Toolkit Preview: Motion Sequencer

Throughout the course of the Glocal project, we will be developing and distributing toolkits which will allow artists of all levels to contribute to our content base. Software, hardware, and conceptual toolkits will be available on our website for download as they are completed.

The first software toolkit facilitates creation of the motion sequence grids that we have been posting here and in our Flickr and Facebook groups. Built in Processing, the Motion Sequence Toolkit creates grids from either live webcam input, or from pre-recorded video. In both cases, the application offers a different perspective on motion by separating it into still frames. Here is screenshot of the interface, in standard grid mode:

Here, we are seeing a motion history of the last 6 seconds of motion, displayed on screen as a grid (I'm holding a drinking glass in front of the webcam). You'll notice along the top of the screen that there are some controls (in blue). Using this control bar, we can change frame rate, frame size, and frame arrangement. We can make the frames very large:

Or, very small:



We can achieve a slit-scan effect by reducing the rows to 1:



Or by reducing the columns to 1:



This toolkit gives us a variety of ways to look at motion from new perspectives. Of particular interest is the ability to take pre-recorded video and render it in different forms.

The Motion Sequence Toolkit will be available for public download shortly. In the meantime, if you are an artist or an educator who would like to get ahold of a beta version, please contact our project coordinator and we'll help you out as best as we can.

Time Lapse Imaging

What Do I look like....when I'd really rather be sleeping?

Project work by David Timlin

[Click on the work to see David's portraits from midnight to 9am]

In responding to the Glocal project, David elected to employ time lapse photography. While time lapse photography is traditionally used to track and monitor environmental changes, David decided to use himself as the subject in this work.

In What Do I look like....when I'd really rather be sleeping? - the title alludes to the events that have been documented. In this artwork David mounted his camera off his bedpost and then set his alarm clock throughout the night to wake him hour on the hour. The documents reveal the juxtaposition of the subject being barely awake and responsive to the camera. Much like Vito Acconci's works of the 1970s where his performances reflected on the representation and the act of being psychologically observed, David extends these concepts to how the body can become a material object, gazed and out of context in both time and place.

Glocal - new ways of seeing

A key objective of delivering the Glocal project includes changing how users work and respond to digital technologies. 

In a world where digital recording devices dominate, shooting at eye level seems to be the most natural. What if this was altered? How would these other alternative views appear? 

In this project we look at changing perspectives (ie. by literally placing cameras and recorders at unusual heights or anchored positions) and how can we capture the everyday in unordinary ways.

As an artist assisting in the delivery of the Glocal project - I am interested in addressing the 'HOW' with the support and suggestions of the public. 

Recently I partnered with a series of UK artists to see what would happen when the digital camera was placed off tripod and away from the rational eye.

Below are the first observational works created by artist Sarah Gale. 

Pictures were devised by placing a camera on a timer under a plastic food tray. The results - meal time like no one has ever envisioned!