The French Audiovisual Archives (INA) made a lovely short film about the collaborative process Simon Valastro and myself used to make Scriptych, a performance at the Opéra National de Paris earlier this year, as part of my residency at the Palais de Tokyo.
Pavillon Neuflize OBC / INA #9 Scriptych / Ollie Palmer – Simon Valastro – VA from Institut national audiovisuel on Vimeo.
Thank you Franck Podguszer and the INA team!
A performance visually remixing and reinterpreting Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Psycho (1960).
Working with footage from the Institute National Audiovisuel (France), the Prelinger Archives (USA) and my own material, I have built software to analyse the visual and audio content of each frame in Psycho. The frames are then compared to a database of archival footage, and replaced with ‘matching’ stills and video clips.
The rate of frame-replacement varies according to the volume of the film’s iconic soundtrack – so that the audial freneticism is reflected on the screen. The result is a mesmerising, chaotic experience, and a reworking of a highly memorable film.
This is part of an ongoing body of work examining the technology of cinema.
L’Institut National de l’Audiovisuel made a short film about the making of 24fps Psycho:
Pavillon Neuflize OBC / INA #2 Taking “Psycho” to Pieces from Institut national audiovisuel on Vimeo.
More information about this project can be found in Chapter 3 of my PhD thesis.
Do Disturb Festival
Palais de Tokyo
9 + 10 April 2016 (full performance)
Lundi du Pavillon
Palais de Tokyo
18 April 2016 (short performance and talk)
Footage provided for experimental purposes by L’Institut National de l’Audiovisuel
Made during my residency at Pavillon Neuflize OBC, the Research Lab of the Palais de Tokyo 2015-16
I just realised I never posted about the making of the video for my Nybble project! It took a long time for me to get round to re-editing, since myriad other projects came up in the time after the event. The first cut was not great, and didn’t do justice to the excellent dancers who were involved, so I took a few days to re-cut the whole thing last year. This blog post is a quick breakdown of the elements of the final video.
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Like thousands of people around the world, I took a time-lapse of the super blood moon. This was from our porch in Chicago, although doesn’t feature anything that is remotely identifiable.
My friend Fiona Williams (who kindly helped me film the Nybble video) made a lovely stop-motion film about the now-probably-obsolete method of learning Italian by cassette. She filmed it in a Christopher Wren tower in London, using a cassette that she found in an attic. The result is charming, hilarious, bewildering and highly enjoyable.
Note: I feature as a technical advisor in the credits, but Fiona really deserves all the credit!
I recorded this video of waves lapping on a beach in southern Italy recently. There was something mesmerising about this patch of water, which is far thicker than most. And a nice thud as it hit the shore. Was it adding to the shore each time, or taking away?
I gave a talk at the University of Innsbruck the other day, and on my day off I went to see the Thomas Feuerstein exhibition Psychoprosa. Unfortunately the show has now finished, but I made this video for future posterity:
The show was great. Lots of things that bubbled and wobbled, strange machines and pipes. Missing from the video is the room full of phantom fridges and ghosted CCTV footage. I’d love to see his studio.
This exhibition was on at Galerie im Taxipalais, Innstruck, Austria, 7 March – 10 May 2015. For more on Thomas Feuerstein, see his website.
I love it when the sun is low. Here’s some shadow chasing on Tottenham Court Road.
Video is on Vimeo.
This is the video which explains how the code-base within my Nybble project works. Each symbol represents a dancer in the performance, and the combination of four dancers creates a letter.
For more information, see the Nybble page.
A love story between a boxer and a toy pig.
Music by Barry White (of course).