video art

.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/vlopomo09

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a few david sylvian songs were the soundtrack for day11's #vlomo09 video. they make the train ride home from work a bit more interesting... these are video paintings - I made the isadora patch file - see attached. it's based on one I made for vlomo08 day 1's video : train ride home. most of my videos seem to end up with a similar theme - drive/ride to work, travel, hotels, some isadora files, some music/arts gigs or festival videos. such is my life I suppose. david sylvian's "secrets of the beehive" album is one of my favourites - it's perfect for when I'm feeling down (as is depeche mode) as I always feel better afterwards. I think it's the male vocal. and piano in sylvian's case.

promise (part 1)
David Sylvian's Promise (the cult of Eurydise) with isadorian footage of the western line express - part 1

11/11/2009

north sydney - parramatta

vlomo09 - day11

view other people's videos @ http://videobloggers.mirocommunity.org

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:::

september (part 2)

David Sylvian's September with isadorian footage of the western line express - part 2

11/11/2009

north sydney - parramatta

vlomo09 - day11

view other people's videos @ http://videobloggers.mirocommunity.org

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

:::

let the happiness in (part 3)

David Sylvian's Let the Happiness In with isadorian footage of the western line express - part 3

11/11/2009

north sydney - parramatta

vlomo09 - day11

view other people's videos @ http://videobloggers.mirocommunity.org

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

:::

isadora file attached

running late tonight so I modified a processing patch used for a different project - playing with tints and darker images. maybe it's the influence of the HP Lovecraft class I'm doing a the moment.. ;)

05/11/2009

blog post @ http://www.aliak.com/content/barely-there

this is day 5 of VloMo09 - 2009 Videoblogging Month - watch other people's videos at http://videobloggers.mirocommunity.org

.mov video file ::: .flv video file ::: video page at blip.tv

the path
vlomo09 day4
04/11/2009

this is day 4 of VloMo09 - 2009 Videoblogging Month - watch other people's videos at http://videobloggers.mirocommunity.org

.mov file ::: .flv file ::: video page at blip.tv

Rupert Howe, the amazing & enthusiastic videoblogger is running a video project. he's invited artists & people to create a video based on two videos made by other participants. for my video I wanted to practice using Processing so I wrote a (very basic) program which allowed me to "paint" with one video on top of the other, whilst drawing thin lines on the screen & between the videos as a way to link them together. my inspiration videos were made by Ryanne Hodson and Kevin Buckstiegel.

attached is the final version of the processing patch file I made, and also the initial version (& also here)

the inspiration / thoughts I had whilst watching the source videos :

atoms of life remuxed together
codes building blocks
diving into the infinite universe of code & atoms
video painting
interactive - controlled by mouse movements & 2 videos affecting each other (when creating the video, not playing)
lines draw points between the two - connecting them too

initially I used the audio from Kevin's source video but I wasn't sure if he'd made it so wasn't sure how to reference it properly (it was part music & part muffled conversations from what I could tell), then I read some emails about Stan Brakhage on frameworks and remembered the readings / viewings I'd done of his work when I was looking into Len Lye's work, so remembered he used to create videos with no sound as "visual thinking". so I've left the final version having no sound track (not quite a lumiere though) as a homage to his amazing work.

:::

I had some problems uploading the videos to youtube - the drawn lines turned from thin straight lines into aliased dotted lines. the video looked OK if played from my own webserver, but really bad from youtube.

Rupert sent me some conversion tips :
1. save as .divx & upload
2. use the settings below for mp4

Don't upload at 640x480 - upload at 480 x 360
Use the following settings:
H264 encoding
.mp4 not .mov
480x360
Bitrate: 12000 (really!)
Framerate: 29.97
Audio Codec mpeg4aac auto bitrate
Stereo 48000 sample rate

this is the .mp4 sample video using Rupert's mp4 settings : this video looked OK

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I also tried re-making the video using linewidth=2 (instead of default which is 1) & exporting as divx in QT pro. this looked OK. I ended up using this video for my project submission (well, this video with 10 seconds of black added to the end & no sound, so technically the final one is based on this version..) the final versio came out at 42 seconds duration - which is not 23 but 42 is a good number for life ;)

drawing divx test
line width=2 divx version

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 :

bookmarking Expanded Cinema - by Gene Youngblood - I have a printed copy of this book, but this online version will be useful for quick & remote access. there's an introduction by R. Buckminster Fuller too!

ExpandedCinema-GeneYoungblood