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.

In celebration of my latest toy gun project, here are three anecdotes regarding guns.

1. Feliks Topolski

Feliks Topolski’s stepfather was in the army. Consequently, Feliks found one of the guns that was in the house, and accidentally shot his 14-year old cousin in the head. A painting of this fateful moment can be found near the entrance to Topolski Century – the artist’s memoir of the century – under the Hungerford Bridge in London.

2. William S. Burrough’s "William Tell" Trick

William S. Burroughs, contemporary of Alan Ginsberg and famed for writing seminal opiate-influenced books such as Naked Lunch, shot and killed his wife in Mexico. Reportedly, during a party, Burroughs said to his wife "It’s time for our William Tell trick."

(It is worth noting here that they had never before done a William Tell trick.) She put an apple on her head, he raised his revolver, aimed for the apple, and shot her in the head. This prompted the unusual situation whereby Burroughs fled the law to the USA, before spending a few years drifting around South America in search of hallucinogenic drug Yagé.

3. My sister and I

My mother experimented with the theory of nature vs nurture. When I was a child, my mother gave me dolls to play with, hoping to nurture my caring, feminine side. My sister received guns, hoping that she might toughen up a tad.

And what became of this? I placed the dolls into the rear compartment of my Tonka truck, and rode around the garden trying to drive over them and burst their heads off, whilst my sister lovingly cared for her guns as if they were little children.

4. Boston

Sneaky fourth anecdote…in Boston politicians rallied to ban Super Soaker water guns in 1992 after gang members filled them with ammonia.

I have been looking at guns. Toy guns. Lots of ‘em.

Fundamentally, toy guns are weird. We’ve had them for the past few hundred years. The idea that you have a toy that is a replica of an object used to slaughter your fellow man is a tad odd. You don’t really get so many toy guillotines or toy electric chairs, so why guns? What makes little boys love them? Why do countless generations run around fields pretending to shoot each other?

Whilst I am not going to try and solve every question you could have about guns, here’s an overview of my gun rationale. Please note that toy guns are not just for boys, but I’ve characterised the end user as a boy for the sakes of continuity.

This is one of a few projects I’m working on at the moment. It may seem macabre, but I have a fascination with object that you instinctively know how to use. Over the next few months I will be developing a few prototypes and thought experiments regarding toy guns. Watch this space.

Here’s the ‘manual Powerpoint’ presentation that got me thinking about guns.

Guns guns guns

You never find a boy with a gun.

You find a cowboy with a gun.

You find a spy with a gun.

You find a policeman (or robber) with a gun.

You find a spaceman with a gun.

You find a soldier with a gun.

Pushing it a little, you find a pirate with a gun.

You find a monster with a gun. Or the guy who kills monsters. With a gun.

You find a superhero with a gun.

In short, a gun puts you on top of the world.

With a gun, the power shifts; you cease being a child. You are holding in your hand a tool that could kill – or maim – anything. In your imagination, of course. Toy guns fuel a fantastical role-play whereby a child becomes an authority figure.

How do we play with guns?

1. Solo

A boy runs around and shoots inanimate objects. Take that, dog.

2. Active participant

A boy shoots at someone. They pretend to have been shot. The boy laughs. They shoot the person again. They pretend to have been shot again. Repeat ad infinitum (somehow this joke never tires).

3. Protection

A child assumes role of bodyguard.

4. Battle

Two children have guns. They shoot at each other. Neither wants to be the first to die.

5. War

Lots of kids have guns. Nobody wants to die.

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:

Whilst being burst, the balloon is effectively undergoing a state change – from being contained in a membrane to explosion to finding an equilibrium in its new form. The balloon we captured in high-speed photography is in a transitory state, when measured on a scale of milliseconds.

3. The interpretation

The ship

The ship’s line was derived by tracing the outline of the ship and the inversed outline of the ship from the Burtynsky photograph.

The motel


The motel’s line was derived by tracing the outline of one of the waves that were created from the balloon explosion.

The balloon


The balloon bursting line was derived from a tangent graph.

4. Reinterpretation

We placed all elements onto the same sheet using a variable scale.

We then plotted the intersections of the graph. The circles drawn around the loci of the intersections were structured according to the intensity of the collision; where the balloon (a ‘small’ scale) met the motel (a ‘medium’) scale, the circle was small; where the ship (a ‘large’ scale) met the motel (a ‘medium’ scale) the circle was larger.

The motel is thus represented in a transient state, similar to the three transient states it is derived from. The outcome is not necessarily a finished building, but represented through the geometric logic that has driven its creation.

The final image was printed and manipulated with paint, charcoal and wax. Click here to download a high-resolution version. Click here for the flickr image pool from the critique.

]]> http://olliepalmer.com/blogblogblog/2009/10/11/perry-kulper/feed/ 4 http://olliepalmer.com/blogblogblog/2009/09/12/avatar/ http://olliepalmer.com/blogblogblog/2009/09/12/avatar/#comments Sat, 12 Sep 2009 13:28:58 +0000 Ollie Palmer http://olliepalmer.com/blogblogblog/?p=309

OK, so I’ve been fairly lax with blog entries recently. That, dear readers, is not due to a lack of excitement – perish the thought! – but a general lack of time to document it all.

I will soon be developing a series of projects at the Bartlett School of Architecture as part of an Masters in Architectural Design AVATAR, studying directly under some of the people who have heavily influenced my past work. To say that I am very excited would be an understatement…

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