Understanding the Slit Scan process
Friday, October 31st, 2008My initial ideas for my 4d project revolved around the slit scan photography technique. I decided to focus my attention to understanding the technique and seeing its true potential. Using Adobe After Effects i experimented with a number of effects, below i have uploaded an short exaple of sound powered slit scaning. Using sound we push the video into the future and back again.
(Original video click here)
Its obvious that the effect has much potential, offering numerous visual effects to which the everyday TV viewer does not get to see. Looking at previous projects and installations got me thinking to what the concept of Slit scan actually is. Quite simply we are capturing time over a period of time. With a still image we are collating a number of periods in time and re-collating them to form one representation of an event/past time.
With this in mind i began to ponder on the idea of representation and transformation.
I started off thinking visually for this project but really its the idea that counts, the concept is the base of the project so making it fit tightly to the brief is a must.
Data is something that we take for granted, no matter what we do nearly everything in our life is digitalised, from navigation to the way we purchase goods. Our movement is also one of these things that is digitalised. With most cities and towns harbouring numerous surveillance cameras we are constantly being monitored, but this data is often discarded, and never again seen. This survalance footage would be an ideal source to study transformation. Transformation of a space, behaviour and even atmosphere.
Using the Arch Os system installed in the Portland Square building of Plymouth (where better to get data from) i am considering representing the data of movement or activity within the building, the data that i will used is yet to be decided. Using the slit scan concept i will use the data from segments or slices of time, and of course reassemble into a representation of time its self on a space. I suppose this could be seen as slightly dadist as we are using ‘found’ objects but conceptualising them within a digital domain.