1. Stereo sound recording, duration of 6 min. An interpretation of Pachelbel's Canon in D into the Bohlen-Pierce scale. Overdubbed solo performance on an 8-string fretless bass with custom macrotonal tuning.
2. Space for two people to sit and listen to headphones.
3. Two pairs of reasonable quality headphones(I will provide a jack splitter).
One CD or mp3 playback device.
Two chairs (any type OK).
Either a pedestal or table, on which to place the playback device, headphones (when not in use) and informational pamphlets about the composition.
4. No special conditions requested; any space is OK.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Monday, April 7, 2008
Preparing work for Sandpoint
Proposition 1: Canon in J:
A translation/transfiguration of Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D into the Bohlen-Pierce scale. I've already spent a significant amount of personal time and energy on this project since about December, envisioning it as a potential candidate for my senior thesis project. I feel confidant about being able to achieve a self-contained version of this piece as a <6 minutes overdubbed sound recording voiced by a microtonal instrument I have already customized specifically for this piece. I could write many pages about what I've already developed and learned for this project. For the time being, I recommend that anyone interested in some background information for my project visit the following website: http://members.aol.com/bpsite/
I have a 2.5 minutes demo recording available of the first several rounds (Currently this file is not online, as I've forgotten how to upload to the server).
Propositions 2 and 3: Either a short frame-by-frame-cut film derived from the final video piece I'm working on for the DXARTS video sequence, or a stereoscopic video focused on the effect of overlay technique and how depth perception is affected by overlays in 3-D film.
A translation/transfiguration of Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D into the Bohlen-Pierce scale. I've already spent a significant amount of personal time and energy on this project since about December, envisioning it as a potential candidate for my senior thesis project. I feel confidant about being able to achieve a self-contained version of this piece as a <6 minutes overdubbed sound recording voiced by a microtonal instrument I have already customized specifically for this piece. I could write many pages about what I've already developed and learned for this project. For the time being, I recommend that anyone interested in some background information for my project visit the following website: http://members.aol.com/bpsite/
I have a 2.5 minutes demo recording available of the first several rounds (Currently this file is not online, as I've forgotten how to upload to the server).
Propositions 2 and 3: Either a short frame-by-frame-cut film derived from the final video piece I'm working on for the DXARTS video sequence, or a stereoscopic video focused on the effect of overlay technique and how depth perception is affected by overlays in 3-D film.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Epilogue for research, Fall 2007
My research takes two forms: I can read the available material others have written relating to my topic and I can learn from experiments I do myself.
The topics that will be most directly helpful to my research include electroencephalography, scientific studies on entrainment, and technical knowledge of the hardware used for image capture and playback.
As for experiments I can do on my own, I want to begin my building a strobe light device that can receive flash-rate information from a computer (probably implemented via Arduino). Running a binaural-beat program in synch with the light rate is also an option.
The second step to doing some primary research on my own would be to head into DIY neurofeedback (http://openeeg.sourceforge.net/doc/, http://www.dcc.uchile.cl/~peortega/ae/). This would not be a light undertaking, and would start in July at the very earliest. With such a complete setup, I could monitor and quantify my own response to a flashing light with some amount of scientific rigor.
While the artistic exploration of frame rate is my chosen primary independent research area, I will continue the simultaneous pursuit of knowledge in other fields. Alternative pixel grids for image sampling is one of my most recent interests (hexagonal and triangular tessellations of the field). The human voice is another interest (particularly with regard to the concepts of fundamental frequency and register). I mention these to reinforce that my experiments with cinema framerate will be a long-term (and not all-consuming) project.
At this point, I believe that the conscious mind may perceive a range of frame rates in correspondence with a range of semantic association. As I’ve mentioned before, I imagine the range as: slower=passive/dreamy, faster=active/fearful/epiphany. Actual entrainment is unnecessary for frame variability to color the viewing experience.
The several areas I am interested in exploring with frame rate are distinct enough that it is productive for me to define them as separate here:
1)Entrainment-based cinema.
2)Frame rate matching to a semantic range.
3) Subjective interaction (interference patterns) between capture device rate and rate of filmed subject (e.g. wagon-wheel effect).
Discussing these as separate categories is helpful to my project advancement, as it offers a better clarity of purpose.
