Panoramic

Home Is What You Make It <360 Experiment> from Carl Frey on Vimeo.

This panoramic video by Carl Frey and David Kiss uses a very interesting technique and contraption which as they describe 'consists of four angled mirrors and four configuration plates, each covering a 90 degree view. We then mounted four HVX200 cameras to the plates, which shot upwards into the mirrors and captured the surrounding environment into separate files'.

images by Carl Frey

Single Sunset by James Rossa O'Hare

We have recently been experimenting with panoramas and slitscan techniques. The above is an interactive slitscan shot of a Dublin Sunrise taken over 3 hours - scroll over with your mouse to rise the sun. We have been looking at the work of Adam Magyar using slitscan techniques and we also interested by this footage of Varanasi in India (misnamed Calcutta) taken in 1899. In this shot of a boat going down the Ganges, a panorama of the ghats passes through the field of vision of the camera.

Similarly in Magyar's work it is time which is recorded passing by the camera - as he writes about his project 'Urban Flows':

a fraction of a moment is recorded through a 1-pixel wide slit...the time and space slices recorded this way and placed right next to each other generate an image without a perspective; it is the passing of time itself which turns into space...'

detail of Urban Flow

Adam Magyar

Other techniques we have been looking at include the stitching together of multiple pieces of footage resulting in a a form of panoramic video. This one by Antoin Doyle records 10 of the 14 gates into Dublin's Stephens Green Park.

Stephen's Green 1 from Antóin Doyle on Vimeo.

Similarly - this collage technique has been used by James Rossa to create a panoramic view of Powerscourt Waterfall in Wicklow.

Powerscourt Waterfall by James Rossa O'Hare

Untitled from Paul Quinn on Vimeo...premiered at screen 2, Multiplex 21 July 09!

Georges Corner 1 from Antóin Doyle on Vimeo...premiered at screen 2, multiplex 21 July09!

animation with type

Here a piece of footage which Aisling McCoy sent in which animates text for an unusual effect - Alex Gopher's 'The Child'. Following on from this, here's another interesting one, made using Processor.

Self-portrait from Nicolas Guyon on Vimeo.

areaman productions - screening tonight

Thanks to Antoin Doyle for pointing tout filmmakers Tom Burke and Shane Hogan who make up areaman productions. Their series of shorts about the Liberties really are excellent and have been shown recently at the Stranger than Fiction Documentary Festival at the IFI.

Tonight (Monday the 20t of July) the series will be shown at 8pm at the Nicholas of Myra Community Hall in the Liberties (3euro at the door) - we think we all should go!

abstract and non-perspectival space

Thanks to Sarah Breen Lovett for showing this film made by Hans Richter in 1921 which is one of the earliest examples of abstract cinema and of a genre called structuralist cinema.

Structuralism has been defined as art in which 'the elements of the work's production or structure become the subject, partly as a way to demystify the cinematic process. For example, a particular camera action might be repeated and studied.'

The recession and progression of the simple geometric forms in this film Rhythmus 21 give the impression of a spatial depth which is non-perspectival. This type of spatial depth is related to that of the suprematists - from who Zaha Hadid drew an early influence.

Kazimir Malevich

Suprematism with Blue Triangle and Black Square

1915

The Peak

Confetti; Suprematist Snowstorm

Zaha Hadid

One distinctive feature of this abstract or non-perspectival space is the lack of background. An infinite emptiness seems to lie beyond the forms which are brought to the foreground of these works. This film called 'black rain' by 'semiconductor' is set against an equally infinite space - 'outer space'. Black Rain is sourced from images collected by twin satellites which track interplanetary solar wind.

Black Rain from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

'Semiconductor's' description of their film brings us back to that definition of structuralism:

'By embracing the artifacts, calibration and phenomena of the capturing process we are reminded of the presence of the human observer who endeavors to extend our perceptions and knowledge through technological innovation.'

This allusion to the 'apparatus' of representation brings Duchamp to mind - in particular this very short film which he (allegedly) made.

Multiplex - First screening - Links

Thanks everyone for coming out to our first screening this evening!

We'll meet again next week in richview @ 6.30 on Tuesday... (Tues 21st)

Here's a link to a post I made on Richviewer a while ago which introduces Seadragon, Photosynth, Gigapan etc, which we touched on today. Have a look - all work on the creation of 3d space from 2d images...something that is relatively low-tech in terms of software used and equipment needed...

This short talk by Olafur Eliasson might also provide some food for thought.

The Technocrat Retrofit of London from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

This Film was made by Keiichi Matsuda as part of Nic Clear's Unit 15 at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London. It uses 'a combination of hand drawing, physical models, collage and live footage, composited in after effects and cut on premiere'.

