isadora

.mov movie file ::: .flv video file ::: video page on blip.tv

Ian's video was called time travel. this initially brought to mind the Orbital song with the Star Trek TNG "Time Squared" episode sample for the Mobius & time becoming a loop. the past few weeks have felt like this for me - I've gone back to 2000, 2001, and hopefully 2003 this week if all goes well.

then I also thought about "Moving Time" as I might be moving house soon

but the theme I went with for the final video (though I sneaked the Mobius quote in the title text..) was the H.P. Lovecraft book "Shadow out of time". we read this for an online class I'm taking, and I really enjoyed it

I thought about Plato's ideas of "remembering knowledge" across the aeons (time travel of the mind?)

one of the other class members mentioned the mental projections and mind swaps & the data-body and likened the spaces between dream/reality in the book, to the virtual spaces common these days & how we often have a data-body these days as well as a flesh-body

so I then thought about outsourcing memory using photos, videos, blogs etc and how by uploading these we become a virtual self on the internet. and how sometimes these things can become cluttered and cross-over each other and even annoying after a while (as I think watching this loop for 1:30 is.. but this is on purpose :), and they're not an exact copy of ourselves. and how sometimes these things can overshadow our real selves, or at least other's impressions of our selves. and how, when watching something on loop you sometimes focus on the foreground moving text, and other times 'me' - this seems to match my real world experiences too - shifting between online me & real-world me focuses

I represented the data-body using text words as this is the medium of the book. using Isadora I made a controller that would move the words around the screen - often blotting out the video of me playing in the background. but it's not really me - it's another virtual image -> mirror image of me, rather than the me I imagine in my mind, distorted by the join in the two glass mirrors and my face is covered most of the time by the camera - the recording of the data-body.

the video is playing on loop with my washing machine as the soundtrack.

using footage of 'me' in the video was inspired by Cheryl's videos, as this is unusal for my videos, so I looked forwards & backwards for inspiration - as in the book, Peaslee & the Yithians look forward & backwards in time for knowledge

vlomo09 day15

vlomo09 30/30 project

15/11/2009

over to you Cheryl! good luck

this video is day 15's video for Rupert Howe's 30 days - 30 people - 30 videos vlomo09 project - watch other people's videos at http://videobloggers.mirocommunity.org/category/30-days-30-people-30-videos
& #vlomo09 / #navlopomo09 videos at http://videobloggers.mirocommunity.org/category/navlopomo09

:::

I took a video from the train on the Wednesday Sydney awoke to the red dust storm and then another on the next day. the videos were taken with my nokia n95 camera, so it lost most of the redness, but you can see that the sky was dustier than the clear Thursday. they're not completely in sync, because I wanted dune day to be slightly ahead of clear day, so you can watch it from left to right and see the scene & colours change as your eye reaches the second panel. I'm not sure if this effect worked as well as I planned though - perhaps I should have lined them up so they were in sync after all.

made with Isadora - the 20090929_dune-day_clear-day.izz patch is attached

I always have problems saving the Isadora video files as they always lose video quality and end up with lots of compression artifacts. I tried exporting at 5% rate, but it somehow increased the framerate and sped up the video! so this was saved at 95%.

other videos taken on the day - with my sony camera so the colours show up properly :

playing with isadora

http://www.vimeo.com/3076782

zoom'n'fx from kath on Vimeo.

3 minutes of 4 years

stylized view of some of the sights from the past 4 years

http://www.vimeo.com/3064740

3 minutes of 4 years from kath on Vimeo

driving home from Brisbane to Sydney after Christmas break. the sunset was amazing. it dwarfed & blurred the road and trees on the side of the road.

dec 2008

http://www.vimeo.com/3037834

driving sky from kath on Vimeo

isadora particles test - green

testing 3D particles in isadora

it's one of the particles examples from the troika tronix forums

my mouse movement is controlling the position of the live particle. I've changed the colour, size, rotation and lifespan

30/01/2009

http://www.vimeo.com/3027467

isadora particles test - green from kath on Vimeo

I've been reading about Rothko's paintings this weekend and wanted to make a video painting similar to his works. it didn't quite work out as I expected (or like a Rothko painting). but I took videos around Auckland yesterday of different colours with the plan of using them as overlayed panels of colours. instead I ended up using a slit screen and shifting the entry points + having horizontal & vertical panels + changing between the different clips.

I don't think it turned out like the later Rothko paintings though. his paintings has large blocks of colour yet they weren't really about the colour. they were about the emotions - and the paintings showed emotions through the colours & induced emotions in the viewer. there were also glimpses of spirituality in the paintings - some had an inner light which shone through the works. also the size & scale of the paintings - often wall sized - caused the viewer to be enveloped in the emotions. the video I've made doesn't have the same emotions. it's more about the colours - the colours of Auckland city. the edges in the video work are too crisp and sharp. and there's no inner light. the motion relates more to Len Lye's use of motion in images & experimental films and sculptures. I've been reading about his work and his papers prior to making the video - in the book "Figures of Motion - Len Lye - Selected Writings". so I will have to try again - & maybe filter out or soften all the edges, or only keep the lines , like brush strokes, then build them up to panels of colour. many options to think about!

