New Project

Along with the digital silhouette updates I will documenting the process of a new project I am doing for Video Art class.

The goal is to create a video or audio project that involves installation, sculpture or performance (or single channel, but thats boring).

I have not exactly come up with a concept yet, however I do know the medium. For a project a while back a team and I created a card table that has a project screen on the surface. It kind of looks like this:

Although our table was built with touch sensor technology. I will only be using the table for its projection surface.

My idea is to create some type of installation that speaks to the use of a table. I had a couple ideas. I thought of perhaps taping someone using the table from underneath. The video would ultimately be in the POV of a person underneath a glass table, looking up.

Another concept I thought about was the idea of hiding underneath a table and what that could represent. In one sense, it brings to mind children playing hide n’ seek, or even in a more upsetting context, hiding from someone who may harm them. In general, to me hiding under a table is an idea that is somewhat naive, as in something a child would do, but also as a method an adult would do if they were expecting or even wanting to be found.

I imagine the user to experience the table as a window into a private world. The user will be looking at a person who doesn’t know they are being looked at.

Take 1!

Over the past couple days I have collected video for the project. It was a bit more difficult than I thought, especially since the daylight hours are getting shorter and most of my filming was done at night. I also was also looking for certain specifications:

1. The object had to be dark, and the background light (or opposite for a reverse effect)
2. It had to match the angle/curvature of a section on the face

Since these objects were a bit difficult to find, I couldn’t be picky with what I chose, so there isn’t much “meaning” behind the footage. But here is my first attempt at creating a digital silhouette.

Here is a list of clips you see in the video mosaic:

• My comforter (bottom of nose and mouth)
• Outdoor clock at IU (chin/neck)
• Jeans on top of white clothing (back of head)
• Fish statue at IU fountain (back of neck)
• Vinyl record on top of its cover (top of head, forehead)
• Leaves (middle of head)
• Antique vanity (nose, forehead)

Few color corrections and cropping were done to create unity and to soften edges.

In my next attempts in this endeavor I am going to:

•  seek for better, meaningful, unified, footage;
• use a tripod;
• study the face and sync the movements of the footage with real facial movements;
• tweak the organization to make the image look more like a profile.

Silhouette Stills

I have begun the pre-filming process. I have captured footage of my model’s silhouette, then converted the .mov file to a sequence of pictures. From there I added a grid in photoshop (final cut took two quadrants of the grid out of the picture, not sure why), then put those gridded pictures into an .avi file. Here is what I anticipate the sequence to look like.

My next step is to start taking footage of objects that are of similar shape to the quadrants on the grid.

Jane Fonda - Cory Everson REMIX

Here is a project I did for a Video Art class. This video takes a Jane Fonda video and two Cory Everson videos and remixes is to an unknown (but great) 80s dance song. Nothing too serious, just an overuse of Final Cut Effects and silly footage. Let me know what you  think!

Cycling 74

After looking all over my school’s computer labs for a mysterious program called “Jitter” (and eventually becoming unsuccessful), I decided research it on the internet. And to my surprise, I also had a hard time finding it on Google. I finally fell up Cycling ‘74, the company that makes Jitter and started to read up about it. It was a bit hard for me to follow along because they use a lot of video jargon like MSP, matrices, QTVR, NURBS, OpenGL API, algorithmic image generators, batch converter/processor, that makes absolutely no sense to me. I am becoming increasing intimidated by this program, and even a glance at words like data processing objects brings me back to the days of painfully trying to keep my eyes open in my Programming class.

Youtube has given me some hope though. I found a bunch of cool videos made with Jitter that might boost my spirits into trying the program for my project.

Like these:

Silhouettes

I first create my piece as a moving silhouette rather than a full-color moving image for simplicity reasons. A two-toned image would just be easier than one. Of course there has to be some kind of message behind the medium so I did some research on art of silhouettes and it really opened my eyes to some cool things.

Lotte Reiniger was probably one of the first people to film a silhouette type of film. Her videos have inspired many artists to create their own versions of shadow theater.

Chinese Shadow Theater: This is an awesome performance done at the Oscars. It is a type of live human shadow theater.

But what artwork most inspired to do more with the medium of silhouettes is Kara Walker. She takes the themes of “whimsical” “old-fashioned” “theatrical” that silhouettes portray and twist them ironically into a social commentary of black slavery.

I really want to make my use of silhouettes meaningful in this way. I have thought of a couple angles I can go with this:

1) Watching some Chinese shadow puppet theater reminded me of a people’s shadow shown through paper walls in traditional Asian homes. Perhaps I could play with the idea of asian stereotypes.

2) When I Googled the words “silhouette art” some iPod ads showed up. Perhaps I can go along with a new, pop-culture aesthetic.

I guess I need some time to think.

Getting Started

Hi Everybody!

I’ve created this blog to document my progress in my newest digital art project. This project is the focus of a Fine Arts independent study class I am currently taking at Indiana University. I have since come up with the topic of creating a “Digital Silhouette.” This idea has evolved from the concept of “video mosaics.” A video mosaic is much like a photo mosaic in the way that it divides a picture into a number of large pixels, but instead of photos, video of a similar color-space replaces the pixels in the image. I found a good research document on video mosaics here: research.microsoft.com/~cohen/npar2002.pdf.

My vision is to create a profile mosaic of a person’s head, divide the image into approximately 16 sections and create video for each section that mimics the shape. The subject will make subtle movements, switching between feelings of exhaust and revitalization. As the subject moves, the different sections will morph as well. So lies the difficulty in this piece.

Here is another link to an awesome digital art piece that has a similar aesthetic to the one I envision: