Experimental Capture – Fall 2024
Computational & Expanded ███ography
I went super basic with Polycam, an app that easily allows you to make 3d/lidar scans of objects and rooms (upgraded version allows for different file type exports along with capability for larger scans.) There are in-app purchases, but they’re easy to avoid. Here’s a broken scan I made
Motion is super intuitive for a person. Your brain says “move” and then you’re limbs move, you’re typing on a keyboard, and you dancing the night away at your friends house warming party. But the task of capturing motion and interpreting this data is a bit more difficult than that. Sougwen Chung takes motion and interprets it as a form in a virtual space. This process of capturing data, then running it through an AI system seems quite interesting, with some weird results. I’m curious as to what different results this sort of workflow can achieve.
Street Ghosts by Artist Paolo Cirio took photos of people found on Google Street View and posted at the same physical locations from where they were taken. Life-size posters were printed in color, cut along the outlines, and then affixed to the walls of public buildings at the precise spot where they appear in Google Street View. His project challenges our perception of privacy, consent, and the boundaries between digital and real-world spaces. By making these ghostly figures visible in the urban environment, Cirio forces us to confront the pervasive nature of surveillance and the erasure of personal identity in the digital age.
It’s always fascinating to see people use technology without being aware or not placing importance on digital privacy and security. Just think about the abundance of live security camera footage on websites like insecam, where you can peruse the globe via frames that others have deemed important enough to look at. With just one website, you get access to what other people value or find interesting in their vicinity.
If all that footage was available to me, I’d want to see what still frames look like across the globe. Did different people, in different locations, choose to aim their camera at the similar things? What do people with different backgrounds and experiences both value?
Sele CT-EDS, a CT-based Explosive Detection System (EDS), used in some Airport security and checked baggage inspection is something I found interesting. The device allows not only 2D but also 3D scans of the bags which does not require people to take out their big electronic devices. If I were to use it I would be curious to see how different types of objects would look under the EDS including organic and inorganic objects, exploring things that “can not be opened” or “revealed.” And bring it back to life in real scale using spatial projection/hologram to allow deeper interaction.
this seems super trivial, but I think there’s something beautiful in a ‘camera’ that looks at a 2d image and just returns a number. In reality all digital cameras do this, they just hide behind more front end that converts that number back into something we can recognize as an image, but a barcode scanner doesn’t take any bs and just spits out a number directly. This in theory only works for very specifically formatted images (barcodes), but now AI is able to embed this into semi-normal looking images…
The Climate Ribbon by Sarah Cameron Sunde is a dynamic visual installation that uses real-time data from climate sensors to reflect the ongoing changes in our environment. The project operates by capturing environmental data, such as temperature, humidity, and air quality, and translating this data into an evolving visual display that symbolizes the delicate balance of our ecosystem.
It is is an arts ritual to grieve what each of us stands to lose to Climate Chaos, and affirm our solidarity as we unite to fight against it.
What inspires me about this project is its ability to merge art and activism seamlessly; it doesn’t just represent climate change, it actively responds to it in real-time, making the audience viscerally aware of the impact of their actions on the environment. However, the project could have expanded its reach by incorporating more interactive elements, allowing viewers to directly influence the data inputs or visualize how their individual carbon footprints contribute to global changes. The concept draws on earlier works of environmental and data-driven art, such as Natalie Jeremijenko’s Environmental Health Clinic, where art and technology are used to engage the public in sustainability issues.
Yeseul Song’s Two Subtle Bodies (2022) uses bone-conduction headphones and capes with embedded electronics to generate sound compositions that respond dynamically in real time to the movements of two participants in a space. The idea is to allow two individuals co-existing within a space to experience each other’s peripersonal space–which Song describes as extending “the senses of self and others by recognizing and perceiving this soft and fluid space between us” [1]. Song further explains that “[t]he subtle body is a concept that appears in Taoism and Dharmic religions to indicate bodies that are neither solely physical nor solely spiritual, in contrast to the mind-body dualism that has dominated western thought. In neurology, the space surrounding a body is called Peripersonal Space and enabled by visuo-tactile senses” [2].
I actually had the chance to try this project with a friend when Yeseul exhibited it at NYU (see photos)! In terms of how I’d want to use it, I’d be very curious to experiment with this system in the context of butoh/butoh-inspired dance. One of the founders of butoh, Kazuo Ono, once described seeing with his feet and that the body is covered with so many eyes that it’s “virtually impossible to count them all” [3]. How would we perceive/interact with space differently if we had the aid of such a tool? It might also be interesting to modify this tool to perceive non-human bodies.
Here are some links to more information about this work:
[1] Two Subtle Bodies. An essay by Yeseul Song | by More Art | Medium
[2] Two Subtle Bodies – Yeseul Song
[3] Kazuo Ohno’s World: From Without & Within – Google Books
Baraka is a non narrative documentary from the 90s shot on 70mm film, featuring some pretty complex time lapse shots that involve panning tilting and zooming at the same time. This required the team to build their own custom 70mm camera. I think this is interesting because the ‘experimental’ part here doesn’t come from the camera itself but the way the camera is controlled? Anyways the results are stunning and unlike anything I’ve seen so id all this a successful experiment
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Rh7J7Jholr0WAxqz_nUWkSmU22fDGHrU/view?usp=drive_link
This is actually an ongoing project by a friend (produced as part of The NUUM Collective) that I saw on my Instagram feed. Part of this project shows a stacked series of ultrawide videos showing two people in a room: one is in a fixed position while the other walks forward and stops at various points in space. The visual effect is quite powerful, so I thought I’d reach out to ask about it (capturing the capture?) and find out how it was captured and some background behind its creation. Nun explains:
“This video is about reducing everything to the distance between 2 people, and what meaning can be derived from that… We’re using a positioning system that uses ultra wideband tech to track the position and orientation in space. We’re exploring the different combination[s] and permutations of distance, orientation, and sequencing.” Overall, I’m also drawn to this project for its effective use of small changes within a context of repetition–which is an idea I’ve been trying to explore through my work as well.
Nun further reflected that differences in cultural identity led to different interpretations of how the movements read when the collective examined the footage. Nun mentioned that these were preliminary findings, but that those with more Western influence tended to refer to geometry and the formal relationships (e.g. counterpoint, sequencing) in a way that was more defined/formal, while those with more Eastern influence liked to refer to the relativity over time (for example, frame 2 feeling closer because frame 1 is further) in a way that was more relational and narrative-driven. Nun confirms that they are looking to build a way to more systematically collect such themes that arise.
Finally, it was interesting to note the connection back to this class! Nun said that she’s “personally very influenced by Golan’s teaching. I’ve studied a lot of his materials — specifically these are closely related to the stuff he teaches about interpolation. Getting from point A to point B through different curves.”