time art

In this piece I'm moving about in time so that my time art piece looks like it was done by a child?

Colour shift

the colour shift of the "stars" is linked to the observed shift in the colour spectrum of stars as they move about the universe, relative to the observer.

The stars display a doppler effect when they move, Red Shift- stars are moving away, Blue - stars are moving closer.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble%27s_law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_shift

Sounds

Sounds used will include-

Room tone- Recorded in the Hackney exhibiton space on campus

Walla/Rhubarb - low Db, high bass- to simulate the sound travelling through the boxes as one is in the exhibition space.

Footsteps- on wooden exhibition floor- Recorded on Hackney floor, large room so a lot of reverb, record close to the walls to ensure reverb is picked up and also to simulate walking through the box maze.

Footsteps in the snow -Boots in the road ice salt box -crunching + heavy boot step sound-heavy bass to make it distinct
                                  -  squeaking of snow steps- cornstarch wrapped in a towel being twisted.

Winds- Wailing, high speed winds, turn the mic adjacent to the wind to minimize distortion ( not entirely effective due to the capricious nature of the wind

Whisper- layered whispers (canon)- mess about with stereo side, treble , bass, reverb etc to give the impression of the origin of the whispers coming from all around the point of auditon.

Breathing- laboured breaths / chattering teeth/ chattering breaths? - simulate breathing in a cold enviroment.

Sound Synopsis?

The sound scape will be engineered to create an immersive experience that puts the listener into the shoes of an exhibition goer. The visitor will be walking through the exhibit and taken in by the lack of colour, coldness and emptiness is transported, in their imagination, to a snowy mountain top where they trudge their way into a cave/tomb where they are accosted by the oppressive whispering of the dead, before snapping back to reality and the exhibit.

basically a lara croft game?

Further Sound Ideas

The idea of packing away her mothers belongings coupled with the strong themes of death that run throughout Whitread's works makes me think of the dead in a tomb. this is synonymous with the Raiders of the Lost Ark where objects are filed away in a warehouse. The idea of a tomb is further compounded by my initial feelings of the exhibit evoking the feeling of walking through an old library space.

except messier/less fancy

The colour and feel of the piece makes me think of snow and cold weather, this idea is shared with one reviewer who said "it feels more like an icy maze" (Andrew Dickson, The Gaurdian, 25 Oct 2005)

Combining these ideas i will create a snowy/mountaintop tomb soundscape in an imaginary way.

Rachel Whiteread research

Rachel Whiteread, the first women to be awarded the Turner Prize , is a contemporary artist who mainly works with sculpture. Many of her works take the form of casts.

Her best know works include House (1993) , Ghost (1990) and Embankment (2005-2006), however House is probably her best know as it was the work she was awarded the turner prize for.

House was an expansion on her previous work Ghost and caused a lot of controversy in the local council when they reached the decision to demolish it on the same day Whiteread recieved the Turner. (a somewhat ironic decision)

Her works have often been regarded as being evocative of Death and Absence as most of her works are of things that are not there.

Embankment (2005-2006)

Embankment was a exhibition held in the tate modern, it consisted of 14000-odd translucent white polyethylene boxes , which were casts of the inside of different cardboard boxes. the boxes were stacked in a variety of ways, some in ordered rectangular stacks close to the floor and others in mountainous peaks that stretched up above the rest.

 Whiteread has cited both the end scenes from Raiders of the Lost Ark ( 1981, Dir. Spielberg ) and Citizen Kane ( 1941, Dir. Welles) as visual inspirations. The death of her mother and the subsequent packing of all her belongings into cardboard boxes was a large influence as well.

test shots time art

had a bunch of test videos of turbulent river flow, that don't want to transfer from my phone.

Instead here are a number of stills of the flows that aren't as useful as I won't be able to track particles along as effectively as a video.

Sound- Initial thoughts

Words that spring to mind:

Box, Cold, Void, Maze, Stacks, Avalanche, Pile, Snow, Sand, Particles, Lost, Sugar, Growth

Box- Obviously there's boxes but the people also look 'boxed in' as they walk around.

Cold- lack of colour leads to a cold feel, this combines with the high vantage point to compound a feeling of cold detachment.

Void- much as above it's void of colour and for me void of any overt emotion.

Maze- a warren of pathways, penned in by high walls/ hedges of boxes.

Stack- Dual meaning, boxes are stacked, but also the connotations of library stacks, library archives etc. get the feeling of a library for some reason but fused with the new and clean.

Avalanche- Looks like a neat avalanche of snow, the snow/colour is synonymous and much like a pile of snow its made up of many individual pieces/flakes.

