I plan to work with what I know and love best: animation and video, vector art,[1] and, above all, programming and interactivity. Behind the curtain, as it were, I will utilize all of my expertise in the fields of art and computer science, melding them together in what may turn out to be a sublime union. A peep into the artist’s workshop: software for video editing (iMovie, FinalCut), effects (Motion, Shake), and animation (Flash); a programming language and environment (Processing, Arduino, and Actionscript); a website creation tool for increasing the audience (Dreamweaver); a video camera for artistic and documentary recording, and above all, the trusty sketchbook, source of creation. Throughout the process of making this project, and when it is complete, I will record my experience with photographs, video footage, and web presence, so that when the time comes to write the process into my thesis, I will be prepared.
Early on, I will need to apply for (and acquire) gallery space in which to display the final piece (options include the LaVerne Krause gallery in Lawrence Hall, or spaces in the Millrace complex on the northeast end of campus). Finding out what my options and limitations are will help me shape the project to its best advantage.
The first step in creating the project itself will be to investigate and implement the key effect—the mirror-window mask—in a smaller setting. To wit: in the Processing programming language and environment, find out how to play a given movie file (the surface video in the final piece), and how to play a second movie layer underneath the first. Then, discover how to capture live video data from the lens built into my computer and display it live on the screen. After that, apply the desired effect to the live video data. Finally, use the altered live video image as a mask, or window, to reveal the secondary movie through holes in the surface movie. With that figured out, all that will remain of the creative enterprise is to create the two movies. (All, indeed!)
To create the movies themselves will be a long process, but one I have gone through before, both for animations (in Adobe Flash) and movies (FinalCut and iMovie). I will start, as always, with the concept, the planning, and the notes, which comprise the under-layer. Then I will tackle the implementation of these ideas, forming the surface movie. As with much of my artistic enterprise, beyond the basic theme of distance and interaction I cannot predict what the final product will resemble.
Next, I will begin on the actual installation and implementation of the project, both physically and on the web. I will need to provide information and images with which to advertise the project around campus physically (posters and flyers) and electronically (email and web presence) to ensure an audience. I will, personally or through others, prepare my selected space for the installation: blacking out any windows, setting up the monitor, and arranging proper lighting. When the time of the gallery show comes, I will arrange for photographic and video documentation of the event.
I will display the project online: firstly, the two videos in their entirety and a web-compatible and compressed version of the actual project, with which people may interact through cameras built in their computers or external web cameras; and secondly, videos and images of the gallery showing. Along with my written thesis and the images printed therein, I will submit a DVD of video footage, including both video layers in their entirety, video from the gallery showing, and video of the Internet application, as well as digital copies of the images in the text. I hope in this way to leave as complete a record of my project as I can, so that anyone who was not able to attend the gallery showing will be able to see something of what it was, across a distance not of space, but of time.
[1] Vector art defines images made up of mathematical equations defining points, lines, curves, other geometrical objects, and their visual properties (width of lines, color, opacity, et cetera), as opposed to raster images, which are arrays of pixels or cells. As such, when enlarged, a vector image loses no data, scaling up easily through its formulae, while a raster graphic will show the rectangular individual pixels from which it is formed. For a comparison, see Images: 6.