The ends of my interest in entrainment is not mass mind-control, it is transcendental self-awareness and communal experience. Trance has a very bad connotation and I doubt that I could erase suspicion of it with several pages of writing. For the most part this suspicion is a healthy impulse anyway, so trying to persuade those concerned otherwise wouldn’t be the best use of my time.
If anyone has been keeping up with the entries of this blog, please let me know. It’s admittedly quite dense, but I hope that its density has been informative for any reader intrepid enough to slog through it. Moreover, if you’re that interested in my project enough that you’ve read through this whole sketchspace, maybe I’ll have somebody to collaborate with next quarter.
The topics that will be most directly helpful to my research include electroencephalography, scientific studies on entrainment, and technical knowledge of the hardware used for image capture and playback.
As for experiments I can do on my own, I want to begin my building a strobe light device that can receive flash-rate information from a computer (probably implemented via Arduino). Running a binaural-beat program in synch with the light rate is also an option.
The second step to doing some primary research on my own would be to head into DIY neurofeedback (http://openeeg.sourceforge.net/doc/, http://www.dcc.uchile.cl/~peortega/ae/). This would not be a light undertaking, and would start in July at the very earliest. With such a complete setup, I could monitor and quantify my own response to a flashing light with some amount of scientific rigor.
While the artistic exploration of frame rate is my chosen primary independent research area, I will continue the simultaneous pursuit of knowledge in other fields. Alternative pixel grids for image sampling is one of my most recent interests (hexagonal and triangular tessellations of the field). The human voice is another interest (particularly with regard to the concepts of fundamental frequency and register). I mention these to reinforce that my experiments with cinema framerate will be a long-term (and not all-consuming) project.
At this point, I believe that the conscious mind may perceive a range of frame rates in correspondence with a range of semantic association. As I’ve mentioned before, I imagine the range as: slower=passive/dreamy, faster=active/fearful/epiphany. Actual entrainment is unnecessary for frame variability to color the viewing experience.
The several areas I am interested in exploring with frame rate are distinct enough that it is productive for me to define them as separate here:
1)Entrainment-based cinema.
2)Frame rate matching to a semantic range.
3) Subjective interaction (interference patterns) between capture device rate and rate of filmed subject (e.g. wagon-wheel effect).
Discussing these as separate categories is helpful to my project advancement, as it offers a better clarity of purpose.
The ends of my interest in entrainment is not mass mind-control, it is transcendental self-awareness and communal experience. Trance has a very bad connotation and I doubt that I could erase suspicion of it with several pages of writing. For the most part this suspicion is a healthy impulse anyway, so trying to persuade those concerned otherwise wouldn’t be the best use of my time.
If anyone has been keeping up with the entries of this blog, please let me know. It’s admittedly quite dense, but I hope that its density has been informative for any reader intrepid enough to slog through it. Moreover, if you’re that interested in my project enough that you’ve read through this whole sketchspace, maybe I’ll have somebody to collaborate with next quarter.
Monday, November 5, 2007
In a Nutshell
My idea is to manipulate frame rate in a way that substantially contributes to
the meaning of video. It is essentially the development of a new cinematic
technique I am developing, not a specific video piece; as such this is a
long term project that will involve a large amount of research and filmmaking,
likely to result in a body of multiple films that will together illustrate the
dimensions of the technique in practice.
Specifically, I am interested in correlating frame rate with the range of human
brain waves observable from EEG recordings, as they are classified in the field
of neuroscience. It is my hypothesis that such a variation of frame rate will
not effect the audience only on a conscious level, but also has the potential to
directly influence the rate of a viewer's brain waves, via the process of photic
driving, a subset of a phenomenon called entrainment.
I hope this summary is a convenient introduction for anyone who might be interested in my idea but would otherwise get lost in all the text.
the meaning of video. It is essentially the development of a new cinematic
technique I am developing, not a specific video piece; as such this is a
long term project that will involve a large amount of research and filmmaking,
likely to result in a body of multiple films that will together illustrate the
dimensions of the technique in practice.
Specifically, I am interested in correlating frame rate with the range of human
brain waves observable from EEG recordings, as they are classified in the field
of neuroscience. It is my hypothesis that such a variation of frame rate will
not effect the audience only on a conscious level, but also has the potential to
directly influence the rate of a viewer's brain waves, via the process of photic
driving, a subset of a phenomenon called entrainment.
