The God Machine II: Fractal Video Feedback Kinetic Sculpture (Ty and Dave Edition)

No computers were used to create these fractals. The operator at the tiller of the Device plays god with light and recursion - when the camera sees itself, a universe is born.

Dedicated to Douglas Hofstadter, who taught me to love all things self-referential.

Light herding by Dave Blair and Ty Hardaway.

Made of maple, mahogany, aluminum, three cameras, five HD feedback monitors (with hue/saturation/brightness analog knobs), three Roland video switchers, two viewing monitors, two sheets of beam splitter glass, and a video input, the mechanism creates high definition analog video feedback fractal sets within other fractal sets, cell structures, strands of DNA, trees, insects, tentacled primordial creatures - a combination of movements and settings that may result in similar, but never identical ephemeral visual output.

For more videos and explanations: https://www.thelightherder.com

Feedback loops are all-important, and are present in ecosystems, geological systems, social systems, biological systems, and it’s no wonder the images created using the structure are so organic looking. Gazing into this feedback allows for insights into the magic of recursion.

But where do these images come from you might be thinking, and why do they actually exist? Once initiated, they come from themselves, and exist because they exist.Imagine a dark room where a camera is looking at a screen which displays the output of that camera. The screen will stay void of an image forever until a “spark of life” (say the lighting of a match) brings forth an image, which will then continue on and on, changing through iterations. That pattern now exists within the wires of the system, long after the original spark is gone.

See an example of an image "trapped in the wires" here: https://vimeo.com/508776650

See an example of feedback started with a "spark of life" here: https://www.thelightherder.com/2010/01/feedback-machine-test-number-three.html

But, then imagine something blocks the camera’s view of the screen, just for an instant. All of a sudden, the image goes out, and the camera sees a dark screen again, which displays what the camera sees, etc... now blackness replaces the pattern.

It would be impossible to find these feedback images by looking at the wiring of the system, by dissecting the cameras and monitors. This may be like the mind - you can't find consciousness just by inspecting the nerves and connections of the brain.

The mind is a pattern that grows through feedback, iterations over time. Once that pattern is interrupted (something blocks the camera's view of the monitor), the pattern disappears, leaving just the organic mechanism. So this may answer the question "where do we go when we die?": the same place the snowflake's pattern goes when the snowflake melts.

Music: Thee Oh Sees, Black Chems

For The Video Feedback Kinetic Sculpture complete build history:

Forward Chronology: https://walkswithdave.tumblr.com/tagged/videofeedbackkineticsculpture/chrono

Reverse Chronology: https://walkswithdave.tumblr.com/tagged/videofeedbackkineticsculpture