While looking for inspiration for my identity piece, I discovered this photo by Stuart Harvey from a BC photo contest. It takes the representation of the subject - the digital avatars - and overlays them over his head, all while holding a laptop and pasting a mouse cursor over it all. One of the avatars depicted is a Mii, a user-created avatar for the Nintendo platform, and it brought me the idea of portraying myself somehow with my video games, as I identify a lot with the ones I own.


Harvey, Stuart. Ctrl. Digital image. Culture 365. N.p., 29 July 2013. Web. 31 Oct. 2016. <http://i2.wp.com/culturedays.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/photography-3.jpg?w=451>.

Identity

How is identity constructed? Is it fixed or fluid? Does it mean where you are “from”?
How do we affect the reading of our identity?

Historical references

Rembrandt van Rijn - gallery of self portraits

Frida Kahlo - various self portraits involving gender and major life events

Stuart Harvey - winner of photography contest

Critique

Sébastien Del Grosso

This photographic portrait gives the viewer a strong impression of the artist emerging from within. The way the subject is viewing his hand with intense focus and concentration displays a sense of care in creating his work. The presence of two mediums - photography and hand-drawn sketching - is a great display of hybridity, and how one merges into the other is fluid and doesn't distract. The lighting is fairly dramatic and highlights the hand with a gentle spotlight, and it shows through the omitted parts of the model.

The gaze

A view or perspective that is implied in a piece, offering the audience a voyeuristic opportunity to involve themselves as a participant of the piece. Jean-Paul Sartre is acclaimed to have been the first to address the concept of the gaze, whereas the concept of the "male gaze" is attributed to Laura Mulvey, a film theorist.

Post-colonial identity

The combination of experiences, beliefs, and perspectives that form an individual which follow a social event or events involving imperialism, colonialism, or similar societal oppression in order to create a resistant front against the colonizing party or parties. Identities may involve qualities of segregation, discrimination, and isolation. Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist and philosopher, gave an analysis of the destructive nature of colonialism and how it negatively affected the colonized.

Hybridity

A mixture or cross between two entities. Hybridity can be applied in various topics, such as an individual's identity involving nature vs. nurture, the meeting of two separate races or cultures, and the conflict in postcolonialism. Theorists that are primarily attributed to discussing hybridity are Homi Bhabha, Néstor García Canclini, Stuart Hall, Gayatri Spivak, and Paul Gilroy.


By Using Himself as the Model for These and Other Studies, Rembrandt Was Making Himself into a Recognizable Celebrity at the Same Time That He Gave the Public Strikingly Original and Expressive Tronies. The Wide Dissemination of These and Other Prin. "Rembrandt Van Rijn: Selected Self-Portraits." Rembrandt Van Rijn: Self-Portraits. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Oct. 2016. <http://www.rembrandtpainting.net/rembrandt_self_portraits.htm>.

"Frida Kahlo - The Complete Works." Frida Kahlo - The Complete Works. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Oct. 2016. <http://www.frida-kahlo-foundation.org/>.

Hart, By Sydney. "Photography as a Method of Identity Formation - Culture365." Culture365. N.p., 30 July 2013. Web. 26 Oct. 2016. <http://culturedays.ca/blog/2013/07/29/photography/>.

@Propelsteps. "Amazing Arts & Artists : Sketch Photography by Sébastien Del Grosso." PROPEL STEPS. N.p., 12 Dec. 2014. Web. 26 Oct. 2016. <https://propelsteps.wordpress.com/2014/12/12/amazing-arts-artists-sketch-photography-by-sebastien-del-grosso/>.

mind in a jam

Glitch Art

My main intention for mind in a jam is to capture the essence of being stuck in traffic. At times like this, my psychological state is in disarray, a conglomerate of impatience, frustration, anger, regret, apathy, and everything in-between, even the unexpected instances of relief and relaxation of not having to keep my foot to the pedal. Bits of vehicles are visible, even a distinct license plate can be seen, reminiscent of being behind the same car for long periods of time.

Takeshi Murata is my primary source of inspiration for this piece. His videos that are a result of corrupted data is create an ethereal world where one frame blends into the next. At times, some of his works have a "smeared paint" effect from multiple datamoshed frames, reminiscent of Monica Tapp's paintings depicting motion-blurred landscapes.

mind in a jam's process involves taking footage from a dash cam and converting it from .MP4 to uncompressed .AVI using Avidemux. Next, the video is opened in Frhed, a hex editor, where I replaced all occurrences of "no" to "go" and saved the video. Finally, I opened the video in Windows Media Player rather than my usual go-to PotPlayer, where I take a screenshot of a corrupted frame.

The reading GlitchCodecTutorial by Nick Briz mentions the following: "If you take this same file . . . save it on a memory stick and open it on another computer through various media players you'll notice that you often get very different results" (Briz). This is crucial in the process of creating mind in a jam. In this time and age, videos are meant to be universal files that are easily shared and viewed, however some media players have different sets of video codecs - methods of compression using computer algorithms - and so the hex-edited video can look entirely different. This lends to my choice of using Windows Media Player's interpretation over PotPlayer's. As Adrian Mackenzie says in the reading: "Codecs catalyze new relations between people, things, spaces, and times in events and forms" (Briz). The focus of mind in a jam is not how representational is it, but rather how the viewer wants to interpret it; through their unique set of experiences, relationships, and behaviour, new meaning can be instilled into the work - this is the codec of the real world.

I wanted the name of the work to be ambiguous as well. This is a representation of a mind in a traffic jam, but it has the potential to extend to the portrayal of a mind jam if it were to manifest itself.

Reading:

Nick Briz. "GLITCH CODEC TUTORIAL." GLITCH CODEC TUTORIAL. N.p., 2010. Web. 24 Oct. 2016. <http://nickbriz.com/glitchcodectutorial>.

I wanted to add some more colour to the work. Using Audacity to import the raw video data brought some more interesting effects with noise and and jitteriness, but not so much with the colours. I tried with both AVI and MP4 formats and they just didn't do it for me. It did work for some nice glitch art with photo stills though.

Next I went with hex editing, back to Frhed Hex Editor. I went and replaced all instances of "no" with "go" and the results were similar to what I had in my experiments: just a slow meltdown that makes it hard for Potplayer and VLC Player to digest.

Then I had an idea: what about Windows Media Player, the old-as-time video player bundled with Windows which I had left for more customizable players? Playing the video with its different codec settings brought so much colour and noise that it was clearly the winner. An issue I had with the player is that it did not allow a full-resolution screenshot, so I settled with a PrtScn of the frame.

Artist statement to follow.

My final video to be used as source material for Project 2. The clip starts with footage of being stuck on the merge into University Avenue during rush hour and ends with a scenic rural drive to Elmira with some music in the background. I wanted to focus on the frustration of being stuck in traffic and the yearning to escape to a more enjoyable voyage.

The video datamoshing technique is the same as before: remove the I-frames aside from the first frame of the two videos and put them together in Avidemux. For this video, I was inspired by Takeshi Murata's work.

Takeshi Murata, Monster Movie, 2005 from Salon 94 on Vimeo.

The way the clips blend into one another in painterly-like ways is an unexpected result of video editing, almost as if it's how the digital format attempts to return to its traditional roots of painting as an accessible medium.

What was lacking in my video is the range of colours, which I will handle in my next post.

Stereograms and Autostereograms

Stereograms are any kind of image that can be viewed with enhanced depth using stereoscopic vision. They are usually two visually similar 2D images set side by side horizontally and invite the viewer to perceive depth between them, allowing the third 3D image to emerge.

In the past, specialized stereoscopic equipment was required to view these images, but there are ways to view them using just human eyes. Called freeviewing, this can be accomplished by either defocusing your eyes or crossing them until the third image appears. Using one or the other can "flip" the perception of depth around (e.g. things that are pushed further in the one video will now be pushed closer in the other).