I hope this summary is a convenient introduction for anyone who might be interested in my idea but would otherwise get lost in all the text.
Project Dimensions
The following is an update on the progress and interaction between my ideas. I plan to update this post and reform in into a more cohesive entry soon. As it is however, it fleshes out the dimensions of my project fairly well.
A dream machine is “viewed” with closed eyes. The human eye's advanced
capacity for perceiving high resolution images is set aside while input is
reduced to a primitive binary pulsation of extreme luminance values.
The a priori “content” of the viewing experience exists only in the temporal
domain. The perception of this stimuli may be somewhat synesthetic in nature,
triggering an audio-like sensation in the perceptually fuzzy range of Hz that is
too fast to be rhythm and too slow to be perceived as pitch. With no spatial
differentiation (to use a digital analogy, no intra-frame information), photic
driving might be better described as a sub-visual stimulus.
I must continue with substantial research into the biological reality underlying
the phenomenon, but at this point it seems that visual entrainment functions by
either A) exploiting only certain specialized retinal cells (possibly related to
ganglion cell transmissions via the retinohypothalamic tract?) by bombarding
them with an unusual stimulus, or B) engaging at some kind of meta-level with
all the eye's receptors, using the optic nerve as a route for “hacking” the
brain.
It's easier to conceive of this as a design error rather than imagine that
nature intended us to respond to photic driving and other forms of entrainment,
but I'm not yet willing to rule out that our hardwired potential for deep level
synchronization and conscious submission may in fact prove to be evolutionary
advantages (to briefly touch on this without getting lost on a tangent, just
consider the utility of rhythm and trance in religious experience and work
songs).
Photosensitive epilepsy, albeit a condition afflicting only about 5% of chronic
epileptics (though exaggerated in the media and public imagination), is
convincing evidence of how powerful, and potentially dangerous the stimulus of a
flickering light may be, even if only to a specific subset of the general
population. A historical perspective reveals that, particularly in biology, the
study of abnormal conditions is often the most potent frontier in the advance of
scientific knowledge, ultimately with broad implications and pervasive
relevance.
Is there any more controversial and underdeveloped field of scientific study
than neuroscience? The answer is no – no I can't, won't and don't want to make
any pretense of being a scientifically rigorous torch bearer. With that
disclaimer, I've recently become aware of Karl Pribram and David Bohm's
collaborative Holonomic brain theory as a fascinating new research area that
might benefit my project development.
I feel like a reasonable knowledge of non-invasive (EEG-based) neuroscience is
necessary for me as I develop my project to keep the results of my experiments
from being a random collection of cheap tricks that I can't reduplicate or
explain. I plan to craft video with intelligently varied frame rate semantically
integrated with the emotional and narrative content of the images. I expect the
frame rate manipulation to range from subtle and consciously imperceptible to
blatant strobing that would probably turn-off a close-minded audience. However,
the avantgarde art crowd has enough kids playing hot potato with
big ideas and I
wouldn't find any consolation if my work had to hide behind a massive artist's
statement or in Post-rationalization-land. If my technique gets
implemented and felt successfully, I wouldn't expect anyone watching such video
to be able to explain why it was affecting. To be successful though, it surely must be felt.
Back to the dream machine. Though it has no inherent atemporal visual detail, a
dream machine purportedly assists the user in generating self-emergent image
content by guiding the brain to a lucid dreaming state. It would be amazing if
photic driving could heighten the degree to which viewers imaginations were
provoked to dig into their associated memories to supplement the on-screen
content of a film. I don't think this would happen. At least not dramatically,
nor for the majority of people. I doubt most people would be able to fully
process complex images before their eyes while in a state of theta wave
dominance. Maybe young children and viewers who got bored and nodded off at the
start would have the best experience at these movies.
If 24p film were projected at 24 Hz, there would be noticeable flicker and
resultant eyestrain. Each frame is typically shown two or three consecutive
times, interrupted several times by a mechanical shutter, for a true refresh
rate of 48 or 72 Hz. Over 60, the flicker fusion threshold, is enough for most
people to consciously ignore the strobing.
