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Spacetime
Frame[work]
Beginning.
I struggle with each project. That may seem like an obvious statement, but I can't emphasize enough the crippling self-doubt, depression, anxiety, and paranioa that accompany each and every moment of attempted creation.
My assignment is simply to create a performance. Simple. Easy. Paralyzing.
What I face now is the objective of sculpting not simply a video, but a video system. It needs to answer questions, so many of which I don't even know to ask yet. A few questions, however, are immediately accessible via traumatic conditioning over the course of several years:
1. Why live?* (That's 'live' as in 'live performance'--don't worry, we haven't reached that breaking point yet.) What makes this performance more worthwhile because it is live? Is there a need for me to be manipulating something in real time? What am I saying, visually, that needs to be said in the moment? Is it truly live if I am using pre-rendered visual sources? Is there a point at which it is no longer live? (My answer to this is usually: Yes. The point at which I can no longer ruin a performance).
2. What am I adding to the story? Is there something that the performer can't say him or herself? Am I illustrating something pertinent? Adding to the value of this experience? Or am I simply distracting from the audio, making what could be very full and meaningful somehow cheaper?
3. How does it connect? One of the easiest ways to make this connection is to use a live video feed. It draws instant parallels, it's instantaneous feedback, and people understand it. But what then? What am I saying that the audience can't already see?
4. What is the meaning? Does anyone care that they are experiencing stimuli on two planes rather than one? Arguably, they're already watching something--a performance. Who am I to draw their eye away?
5. Who is it for? Am I creating something for the audience? Am I doing this for myself? A greater good? The artistic aether?
*
I consulted my thesaurus in the hopes of finding a less confusing word. it offered, prolifically, the following:
Unexploded, explosive, active; unstable, volatile, hot, glowing, red hot, aglow; burning, alight, flaming, aflame, blazing, ignited, on fire.
ANTONYMS inactive.
Thanks a lot, words.
Nevertheless, I begin. And I'm beginning with two parameters: Time and Feedback. I begin with Jitter.
I know some things, believe it or not. I know that people like live feeds. You see it at clubs where everyone is indulging themselves with food and drink and music that makes them want to dance horizontally. Their sweaty, glazed faces mirrored back at them on a big screen, they love it. I want to represent time and identity in this performance, but it's not enough to simply project the singer's face onto the screen. What visuals allow us to do is to buffer moments. Just as we can play back audio samples, referencing what came before it, so can we reference back to movements, gestures, scenes.
My first step in this system is to create a framework within which to reference history.
My second step is to enhance the framework with feedback abilities. Why feedback? Because it's an easy way to manipulate visuals in a way that doesn't involve introducing new sources, that's why. You're feeding something into itself to output a new product. Adding this capability keeps the patch self-contained and self-sufficient.
To the left is a low-quality recording of this patch. What it should demonstrate is a single video source, set first to delay, and then to feed back, and then to rotate before being set back to normal.
My third step is to wonder what, exactly, I've made. One could argue that I've made a poor-man's version of the iTunes visualizer. Well, you know what I say to that? I say:
"Stop arguing with me, no one likes a contrarian."
I say I've made a framework in which to explore what has come before, and that exploration is twofold: buffering and navigating frames, and feeding a system back into itself. It's one source, spread over time and space, and manipulated into new forms.
February 6, 2012