Patrticles/ sand/ snow/ sugar - Lots of individual pieces making up the whole


Desertscape/ Snowscape- these atmos soundscapes are quite similar - Cicada sound (desert only), Wailing winds, birds of prey calls (hawk/or vulture in the desert,eagles etc in the snow scape), blizzard sounds, crunching snow/sand.

Snowscape mixed with library/exhibition sound ? - ambient room tone,

Time Art Treatment

I shall be using a star particle device (CC Particle world) to recreate a cyclic model of the universe over time. I will be aiming to show the balance of this model in a visual style, demonstrating how all energy is finite and how based off this fact it can't be linear (in my view).

The screens on the left and right will be vertically tapered by black bars to represent to relatively small size and confined nature of our still expanding (in the right side ,retracting) universe. These two screens will effectively show the same thing but inverted, as the model for an expanding universe and one for one undergoing the big crunch are almost identical. The two side screens will show a thin stream of small stars that snake down the page, getting larger and more numerous as they flow to/and from the centre screen.

The middle screen will show the stars oscillating in size around a small centre point (call it a singularity) as they begin to move/behave more chaotically (this is synonymous with the behaviour of physics as time as we know it begins to teeter). As the stars move further along their path , they will begin to move more turbulently , the movement of the stars will match the test pics/videos that i took of turbulent flow as many points along the river flowing through farnham and also the manner in which ink diffuses into water (in the ink bath test i did). The turbulent flow will represent how space and time (and spacetime) break down as the universe reaches its turning point, when expansion is no longer possible and the universe begins to reverse and contract.


(insert diagrams here)

The middle screen will flow around the centre point in a similar, if more chaotic, fashion to the Chinese symbol for Ying and Yang (which denotes the balance in all nature, in this case the balance of all energy and the expansion/contraction of this model of the universe) as will the two other screens denote the balance.

Image Factory: Time relative to oneself in a crowd

(bear with me on this one)

have you ever watched people walking down a busy metropolitan street and noticed that people all walk at different speeds indifferent to whomever's in there way. This made me think that time in a crowd is relative to every individual, these individuals get annoyed by people moving a different speeds (speeds that relative to themselves is too slow)

I'm not quite sure what i'm trying to achieve by that statement (rinne mé é ar meisce) but thinking on it reminded me of several scenes from the show House of Lies (the one with don cheadle) in which the main character steps out of digetic time to break the fourth wall and address the audience. When he does this the scene around him freezes and he begins to move about the foreground making with the funny. I thought this effect would be perfect to highlight how someone who likes to take their time might feel when trapped in a bustling crowded street.

http://vimeo.com/32028017 (this video shows how some of the interesting VFX are done on the show)

however the effect i'm interested in is more similar to this:

the making of:

these effects would be amazing if i was able to reproduce them , however I question if i have the time/skill to complete it effectively.

Image Factory: Time as a cycle (AE)

essentially my idea for this panel is to create a looped model for the expansion of the universe using the particle effects

Image Factory: Time as a River panel (AE)

The idea I had for this panel is based heavily off the idea of time as a river.

The triptych panel would show either an actual river or one that is animated, with the flows highlighted using the particle effect. It would show a large clump of particles enter the screen from one side, moving slowly at first, this clump of particles would follow the flow of the river at first but then would enter turbulent flows, and begin to move faster and as the flow becomes more turbulent the clump will break apart/down and disperse into nothing, representing the end of time as we know it. the process would then repeat itself.

I would need to get to grips with moving the camera relative to the image (as we learnt in the animating the still volcano tutorial) so the viewer will follow the flow of particles. And if possible to break up the monotomy of this continuous loop by coding the particles to appear as different colours, and or, to change the motion of the turbulent flows each time.

Image Factory: Death Clock? Panel?

Upon various Google searches about time and death I came across several websites with the concept of a death clock. These are websites which upon entering some details about yourself (age, BMI etc.) will predict when you will die.

From visiting these sites an mulling them over I thought of an idea for a panel in my triptych:

An hourglass sandwiched between two silhouetted faces like :

except not back to the future :P

  the hourglass will have grains of sand (representing time obviously) passing through it with the un-silhouetted eyes of the faces watching the grains, once the bottom is nearly full the hourglass flips and the process repeats.

This is somewhat a commentary on my own feelings on time and death, I feel that in some ways time was created by those afraid of their own demise(much like the way in which we create gods/an afterlife to appease their own fears of dying).

