Here’s the presentation I gave in Copenhagen last week regarding my Physical Virus project. The project is an architectural conversation about invasive species; the first step is to create a ballet performance using ants, using a series of modified printers to print pheromones and influence ant behaviour. This presentation shows briefly the main stages involved in the execution of the project, a few influences, and some videos pilfered from various places.

You can also see the first batch of ants on flickr here.

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.

The following statement is true.
The previous sentence is false.

Mis en Abyme / Strange Loops / Infinity / Voids

Introversion, self-reference and meta-reality abound; the theme I’m working with is the concept of a thing in a thing. Mis en Abyme, literally translated, means ‘into the abyss’. Kind of like a Russian doll – but an infinite one.

Hofstadter investigates this in Gödel, Escher, Bach – the paradoxes that exist within each of these genius’ works are remarkably similar.

Expect an experience that is simultaneously introverted and ethereal; esoteric yet accessible. As I say, development is in progress, but here’s a list of influences so far (by no means exhaustive):

• Douglas Hofstadter
  Meta-physics, presentation of mathematics alongside music and art
  Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid // The Mind’s I // I Am a Strange Loop

• Michel Gondry
  Incredible use of visual effects, warped looping and fractional distortion
  Björk – Bachelorette // Kylie Minogue – Come Into My World // The White Stripes - Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground // Also look at this video for the White Stripes – not Gondry, but Alexandre Courtès

• Charlie Kaufmann
  Screenplays with stories that fold into themselves and each other
  e.g. Synecdoche, New York // Adaptation // Being John Malkovich

• Francis Bacon
  Space frames, foreground and background merging, distorted figures – frankly, I relish any opportunity to browse through Bacon paintings
  See image reel at the end of this post

General points-of-reference

Optical illusions, magic, puppetry…plus other influences include all of the usual suspects, plus music videos, short films, etc, including: this book, this video, of course this group, this video, this one is equally cheesy, these projects, this studio (of course), fractals, ths photographer, these guys, this image is jerky and pixellates badly but a nice idea, you’ll regret this image, this guy, etc etc. (If you’re interested in my influences, check out my delicious stream, or head to Ruairi’s blog at interactivearchitectrue.org)

Click on the images below to be taken to their source. Images are property of their respective copyright holders.

The brief was to work on a motel using an Edward Burtynsky photograph as a site plan, using one of four of Perry’s methods.

Kim Walker and I worked together, and investigated gestural translation. Gestural translation, to explain in one sentence, is a process by which a gesture is translated into an architecture. The gesture can be as meaningful or meaningless as you wish, and it is generally the way in which it is translated that creates the interest.

We chose this photograph of a fragment of a ship being broken down as our site:

The process then underwent four stages:

1. The gesture

Our chosen gesture was bursting a balloon filled with water. This action took place over a scale of milliseconds and was captured using high-speed photography and video.

Finding commonalities

We found commonalities in the site, the gesture and the motel through changing state of being over time: