This is a re-edit of vimeo.com/583295530 with new music and images.
Go to thelightherder.com for more videos and explanation.
The HD Video Feedback Kinetic Sculpture creates fractals and organic-looking images in real-time, without a computer: this is old-school video feedback.
This is part sculpture, part performance art, and may make the most complex video feedback ever created, using three cameras, two video switchers, a sheet of beam-splitter glass, and an HDMI input from a phone or live video feed (a couple of the images were created using the new build with two sheets of beam-splitter glass: vimeo.com/584117487)
Much like a musical instrument, the operator at the helm of this device plays it, but instead of making sounds, makes entire worlds, spirals within spirals, loops within loops, galaxies, classical fractal imagery and primordial organisms, leaves, trees, and insects. It really is the God machine.
When creating with it, hours can pass without noticing. It's deeply relaxing, and when you get into a groove, it's a kind of meditation.
I started this project at the very beginning of the pandemic, and did the first video shoot a month or so after (youtu.be/wMeV98BHLVE). The device has evolved naturally since then, as have the images it can create. This is a re-edit with new music of the most recent video, shot almost exactly one year to the day from the beginning.
If you're interested in commission something similar, or have a gallery or performance space you'd like to see this in, please contact me at davEditor@gmail.com.
"It really is quite tangled...very impressive. Lots of wonderful fern-like stuff, also some jellyfish-like stuff, and the Sierpiński gasket now and then. Congratulations!"
- Douglas Hofstadter
"I like what you are doing very much. It's fascinating. Reminds me of the days when I was playing - experimenting - discovering."
- Heinz-Otto Peitgen
Read a review of the project by Rich Walkling here: ottermeat.tumblr.com/post/622937497242107904/the-life-giving-god-killing-power-of-the-video
Forward Chronology of the entire project here: walkswithdave.tumblr.com/tagged/videofeedbackkineticsculpture/chrono
Reverse Chronology of the entire project here: walkswithdave.tumblr.com/tagged/videofeedbackkineticsculpture
If you'd like to help me take this to the next phase (4K), go to gofundme.com/f/the-hd-video-feedback-kinetic-sculpture.