Keiichi Matsuda describes his film as a project about:

'....architectural intervention, but its basis lies in economics. Our current system of economics and politics (as they have converged to a point which is hard to distinguish) is fundamentally unsustainable. It relies on debt and exponential growth, and operates on an abstracted belief system that ignores our finite world resources. Technocracy is a post-capitalist economic system devised and developed in 1920s America by academics and scientists as a solution to the waste and unsustainability of capitalism. Like capitalism (and communism/socialism etc.), it does not concern itself with scarcity, but rather with abundance, with the view that the capacity exists to feed, clothe and shelter everyone in the world. This does not happen with the current system as 'there is no way to sell an abundance'. This has shown itself increasingly as false scarcity is imposed on us in the form of digital rights management, licensing for broadcasters, action against peer-to-peer services etc....'

Some of the techniques used are similar to those which Kevin Kelly calls 'painted film'.

'...painted film is "drawn" with photographs. It is painted, layer by layer, frame by frame not by hand but with manipulated photographic images. It is painted by cameras. These movies are the cinematic equivalent of photoshopped films....'

Another example of this 'painting' can be seen here in the making of Speed Racer.

An interview with Nic Clear who runs Unit 15 in the Bartlett can be found here - with more examples of films made by his students.

First Multiplex Screenings

tuesday 14 july @ 6.30pm, richview
we're holding our first screening on tuesday evening. anyone who would like to come should send us a link to a piece of film that describes space in an interesting way.

pick something you like, and you can tell us about it on tuesday. This could be from youtube, vimeo etc or a dvd you have.

we'll be watching excerpts, not whole films and will be talking about each one in terms of technique, theory and its ramifications for how we can create our own films in the coming weeks.
we can also do a quick walk-around the facilities in ucd for those who are unfamiliar with the architecture school.

the event is open, and please us know if you are coming by emailing us at nowwhatmutiplex(at)gmail.com

looking forward to seeing you there!
alice & james rossa

The Turn (Opus) from Fredo Viola on Vimeo.

NYC, Brooklyn and a train to the country side... Shot with a small point and shoot.

Here's a link to a post on a music video created using surveillance cameras...video not very good, but idea is. could this be one of the ways we make a film about space? see also look by Adam Rifkin - again not a great film but interesting concept.

still from Filmworks by Anthony McCall via Lombard Street

Image and transport technologies, revolutionized in the nineteenth century, instigated new relationships with time as fundamental as those begun in the transition from prehistory to recorded time (Kern 1993). Both Paul Virilio (1989) and Friedrich Kittler (1999) suggest that cinema must be located in the twinning of media and military technologies. As Sigfried Zielinski argues, however, reiterating the assertion made earlier by Lewis Mumford (1934: 12-18), nineteenth-century military and media technologies both depended for their mechanization and automation on the logically and chronologically prior development of the clock (Zielinski 1999: 72-74). The new armaments and logistics of the Maxim gun and the tank, like the new network of rail and telegraph, like the structured time of the shutter, derive both technologically and conceptually from the mechanized measurement of time. Without the mass-scale precision engineering required by the popularization of watches and clocks in the 1870s, the machine gun, the railway schedule, the production line, the cash register, and the cinematograph are not thinkable. The splitting of human actions into mechanically discrete movements, the atomization of economics and bureaucratic flows into distinct and quasi-autonomous, even meaningless keystrokes on the adding machine and typewriter, the Taylorization of work at Ford's River Rouge plant all spring from the same imagining of time as a discrete series of steps. And yet, although the cinema has the discretion of a chronometer, it also struggles with other temporalities, some coming into being, some fading from their old hegemony. However important the addition of the second hand to mass-produced watches, it alone cannot account for the opening up of microscopic, infinitesimal times, or the mise-en-abyme of the commodity fetish as it spiraled into spectacle.

- Sean Cubitt, The Cinema Effect. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005. Pg. 6-7 selected by Greg J Smyth via Serial Consign

SURFACE : A film from underneath from tu on Vimeo.

Synopsis:
“What would the world be like from an underground perspective?”

SURFACE is an experimental film, exploring the emotional journey from an underground urban perspective. This 'urban symphony' transforms human actions and street objects into beats that harmoniously compose a grand audio and visual composition. The film emphasizes the ideas of ‘point of contact’, ‘human identity’ and notion of ‘live footprints’.

SURFACE is a part of UND-VIS, a thesis project for MFA Design and Technology, Parsons The New School for Design. UND-VIS : Under Vision Experiment; explores the new visual language of an unconventional perspective from below.

More info. + behind the scene : www.surfacefilm.com

Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

©2009 COPYRIGHT - All Rights reserved

Project info @ http://vimeo.com/channels/keithloutitssydney

This film is 100% 'real', but there are some new techniques for me here, such as using time lapse to create the illusion of forward movement for the helicopter ocean scenes. These flight sequences would not be possible without the skill and patience of Chief Pilot Peter Yates. Thanks also to Trevor Cracknell (for getting wet!) and Family.

Artist Info @ www.keithloutit.com

welcome

This just started - so come back soon once we have got the ball rolling