Time Delayed Cinema

by Alvaro Cassinelli, Assistant ProfessorIshikawa-Komuro-Namiki Laboratory, Meta Perception Group

(www.k2.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/), University of Tokyo

Workshop at Animatronica/Microwave New Media Art Festival, (www.microwavefest.net), Hong Kong, 4-15 Nov.

2006

This talk:

Experimental techniques to interactively scramble Space & Time in the moving image, thanks to the

metaphor of time as a tangible substance

...and resulting interesting visual & narrative implications.

I) Early devices to reproduce the illusion of motion

Plan

• Early analog techniques • Digitally Era & the Video Cube paradigm

II) Expanded Cinema (device and codes)

III) Space-Time Experiments:

V) Considerations and Conclusion

• Victorian “optical gadgets” • The rise of the Cinematograph• Breaking the rules

• Deconstruction of the medium & experimental cinema

IV) Khronos Projector experiments

• Analog techniques • Digitally Era & the God’s Viewpoint paradigm

I. Early devices recreating the illusion of motion

• Shadow puppets…

Early motion-illusion devices

• Magic Lantern (probably 2d century, China): precursor of slide projector

• Victorian Era (second half of 19th century). Systematic study of basis of the moving picture ：

afterimage and stroboscopic effects

javanese

chinese

praxinoscope

phenakistiscope

kinetoscope

thaumatrope

zoetrope

kineograph

…And next?

predicted that one day it was going to be possible to tell whole stories with moving

images…

…Really? Purkinje (physiologist, persistence of vision, 1818):

• thaumatropes (only two images / motion, metamorphose) [W. Herschel,

1824]

• Phenakistoscope (or phantascope, or stroboscope) [J. Plateau, 1832]

• zoetrope (or “daedalum”) [G. Horner, 1834 …or Ting Huan ( 丁緩 ), 180

A.D.]

• praxinoscope (uses mirrors) [Ch. E. Reynaud, 1877]

• kineograph (just a flip-book!) [J. B. Linnet, 1886]

• Kinetoscope (a cinema… for one person) [Th. A. Edison, 1888]

…No more than Victorian Era optical “gadgets”??

Photography well developed by the end of 19th…

• Earliest use: lantern slides (real places and people)• Eventually it became possible to take and display pictures fast enough to reproduce the illusion of motion...

Lots of limitations! (no stereo vision, no panoramic, linear narrative)…

…but powerful enough as to create a new form of art!

Seventh Art of

filmmaking

• narrative films• documentary film • animation film…

The introduction of the Kodak camera in 1888 was a dramatic event.

The Arrival of a Train at the station (1895),Freres Lumiere

Cinematograph, Léon Bouly/ Freres Lumiere

(~1892).

The rise of the cinematograph

Cinematograph (Lumière, 1892)

• experimental cinema…

• Faithful depiction of reality (scientific purposes & documentaries). From modernist realism to neo-realism. “Myth of total cinema” revived today with VR immersive tools?

[ An early divide… ]

Whatever way, Hollywood “entertainment code” dominant in the 1920s. Continuity of editing (invisible camera and sound editing)

Battleship Potyomkin (1925), Sergei Eisenstein: power of editing and montage.

• Powerful tool for (fictional) storytelling. Artistic / political uses. Persuasive (and pervasive in pre-TV times).

Vittorio De Sica's Ladri di biciclette (1948).Non-professional actors, hardships of working-

class

Double legacy (photography / magic lantern) of the cinematographic hardware creates a permanent tension:

Pre-WWII modernist (European) Avant-Garde:• Influenced by visual-arts movements of the time (Surrealism, Dadaism , Cubism, Futurism, Suprematism, Constructivism)

• Expanded cinematographic code (through montage)

Beyond/besides Hollywood: pre-WWII avant-garde / post-WWII “Experimental Cinema”, Video Art and Digital Era.

Post-war avant-garde (50s, 60s): • Experimental Cinema emerges as independent genre, (New American Cinema)• Explosion of the independent filmmaking • Expanded Cinema experiments:

• extended cinematographic code (Structuralists, Fluxus, minimalist, conceptual, etc) • but also extended medium. Precursor to today’s “new media arts”…

Un chien andalou , 1929 (Luis Buñuel and

Salvador Dalí)

Breaking the rules

Maya Deren, Meshes of the

Afternoon (1943)

David Lynch, Lost Highway (1997)

Digital revolution & digitally expanded cinema (80s~):

• cheap and popular technology• virtual reality• links with computer game industry • Computer graphics industry• Virtual Cinema• Digital Video Art (algorithmic image, Programming languages for the visual arts such as DBN – Design by Numbers and Processing…)

Video revolution & Video Art (70s):• Electromagnetic support and sophistication of special effects• Influences: post-structuralism & deconstruction, minimalism, pop art, Fluxus experiments (film & musical score, repetitions, etc.)

• Emergence of Video Art ≠Experimental Cinema. Interactiveness, loose or no narrative. • Closed-circuit and interactive installations break the traditional “spectator-spectacle” relationship.

Nam June Paik, Magnet TV, 1965.

MACHINIMA (machine-animation): 3D games and first-person shooters as a platform for production and film genre itself.

John Maeda Nature, 2005

II. Expanded Cinema Revolution & the “Media Arts”

End of “cinematograph reign” (filmic code and apparatus):

• Expansion of cinematographic code (≠invisible edition)

• Medium expansion (techniques, material detournements…)

Expanded Cinema Experiments

… 60’s experiments resumed in today’s digital Media Arts

• Material experiments

• Retro-toys

• Multi-modal imagery

• Narrative experiments

• Sound experiments

• Found sound and images (form of found art)

• Space experiments

• Time experiments

• Space-Time Experiments

EXPERIMENTS

Material experiments

Scratched, punched, painted the celluloid…

Replacement of the film by a thread…

Turning the whole mechanism upside-down…

…New recording mediums (film, electromagnetic…)

In search of the origins (media-archeology idiom)…

… or the light beam by a rope!

Challenging the convention of the filmic machine

Rohfilm, B. & W. Hein, 1968

P. Weibel, Lichtseil, 1973

J. Maire, Demi-pas, 2004

Retro-toys and the archeological idiom

Exploring the medium: back to origins & re-appropriation

Toshio Iwai, Morphovision – distorted house, (2005)

Toshio Iwai (3D zoetrope)

Julien Maire’s Demi-pas (2004) or the moving magic lantern revisited…

Philip Worthington, Shadow Monsters, 2005

Space experiments

• panoramic shooting and projection ( immersiveness)

• support of the projection (screen: flat, curved, multiple, mobile, people, water, smoke, wood…)

• projection environment (beyond the “dark room”, multi-theatres, building, road from cars…)

Josef Svoboda, Polyekran, 1967

Challenging the “painting” paradigm: image is liberated from its frame/screen

Robert Whitman’s Prune Flat, 1965 (projection on people)

Cinelabyrinth, Radúz Çinçera, (1990)

Dan Graham, Cinema, 1981 (model)

Daniel SauterLight Attack, 2004

Time experiments (we are getting closer… )

Challenging the notion of classical narrative time & montage

• “Real time” in the movies. Experimental cinema, but prefigured by neo-realists & french nouvelle vague.

Douglas Gordon, 24 Hour Psycho (1993)

Warhol, Empire State Building (1963), 8 hours film

• Manipulated time in the movies. delayed or compressed time Psychological time / psychedelic connotations. Film shortening and lengthening, repetition.

Time-Lapse / Speed-Up photography

Scientific use: • slow phenomena (ex: biology, plants, cells)• fast phenomena (biomechanics, explosions)

Edgerton rapatronic cameras could take a million frames per second

( 1945, Los Alamos first Atomic Bomb test)

© E.M. Kinsman

© Andrew Dunn

© GraniteBay Software

Extreme form of slow-motion & fast-forward:

• see the unseen / enhanced perception, fleeting emotions

• time distortion psychedelic experiences with drugs…

Bill ViolaThe quintet of the astonished (2000)

[ Hyper-Slow motion: the “Bullet-Time” special effect ]

Bullet-Time effect achieved by setting dozens of still cameras surrounding the subject. These are usually triggered at once or sequentially (very similar to Muybridge’s 1878 setup…)

…“Virtual Bullet-Time is much easier to do in computer graphics (virtual camera).

III. Space-Time experiments

“[…]the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion “

Albert Einstein

a) Analog techniques for mixing Space & Time

b) The digital Era & the God’s Viewpoint

a) Analog techniques for mixing Space & Time

• Non-linear editing can scramble the chronology, while preserving the integrity of the images on the screen…

Preserving the integrity of the image on the screen:

Scrambling space and time on the same screen:

• Discrete: polyptych cinema

• Long exposure & Marey’s chronophotography

• Slit-Scan photography…

P. Greenaway, The Pillow book, 1996 multi-screened scene

Conti

nuous!