Here is an interactive stereogram online, using one of Salvador Dali's paintings The Chair: http://www.mcarts.com/theAge/dali.htm

Autostereograms, also called "magic eye pictures", are more commonly found stereograms, as they are composed of a single 2D image with a seemingly repeated visual pattern that when viewed with perceived depth yields a 3D image. The "auto" part of the name means that the process is done automatically, without requiring a stereoscope to view.

Autostereograms can also be videos, such as the music video "Black is Good" by Young Rival:

Above is the defocusing version, below is the cross-eyed version:

"Stereoscopy." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2016. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscopy>.

Norio Nagano. シンゴジラ in 3D. Digital image. Instagram. N.p., 3 Sept. 2016. Web. 17 Oct. 2016. <https://www.instagram.com/p/BJ6lh95gj5V/>.

"Stereoscopic Vision : Dali." Stereoscopic Vision : Dali. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2016. <http://www.mcarts.com/theAge/dali.htm>.


Priester, Gary W. Lighthouse. Digital image. BrainBashers. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2016. <https://www.brainbashers.com/showstereo.asp?29>.

Black Is Good. Perf. Young Rival. Young Rival - Black Is Good [Official] (Autostereogram Video). YouTube, 27 Jan. 2014. Web. 17 Oct. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AKtp3XHn38>.

Black Is Good. Perf. Young Rival. Young Rival - Black Is Good (Autostereogram Video: Crossed-Eye Version). YouTube, 27 Jan. 2014. Web. 17 Oct. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUO5al57-1s>.

Wigglegram

Animated images that simulate 3D vision and is done by looping a few frames that are slightly shifted from the two points of a viewer's eyes. This is a type of pseudo-stereoscopy that does not use separate images for each eye.

Ofnuts. Flower Wigglegram. Digital image. Pixls.us. N.p., 3 July 2016. Web. 13 Oct. 2016. <https://discuss.pixls.us/t/flower-wigglegram/1762>.

Datamoshing

The act of using compression artifacts to intentionally visually corrupt digital video or animated GIFs. This is the opposite of minimally using compression artifacts in order to acquire lossy-compressed images for smaller file sizes while maintaining most of its visual integrity.

Poem to Mr Compression. Dir. Rosa Menkman. Poem to Mr Compression // WMV Lowquality, Datamoshed. YouTube, 19 July 2016. Web. 17 Oct. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af2qUZ9KjXE>.

Jog Image Sequence

An image sequence is a series of frames containing visual information. In terms of glitch art, this can be "jogged" or disrupted to create digital destruction. One process is utilizing I-frames and P-frames of a video to create glitched effects: I-frames contain visual information whereas P-frames contain relative differences between frames, and changing/removing some of these frames result in "blending effects".

Pink Dot. Dir. Takeshi Murata. TAKESHI MURATA Pink Dot 2007. YouTube, 24 Aug. 2010. Web. 6 Oct. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkY6zFbwgQ>.

Cinemagraph

A digital image is a photograph that appears to be static, but instead contains subtle and/or repetitive movement. Commonly associated with fashion after the term was coined after Kevin Burg and Jamie Beck, two photographers.

Jason Winter. Digital image. CINEMAGRAPHS: THE LATEST EVOLUTION OF THE ANIMATED GIF. N.p., 16 May 2016. Web. 13 Oct. 2016. <http://blog.invisionapp.com/cinemagraphs/>.

I've settled with a basic idea for Project 2. Using some prerecorded footage I wanted to try the Overlay effect again from this datamoshing tutorial. Essentially it involves combining two video clips into one by keeping a single I-frame at the start and removing the rest throughout the clip. From what I learned, I-frames are like key frames, and the other type, P-frames, are the in-between frames. So after removing the rest of the I-frames we are left with only P-frames, and the blending effect follows.

Both clips are from the same street and highway entrance/exit, but the notable difference is day and night. I wanted to see how the clips blend together and then got some interesting visuals. The audio is nothing special though, just cars humming by.

