Tuesday 26 January 2010

Level curves - analogue/digital (video)

Volume development

The whole process under development has as a basis of intent the transformation and/or translation of media and interpretation.
The primordial desire underpinning the whole work was merely to understand, interpret and transform the movement of dance to a movement of volume modeling. The hands of a dancer move continuously in a space where fundamentally there is no other matter than air. The objective of the intended interpretation was to bring matter to this otherwise ethereal matter or define the volume modeled with this movement.
The space occupation of a person is the foundational issue. Emphasizing the hands movement as modeling movement, this brings to surface the perspective that any person is capable of modeling space and therefore shape material forms, though without the proper awareness of it.
As shown and said before the practical case being worked out is the dance, as my work is referring to Sound, Music and Rhythm.
The methodology chosen to develop this transformation as desired can be defined in the following steps:

1st - Select a soundtrack to be subject of the Dance. As said in the previous post "Recent work", the selection fell upon a 2Many DJ's dj set. This was not a random selection as the Belgian brothers David and Stephen Dewaele, when acting as 2Many DJ's, are known to transform songs from other musicians in their very own way. This way I was underlining that the transformation process was not starting in me, has it had a long history behind.

2nd - Prepare a space for the dance performance to take place. This point was demanding for 2 purposes. The first is documentation of the performance. The second is to create, out of the documentation, material for the process to proceed. The documentation's format is video (24' PAL miniDV).

3rd - Perform the dance. The warm up of this performance is shown in the post "Video - warmup".

At this point the creative process splits in two derivations. This post follows only one of them.

4th - Extract 5' of video, turning it to still frames. The frame rate was diminished in order to reduce the amount of image files. 2500 was the result and following a process of intense layering came out a single image (see post "Processing images").

5th - This step was quite demanding in matters of thought, as it became somehow riddly the path to take afterwards. The objective was to extrude that image, but how? Color range was the solution. I then took two different steps leading to the same end: one analogue, one other digital.
Basically I created level curves out of the different colors in the image, therefore creating a map to a 3D extrusion. I made a video of the two methods that I will post soon.

6th - Using MDF as an experimenting material for a first 3D approach to what I want I created the volume I was seeking.

Wednesday 20 January 2010

Saam Farahmand and The XX - A Sculpture of the Album

The Vinyl Factory to create limited edition of The xx’s acclaimed album, and host audio-visual show.

basic_space



xxsaam

The xx have teamed up with The Vinyl Factory to showcase a unique audio-visual collaboration with video director Saam Farahmand, and create a deluxe limited edition version of their critically acclaimed debut album, voted the ‘best of 2009′ by The Guardian and FACT magazine, among others.

xx: A Sculpture of the Album finds Saam creating “a 3D physical interpretation” of the band’s debut album, xx, which will be displayed at The Vinyl Factory in London for six days from January 8-12, 2010 (opening times below).

The sculpture utilises film, light and sound via three specially created audio-visual units (each unit representing one member of the band with a mix of exclusively filmed footage and mixed sound), and every visitor will enjoy a totally unique experience of xx. According to the press release, it’s nothing less than a totally new way to immerse yourself in a record.


from: http://www.thevinylfactory.com

Friday 15 January 2010

Parallel doors

At the same time, the initial video is the pretext for another line of thought, a new work, a new interpretation of a visual content. In the same way it is a translation, a transformation of the initial meaning into a different text. However, the initial meaning or the initial reason remains the same. If we want we can deconstruct the whole process and return into the first instance without it being changed. What has changed with certainty is the way that we now perceive that first instance, being in this case the 2 many djs' dj set. Now we get to see new things that can outcome from it in the same way that we understand what are the possible outcomes of eggs.
So, the step taken as a parallel work was to get 24 people to see the video without sound. In a very strong way, the sound is a great deal of the context of that video, meaning that this way the video was decontextualized. The 24 subjects were here asked to interpret that dance, taking into account their own notions of dancing, Sound, Music and Rhythm. Then they were to make their imaginary version of the soundtrack of what they were looking at in real time, expressing themselves in any way the could think of.
At this point this is raising issues as music culture, personal Sound, Music and Rhythm notions, individual memory, relation of Sound, Music and Rhythm and dance, the capability of expressing all these as one streaming thought and the ability of dealing with that in an exposing environment where a camera is recording.
This moment in the process ended up with about 3h of genuine footage. An amazing factor within the footage that was purposely used is the vast range of nationalities. 4 continents are represented in this, which is quite amazing and in great use for the purpose of this work.

