Last gaze
Processing custom software, camera, IR filter, projector
Dimentions variable
Rather than illustrating the trace that an L-system produces, I want to explore the effect of attributing these structural properties to the camera itself. In this experiment, all manipulations happen on the perspective and not a visible line. Hans Holbein's painting The Ambassadors demonstrates a standard approach of dealing with an anamorphic image, in this case the skull in the foreground. It is standard in the sense that we are offered a vantage point for viewing the skulls in its correct proportions. In this experiment I'm trying to explore the process needed to get to that vantage point by withdrawing human movement and using a computational means. The anamorphic skull in this painting is a symbol of death which inhabits its own dimension. The consideration of death in this situation could be interpreted as our journey towards this so called vantage point. However, in this experiment the search for death (or for its consideration) has been automated so that it seems that death searches for us rather than we searching for death. I extended my code from an L-system example. I removed the turtle class as I needed to develop timings during each camera movement instruction so it could check the next character in the string instruction when I wanted. This restructuring allowed me to create smooth transitions from one camera instruction to the next. I've created global variables that allow me to control the duration and speed of movements. Following that I extended the range to movements allowed by the camera so it could move more organically in the 3D space. I found it very interesting to develop sketches that would illustrate the 3-dimensional path that the camera would take and the recursive patterns that would follow.
I'm very fond of this spatial thinking and willing to incorporate it in future experiments. These geometrical structures which are the result of the L-system are the paths within which the invisible object (in this case the perspective / camera position) moves. This was quite an interesting challenge to solve, especially at the aesthetic level as its coordinates exist only in relation to a visible or tangible object (in this case the painting). The structural properties of the camera movement are based on an L-system which is a re-occurring model in a variety of living organisms. The experiment explores possible dialogues between the living camera and its search for the consideration of death. I want to convey the idea of artificial intelligent perception of death in its most subtle form, this is why I chose a more passive approach to how the computer actually reads the painting (hence the fact that the camera view doesn’t develop a better and restricted angle in relation to the anamorphic skull). But what I'm aiming here for with this passive scanning is a reflexion on the general and natural model of sight and perspective on the subject of death in its methodology rather than its cultural conclusion. In other words in the way it is looking rather than the importance of what it is looking at. But nonetheless this opens a discussion on how we can illustrate a consideration on death without a direct and animated human intervention. This experiment is one of the fundamental building blocks for my major research. I will be developing ideas around kinetic and computational cinematography and kinetic perception and their impact on performance art and images. Processing will help me visualize a kinetic camera system and guide me through the physical construction and layout of it.