Category: Final Project

FYP Project Proposal

Point of Departure

“Film is like origami, it folds into itself from itself”

I wrote this manifesto on film a year earlier, very much inspired by Dziga Vertov’s The Man With A Movie Camera (1929). The manifesto presents itself as an origami camera. I believe that the medium of Moving Images really create this unique experience for the viewer because of the folding of time and space. Hence, for FYP I’d like to explore Projection as the act of unfolding and what sort of interaction that can ensue.

Central Concept

The central idea is to allow participants to experience the very act of Projection itself and experience an alternative mode of receiving Moving Image content from their Smartphones.

This will be achieved by a dark room installation space in which participants will run an application on their Smartphones and place them onto an analogue projection device which will project using only the brightness of the screens themselves.

 

 

Links to the full proposal and workplan are below:

Full Proposal – https://drive.google.com/open?id=1GffqQMdowDDGd-41jknOP9o4kCIp0jXy 

Workplan – https://drive.google.com/open?id=1AHs9hyqXnx0WGu9wnV5a5fNgcrfQCEdi

FYP Proof of Concept

 

This is my initial Proof of Concept. The Shoeboxes create a fully darkened and enclosed space for the light of the Smartphone alone to travel through the entire device and eventually project outward. The Mirror and Biconcave Lens serve to correct the rotation of the image from the user’s Smartphone as he/she places it onto the device. This set-up will be further developed during the course of the FYP.

FYP Ideas 2

Having attended much of the presentations for the seminar Emergent Visions Adjacency and Urban Screens, I had many takeaways that would definitely inspire the development of my FYP project. Here are some notes on that experience and the thoughts connecting back to my FYP ideations.

In particular, I was most inspired by Kimchi and Chips presentation by Elliot Wood, which I also talked a little about in class. It was an eye opener hearing him speak about his ‘projector hack’ where he looked at the digital projector not as a media device but from the standpoint of physics, and came up with a scientific solution to make the light way brighter than a low-cost projector should be able to. I watched his tutorial on the ‘projector hack’ and I certainly believe that light and projection is really physics that needs figuring out and I am totally excited with what I might be able to develop in the coming months.

Also, Erkki Huhtamo’s presentation on the mediated city was really fascinating, how he delved into history and cityplanning and the different stratas of media within the complex jungle of the modern cityscape. I was particularly inspired by this and thinking of how it might drive the subject matter for the pen drawings i will do for the sort of backdrop for my projection installation. It is certainly an area of research that is intriguing. I borrowed Erkki Huhtamo’s book Media archaeology : approaches, applications, and implications from the ADM library and will proceed to read into it and see what ideas come up.

I was also really fascinated by the sort of guerrilla movement of Manifest.AR which Tamiko Thiel introduced. I think invasion into MOMA was really great fun. So I was thinking like how AR is really an overlap of the real world as in captured by the phone camera and the virtual as in the content provided by the AR app. So what if I sort of extend this idea of overlapping the digital content and physical into a configuration where I project onto my drawings. That is essentially not so dissimmilar to how AR works. My drawings are physical traditional media and the projected animations are digital manifestations overlapped onto the physical and thus possibly creating an interesting interaction.

Also I must say that Refik Anadol’s energy and innovations were really so infectious and I greatly enjoyed his presentation. I don’t think my FYP will be anywhere near the scale of his aesthetic and architectural endeavors but it was really great to see someone so brilliantly bringing huge architectural spaces to life by the effects of light and projection. I enjoyed the urban screens that he presented and would certainly like to see them myself should I ever be in any of those cities.

I might be sidetracking in the next section … but just more thoughts …

I also enjoyed the projection mapping that other ADM students did with Rose Bond for the Chinese Heritage Center.

It was also wonderful to catch up with Marc Glode whom I had the great fortune to attend his course on Experimental Filmmaking last year. He invited me to come to this wonderful informal film screening curate by him on the rooftop of Grey Projects in Tiong Bahru. I greatly enjoyed the experience for its informality and Marc’s choice of the series of films was great as usual. In particular I really liked Une Homme Qui Dort  (1974) by Bernard Queysanne, that stream of conciousness black and white film really bringing us into the psyche of the modern understanding and feeling loneliness in big metropolitan city. During the event we just moved around, chatted, drank while in the midst of each film. The informal context and the sort of small community feeling in the heartland of busy Singapore was profound. I wonder if I might be able to create this sort of community atmosphere in my FYP? Because I also do this informal gathering of coursemates to watch obscure films together in the school auditorium and really to me that is the best feeling to watch a film and experience it together.

FYP Ideas 1

 

searching for an

F. Y. P

idea … inspiration …  interest…

 

The advent of the camera and the projector is over. Feels like they’ve been around like in forever. Our cinematic experience is a numbing sensory saturation of gross entertainment.

I am still, however, currently stuck somewhere in the 70s, watching what most people will deem to be ‘crazy-crap’. On the other hand, I could say I have special interest in experimental film and the workings their awe-inspiring machinery.

So to my potential audience: I’d like to invite you into a carefully designed and programmed projection space. An installation that will explore the wonder of projection itself as a medium.

I think the act of receiving a film should be made surprising, once again.

- Stream of wonder-machines that intrigue -

a sort of picture essay here, with some small thoughts, to track
the development of machines / presentations
of moving images that I think hold possibilities
to explore myself as an artistic endeavor

1891

Kinetoscope, invented by Thomas A. Edison and William Dickson. A first real personal projection space. I like the mechanics behind it.

1900s

Hale’s Tours of the World, Projections in a Bus-like theatreInteresting that vehicle simulators started way before our times and people went to these for entertainment.

1927

Napoleon, Abel Gance, Black & White Film shot on 3 cameras, Cinerama Projection. Kind of shared this in class but I forgot the title and the director, so to refresh my memory again.

 

1970s

Drive-in Cinemas, Jurong, Singapore. I wanted to see if there was anything interesting closer to home.

 

1970

The Invisible Cinema, Peter Kubelka. This is a really subtle move into altering the usual cinematic setting.

1971

A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick. I thought it was interesting to find “projection machines” portrayed in film as well, like in this cult classic example, albeit placed in a really horrifying sensory attack.

1920s

Clavilux, Thomas Wilfred, ‘Lumina’ Compositions  installations of light played by keys like the melody of an organ except visually. 1948 recorded ‘Lumina’ performance below. This is certainly an amazing aesthetic phenomena but it is very much scientifically constructed. Visual Music! (although the artist was always adamant about an auditory aspect to the pieces)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1920s

Furgue, Hans Richter long format sequenced paintings and later animation work like Rhythmus 21

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2010

Quasi-cinema, Lucas Simone, sequential photographs folded and stuck together with wooden sticks. Like Hans Richter’s work, the images are projected in our mind’s eye as we physically move across the room, alongside the sequence.

1973

 

Three Transitions, Peter Campus. A play on the idea of projected images and superimposed video, with the advent of the green-screen concept.

 

I think that these images and visuals provide many possible starting points for me in terms of the kind of wonder I wish to engineer with my work. I think that it is interesting how everything digital always has references to something analog.

The advent of projection is only lost because people take these screens for granted. Everything from TV to Movie Theaters, to huge advertising Billboards, we expect everything to be a seamless download of images. And these things flash past our eyes without any question.

I want to research more on what can I construct and how to create surprise from a simple mechanic.