This week the Mis en Abyme project has moved out of the realm of the purely hypothetical, research-based project and into the real world – and a step closer to the abyss of the meta-world.
And about bloody time, too, I say. The project has a fairly tight deadline – but then, we’re learning from Hofstadter:
Hofstadter's Law: it always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
So, what did we do?
First, we plugged a MacBook Pro into an external screen. Then we pointed its webcam at said screen – so effectively, there was a camera looking at a screen with the image from the camera on it. Then we pressed ‘record’. That’s it. No extra processing effects, or flash or anything like that. A camera looking at its own image produces a fairly interesting repeat-to-eternity effect, with a slight time delay between each enclosed image change. The effect can be domeonstarated by moving things about on screen, as shown here.
Please bear in mind that these videos arefairly raw and uncut. They’re ore sketches than polished, beautiful items, but should give an idea where this is headed.
Then we tried all sorts of things with looping videos. We put a prerecorded and a live video on the screen.
We put the screen sideways. This meant that our eternal repeats were each turned 90º – so the repetition turns fairly nicely into a spiral.
This video is the motherload – it lasts 8 minutes and tests loads of different things at once. It’s sideways, it has repeating videos (each with their own repeating videos inside), and the centre of the screen frequently turns into a orb. The more technically-minded amongst you will be able to decipher what is going on.
One of the most interesting things is the screen’s inclination to ‘breathe’ when nothing is happening. I assume this is due to the auto-contrast within the camera and screen, but it almost seems like the screen is alive, active even when doing nothing.
There are quite a few visual effects that emerged from this little series of experiments. The project is due to have a bit more juice pumped into it over the next few weeks – it’s pretty clear that there’s still a fair amount to go before this is an immersive, all-body experience.
View all of the videos onvimeo, and see the images on Flickr.