Painting with slices of video February 8, 2012 8:30 AM   Subscribe

Does anyone remember a post (from the past year or so, I think) about some digital art that was made by taking (pixel-wide?) slices of video and sort of "painting" with it?

To clarify, these were still presented in the form of video (except all abstractified and texturey), and weren't static paintings in the traditional sense, and may've included (equally abstract) audio. Thinking about it a bit more, I think there was some sort of programming aspect to it, rather than this being a thing that was done manually (I looked through posts tagged with max/msp/jitter as well, but couldn't seem to find it there either). I'm pretty sure the art itself was hosted on vimeo, although I could be mistaken. I have searched and looked through various combinations of tags and the like, but it seems my google-fu is not up to the task.

So, does this ring any bells or sound familiar to anyone?
posted by kilo hertz to MetaFilter-Related at 8:30 AM (9 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

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posted by the quidnunc kid at 9:00 AM on February 8, 2012 [5 favorites]


Are you talking about this visual effect: Chairlift - "Evident Utensil" Music Video.
posted by demiurge at 10:44 AM on February 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


You're looking for the I/O Brush.
posted by flatluigi at 10:46 AM on February 8, 2012


Bah, it dropped my link. http://web.media.mit.edu/~kimiko/iobrush/
posted by flatluigi at 10:46 AM on February 8, 2012


I don't have tarot cards, but I suspect you're thinking about the movie barcodes post.

Also, alby made a project out of this.
posted by P.o.B. at 11:32 AM on February 8, 2012


Those are both great links (and I recall having seen the i/o brush on the blue before), but unfortunately neither are what I'm looking for.

The effect in that music video isn't quite what was used. Visually, as best as I can remember, it was as though a pixel-or-two-wide column or row of visual data had been picked as brush/palette and had been stretched or otherwise used to fill the rest of the screen (but not evenly; there would be variations in angle and stuff that added jaggedness and variation), but since the source was video, as the data in that column changed, so too did other portions of the screen. I feel like there was a general monochromaticity to it as well, although I can't be as certain about that. Altogether, it was much more abstract than the music video you linked, demiurge. The audio was also more like washes of filtered noise, rather than something more recognizably musical. The whole thing was very textural, both audibly and visually.

Memory can be a fickle thing, but I'm absolutely certain this was linked on the blue somewhere (and I'm fairly certain it was, if not the centrepiece of an fpp, a prominent example of a process that the fpp was about; once again, I think max/jitter or something similar was involved). It might be older than I recall (time moves strangely on mefi), especially considering I couldn't find it in my favourites and I've been lurking rather longer than I've been a member, but I'm positive it exists and wasn't just a hallucination or something.

On preview, no, it wasn't the movie barcodes thing either. The endresult was still in video form. Come to think of it, it must have been older than that as well, as I vaguely recall being reminded of and trying to look for it (and failing) when I saw that post the first time.
posted by kilo hertz at 11:41 AM on February 8, 2012


Until I got to the 'more inside', Andy Denzler's paintings sprang to mind.

It sounds like 'datamoshing' might be a handy search term, if you haven't used it already - a lot of it is completely bonkers, but you do see folk doing it in a more restrained way (eg., this).
posted by jack_mo at 11:59 AM on February 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


Sounds like slit-scan to me.
posted by bz at 12:27 PM on February 8, 2012 [2 favorites]


While not what I was seeking, those are some great paintings, jack_mo. Really cool stuff. And I hadn't come across the term datamoshing before. It certainly does seem relevant (though still not quite it) and worth looking further into as well.

It seems like exploring the world of slit-scanning is the ticket to finding this thing. Though the project I'm trying to recall took it a bit further than the majority of examples of the technique that I've come across so far (not that they're not incredibly interesting as well; on the contrary), that is definitely the kind of effect I had in mind. So, thank you for that, bz. Unfortunately it seems like most video links from more than a couple of years ago have died since, but at least now I have a better idea of what I'm looking for. Also, sifting through old posts is great, because even despite not finding what I was seeking, I've come across lots of gems that I'd missed before.

Anyways, thanks for your help everyone. I have a feeling this as close as I'm going to get that specific piece of art (though don't let that stop you from posting/linking if you think you know which post/project/link it was), and will likely settle on finding other interesting works in this field and/or trying my own hand at it. Oh, and I'll be sure let you know if I happen to actually find it, in case anyone else is interested.
posted by kilo hertz at 1:36 PM on February 8, 2012


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