After this point the ball rolled back to my hands. I had to sample these three hours into short clips. Got over 200 samples. Here are some.

Thursday 14 January 2010

Processing images


The final video was put into single still frame files in a rate of 8fps. I then took 2500 files and made one image out of it using transparency layers.

This is the result of this process.

Video - warmup


This video is the warmup session to the full performing act that serves as a base to a series of following events.

Project's Blueprint

These drawings are reflections on the project.


This drawing is the space planning on the studio where the first experience was held. It also insinuates the plan for the desired space. The actual experiment had only one camera recording while the desired scenario has three: front, side and top.


This drawing is another study of the space and the performance space. However, it presents what somehow was imagined to be the motion blur resultant from a sum of overlayed frames.

Recent work

As a starting point for my most recent work I've set up a studio to perform some recordings of a dance. The performed dance is itself a response to the dj set I'm dancing to (2 many djs). Meaning that the initial instance on this work is the 2 many djs' dj set.
It is very interesting on the other hand that the infinity that I present as a process for my ongoing work doesn't have a start at this point in a simple way. This point is where this work starts on my hands. Before that it had a whole history of relations with previous influences in the same way as I propose to work this ongoing process.
To star with, I present a few pictures of the setup I used to begin.

Thursday 7 January 2010

Number Spiral


This site has great mathematical patterns. The starting point is simply a spiral.

Tuesday 5 January 2010

Daito Manabe - test 4

Daito Manabe - test 3

Candice Breitz - Thriller

Candice Breitz - Legend

Kutiman - Mother of All Funk Chords



Kutiman is indeed a great influence in my work for the way of doing video meshes.
Sampling videos and creating great music compositions of all kinds he masters the remaking and reinterpretation of sound.
See more at his website.

Triangle Project - Videowork

Triangle Project was a one week work based on the exchange of information between two students on the MAs of Fine Art and Graphic Design.
My partner on this work was Ralph Dunn.
What we did was explain each other what our work is/was and based on that each one created a new piece of work to present by the end of the week.

These pairs of people were arranged in larger groups. Each of these had to present a group catalog. The point of this catalog was not to present finished work but the process over witch the groups thought their work, their worries and their abilities to resolve the project's demandings. Our group presented an audio catalog. It seemed more important to us to involve the discussions of what and how to do and approach the other's work than to show images of unfinished processes. Specially because some of our work, as mine or Ralph's were audio and video works.

My work consisted in an appropriation of Ralph's video and audio works, in a postproduction act, and soften the weight of his works by remixing them all into a new audio/video piece.

Introdution Presentation

This video was the first presentation I did for the MAFA at Chelsea College of Art and Design (2009/10).
It was a statement of intents as much as a presentation of my previous work and the whereabouts of my thoughts and ideas.

Magic Wave - artist interview

Magic Wave - Reuben Margolin

Kinetic Waves

Edition 01-02

This blog will contain mostly 2 things:
1st - influences, ideas, images, ways of doing and thinking related to what I do and want to do
2nd - my work

Monday 4 January 2010

Edition 01-01

This blog is dedicated to the work in progress by the artist João de Brito Vidigal.
His work has been going through a huge change of perspective and his approach to it is being solidly developed.
Having Sound, Music an Rhythm as a basis of his work, he analyzes a whole role of translations that happen within everyone's mind. The work then goes on from that point, developing a series of different translations from Sound, Music and Rhythm to dancing, writing, performing, sculpting and drawing. A broadband of media as a support to several steps of creation, where the process is as important as the final solution.