The concept of a death clock , the wanting to know when you will die raises something of a moral dilemma: is it better to live a life ignorant of when the end will come(an arguably happier life) or one where you spend the rest of your life in fear of your upcoming death and spend the rest of your life attempting to prevent the inevitable. (this is of course based of the hypothetical that clocks work accurately)

Image Factory: Time as a cycle

Time moving in cycles or rather our physical world moving in cycles of time is another interesting concept, one which is evident in almost any living thing or otherwise (although it is more clear to us in that which lives)

Living things ( Animals, Fauna etc.) have very evident cycles of life. The shortest and most obvious/abundant to us humans is the life cycle of trees, how in the spring their leaves are 'born', in the summer the leaves 'live', in the autumn they begin to 'fail/become ill' , and in the winter they 'die', all before being 'reborn' in the spring thus completing the cycle of time and the cycle continues.

Time/life cycles vary with different cyclic model, the longest cyclic model being the cyclic model of the universe proposed by Einstein , in which he stated the universe is in a constant state of flux. First a Big Bang followed by an exponential  expansion before the gravitational pull of mass begins to cause the universe to begin shrinking before undergoing a Big Crunch and bouncing back with another Bang. The cycle is obvious here:

Big Bang- Birth
Expansion of the universe- Growth
Retraction of the universe- Old age/Illness
Big Crunch-Death
Big Bang-Rebirth

Image Factory: Time as a river

Thinking of time as a river is an interesting concept to me as there are many characteristics of time that are synonymous with that of a river. For example time as far as we are aware of it moves in one continuous direction, and yes while a river may not take the most direct route to the sea there is still a final destination in mind. (Although we have no knowledge of an end to time so this model doesn't fully fit)

Another example would be that a river is effected by many different currents/flows (turbulent, streamlined etc.) much the same way that relative movement effects time (the faster one moves, the closer they get to the speed of light, the more space time begins to break down) I feel this is synonymous with the turbulent flow of a river.

The flow is constantly accelerating as the flow is continuously changing direction, and as such (without any outward interference, such as the river bank in this example) the flow exponentially begins to become more chaotic/begins to break down more.

Image Factory: The End of Time

The End of Time By Peter Mettler

This is an extremely interesting documentary concerning time, In this doc Mettler travels the world investigating our perceptions of time.

"Working at the limits of what can easily be expressed Filmmaker Peter Mettler takes on the elusive subject of time and once again turns his camera to filming the unfilmable" - http://www.theendoftimemovie.com/

During this documentary Mettler travels the world investigating various time related subjects, such as the particle accelerator in Switzerland where they are attempting to probe regions of time we cannot see. To Hawaii to investigate the physical representation of time in the lava flows. He also visits Detroit to document the fall to ruin of its city and the efforts to rebuild. He finishes his journey in India with Hindu funeral rites where he tackles the idea of rebirth

Mettler has not only forged an extremely thought provoking documentary but one that fully immerses you with the extraordinary visuals captured by cinematographers Camille Budin, Nick de Pencier and Mettler himself. I would defiantly recommend it as a watch, not just as it relates to the unit but also as being one of the most visually stunning and overlooked films of 2013.

Image factory: Time

Time is the curse of the self aware.

Time as we humans know it has so little significance to 'unaware' animals like dogs or cats, Sure domesticated animals pick up learned behaviors/habituation to certain times , feeding etc. from the regularity with which their owners act. Other than that an animal knows to sleep when its dark, awake when it's light and to eat when it's hungry.

Human's self awareness and natural curiosity caused early civilizations to begin to investigate natural phenomena  such as the tide, changes in weather (Seasons) and the movement of the stars.

As civilizations developed, as did our understanding of time. Time begun to play a much more important role in society with the introduction of calendars and crude clocks developed from observations of nature( sundials, water clocks etc.).

I think the point i'm attempting to make from this is that due to the awareness of time, human life appears to have become much more hectic (everything has a deadline nowadays). While some might argue that returning to classic time keeping methods (i.e the grumbling of your stomach) might benefit humankind in the long run it would also cripple our world as we know it, so as of now unless someone can create a better system we're STUCK with Persian minuets and seconds. 

someone should have warned early man

IT'S A TRAP!

Image Factory: Time. Triptychs

Triptych (Three-Fold) a brief intro

- A piece of artwork (usually a paneled painting) that is divided into three sections , generally the sections would be hinged to allow the artwork to be displayed opened or closed.

Triptych's evolved out of middle age christian art and were traditionally used as altar displays and to depict saints etc.

Because the ability of the triptych's to fold they were able to be transported easily and with minimal damage to the image, as such one popular use for the triptych other than religious art ,would be to display potential matches among the royalty of the time.

The triptych form is mostly used in modern times as a means of displaying photography, either the three frames following a theme or one image broken into three.

Famous triptych artists include :

Francis Bacon

 Max Beckmann

Hieronymus Bosch