Digital video cameras have no physical shutter per se. Shutter speed is the time a charge is allowed to build up on the CCD(s). I have no independent source to confirm this assertion yet, but it is my current understanding that when shutter speed is lower than frame rate on a digital camera, multiple frames are allowed to bleed together. This results in ghosting and image blur. The interaction of shutter speed/ exposure time and frame rate is something I need to explore further.
I have many questions. How far apart do the peaks and valleys of a wave
representing a stimulus have to be for this wave to be capable of entrainment?
Is there a maximum amplitude of such a wave beyond which it is no longer
effective? Is periodic change in luminous intensity (candelas) the only variable
for defining the Hz of the entraining stimulus or could relatively minor changes
in the detail of a frame (even with zero overall luminance change) be effective?
Are the valley and the trough most effective when they occur for equal
durations?
More to come.
A dream machine is “viewed” with closed eyes. The human eye's advanced
capacity for perceiving high resolution images is set aside while input is
reduced to a primitive binary pulsation of extreme luminance values.
The a priori “content” of the viewing experience exists only in the temporal
domain. The perception of this stimuli may be somewhat synesthetic in nature,
triggering an audio-like sensation in the perceptually fuzzy range of Hz that is
too fast to be rhythm and too slow to be perceived as pitch. With no spatial
differentiation (to use a digital analogy, no intra-frame information), photic
driving might be better described as a sub-visual stimulus.
I must continue with substantial research into the biological reality underlying
the phenomenon, but at this point it seems that visual entrainment functions by
either A) exploiting only certain specialized retinal cells (possibly related to
ganglion cell transmissions via the retinohypothalamic tract?) by bombarding
them with an unusual stimulus, or B) engaging at some kind of meta-level with
all the eye's receptors, using the optic nerve as a route for “hacking” the
brain.
It's easier to conceive of this as a design error rather than imagine that
nature intended us to respond to photic driving and other forms of entrainment,
but I'm not yet willing to rule out that our hardwired potential for deep level
synchronization and conscious submission may in fact prove to be evolutionary
advantages (to briefly touch on this without getting lost on a tangent, just
consider the utility of rhythm and trance in religious experience and work
songs).
Photosensitive epilepsy, albeit a condition afflicting only about 5% of chronic
epileptics (though exaggerated in the media and public imagination), is
convincing evidence of how powerful, and potentially dangerous the stimulus of a
flickering light may be, even if only to a specific subset of the general
population. A historical perspective reveals that, particularly in biology, the
study of abnormal conditions is often the most potent frontier in the advance of
scientific knowledge, ultimately with broad implications and pervasive
relevance.
Is there any more controversial and underdeveloped field of scientific study
than neuroscience? The answer is no – no I can't, won't and don't want to make
any pretense of being a scientifically rigorous torch bearer. With that
disclaimer, I've recently become aware of Karl Pribram and David Bohm's
collaborative Holonomic brain theory as a fascinating new research area that
might benefit my project development.
I feel like a reasonable knowledge of non-invasive (EEG-based) neuroscience is
necessary for me as I develop my project to keep the results of my experiments
from being a random collection of cheap tricks that I can't reduplicate or
explain. I plan to craft video with intelligently varied frame rate semantically
integrated with the emotional and narrative content of the images. I expect the
frame rate manipulation to range from subtle and consciously imperceptible to
blatant strobing that would probably turn-off a close-minded audience. However,
the avantgarde art crowd has enough kids playing hot potato with
big ideas and I
wouldn't find any consolation if my work had to hide behind a massive artist's
statement or in Post-rationalization-land. If my technique gets
implemented and felt successfully, I wouldn't expect anyone watching such video
to be able to explain why it was affecting. To be successful though, it surely must be felt.
Back to the dream machine. Though it has no inherent atemporal visual detail, a
dream machine purportedly assists the user in generating self-emergent image
content by guiding the brain to a lucid dreaming state. It would be amazing if
photic driving could heighten the degree to which viewers imaginations were
provoked to dig into their associated memories to supplement the on-screen
content of a film. I don't think this would happen. At least not dramatically,
nor for the majority of people. I doubt most people would be able to fully
process complex images before their eyes while in a state of theta wave
dominance. Maybe young children and viewers who got bored and nodded off at the
start would have the best experience at these movies.
