I have always been enticed by the promise of technology. I am fascinated in how people relate to technology and what role it has in art and play. My work “Seated figure?” repurposes game technology using it to set up a discussion as to what is our relationship with these new technologies. Who is leading whom? In the work, the viewer is the art, viewing the art, being viewed by the art. So who is the artist, and what role can technology play in blurring these lines?

Post submission paranoia aside I am very excited about when I am and the ideas I have to work with, not just for this next semester but ideas That I entend to pursue futher down the track. An interactive environment the dissuades jumping about, that creates a pleasing image. As Olafur Ellison suggests in interviews here and here making a pleasing or exciting image can grab the viewers attention so they spend more time engaging with the work. Like Ellison I want to create a machine or a system that work with its viewers to create special moments. I feel that I now havethe bare bones of such a system. I am keen to extend what I have not only by determining how best to present and install it in a space but also looking at evolving colour palettes as a result of the viewers interactions.

The surprising discovery from the semester was my works based on Edward Muybridge imagery, I like the concept of extracting movement from those images. The idea of movement as texture, or the potential merging of other senses is very intriguing. I intend to do more works generated from captured movement. A recently acquired low res but high-speed digital camera will be used to capture slowmotion footage that will be the source of my imagery.

The best parts of these works were achieved by searching for a concept but by experimentation. Starting with the concept can often lead to an end point very quickly but this experimentation has lead to many other areas od exploration and these ideas also open up more concepts. Coming for an environment where everything is about achieving specific results this is a breath of fresh air. Not that I’m going to give up my current workflows when given a set task that needs to be achieved, but I will have more confidence in practice as a way to build a concept instead of just contemplation.

The woman descending stairs had been on my mind ever since the bed sequence so edited that into a sequence the would repeat reasonably well.

Creating motion: I thought again about morphing between still frames but this didn’t work with this sequence, the contortion of shapes getting it bed seemed to fit with the distortion of the created motion, but here it ruined the flow with the new motion working against the flow of movement down the stairs.

Creating texture: With the morphing removed I set about examining texture more thoroughly. The rationale for adding texture to these images is driven by the concept of seeing differently. if you couldn’t see light but the you still created imagery in your mind how would movement look. Aslo the kinect started me thinking that if the kinect “sees” depth and it was creating the vague textured outlines, so if that was our only form of vision how would it look given the richness we curently use to process visual information. Thinking more about these ideas I started thinking about how the Kinect is reaching out (with it infrared projections and feeling for an object) it decided to imaging a sense somewhere between vision and touch. A tactile vision how could I represent this idea and what might be tactile motion, The hair like tendrils remind me to computer generated flow fields signifying an object moving through a fluid but at the same time they had and incredibly tactile look to them.

This work took a few colour iterations as it evolved however I like the warmth of this one with its flesh inspired tones.

the second instalment of this work was interested in pushing the importance of the physicality of the image down and just looking at the motion.

Although excited by the the direction my work was taking, I was already think about what was next, but what if there doesn’t need to be a next what if Even after this next semester I keep exploring these ideas where could it go? On this thought I though about all my previous work and what ideas could extend to this process multiple concepts sprang to mind. Michael nod to Magritte also put we right back to my love of his work and umbrellas sprang to mind. One of the first pieces of coding I did when I first started experimenting with reading Kinect data was to make an inverse umbrella. You opened the umbrella and this started rain falling down from under its canopy.  My mind just straight to how this could work along side my current you as an extension to these ideas. There is a firm image in my head of this work and I had to stop myself from generating too many other or I waould have missed the rest of Michaels talk.

I always love these moments when a few words mark a whole new perspective of thought. This massive realisation for me but for most others it was probably just more words.

The last thing I removed was the scanline updating of the imagery the feel of it was very much electronic scan rather than a painted effect. Instead I set up a random “painting” of the scene, this gave a much more fluid effect but it had the added advantage of effecting time in a much different way.

