The last week has been spent mainly making web documentation for the installation “Dialogue – Transition” in Kristiansand in March. They are still not entirely done but they are getting closer.
I’ve been experimenting a bit with how to do the documentation. Some of the techniques used are:
- Javascripting: The stripes at the top of the page is a simulation of Jeremy’s video processing using 40 images sized 720 × 1 pixel swapping randomly at a speedy rate.
- Animated GIFs are used for the black and white stipes at the menu.
- The 30 pages of documentation from Kristiansand represents a virtual walk around the space much the same way that the audience would pass though it.
- Layers are used for a number of features. The most important is superimposing QuickTime movies on top of still images. This is saving bandwith compared to making the whole of the image as a video. The extraction of sections of the video was done using matrix mappings in Jitter.
- Sound is created using four looping mp3 files of different lengths. The audio files are loaded into cache so that they don’t have to be downloaded over and over again for each new page. The four files represents sounds from different sections of the room. Varying volumes are used to simulate change in relative levels in different parts of the gallery space.
It has taken a lot of time to do this. On the other hand I’ve spent quite some time with the material of Jeremy and Jon Arne this week. We will be doing a new installation in Trondheim in September so in a sense this has been a way of preparing myself for further development.
It’s interesting to see how Jon Arne is displaying the actual techniques involved in making the paintings the act of spray painting splashing paint using a spattle to smear the paint out etc. Me I’ve tried to hide the techniques used for making the sound for most of the projects I’ve been doing so far. While a lot of new media art tends to focus thematicly estethicly and/or conseptually on the techniques involved I’ve attempted to hide them. It has mainly been a mean to an end and I’ve been afraid that if the technique is emphasised to much in the presentation to the audience it might get in the way of what I really want to express the works ending up being some sort of a technological fetishism. With Jon Arne’s paintings the impression of exposing the technique is rather a communication of the sheer joy of painting.
