New pixel-time tests

Here are some new generated images from modified version of my Pixel-time patch. This one turn films into timed pixel grids by calculating the resolution based on number of frames in the video and then captures on pixel per frame and flows from the top left down to the bottom right. 

I have some that capture the pixel based on its current read-write position and others that capture the average of all the pixels on screen. 

So far, there isn't much going on with this as it only produces abstract grid compositions. I am currently working to expand the functionality of this program as well as find an actual use for it. 

Lasagna show @ Arprim

Some pics from the Lasagna show opening today at Arprim. The show turned out pretty well and I was happy with my prints. The invitation I made for it was really badly printed and someone (I don't know who,) repositioned my type. But, since they where printed so late it didn't make a difference and hopefully almost no one will see them. 

Self-Portrait Studying

After having found a way to streamline and speed up my program quite considerably. I took this 10 minute shot of me re-reading a draft of one of my latest papers. Due to the increased speed it is a lot easier to make out moving figures.

3 hour self-portrait in Pixel Time

Here is a higher resolution example of my pixel-time photography program. It took almost three hours to complete. I will need to find a way to pump a little more speed out of this program or I will have trouble finding sitters when the time comes to produce my series.

Or, maybe I just need to figure out a more creative use for this new machine instead of simple photo-portraits. 

I will keep playing around with it and see what comes out. The possibilities of opening the debate on perception and information are already quite apparent, as are the possibilities of discussing the differences between analog and digital perception and their subjects. I am looking forward to seeing where this can go!

Pixel lapse photography

Here is a test from my latest programing/print project. Basically, It does what a digital camera does only slower. It exposes the process of registering one pixel at a time as it takes the photo. Usually the process is so fast that it looks instant but in reality numbers always register in sequence. 

I still have quite a bit of work to do on this as right now my computer has trouble doing this at speed at high resolutions. So, I need to optimize the program and see where I can squeeze a little more performance out. I also need to make an interface and iron out some bugs. It shouldn't be long now as the prototype works quite well.

As you can see things that don't move register clearly whereas things that do move have their movement registered as the pixels draw. 

Projecting Pastness: Memory and Time

This installation consisted of a chair, some history books and a lamp to read them by. The chair included a light sensor that was hooked up to a computer running the program I wrote which would trigger a camera to photograph the subject and re-project them on the wall when they left the scene. Additionally, when no one was interacting with the installation the computer would randomly recall moments from the past and replay them – not necessarily in the proper order, and sometimes deciding midway to mix them up. the captured images would also, once recalled, deteriorate with time and pixelate into obscurity. All these effects would also create visual feedback loops and that would fragment and redefine the "memories" as time past.

Obviously, the still pictures here, taken under low light, do not display much of the actual situation at all, but they are all I have to show for now.

Wittgenstein, Language, and Simulacrum

These are the next steps in my simulacrum project listed below. In this print work, I used programming to translate some Wittgenstein quotes from Tractatus, into binary pixels in CMYK. I guess this can almost be seen as a combination of much of my previous work. to me this still seems in-progress. It is not resolved and needs to continue or be discarded. 

Memories

I never realized just how important your living or working space is. I guess I have been exceptionally lucky up until now that I have always felt good where I was and just accepted that as a given. Well, that is until I moved to my current space in NDG. 

I am not sure if it was the light, the location or the sound insulation but last year I felt inspired from morning till night and now I find myself looking for reasons to not be here and waste more time than I have wandering aimlessly downtown.

This photo I found of my ex-studio illustrates the obsessive focused passion of last year well. My current studio is so barren and empty you would swear it was abandoned. 

New Adventures in Electronics and Computers!

I am really new to electronics, programming and interfacing with the computer beyond the mouse and keyboard, but I am really excited about the possibilities for future projects. 

Here is my Arduino and a photocell I put together in order to interface using light sensing. This is pretty basic, but I got a resolution control program working with light readings. 

I am currently working this into an installation project that will deal with projections and memory. I will be done in two weeks and will, hopefully, film the interactions to display here.

Simulacrum project

Here are some works in progress from my new print series of binary/hex/grid compositions. 

The word simulacrum means: An image or representation of someone or something. (Oxford English Dictionary) But I prefer Brian Massumi's interpretation , which states:

 "A copy is made in order to stand in for its model. A simulacrum  has a different agenda, it enters different circuits."1

 and,

 "The thrust of the process is not to become an equivalent of the 'model' but to turn it and its world in order to open a new space for the simulacrum's own mad proliferation. The simulacrum affirms its own difference. It is not an implosion, but a differentiation; it is an index not of absolute proximity, but of galactic distances."2

This new series of mine, based on programing and file codes, attemps to explore the questions of copy and simulacrum by looking at the nature of an image from a digital perspective. What is an image? And when it is explored from different perspectives or encodings does its nature change? 

This is unfinished work and is still in the process of being created.

1. Massumi, Brian. "The Simulacrum According to Deleuze and Guattari" Copyright no. 1, 1997.

2. Ibid.

Willing the Grid. part I

In case people haven't gotten it yet, my work last year wasn't really about grenades. It was more about structures and systems; relationships that define perceptions and not objects in-and-of-themselves. 

A grid is a very relevant structure in this sense. It grounds and systemizes thought, ideas, architecture, etc. Is this what people seek? A willing of the grid at the expense of a groundless potential? 

And again!

Since I felt the last 4 color litho was such a success i decided to up the challenge with a much finer dot resolution and try it again. Of course, I got myself completely in over my head and had no end of trouble printing this. Wasted films, plates, paper and time to finally end up with a paltry edition of 3! 250$ worth of material and perhaps 35 hours to get 3 prints that are not even that well printed. At least I ended last year with a valuable lesson in humility. 

So this is how JPG compression works!

I have so much more respect for the computer after trying to draw like one. Understanding how simple things like compressing a JPG image require some pretty creative constructions has completely changed my view of the dichotomy between the analog and the digital. 

Precious Grenade in CMYK

This 4 color offset lithography uses the concepts of commercial CMYK offset printing process and makes the color illusion created by half-tone patterns explicit.  Though the pattern is an obvious distortion, the image from far appears top be full color. Does exposing the illusion change the way we understand perception? 

Art Matters 2008

My drawing installation at last years Art Matters Festival at the FOFA Gallery. Three grenades, or perhaps, three representations of grenades. 

So many people automatically assumed that I was protesting war with this work. As if an image of an unarmed grenade was inherently political. Or even the actual grenade lying on the floor between the two images. Anti-war or pro-war? 

Maybe it had nothing to do with war and more to do with the way we, as thinking creatures, relate and identify to an object of our own creation. This work turned out to be a great example of the paradox of being attracted to something we have been conditioned to revile. And, luckily for me, more people than I had originally expected came in for a close look and realized that the grenade was not the real subject of this work, but merely a vehicle for a more abstract idea of relative truth and tautological systems.

First words

For intellect in the service of the will, that is to say in practical use, there exist only individual things; for intellect engaged in art and science, that is to say active for its own sake, there exists only universals, entire kinds, species, classes, ideas of things.

– Arthur Schopenhauer