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September 15, 2004

Filmmaking for Computational Media

The guest speaker in our class series today was media artist, Michael Lew (of Media Lab Europe and MIT Media Lab). To illustrate this, his project Office Voodoo is a tale of two office co-workers who were filmed thru a wide range of emotions, which were controlled by two dolls that represented the actors. The footage was edited real-time, adjusting to the controllers and keeping continuity.

An extension of Hyperbole Studios (the creators of the X-Files games), Virtual Cinema, is dedicated to interactive film and storytelling. Its aim is to continue to develop the technology to deliver a sophisticated end-user experience and allows filmmakers, in any genre, to quickly leverage existing skills and production expertise into the exploding world of interactive media design. The limited choices still related to the timeline structure of the story. Which brought up the question of how much control is really necessary and does it take away from the content of the story or narrative?

Since we assume that the viewer has free will and is unpredictable, Tracey and the Plastics made it into this year's Whitney Biennial. This interactive piece is thru Wynn Greenwood. She plays the roll of all the band members one live and the rest previously filmed and presented as video projections. The Plastics originated as characters in a choose-your-own -adventure mystery that Greenwood was writing. The characters ability in that setting to rearrange and rebuild their world according to their own desires led the artist to flesh them out to varing degrees in real life.

At this point only artist seem to be crossing mediums and tackling the emerging genre. The move towards a more main stream acceptance of interactive art, not only with film was illustrated at this years Olympics. In Athens this summer, the piece by Maurice Benayoun:  Watch Out!  The Eyes of the City ("Landscapes below Athens" Route) was installed. The tongue in cheek commentary on who's watching who was set up with a box on Ermou Street which captured the eye of the passerby and in turn projected it on screens above the busy sidewalk.

And where is this all going? Another example of the program interacting with the viewer while being filmed in real time... Nudemen Garden.

Posted by shelby at 10:36 PM | Comments (0)