made in isadora - patch attached

26/01/2009

http://www.vimeo.com/2965451

slit screen video painting from kath on Vimeo

news slices in the snow (85sec version)

news slices in the snow (85sec version) : I made this last feb, 06/02/2008 after I'd heard about the terrorist attack in Israel. I'd read many of the online stories about it, so in this video some screenshots of the news stories / websites are cut-up and sliced and rotated in 3D (to represent the multiple levels and perspectives wrt the region & it's problems) on the screen whilst in the background, snow is falling to cool things down whilst steam is rising. the soundtrack has the sample 'over & over' as I was wondering when it (conflict in this region) would ever end. part way through the news slices started looking like a folded paper bird - let's hope it's a bird that brings peace to da middle east!! (as my friend Angus used to say)

it seems it might be apt for this year too. I've been following the recent stories regarding Israel & Gaza listed @ www.aliak.com/content/summer-holidays

this isn't the original version - it's a new version of the first 1min 25sec so it'll play here on flickr (since they have a 90sec video limit)

06/02/2008 original version @ www.aliak.com/content/news-slices-snow
09/01/2008

filename=20080206_news_slices_in_snow130-exp.mov

made in isadora

I haven't felt like making a new video yet. maybe I need to stop reading the news / info sites

in KL the traffic's not that bad (on weekends) but I'm sure people would rather be walking along the beach

just a quick video - made in isadora - patch attached

song is "The Hard Road" by Hilltop Hoods from their album "The Hard Road"

other places to watch this video :
http://mefeedia.com/channels/vlomo08
http://vimeo.com/2141095
http://blip.tv/file/1425859

blog entry : http://www.aliak.com/content/vlomo08-day4-kl-traffic

VloMo08 : day3 - Palm Beach, Sydney

a few different clips from my trip to the beach today

I think the videos are playing a bit too slow and the file size is still too large ~70Mb and there's a lot of compression artifacts. but oh well

made in Isadora - patch attached

music is "Music For Body Lockers" by Chocolate Weasel on Funkungfusion album (Disc 1)

VloMo08 - day # 3

view other people's videos @ http://mefeedia.com/channels/vlomo08

http://blip.tv/file/1423019

http://vimeo.com/2140618

http://www.aliak.com/content/vlomo08-day3-palm-beach-sydney

earlier this year on 23rd May I went to Gallipoli & ANZAC Cove in Turkey, so this is a collage of some of the video clips taken that day. in Australia & other Commonwealth countries, Rememberance Day is on 11th November. as I'll probably be overseas for that day, I made this video in advance.

it was interesting to see Gallipoli and to hear and read the stories of the ANZAC battles from the Turkish perspectives, as I'd only heard the Australian stories previously. as the Turks won this battle, they celebrate the day as we remember ANZAC Day on 25th April each year. their battles were led by Mustafa Kemal who later went on to become Ataturk - "Father of the Turks" - founder of the Turkish Republic and its first President - the fall of the Ottoman Empire happened after this battle, and many of the famous quotes of his arose from this period also. so when I was there, I thought of the ANZACs who'd lost their lives - partly in the name of modern Turkey. amazing to think what could have happened if the tide hadn't washed their boats onto the wrong part of beach and they had been able to climb the hills over the gradual slope. also I noticed how many red poppies there are in the area! I'm not sure if they were there back in WWI too or if they've been planted in the peninsular by the various commemorative groups.

the song is "Ever so lonely / Eyes / Ocean" by Sheila Chandra on her "Moonsung: A Real World Retrospective" album - I thought this song was apt as perhaps the soldiers felt lonely fighting by the ocean/sea in a far away country. plus it's a beautiful song, and once again it was exactly the right duration (strangely this happens often)

the video is made using Isadora - using multiple players and an image tile - .izz file attached

VloMo08 - day # 2

http://www.aliak.com/content/vlomo08-day2-gallipoli-rememberance-day

visit http://mefeedia.com/channels/vlomo08 to see other people's videos

02/11/2008

http://blip.tv/file/1420485

http://vimeo.com/2140499

this is a short video taken out the window on the train last night. the people are reflections of themselves as seen from my side of the train, and they become combined with the lights and suburbs outside the train as we move past the stations.

I made the patch for the effects on the lights & speed of the video in Isadora (attached)

the song is "In Reverse Order" by Neotropic from her "La Prochaine Fois" album - it was exactly the right duration and the name of the song matches the video as the people and lights are in reverse

VloMo08 - day #1 video 2

visit http://mefeedia.com/channels/vlomo08 to see other people's videos

http://vimeo.com/2140331

http://blip.tv/file/1420154

a video by Nam June Paik (RIP) - this would be fairly easy to do using isadora these days. though a different story if you consider how he made it!

Nam June Paik - Ryuichi Sakamoto; Replica, for keyboard Composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkjxG_k0VDo

http://www.spoems.com/tag_paik.html has a collection of his video works

dpwolf has finished his thesis - you can download it from his site - it's called Vidgets: The Development and Use of Interactive, Network Based Video Works by David Wolf (dpwolf)

I've downloaded it but haven't finished reading it yet. he makes cool live video performances using isadora and quartz composer and the music is made with controllers and max / msp. I'd been to a workshop of his the previous year and that's how I started trying out isadora. (obviously he's more advanced than me ;)

I noticed page 138 has a photo which looks like a capture from a video I took of his & Somaya's performance at electrofringe 2006. I thought I had a photo but can't find it but I have a video. and the other photographer in the room was on the other side of the room as I recall. small world.