Example of a long exposure shot with

moving subject

Chronophotography

• Jules Marey “Chronophotography”: pictures on the same plate using a chronophotographic “gun”

•Fine art and Medical applications (study of gait, biomechanics)•Imagery reminiscent of Futurism (representation of speed, motion…)

• Eadweard Muybridge’s “batteries of camera” setup is the precursor of bullet-time special effect (virtual camera) - the difference is that in bullet-time, all pictures are taken at the same time (a sort of ultra-slow chrono-photography…)

Muybridge's The Horse in Motion (1878)

Flying pelican captured by Marey (around 1882)

Zoopraxiscope disk

Slit-Scan Photography

• Can dramatically enhance perception of action

• Imagery reminiscent of early Analytic Cubism (1912): different (time) views of the same object are merged on the canvas…

A moveable slide with a slit replaces the shutter

(Effect known as focal plane shutter distortion in a normal camera)

Hammer thrower, George Silk 1960

Bob MumfordStreak Photography

Robert Doisneau, controlled slit-scan (couple spinning on a

turntable )

Henri Lartigue photography of a race car: use of focal place distortion while panning

Zbig Rybczynski, The Fourth Dimension (1988),

27-minute, 35mm color film

Slit-Scan film (analog!)

Christian HossnerSlit Scan Movie, 35mm film (2000)

• Post-produced Slit-Scan (record everything on film, delay sections of the image while printing):

• time-delaying mask most likely fixed.

• extreme case of “screen” Expanded Cinema (screen smoothly broken into time-clusters)

• Slit-Scan during shooting? (Similar to slit-scan photography, but with continuous film?)

...edition becomes invisible again: it appears as if objects themselves are warped (special effect?)

I don’t know any example of this… (would need “optical buffers”!)

Georges Braque,Woman with a guitar, painted 1913

Analytic Cubism

Synthetic Cubism

The first Synthetic Cubist work, Picasso's Still life with chair caning (1911-12)

(already explored in the pre-war avant-garde!)

Marcel Duchamp, Nu descendant un Escalier

(1912)

Cubist/Futurist

(i.e. “papier collé”)

• Subject broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted form. • Subject depicted simultaneously from a multitude of viewpoints.

shooting reproductionSingle Place (SP) Multiple Places (MP)

Sin

gle

Tim

e (

ST)

Mult

iple

Tim

es

(MT)

ST

MT

SP MP

ST

MT

SP MP

ST

MT

SP MP

ST

MT

SP MP

Not easily categorized as a cinematographic technique or a visual genre

Still, portrait

Pictorial motif

(repetition, a la

Warhol)

SPATIAL CUBISM (Brake, Picasso)

Marey’s Chronophoto

graphy & Time-based

CUBISM (Bacon,

Duchamp & Futurists)

SPACE-TIME CUBISM

(maximum mess… or Synthetic Cubism)

Muybridge’s CHRONO-

PHOTOGRAPHY (Muybridge’s

horses)

POLYSCREEN CINEMA

(Radok, Svoboda)

Traveling, pan, tilt, dollying,

craning etc in classical CINEMA

Early CINEMA (fixed camera), TIME-LAPSE photography

Marey’s CHRONO-

PHOTOGRAPHY (jumps, machines)

Collection of stills, and if

same subject:Panorama

Slides, and if same subject: bullet-time special effect

Putting a little order…

Working definition: “time-based Cubism”

• Simultaneous viewpoints are points in TIME instead of views in SPACE

• Marey’s Chronophotography (~1880): time-evolution in a single photographic

plate…

• Aesthetics related to Futurism movement (representation of speed)

Marcel Duchamp. Nu descendant un Escalier

(1912)

Francis Bacon, Three Studies for Self-Portrait, 1974

"…I see every image all the time in a shifting way and almost in shifting sequences."

Umberto Boccioni, The Charge of the Lancers, 1915

In “analog times”, painting / collage were the only ways to arbitrarily blend multiple point of views on the

canvas…

b) The Digital Era & the Video Cube paradigm

• Frame by frame non-linear edition

• Total recording & total control of reproduction ( any case of table can be filled a posteriori)

• “God’s viewpoint”: total cinema, immersive cinema, virtual reality…

• Real-time interaction (Live Cinema: at the image level - pshychadelic VJeeing, or at the narrative level)

Total recording on cheap random access memory enables:

• Video as a volume that can be sculpted

But mass of information needs new interfaces:

• Multi-track non-linear editing software…

…mass of information saturates cognition (infinite possible storylines invisible)

Still, we can appreciate this bunch of data as an object in space

Video Cube (from E.Elliott

Video Streamer)

A. Garcia adaptation (2006) of Bioy Casares “Morel’s invention” (1940)

Graphical-User-Interface (GUI) based software

• Post-production tools…

• Art? Special-effect tools?