If 24p film were projected at 24 Hz, there would be noticeable flicker and
resultant eyestrain. Each frame is typically shown two or three consecutive
times, interrupted several times by a mechanical shutter, for a true refresh
rate of 48 or 72 Hz. Over 60, the flicker fusion threshold, is enough for most
people to consciously ignore the strobing.
Digital video cameras have no physical shutter per se. Shutter speed is the time a charge is allowed to build up on the CCD(s). I have no independent source to confirm this assertion yet, but it is my current understanding that when shutter speed is lower than frame rate on a digital camera, multiple frames are allowed to bleed together. This results in ghosting and image blur. The interaction of shutter speed/ exposure time and frame rate is something I need to explore further.
I have many questions. How far apart do the peaks and valleys of a wave
representing a stimulus have to be for this wave to be capable of entrainment?
Is there a maximum amplitude of such a wave beyond which it is no longer
effective? Is periodic change in luminous intensity (candelas) the only variable
for defining the Hz of the entraining stimulus or could relatively minor changes
in the detail of a frame (even with zero overall luminance change) be effective?
Are the valley and the trough most effective when they occur for equal
durations?
More to come.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Cultural Web
The core of my idea is the experimental use of photic driving as a new realm in which to explore and devlop cinematic language. As such, cinematic technology, including historical and obscure technical forms is one half of my research plan. Research into Neural Correlates of Consciousness and the application of the physical concepts of entrainment and coherence to the measurable parameters of human states of perception is a field that demands highly specialized knowledge and training. I cannot pretend that I am going to move very far beyond amateur status in this field of study in the short term, yet I still intend to learn a great deal about the topic so that my understanding of it neither generates false leads for my project, nor taints it with the stigma of pseudoscience. As audio is often presented in conjunction with video in an integrated relationship of mutual reinforcement (and surely audio is given prime importance in many cases), I think it natural to have a strong simultaneous interest in the field of sound correlated with the predominantly visual frame-rate research I am undertaking. My focus in this related area is on very low frequency tones (including infrasound), the gradual border ranging between perceptions of pitch and rhythm in the 0-60 Hz range, acoustical beating and other interference patterns. I hope to actively explore the connections between photic and auditory driving, as I have already generated some interests I am enthusiastic to explore from mapping sound theory concepts to the visual domain, such as harmonics and resonance.
Dream machine, Brion Gysin
entrainment, coherence (physics)
resonance
harmonics
trance
auditory driving
photic driving
epilepsy
chronobiology
over/undercrank
refresh rate
flicker fusion threshold
shutter speed
frate rate selection, “ramping”
vfr, media containers
cinematic techniques
interference patterns
acoustical beating
Alvin Lucier
quantization error
neural correlates of consciousness
binocular rivalry
suprachiasmatic nucleus
stroboscope
light painting
electroencephalography
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
The bridge
NOTE: Please read the prior post in order for this one to make sense.
Attention to our involuntary (and pseudo-voluntary) biological signals continues to strongly influence my art, however, it's unlikely that I will continue to use biofeedback. And whereas Follow Your Heart! is an immersive, interactive installation experience designed for one individual at a time, I do not expect the research and artwork development I'm now undertaking to result in any of these attributes.
I am uncertain at this stage whether I would need to develop specialized hardware for the image capture and digital projection of variable frame rate video. But even if this does become the case, then at least the content I create in this specialized medium could be viewed by many people at once. This future potential for shared experience and greater audience exposure is something I'm enthusiastic about.
As in Follow Your Heart!, the research going into my new work is based on my fascination with the relationship one has to their unconscious. Encouraging disorientation of a person's normal sense of self and facilitating transcendental experience is still my ultimate goal. The concept from Buddhist philosophy of anatta, possibly translated as non-selfhood, is something I want my work to explore.
In Follow Your Heart!, the unconscious self plays the leader for the conscious will to follow. If some degree of tension or resentment is momentarily provoked as the participant struggles to keep up, all the better. Resonance or dissonance between the video's frame rate and the viewer's dominant brain waves may create a meta-drama on top of the film's narrative content. If the pull of the film on the viewer's conscious mind is out of step with the direction and rate of frame rate entrainment, it is unlikely that the range of feelings Follow Your Heart! aimed to elicit would emerge in this gap. Rather, a simple awareness of the disparity might emerge and the conscious mind would self-correct.
