Two weeks tomorrow since classes ended and although I am combining a lot more rest into my activities I still feel dragged out much of the time. I suppose as I get older it takes longer to bounce back from sustained intense output (bolstered by caffeine, which I have been weaning myself off of, today being my first attempt to go entirely without). I still have an essay to write for another class, ‘Social and Cultural Implications of New Media’, which will cover some angle on documentary new media, so I am going to keep writing in this journal as part of that process. I will go back over some of the course materials, from both classes, now that I have more time and mental space for contemplation. I also have to get started on my thesis project, but I am still catching up on a backlog of household chores and administrative tasks.
The best part of having no classes? Leisure reading! Currently, Jonathan Lethem’s Girl In Landscape. I’ve read most of his novels, but this one eluded me for a time. Oh, and the cats are noticeably happier having me home more.
‘Auto Borne’ didn’t quite meet my objective, largely due to technical limitations. The ideal result would be that only airborne moments are recorded. Due to lag (mechanical and electronic) this was not always the case. Presumably with sufficient time, money and technology these limitations could be overcome, either through accounting for lag in programming, using a better/more sensitive switch/sensor and/or faster technology/protocols. Simpler matters like making the hardware more robust (i.e. cladding or tubing to protect the wires at their most vulnerable point, soldered to the switch and receiving the impact of jumping humans) could be taken care of in a shorter time span and with little extra money spent. As well, the Processing code should allow for unique file(name) creation for each recording – right now it creates ‘output.mov’ file, which needs to be deleted or renamed before subsequent recordings.
It is not so much that I would do things differently, but rather that I would extend what was done, which was limited by the compressed nature of the course. I would like to have spent more time exploring and reflecting on each briefly-covered area. I would like to reconnect with, refresh and develop the basic electronics and programming skills I have (out-of-practice as they are) so that I could create my own Max patches and even use Processing comfortably (it is syntactically similar to C, which I have had some foundational instruction in and use of in building UNIX server software from source… a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away). I struggle between being a builder and a director – I want to be both hands-on and visionary. One thing I would change in the arrangement for a longer-term indoor installation of ‘Auto Borne’ would be to project the feedback portion onto a surface behind the camera (not behind/beside the trampoline) so the user/viewer can see themselves being recorded. I’d also like to see a more portable version that could easily be set up in different public spaces, like the pressure pad version that records feet walking by (that Steve remembered better than I did during my presentation).
I derived great satisfaction from reconnecting with prior technological interests, something I’d drifted away from, not least out of a jaded disinterest from several years working in corporate IT, and feel exhilarated by the potential generated when new media art intersects with documentary work, though I’ve barely begun to consider and understand the farther reaching implications. There is still so much for me to synthesize and contemplate, but I feel fairly certain that new media will continue to inform my work. If documentary work is an engagement with and representation of experience and relationships, new media can extend this in strategic and thoughtful ways by the manner in which interactivity and virtuality shift perception and representation.
This has been a little more hastily composed than I usually like, but I have to go kitten feeding at the THS, so I will edit/add later this evening.
A component of my presentation that was not accounted for in the original ‘Auto Borne’ post was the use of a projector, which I used to display both a ‘realtime’ (with lag) representation of the camera’s record function being turned on and off by the switch activated by jumping on the trampoline, and the movie file of what was recorded. The first showed video black during the record-off moments. The second showed only the aggregated recorded images.
What I didn’t mention in the original idea post but did discuss in my presentation were some of the underlying concepts I’m exploring with this project:
1. The idea that humans have a perceptual shutter, AKA the missing half (or third of a) second. That is, that our total perceptual process occurs in a rapid succession of fragments, as demonstrated by various cognitive science studies (Abstract for ‘Emotional Effects of Media: The Works of Hertha Sturm’). I mentioned specifically that in one of Dr. Sturm’s studies, both brainwave activity and galvanic skin response were measured (in 9 year-old children watching a particular short film about a snowman) and it was found that, contrary to expectation, the brainwave activity occured *after* the galvanic skin response, which drew attention to this gap in perception. Brian Massumi refers to this study at the beginning of chapter 1 of ‘Parables for the Virtual’); that the continuity we experience is an aggregate continuity with gaps filled in by our brains. I am also interested in Erin Manning’s ‘The Politics of Touch’
2. How our bodies absorb experience and reconfigure/express it in movement. Specifically, this project attempts to take a closer look at this through the point of suspension, that particular moment, when jumping, in which we are briefly and simultaneously unable to control our bodies and suspended before falling.