Martin Reinhart & Virgil Wildrichtx-transform (1998)

Sidney Fels, Kenji Mase & Eric LeeVideo Cubism (1999)

Michael Cohen et al.Stylized Video Cubes (2002)

Eddie Elliott Video Streamer (1992)

Explicitly treated and displayed as an object (not for editing purposes)

Joachim Sauter & Dirk LüsebrinkThe Invisible Shape of Things Past (1995)

Alvaro Cassinelli, Khronos Projector (2005)Deformable screen and video volume sculpture

Tamás Waliczky & Anna Szepesi,Time Crystals, (1997)

Sidney Fels, Kenji Mase & Eric LeeVideo Cubism (1999)

Video volume mapped in real space!

[ Toshio Iwai’s tour de force ]

Toshio Iwai with NHK Science & Technical Research and Labs. Morphovision: Distorted House (2005)

The video-cube is not only mapped in real space:

the “3D buffer” is the real object!

(this is a kind of 3D zoetrope)

T. Iwai Another Time, Another Space (1993)

Live Slit-Scan (software invisible treats video as an object)

Bill SpinhovenThe Time Stretcher (1988-1994)

Steina Vasulka, Bent Scans (2002)

Jussi Ängeslevä & Ross CooperLast Clock (2001)

Christian Kessler, Transverser (1998)

Daniel Sauter & Osman Khan We interrupt your regularly scheduled program (2003)

• live video-feed…

• no physical interaction…

Metaphor of the spatio-temporal WARPING MIRROR

TIMESCAPE (2006), A. Cassinelli & H. Naito (Tangible + LIVE input)

Interactive space-time sculpting (non GUI-based)

Camille Utterback, Liquid Time (2000)

Khronos Projector (2004) , A. Cassinelli

Tangible interface enhances the physicality of the act:

Metaphor of TIME AS A SUBSTANCE (oil, water-like…)

Painting with Time

IV. Khronos Projector experiments(details of the project at the artist talk, 18:00-18:30)

Possible Khronos Projector contributions to cinematic expansion…

Interactive Cubism:

• tangible, deformable• images on real space• sensual interface ( “cold digital technology”)

Time as a physical substance

• Recycling video as rough material for sculpting space-time • Beyond the DVD player.

Interactive Paintings

Support of projection

“Found media” processor• Smooth blending of thousands of images

Deformable “time-mirror”

Video as a 3D object

<www.k2.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/members/alvaro/Khronos/>

Some examples (click on images to launch video)

Francis Bacon, “Three Studies for Self-Portrait”, 1974

“Three (Khronos) interactive snapshots of M. Bressaglia”, 2005

Interactive, “instant” Cubism

Combinations: Chromatic-Time Arrow + LIVE video:

.. A “live” Francis Bacon-like

portrait!

Chromatic-Time Arrow: mixing Time and Color spaces

Further experiments with the Khronos Projector

• Large screen & story that implies physical effort and displacement of the spectator

• Producing 3D prints of the sculpted video cube

• Mixing dimensions: color-space, gesture-space (face expressions could “freeze” time around the actor), etc.

• Full-body interaction screen (dancers inside the box).

• Inversion the interaction principle: gestures in real space modify the shape of the projection screen

• The Volume Slicing Display: virtual volumes intersect real space…

• Spatialized sound…

(more on this at artist talk)

IV) Considerations & Conclusion

Remember: the cinematograph was perceived as “an invention without future” by the Lumière Brothers. We may

be just in the age of the experiments (perhaps the most fun, let’s enjoy…)

• Despite interactivity, most of these “time-warping installations” look like contemporary versions of Victorian optical gadgets playing “tricks” on people’s perception of reality…

• Can these interfaces lead to a form of performative cinema based on real-time space-time manipulation?

• And in general, how much today’s Media Art installations are no more (and no less) than 21st century “tricks”?

Important Questions:

• Can we really do more than “tricks”? (i.e., generate a full-fledged interactive / cinematic code).

• And do we need to be concerned by that???

Some References

Expanded Cinema:

• Expanded Cinema by Gene Youngblood, Publisher E.P. Dutton (1970)•Online: <www.vasulka.org/Kitchen/PDF_ExpandedCinema/ExpandedCinema.html>

• Future cinema: the cinematic imaginary after film, Jeffrey Shaw and Peter Weibel [Eds.],• Book: The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002.• Online: <http://www.zkm.de/futurecinema/index_e.html>

Slit-Scan photography and video (and more):

•Levin, Golan. An Informal Catalogue of Slit-Scan Video Artworks, 2005 <http://www.flong.com/writings/lists/list_slit_scan.html>

Time Lapse photography: •Software for Canon cameras: <www.granitebaysoftware.com/Product_gbt.aspx>•Plants in Motion: <plantsinmotion.bio.indiana.edu/plantmotion/flowers/flower.html>

… and also Khronos Projector website: • Online: <www.k2.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/members/alvaro/Khronos/>

Khronos Projector in “cellular video” mode