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LIVE VIDEO PERFORMANCE. HOME | 1999 | 2002| | INSTALLATIONS | OM 303 | STUFF | LINKS |
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Live video / animation composition, video mixing, or V-Jing is the idea of having a live, ever-changing, interactive video presentation, the content and context of the mix is usually largely improvised. Individual aspects of the video output are interactively changeable. An advantage of playing with electronically captured and generated images is that you may composite them instantly. There becomes no need to wait for rewinding or rendering just press the button or wave your arm and moving images instantly appear. The beauty of interactive video is that colours, images and objects can all be moved around on the digital canvas. In effect the hardware is played as a new form of musical instrument that uses light(animation and video) instead of sound to produce its rhythms and lyrics. The nonlinear structure of such video systems as Olaf designs allow him to experimentally composite animations and create effects in sympathy with his current environment, and in the time frame of now (live). It is not surprising for a typical real time composition to not use any videotape at all. All images are digital. Computers are used to play or generate one or more separate digital video files which can be individually manipulated. Animations can be instantly faded in and out, bought forward and backwards through the composition, things like strobe and colour-cycle effects added. Audience interaction can also be used and fed into the existing mix. The potential of this kind of setup makes it possible to edit a sequence live. As with any networked system, real-time video composition may interface to multiple users. It can be setup to allow the audience to create the composition, or it could be setup so its not controlled by human hands, but simple data signals collected and transmitted from anywhere in the universe. The live video shows that we have designed and performed over the years could be best described as unstable media- it is transcendent - once only. Live and never again performed on strange instruments for an audience, and reactive to that audience and situation. 'UNSTABLE MEDIA' - V2 Rotterdam, Netherlands. Unstable media is defined by Johan Huizinga in the book Homo Ludens. Huizinga defines unstable media as media created from a sense of play, for a mass audience. Comparing it to what he defines as stable media, stable media being created with a much more conceptually thought out plan, made for an individual contemplation. To really get the most out of a "stable" painting, photograph or etching you (the audience) must really get to the heart of it, you have to enter into a one on one relationship with it, what does this work mean to me and me alone? To understand the work means to develop an utterly personal understanding of it, and to let it unlock your inner world. If the work appeals to you, you may want to find out more about why the work was made and who made it and to compare your reaction to other peoples reactions that the work invoked in them. All of the works admirers remaining unique individuals with individual reactions. Unstable media is totally the opposite in that it is targeted at a crowd. You can see this difference between the audience in a museum opposed to the audience at a concert, a performance or at a public speech. These are real mass media events. All the audience members are connected by the same energy source - the action occurring on stage. No matter how big or small the crowd, each member is effected as they all face or move in the same direction. This moment is what unstable media aims for, the moment where all viewers lose there sense of individuality, where they too contribute to the event, just as what is typical of festivities; merry excitement where the performing artist provides fuel but not content. Television has been called mass media because it reaches so many people at the same time but it rarely leads to the manifestation of crowds, although it has the capacity to be experienced by many viewers at once this form of mass media is very different, it is becomes a physically solitary experience. The television evokes the idea of an abstract, imaginary crowd, it gives the viewer the notion that there are people watching elsewhere while they they sit, isolated in their living room or at least isolated by comfort - where they become less aware of there own and other peoples bodies. Unstable media allows for the introduction of chaos and for the idea that each persons interpretation of a work, however unique is part of the desired reaction, as all reactions are relative. Furthermore, chaos itself in the 20th century has been reduced to a mere mathematical, where it has been used to define and clarify many ideas and concepts. Benoit Mandelbrot demonstrated that the contour of a shape can never be absolutely determined, since it depends on the distance between the measurer and the object to be measured. Book for the Electronic Arts - V2, Rotterdam Netherlands. ISBN From the moon the contour of Australia appears to be a certain length, from the ground it appears much larger and on a molecular level it is almost infinite. The closer you observer a circle the straighter it becomes. Edward Lorenz demonstrated with his handful of relative mathematical formulas that even within the total instability of weather patterns there was a stable structure of infinite complexity. Until the late 80s a rather apocalyptic mood was defining 20th century consciousness. The circumstances in which we found ourselves in had started to shed a grim light on our existence into the next century, the degradation of the environment, acid rain, the arms race, nuclear fallout, meltdowns of nuclear power plants, the increase of cancer and the aids epidemic seemed to point in the direction of total entropy. As the wider acceptance of the chaos theory in the later part of this century prevailed, a more relaxed world view was adopted with the realisation that within chaos lies order. This seemed to relax people's anxieties of what the next century holds. However now that we are well and truly in the 21st century we must prevent ourselves from becoming complacent. |
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SLINKY 2002 - PHOTOS BY JULIAN SMITH. Care of FUTURE ENTERTAINMENT |
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