#but I wasn't about to re-record ~30 minutes of audio

[obsessivelollipoplalala]

It was agony having to listen to my own voice during editing but I finally made a video version of the critique of Ashford's Lovett that I put on Medium 2.5 months ago lol. I'm not going to become a YouTuber, I just have a lot to say about my favorite female villain of all time! I hope people aren't too harsh on my video skills lol (though I don't expect this to get more than 20 views, anyway).

[k00299393]

Time-lapse Experiment

With the mold I made from the toddler shoes I decided instead of making a candle to melt I decided to freeze some form of liquid, do a time-lapse and have it melt in front of the fire. the idea was that I would set it up with my phone on a tripod, plug my phone in to a power source so as not to worry about my battery wasting during the process. In theory that way I would be able to hit record and not worry about it until the shoes had fully melted. This was not the case.

The Set Up

Materials and reasons for using:

I started by creating the scene, taking a box and painting it red. Originally I painted it red because Pantones colour of the year for 2023 is viva magenta. Then I put a layer of gloss finish modge podge over it in the hopes of helping it to not soak up any liquid too quickly.

For lighting I wanted the colours of the flames from the fire to flicker through the video. During set up I realized the light from the fire wasn't very strong so I used the light from a battery operated candle.

I decided to use milk as the liquid as this is what we are reared on from infant to childhood.

To create drama I wanted to put a contrasting coloured liquid in the base. After much thought I decided to use red wine not only for its contrasting colour but the fact that it has to be matured over time and we are adults before we are allowed to consume it. It also would work well with the red of the box. I hoped the milk entering the wine would create a dramatic white cloud.

Lastly I wanted the shoes to be elevated out of the wine so as not to have the shoes melt too quickly. I used two thin cut logs, I liked the roughness but also the natural texture.

I sat the box into an oven tray for any spillage.

For audio I had planned to have a sound effect of a fire but as the video ended up being over two minutes long I decided to go with music, specifically an instrumental song so I chose a song by Carter Burwell called Bella's Lullaby included on the Twilight Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. Which is kind of sentimental to me and I named my eldest daughter Bella.

Outcome

The time-lapse took about 4 hours, I underestimated how long it would take the milky shoes to melt. But there were a number of complications. You'll notice the camera get jumpy a number of times as a result of this.

1st- Turns out the battery operated candle was made of real candle wax on the outer shell, this melted all over the fireplace. So I lost most of the effect of the flames early in the video.

2nd-Never considered how the heat of the fire would affect my phone which was set up to record the time-lapse. The phone overheated and turned off. I had to remove it from the tripod and wait for it to cool down. I also had to then block the heat from the fire completely losing the flame effect and slowing down the melting process.

3rd-Set phone back up again. Noticed my battery was at 9%. After much troubleshooting I discovered the extension lead was not working. So again I had to move the set up closer to an outlet. This changed the lighting again.

4th-The dramatic effect that I had hoped for doesn't happen until about 1 minute and 30 seconds which is about 3/4s of the way in, for two reasons. The first was the length of time it took for the frozen milk to melt and secondly when the milk did finally melt into the wine, I had the wine too deep and the milk sunk to the bottom before finally coming back to the surface.

The finished Video. 'Changes over time'

''Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have of them.'' Marcel Proust.

I think this quote from Marcel Proust is very fitting for this video. Marcel Proust is an early 20th century French writer responsible for the longest novel in the world: 'A la recherche du temps' which has 1,267,069 words. I think I'll stick with the time-lapse videos.

Overall I enjoyed the making of this time-lapse, however stressful it was at times. I have decided that I would like to re visit this idea in the future with the knowledge gained from my mistakes and recreate how I imagined it would go.

[fineartsjournal]

213341 Art Studio IIIA ⋆ Week 10 - Someway, Somehow

I arranged a discussion with Mike about what materials I'd need. Until then, I actually hadn't planned out my presentation, let alone prepared any video, which was cause for some raised eyebrow on his end.

Nonetheless, he supplied me with a box stand and sent me on our way. We'd meet again - and I'd need my video clips ready.

My idea is simple, and driven foremost by concept, rather than technical complexity:

Much akin to my prior linking of sampling to the act of remembrance, this interactive piece will put the access of personal memory in the hands of the viewer.

Re-using the day-in-the-life recording from 2004, the video will be divided into small samples, which will be triggered by the buttons on a midi device, turning a childhood video into an instrument.

All this will in turn, play from a speaker, and run from my laptop, set up inside the stand.

The first part to this would be actually opening Max.

I registered my 30-day trial account onto Cycling '74, loaded up the official YouTube tutorial, and made my first ever 'patch'.

In particular, it was a random number generator hooked up to a metronome, causing different intervals of a video to play depending on the number.

