Herewith I want to write down the current state of the sound development which is the outcome of the last working period in may/june where we sat all together (Ole, Annesofie, Silas and me) in Copenhagen:

After diverse tests with accelerated sound recording my doubts about the results of either too simple or too hectic sound structures got acknowledged. Imagining the final exhibition which meant projecting myself into the 360 degree time lapsed panorama, I decided to work with unprocessed sound-field recordings on the one hand and with a generative music on the other hand which formalisms are based on the grammar of Inuit music.

With fading into the real soundscape while the video panorama slows down to realtime, the listener shall have the chance to immerse into the audio visual environment as deep as possible. He is now able to get absorbed by the landscape and can meet the performers actions, a passing polar bear or whatever caused the system to slow down.

When the panorama accelerates again the listener leaves the perception of time he is used to and enters artistic space. A music develops or goes ahead, it is almost not music yet and should almost not comment the visual scenery but it is connected to the movie’s parameters which are considered as of eminently importance for our artistic vision. More challenges are that the music has to be about 12 hours long and should be neither disturbing nor boring, exhausting or anything else what lets us escape from the exhibition.

Is it possible to compose a ‘music’ based on these conditions – was the question I asked myself and started to implement some ideas.

Here you can listen to one of these which uses a simple algorithm (not based on Inuit music) which controls a software synthesizer (sculpture) that uses physical modeling for the sound synthesis. This Synth was a quick decision to prevent the danger of a folkloristic/stereotypistic music and in forethought that also elements of the sound could be controlled by the movie. Just for fun I added a drumset. As one of the first tests I found this result persuasive in cases of

• being not too much in the foreground and
• being very much developable ….

The next steps will be to:

• find out: what exactly is ‘Inuit music’?

Starting a period of research I found the abstract ‘Cluster Analysis for Computer-Assisted Statistical Analysis of Melodies’ by Luigi Logrippo and Bernard Stepien from 1986. Herein was described a statistical analysis method based on the example of ‘Inuit Music’. Fantastic!!!. But I missed more detailed informations about the analysis’ formalism and specially the data sets of the analyzed Inuit music songs so I contacted both and was deeply moved by their response mainly the amount of time they spent to find the about 30 years old papers, making them available and writing back looong emails. It seems that I am owning now at least a statistical description of Inuit music… I shouldn’t forget to mention Ramon Pelinski. He was part of this research project and mainly responsible for the musicological work.

• defining the right grammar and formulate a resynthesis algorithm

This is the current challenge I am working at…

• define the sound material: instruments, resynthesis, recordings of vocals in greenland (refering to choir music), etc.

• find the right video parameters which are able to produce an interesting, convincing and still surprising musical dramaturgy.

all best and see you soon – daniel

It’s a sketch, and the code is only relevant to other programmers using this camera, but I’ve put it up on my GitHub nonetheless.

Source code

Find the openFrameworks based source code in this github repository.

About the code

prosilicaAlternatingExposureSketch is a first attempt at doing continuously alternating exposures 3 steps apart for on-the fly 1080p HDR video capture.

Included is a ofxVideoGrabberProsilica addon, that implements some of the most relevant parameters for controlling a AVT Prosilica GX1920 camera and using software triggering. It is ok for trivial use, but does not provide the accurate timing necessary for high framerate usage yet. The code is based on Stephan Schulz’ code from the openFrameworks forum.

For now we are really thrilled and happy to receive this generous donation and will spend the next couple of months working with the camera, sketching software to work with it. When it all works out we will receive the remaining 3 cameras.

Rescheduling

Because of the wait we have had to postpone the setting up of the research station in Greenland. We cannot be ready for our planned window in May this year. As we are all involved in several projects, next window will be in August 2012.

This means that we will have plenty of time to work on detailing plans, programming and doing artistic experiments. First working period will be this May and June, as we had all ready planned to use this time in Greenland, it is an ideal time to work together in Copenhagen and/or Berlin.

If you are in Berlin, please come by – we will be in:

Georg Brandes room (door 24, room 3.134)
from 12:00 to 14:00
on February 10th 2011.

Here’s the updated event info

And here’s a map with directions to Nordeuropa Institut:

View Larger Map

At that time Ole worked with Quillaq on the plain at the foot of the Savissivik hillside. There they filmed a series of long duration shots of Quillaq approaching a fixed camera. These shots have been our boilerplate footage for experimenting with ways of doing the dynamic timelapse footage.

The challenge is to find an algorithm that will speed up the video when there is low activity in view, and slow down when there is high activity. High activity can be ‘movement’, but also ‘closeness’.

Here’s a small screencast from the software sketch – with a guest appearance by Silas, our newest project member

The 6 hour long video triptych ran from 21.00 on December 11th.

30 Days, is a research into the subjective perception of time and space, velocity and synchronicity. Over a time frame of thirty days the three artists Annesofie Norn, Veronika Bökelmann and Ole Kristensen documented the rhythm of their travels through the summer 2009.
With an equal set of rules three distinctive video journeys lead throug Europe, Greenland and the Mediterranean. Twelve minutes of structured filming per day explore physical distances and the means to overcome them.

The installation was made as a prelude to ‘Longing – Fast Forward’ a one year artistic research station on the Northwestern coast of Greenland.

Read more about 30 days and see a video excerpt.

