Live Video Delay 4 (excerpt)

First demonstrations of the Live Video Delay System. This is a dual camera/projector system I developed, which realises a visual analogue to an improvisational approach I've been using in solo audio performance scenarios since 2003. It facilitates a kind of improvised "drawing" whereby movements, patterns and structures can be built on in real time via a continuous delayed playback/response cycle.

I like to think of this performance activity as a kind of "tending." It is not the willing-into-existence of an already known thing, but a careful and reverent watching (or listening) and responding, which ensures the thing grows from, and stands on, its own foundations.

What results is a growing "organism" that is neither purely a product of the performer, nor completely reducible to the processing mechanism. The performer contributes new material, but he/she is always guided by what is played back, and what is played back is always the sum of his/her previous recorded "guidances." In another sense, you could say the organism's path of development is shaped by its own previous experiences and memories, and the impression they have upon those looking on and reacting.

Taking this analogy further, perhaps there is a kind of dangerous seduction at play between the organism and the reactor. The organism needs to seduce the reactor in order to grow and flourish, but peril is always present in that the reactor may at any time obliterate the organism, either by not responding sensitively or by exerting his/her power to reduce it to his/her own will.

Feel free to ask me any questions at transparentmeans [at] gmail, and watch transparentmeans.net for details of upcoming screenings and demonstrations in New York.

--Alex Carpenter

[Video recorded at MELA Foundation, New York City, September 2009. Audio recorded at EMU Studio, Adelaide, 2006. Copyright Alex Carpenter.]

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• live video
• video delay
• video feedback
• laser imagery
• organism
• organic patterns
• microscopic
• transparent means
• alex carpenter