas Trunbull had some “art” behind a slit in in a darkened room, then opened the lense and while it was open, tracked the camera towards the slit, so that the slit moved from center of the frame to the edge. Then closed the shutter.
Then he moved the art behind the slit a tiny bit, and repeated.

I did my own version in my Black and White film “humonculas”, unfortunately on 16mm, and therfore never seen on the small screen! (And no money to have it transferred neither) So none of my wide screen spectactulars have ever seen the light of day…One of these days Ill pay for Stwawberry Wast, Homonlulous and Terpsichore to be transfered.. but I digress)
In Hompnculous I did little more than use a zoom lense frame by frame, on a darkly lit “Life Machine”, that had a few highlights, and produces a kind of jerky and blury version.. Not helped by the fact that I developed and hand printed the film myself, in my own Russian dev tank, and home made contact printer (or old Bolex with a couple of cuts sawed in).
Anyway.. I downloaded as many “slit scan” camera I could get (for free) and tried them out… some with interesting results…

EXPERIMENTAL PHOTOGRAPHY

Spent the evening playing with the replicator in Quartz..

Both of these are made by starting with a simple shape, replicating that shape many times and adding offsets, that are controlled via LFO’s. At the end of a few sets of 3DReplicators I have a 3DTransformer, just to add the spin.

Sphere Replicator
This one started with a sphere, the LFO settings are changing the size of the spheres and controlling the offsets and origin transforms. I think this one is a bit too reminiscent of lots of old 80s techno graphics. Not UN-usable I like it when it becomes like snake-skin or like internal organs.

Square Replicator
(Takes a while to appear, hence black at start)
Starting from a cube where all the edges of the cube are modified via LFOs and then replicated in the same way as above. I like this one as it quite exotic and can go from spiny growths to huge fan like objects.

Both of these are never repeating in the quartz patches, here of course these videos are just showing the first few minutes. My next goal with these os to expose some of the most relevant settings so that they can be modified out of the program, in Resolume. Have them react to sound and midi clock/notes.
(If I get around to it, Ill edit these a bit and add some music…)

Today I sent a UStream of the set by Jon Hegre and Greg Pope, and then Xavier Querel. At ANX in Oslo.

Greg Pope has two projectors with black leader film. As he runs them he attacks the loops with various implements, the sound from the hits is amplified as it the sound that he creates by accidentaly scratching the optical audio track from the film. The piece ends when the film is scratched completely white. The whole sound is mixes, looped and effected by Job Hegre.


Video streaming by Ustream

Pure Genius!

Then later a set from Xavier Querel, who uses the projector in another way. He first runs the projector and csts shadows of it on teh screen, then he plays film the wrong way (at the audience) and onto a tiny screen, and then manipulates the film till it gets stuck and burns, he controls the burning by adjusting the lamp, so it doesnt happen too quickely. Just when you think its all over he works with teh pure white of the projector and lights the whole room, via a mirror. The beam is interupted with lenses and mirrors and the projections are cast in all directions. Working out side the projector, then inside a tiney screen then back out again.
Unfortunately my iPhone ran out of batteries soon after it started.

Video streaming by Ustream

Again Pure Genius!