During my presentation I was asked a couple important questions:
1. Is this part of my thesis work and, if so, how does it fit in?
I described how ‘Auto Borne’ is an extension of two previous projects – ‘Some Days’ and ‘Borne’ – and how it will run through and alongside the workshop series I will carry out with a group of queer youth who have experienced homelessness, but will not be the final collaboratively generated piece itself. Lila Pine, my advisor, approached me afterward and suggested I consider the process as central to my thesis, at least equal in value to the creative result.
2. In what way is this project documentary?
I stumbled in answering this and couldn’t get much further than referring to the video being discrete units of recorded actuality. Alex Bal suggested that key to drawing documentary into this new media discussion/exploration is the idea (and presumably instances) of simulation. I’m not sure I get this, cluttered as the dusty corners of my associative impulses are with echoes of Baudrillard. It reminds me that I didn’t get around to answering the question she posed in response to my Documentary Manifesto: how does documentary media function in a virtual world?
I’ve digressed a bit and will have to complete my project reflections after some sleep.
I love that I presented my ‘Auto Borne’ project in the Mixed Reality Extension Lab (at the Rogers Communication Centre).
I regret not arranging for documentation of my presentation, but I have two test videos and a few photos of the set-up.
One of the first test videos, using a crappy webcam:
One of the subsequent test videos, using my Canon Optura Xi:
There were some frame rate adjustments necessary in the Processing code.
In spite of my usual clumsy public speaking, the presentation went well and ‘Auto Borne’ even worked more or less as intended until all the jumping up and down broke one of the wires connected to the switch (just as, alas, an audience volunteer – Marie Wustner – was about to try it out). I knew this was likely to happen as I’d had to solder the wires back on three times during test runs.
Photos of the setup (re-enactments at home):
Laptop Setup
Arduino and Breadboard Arrangement
Camera on Tripod (oops, forgot firewire cable – so much for verisimilitude)
Trampoline with Switch-Embedded Foam Underneath and Wires Running to Breadboard
All components have been acquired and assembled. The trampoline switch interface works (yay!)…
…but the camera control is not working out as hoped.
This has to do with the limitations of the camera, however, and not with the patch. The intervals between ‘record’ and ‘recpause’ when jumping on the trampoline are too short to allow adequate time. Thinking this to be primarily due to the mechanical lag of the tape mechanism (with its pre- and post- roll), I changed to the memory card. But the controls are different and don’t work with the jit.avc object’s ‘record’ and ‘recpause’ functions.
I wondered about just getting mid-air still images, but again this requires a different set of controls and I don’t know what these might be. Rich, Steve’s RA, said he thought he could get something working in Processing and agreed to work on that. We’ll see how that goes…
Shoulda posted these earlier, but here are a couple of scribbles outlining the basic appearance and logic of my final project.
On Wednesday with Steve I tested the MaxMSP FWCameraControl patch with my Canon Optura Xi and it mostly works. I’m using my own camera, tripod and recently-purchased-for-cheap rebounder trampoline. I acquired switches from Active Surplus and will use a class computer with MaxMSP and Arduinosoftware on it. I need to acquire foam to cushion the switches below the trampoline and a bigger memory card to avoid the lag of the camera’s tape mechanism (which was unable to handle shorter record/pause intervals well).
For my final project I will create an automated, interactive version of the editing technique I used in my 2005 short video Some Days, which I extended into a multi-channel video installation titled Borne. This simple (but labour intensive) technique involves recording someone jumping and leaping about and cutting out the frames in which the person is touching the ground.
I uploaded a jumping sample from Some Days to my Vimeo account, which I will then embed once Vimeo has finished converting the file (from QT to Flash video). BTW and FYI, Vimeo is a more creator- and community-focused alternative to YouTube, founded by a former fellow (New School) student’s son. Please join me there (and maybe I’ll actually start uploading some more video).
Actually, I can only embed video from Google Video and YouTube, so I uploaded it to YouTube.
The automated interactive version will use a pressure switch (set up with a mat or, ideally, a small trampoline) that controls the record and pause functions of a video camera mounted on a tripod. When someone is on the mat the camera remains paused. When they jump up and down on the mat the camera will record those moments the person is in the air. MaxMSP can be used to control the camera. I’m not sure if I need a micro-controller for the pressure switch.
I will edit this later – I have to get to our Thesis Project Development class now.
“Trigger Happy is a book about the aesthetics of videogames — what they share with cinema, the history of painting, or literature; and what makes them different, in terms of form, psychology and semiotics.”
