Durational/optical mix, 2013- (ongoing series)
Programming, video, sound
This project started as an attempt to create optical greys by displaying black and white frames of video at high framerates, similar to the way the brightness of LED lights is controlled.
The same principle was applied to primary colors in an attempt to create optical color mixes in the time domain. Ultimately the limitations of video playback mean that the finished versions don’t successfully create the illusion of stable mixed colors, but they refer to the idea while generating a unique aesthetic. Each experiment was intended to be a part of a larger exhibition with multiple pieces, some of which would run via computer in real-time throughout the duration of display. I compiled several versions of this idea into one video to be displayed at the E. B. White Gallery in El Dorado, Kansas.
I extended the project to incorporate a variety of imaging techniques. The video below depicts one version of the project dubbed Pulse Width Patterns that was manipulated by exposing the sensor of digital SLR camera, without a lens, to the ambient light created by playing back video on a TV monitor.
I wrote the following statement for this version:
Future audiences of contemporary media will likely misread the nature of how we separate signal and noise. In the same way that ancient Roman statues that are now almost universally presented as blank white marble despite having originally been painted, the ruins of 21st-century digital art will be met with obfuscation and misunderstanding. The presence of glitches and technological failures will be indistinguishable from original content, conflating signal and noise and creating a new nostalgia for forms that never existed in our own time.
A. P. Vague 