Instead of the Daniel Crooks style distortions the image took time to develop and also took time to disolve, this meant for an object?person to make an impact on the screen it/they had to spend some time being still. A movement would break up the forming imagery. Leaving the scene would leave a temporary ghost. Jumping about and waving you arms would only have a minor impact on the image. Stillness and quiet contemplation would render you in to the work.

These gentles interactions were what I had hoped to foster. The ghost image tied back to ideas I had had about what if a dog processed scent trails visually. It also ties into previous ideas of memory. The longer an object is present the more it gets painted into memory, the richer its rendering becomes the fleeting passing very soon is lost. The moment is also very strong here, sometimes a great image occurs but it will never stay. While trying to get screen grabs of the work If I delayed too long the moment was gon never to be created again. Any of the still images captured can never be recreated again.

All of this just seemed to fall into place, I had no real plan when starting out, just a direction or two to follow. But some how all the pieces fell into place. Im not sure what I put it down to but I know it wouldn’t have happened if I had no time to play.

I had started with very fine grain generation of my textures but now it was time to get under the hood and see how I could ramp it up.

It turns out bigger is better.

It was now heading more towards a painted feel a few more changes and I might be closer

One of the best things about working with light is the bright colours available. A fan of neon lights grow in the dark colours and phosperescence in nature, these very manufactured colours have a strong influence on me I think it harkens back to the imaginary worlds of my childhood picture books. So gery was never going to be an option I was content with. Besides this the human brain is great at perceiving colour we process different wavelengths of light on it creats these vivid colours in our minds if we saw different;y i.e. we save depth then it would make sense that these distances may be represented with colour rather than graduations of light. As a stop gap I decided just to apply a simple function to the depth image to transform the depth information into colour, there are plently of ways to map the depth to a hue but I wasn’t keen to do this quite so methodocilly. I wanted to pull my colours from an selective palette. An initial coding error caused some banding in the colours.

At this point A few doubts started creeping in I had added the texture to get away from the computer generated look but now I had found myself with some sort of warped computer generated tapestry. I needed to work on the texture.

I decide it would be beneficial to have some video where the basic structure stayed the same so I started looking for time-lapse imagery. I came upon a sequence of a tree taken over a year, this seemed like an ideal candidate for some tests.

Explanation take 2. – the tree is set in a wintery scene, it branches are barren and snow lies on the ground. As a person walks towards the image of the tree their form appears in the image. But not as a captured video likeness as a silhouette. As the viewer moves closer there image becomes larger but silhouette is becoming more defined it holds the scene from a different season. Pushing forward until the tree is fully leaved.

Maybe the video will help.

I found this work to be quite enjoyable to interact with. It looked interesting but as it was an almost random piece of footage it was really just a bit of a gimmick. For this to work for me there should be an idea behind the footage I treat like this. But as a proof of concept it worked.

I intend to use the distance sensor in the Kinect to allow the viewer to scrub through the footage to see if being in control of the media that is having your presence their affecting the content help to engage the user more.

I’m reminded of my own tiny bit of “disaster” footage. A few seconds of news from the 1967 bushfires I’m a baby in a basinet being loaded into the car as the wind and smoke whips at my mothers dress. Our house survived, but the neighbouring ones didn’t, the fire was so intense the chooks burst into flames as they ran fled across the yard.

My mothers recollection of the media in this event was far from favorable at one stage she yelled at the camera man to put down his camera and help with the fires, this was show later on the news (with no sound) portraying her as a paniked woman screaming at the camera. 13 years as a fire fighter an I never welcomed the cameras and neither did the people trying to come to terms with there loss.

These few seconds of footage has always been important to be and I contemplated how I could use this in a work. I had have spent much time scrubbing this footage back and forth mesmerised by the grainy image. Being in control of the playback somehow made me  a part of it. Part of that moment, and the more I played the more it drew me in. just watching the footage was nothing in comparison. Could I some how give this experience to the viewer ? Would it mean anything to someone else would they feel like they were there ? Does the act of directly controlling the viewing experience lead to a deeper attachment ?