The drag-and-drop method was surprisingly intuitive, and once I get used to the code jargon (and start paying $10 a month) I could see myself having fun with this.

Around this time, I was formatting workbook images in a web version of Microsoft Paint called JSPaint. I discovered a feature called "draw randomly", in which the program started making random marks over the canvas in real-time, with a distinctly artificial sense of composition.

I tossed in a different image and left it running until it crashed.

Could this be another avenue for creation? A grand statement on AI? A conversation between man and machine?

We can save that for next year.

As for a MIDI controller, Mike had arranged a Hercules P32, which is better accustomed to a DJ setup, but in my benefit, has 32 assignable pads.

The path from here seemed simple enough. Divide my parent's video into 32 segments, and then setup Max to play them with a MIDI input.

Back to an old friend of mine:

Clips were chosen for their sound, variety, and visual activity. Recognizing that people would be rapidly pressing different pads, I made sure that no two clips were from the same shot, and shared an immediate audio feedback.

I also made sure they didn't go over 5 seconds each, instead allowing them to function as quick-fire samples. This would also save on storage.

Back into Cycling 74's Max, I worked my way towards the following setup: You press a button, and the video plays.

As I kept at it, it became increasingly frustrating how barren my searches were for what appeared to be such a simple task.

It took a hot minute until I could even find an applicable tutorial; but this was of little help, as each bit of jargon in one tutorial led me to another, and so on until it was 2:30am.

I had no prototype by 3am, and with the general expectation that I'd hit the ground running with a setup the next day, it was disappointing Mike would have to step in from here.

I met Mike in the Block 6 recording studio the next day and got to setting up the Hercules P32 MIDI controller. It didn't work at first.

But I just needed a dedicated driver, which I downloaded. It didn't work.

Even with my best attempts on the Max MIDI mapper, I just couldn't assign the keys. A web test wasn't showing anything either.

Maybe it was the fault of Max itself. Mike wasn't familiar with it, his VJ'ing choice instead being Resolume Avenue.

To get rid of the watermark on the free version of Avenue I downloaded, Mike rang up Eugene Hansen for a serial number, which he then sent over email after a request.

I activated Avenue, and it was good. My MIDI still didn't work.

I combed throughout my device settings for a frustrating half-hour, even downloading a MIDI monitor, but all to no result.

When Mike came back to help, he had the idea of switching out the MIDI USB cable for one that came with a little cylindrical 'booster', and it turned out to be the sacred thing needed to get the damn thing going.

Resolume Avenue downloaded with two other programs. One of them, Alley, came in handy for optimizing the clips. Pasting all 32 videos within the menu, it sorted them into DXV .mov files, which ran like a charm. I have no idea how it works, but I was there for the ride.

It was getting fun. There's a lot of buttons on the Hercules P32 DJ, and all of them can be assigned a function.

Where at first I wanted just to utilize the pads, maybe alongside some painted instructions, Mike showed off the various real-time, MIDI-controlled effects that could be applied to the video.

Soon, I found myself skimming through a menu of different effects, and assigning them, one by one, to each button. This took hours, but by GOD was it worth it.

Some effects left quite the impact. Beyond just triggering clips via the pads and passing between the two screens with the crossfader, the other two faders on the P32 controlled a tape-like speed warp, as well as a dreamy, hallicinogenic pea soup 'trail' effect.

Mike, recognizing the sort of people that wanted to press every button, affirmed that it was good to have *some * kind of feedback to even the most humble of knobs, just so the audience could truly feel in control.

This was an art in itself, as you didn't want an added effect to completely disrupt the concept, however you also wanted it to be noticeable, as to achieve the feeling of "Oooh, this button does THAT!"

We postponed our setup to the next day, which went much quicker than I anticipated. Without much more than my direction as to where the monitor screen would go, mike set the whole thing up, as we wired the proper cabling in place.

The monitor came with speakers, and sat at 1.5m off the ground, despite the controller itself being quite low. Being a little hunched over didn't bother me, besides - lowering down to a child's height while interacting with a childhood video was an amusing addition to the concept.

I ran out of ideas as to what to map for the buttons in the middle of the controller, instead whipping up a carboard cover that sit neatly over the machine with no property damage.

It was also at this point that I came up with a name for this piece: "Brain" - this work is a representation of my brain, perhaps one in a state of remembrance, but recalling points in time from just before the limits of my memory, but not before my conscience. The audience plays with my brain, brings back these formative experiences, but can just as actively warp and fade them, just as these memories have in my mind, 20 years later.

The connotations of a laptop inside this locked box, wiring visuals to a monitor as you interact with the apparatus on top had a bodily connotation to me as well, upon which I painted on the simple audience instructions: "play with brain".

My dad's name is Brian. I guess the title works as an anagram, too.