The quality after upload is really terrible, so here is a Google Drive link for a more HD version: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1w16GJvor0SQUd0U2IxTFpZbXc/view?usp=sharing

It looks wicked, really. However, the process is time-consuming. I needed to convert the MP4 to an uncompressed AVI format, then after removing the I-frames, convert it back to MP4 so it is a more portable and viewable format; with a high resolution of 1440p, it's not hard to imagine how tedious it is. In the future, I would clip the videos so they are more manageable.

It would be cool to do a day-and-night like here, experimenting with sunrise and sunset. If time permits that's worth looking into. Otherwise using footage from different types of roads should provide enough difference to create the overlay effect. There's also the bloom effect mentioned in the tutorial, I'll play around with that next. So many factors to experiment with!

These videos from The Tunnel's YouTube channel gave me an idea:

The combination of road trip footage with a vaporwave track inspires me to create a datamoshed video for Project 2. I recently purchased a dash cam due to the increasing amount of vehicle accidents in order to ensure that I have proper evidence of whatever events may occur during a drive.

Not too long ago, I also watched The Blair Witch Project (1999) and it amazes me how it brought about the art of found footage to Hollywood cinema.

The video portion could be filmed using my dash cam. It can support video footage up to 1440p so pretty high definition. One disadvantage of using a dash cam is that unlike a regular video camera I can't really bring many varieties of camera angles. A workaround for this though is to add variety by dismounting the dash cam and moving it around while still recording. This would require me to have another person drive the car - I wouldn't want to be fiddling around with the dash cam mid-drive!

Some video footage ideas I've came up with:

1. Driving down a highway (eg. Highway 7 in KW)
2. Stuck on a highway (probably Highway 7 during rush hour)
3. Driving down a road surrounded by farmland (eg. near St. Jacob's or one of the roads leading to Guelph?)

As for the audio, it could be one of these:

1. Audio attached to the video. That way they can be datamoshed along with the video. Could be interesting to have a combination of dialogue, music from the radio, or sounds from my phone. 
2. Audio prerecorded. I could easily insert the audio into the video and retake as needed, but it takes away from the purity of the found footage. It can be datamoshed separately which could lead to interesting results.
3. Audio sampled and remixed from other sources, à la vaporwave. This could be as simple as lifting a track from elsewhere (but not advisory) or as difficult as myself creating one from scratch.
4. What if I took an image and tried to play it as an audio track? It may end up as just noise, but worth some experimenting.

Edit: After chatting with the instructor, more audio to consider in the car could be opening windows to hear the traffic, wind, etc. Those could be interesting elements to add. As for copyrighted music, the audio probably has to become completely unrecognizable, so probably not worth it. I think going for the authentic audio is a good idea, just need to find a way to datamosh so that audio is also affected.

V A P O R Memories. Dir. The Tunnel. YouTube. N.p., 4 July 2016. Web. 5 Oct. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eNEMF98Xb8>.

V A P O R Memories 2. Dir. The Tunnel. YouTube. N.p., 22 July 2016. Web. 5 Oct. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYmstwWc66o>.

Datamoshing (Databending)

1. Log into Windows
2. Open Audacity
3. Import MP4 as raw data, encoding A-LAW
4. Export as MP4
5. Repeat steps 3-4 two more times

Noticed that the glitch art GIF/video tutorial led to a subreddit specializing in breaking anime GIFs and decided to look around.

This one is so mesmerizing. Using Motoko's invisibility sequence from the movie "Ghost in the Shell" combined with datamoshing almost makes the artifacts disappear, until they slowly and eventually shift into the man's face in the first frame. It also helps that this is one of my favourite films of all time.

Jimlast3. Ghost in the Shell. Digital image. Reddit. N.p., 30 Aug. 2014. Web. 3 Oct. 2016. <https://www.reddit.com/r/brokenanimegifs/comments/2ezrmf/ghost_in_the_shell/>.

1. Log into Windows
2. Open MP4 in Frhed
3. Select row 0x24680
4. Replace all following occurrences of "5" with "0"