Music is often used to reinforce the emotion of a scene. Combining visual entrainment and cinema would likely be used in the same mutually reinforcing way. For example, very high frame rate could be employed when a character is afraid, trying to think quickly, avert disaster and has an epiphany. Very low frame rate could be used when a character is basking in a state of happy relief, dreaming or drunk.
Much less often, but occasionally to intensely powerful effect, music can be very carefully chosen in deliberate emotional dissonance with a scene (e.g. triumphant music set to a massacre, sad music bringing tears of happiness). Low frame rate accompanying a sudden, sorrowful revelation and lots of on-screen action might work in a similar way, to underscore the hopelessness of a character's efforts, like in a dream when running but being held back by the air.
Then there is the special case of interference patterns that may be generated between frame capture rate and periodic on-screen events cycling against still reference objects: This would be a wholly unsubtle (but, I am inclined to imagine, beautiful) way of illustrating how the quality of perception is reflected on what is being perceived. A statement that sounds obvious, but is conveniently forgotten so often.
Working toward implementation and experimentation is certainly preferable to merely writing about a permanently hypothetical cinematic vocabulary for the proposed technique of frame rate variance. But I suggest the possibilities I have imagined here to give the reader a sense of the potential significance I hope may eventually emerge from the latent idea.
Attention to our involuntary (and pseudo-voluntary) biological signals continues to strongly influence my art, however, it's unlikely that I will continue to use biofeedback. And whereas Follow Your Heart! is an immersive, interactive installation experience designed for one individual at a time, I do not expect the research and artwork development I'm now undertaking to result in any of these attributes.
I am uncertain at this stage whether I would need to develop specialized hardware for the image capture and digital projection of variable frame rate video. But even if this does become the case, then at least the content I create in this specialized medium could be viewed by many people at once. This future potential for shared experience and greater audience exposure is something I'm enthusiastic about.
As in Follow Your Heart!, the research going into my new work is based on my fascination with the relationship one has to their unconscious. Encouraging disorientation of a person's normal sense of self and facilitating transcendental experience is still my ultimate goal. The concept from Buddhist philosophy of anatta, possibly translated as non-selfhood, is something I want my work to explore.
In Follow Your Heart!, the unconscious self plays the leader for the conscious will to follow. If some degree of tension or resentment is momentarily provoked as the participant struggles to keep up, all the better. Resonance or dissonance between the video's frame rate and the viewer's dominant brain waves may create a meta-drama on top of the film's narrative content. If the pull of the film on the viewer's conscious mind is out of step with the direction and rate of frame rate entrainment, it is unlikely that the range of feelings Follow Your Heart! aimed to elicit would emerge in this gap. Rather, a simple awareness of the disparity might emerge and the conscious mind would self-correct.
Music is often used to reinforce the emotion of a scene. Combining visual entrainment and cinema would likely be used in the same mutually reinforcing way. For example, very high frame rate could be employed when a character is afraid, trying to think quickly, avert disaster and has an epiphany. Very low frame rate could be used when a character is basking in a state of happy relief, dreaming or drunk.
Much less often, but occasionally to intensely powerful effect, music can be very carefully chosen in deliberate emotional dissonance with a scene (e.g. triumphant music set to a massacre, sad music bringing tears of happiness). Low frame rate accompanying a sudden, sorrowful revelation and lots of on-screen action might work in a similar way, to underscore the hopelessness of a character's efforts, like in a dream when running but being held back by the air.
Then there is the special case of interference patterns that may be generated between frame capture rate and periodic on-screen events cycling against still reference objects: This would be a wholly unsubtle (but, I am inclined to imagine, beautiful) way of illustrating how the quality of perception is reflected on what is being perceived. A statement that sounds obvious, but is conveniently forgotten so often.
Working toward implementation and experimentation is certainly preferable to merely writing about a permanently hypothetical cinematic vocabulary for the proposed technique of frame rate variance. But I suggest the possibilities I have imagined here to give the reader a sense of the potential significance I hope may eventually emerge from the latent idea.
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