Schedule Oct 7, 2011
Video Feedback: Pixel Behaviors
Ethan Turpin

Ethan Turpin's "Video Feedback: Pixel Behaviors" generates life-like patterns with interactive movement. Pointing a live video camera at its own projection, gives what is known as a 'video feedback loop'. The camera reads the screen and shows the screen, in repetition. A visual vortex appears like a corridor of frames, or screens within screens, stretching into apparently infinite depths. Artist Ethan Turpin is interested in what happens when the camera is zoomed in on this central void, where the pixel noise is activated in the image. By carefully adjusting the angles and standard controls on a camera and projector, he has isolated self-sustaining patterns in the pixel relationships. The resulting algorithms that govern the churning imagery are based on iterative spirals, not unlike those found in life's architecture. Each installation of the chaotic visual system gives a different result. The real-time animation can have a graphic resemblance to microorganisms, expanded to a human scale, and may evoke the uncanny sensation that life has emerged within the system. Participants are invited to move in the space between the camera and projection screen, integrating into the abstracted image.

A short video demo can be seen here: http://ethanturpin.squarespace.com/video/

This work was developed as part of the 2010 Visions From The New California Award, with support from The Alliance for Creative Communities and The James Irvine Foundation.

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