Ole Kristensen created the video installation ‘Inland‘ for the second run of the Frost performance in Copenhagen. It is based on footage from our research trip in Nothwestern Greenland 2009.

Frost is a modern dance performance by choreographer Tina Tarpgaard, involving Ole as software artist for the interactive scenography. It was commissioned by Danish Dance Theatre to premiere in the fall of 2009, where it received a great response. After winning the prestigious Reumert award as the Dance Performance of the Year, it enjoyed a completely sold out second run in Dansehallerne on the old Carlsberg Brewery. Some of the scenes in FROST are directly inspired from our travels in Greenland. You can see more about the FROST performance, including video documentation, on Ole’s website.

I løbet af den første måned af vores researchperiode var vi fordelt over store geografiske afstande.

Jeg fløj til Upernavik for at begynde den første rejse i kayak op langs nordvestkysten for, imellem øde landskaber og små bygder, for at lede efter egnede områder for installationen af vores forskningsstation.

I mellemtiden arbejde Ole Kristensen på en teaterbåd i Middelhavet og Veronika Bökelmann rejste imellem centraleuropæiske metropoler.

Indledelsesvist diskuterede vi hvordan vi kunne arbejde på ‘Longing ⤿ Fast Forward’ uden at være til stede sammen, ja uden at have nogen form for elektronisk kontakt overhovedet. Vi er vant til at kunne kommunikere gennem internettet, men jeg var ganske offline i sin kayak, og kunne kun have sporadisk kontakt.

Vi besluttede at foretage en personlig undersøgelse som pendant til projektets spørgsmål om hvorvidt accelerationen af de naturlige cyklusser I de arktiske egne påvirker menneskets oplevelse af tid. Med udgangspunkt i vores tre vidt forskellige livssituationer, tempoer, landskaber og daglige rutiner lavede vi derfor nogle enkle regler der skulle lægge rammen for en slags video-dagbog hvis tidskoder, tematik og et enkelt objekt var vores eneste fælles reference under et forløb på 4 uger. Hver dag ville vi filme 12 minutter, hvoraf de sidste 2 minutter skulle være et stille portræt, et ansigt, der kigger i kameraet.
Resultatet af optagelserne er en tredelt videoprojektion på 6 timer, som du kan se et uddrag af under 30 Days.

Another 12 hours travel back south to collect Ole in Kullorsuaq and the long return over one week into the wild searching for whales with 30 hunters and as many kayaks; where I learned about watch and wait in silence, sleep because off rain and not because of a time code, to recognise the odd feeling after waking up not knowing if 5 o´clock means day or night, wondering how we count time in the small cotton tents, dizzy by the thick smell of petroliumlamps, damp bodies and whale fat; appreciating how laziness turns into explosive action by the simple call off whales, the men dispersed into disappearing kayaks, listening for the shout off a successful harpunation, watching the men cutting the big animal with a ceremonial concentration and the blue ocean turning shining red.

We finally returned to Savissivik and got a full time occupation as school teachers; Ole staring as the mad professor and me as psycho pippie with the honest attempt to teach them danish by constructing a bone monster and act in our experimental video recordings…all some rather fruitless excursions into the world of vivid glutamate, ice bears hidden behind every stone and the common preoccupation of collecting gun patrons and secret cigarette smoking.

Langs den nordvestgrønlandske kyst er man mange dage undervejs uden at møde det der bare ligner et menneske.

Vores kayakker lå derfor lavt i havoverfladen, tungt lastede med mad, brændsel, stormkøkken og et enkelt par ekstra sokker. Døgnene smeltede sammen i en glitrende havoverflade af is i lysende flader. Dagene planlagdes ikke længere efter solens vandring, i stedet blev selve havets rytme og skiftende strømninger vores parameter; hvordan det rejste sig og veg tilbage som et stort sovende dyr, der i den stille nat holder vejret, for i de tidlige timer igen at ryste sin bølgende pels.

Hver dag roede vi omkring 10 timer. Det var fysisk krævende og jeg oplevede adskillige gange hvordan jeg mistede min orientering af tid. Når vi skulle krydse en bred fjord roede vi efter et pejlepunkt i landskabet. Det der for mig lignede en afstand på 2 km, kom aldrig nærmere og efter 3 timer var vi stadig ude på vandet. Det er simpelthen et landskab med nogen helt andre proportioner, som er svære at forestille sig – selv når man er der. Jeg spekulerede på hvordan min perception er afhængig af kendte visuelle mønstre og rytmiske variationer for min orienterering i tid og rum.

Hver dag arbejdede jeg med mine oplevelser igennem den 10 og 2 min videoopgave, 30 dage, som Ole og Veronika også arbejdede på nede i Europa. Men hvordan kan man formidle en kinæstetisk oplevelse af endeløse horisonter, der opløser tidens kanter ved hjælp af en firkantet søger og en tidsramme på 10 minutter? Jeg prøvede at se landskabet omkring mig som et omfattende visuelt og eksperimentelt fænomen, skabt som et resultat af sensoriske observationer.



Resultatet kan beskrives som en subjektiv geografisk rejse hvor selve billedernes kontekst er underordnet rytmiske og kompositoriske valg og lange stills af smeltende is, en sovende bror, lav der vokser 1 mm hvert år og tiden det tager at koge pasta på et stormkøkken i regnvejr, afløses af korte abrupte optagelser.