YoDrChaos - 2013-01-28
A film by Jim Crutchfield, Entropy Productions, Santa Cruz (1984). Original U-matic video transferred to digital video. 16 minutes. See http://csc.ucdavis.edu/~chaos/chaos/films.htm Citation: J. P. Crutchfield, "Space-Time Dynamics in Video Feedback". Physica 10D (1984) 229-245. http://csc.ucdavis.edu/~chaos/chaos/pubs/stdvf-title.html.
after watching this i'm not sure if i'm still alive tbh
You are not alive. Nothing is alive. There is no life. There is no matter, or energy. Reality does not exist. All that is, is a bit of math solving itself.
@russ1618
Reality is like a coin flip, except the said coin has more than two sides. Our minds could indeed be creating all that we know and see, and be nothing more than a set of numbers crunching until they expire, OR it could a shit ton of other things.
@cyborghyena , of course, everything could be anything. Whatever it is will still be mathematical.
How would you know if you haven't already been dead before ?
This is nothing less than an expression of how consciousness creates EVERYTHING simply by the shifting of focus back onto itself.
Lol. Ok mate. Whatever you say.
thats right, without consciousness recognising itself there would be no reality, there would be no substance. Such is the paradox of life and death.
Jim Crutchfield wrote a paper about video feedback in the 80's. There's a link to it in the description. I assume this video accompanies the paper. It's all nonlinear dynamics. Interesting, yes. Fascinating, yes. Mystical, no.
@Ross Oldenburg When machines do it, it's interesting and fascinating. When consciousness does it, it's mystical.
+Roy Dopson thanx, i was looking for such a idea in the comments.
Now we need to get hold of the original tapes and do a proper 60fps transfer in 720p
A 15 minutes not wasted.
Aside from smooth camera control, distance from the monitor, zoom, and rotation are all important. Ideally, the camera should keep a dead-center aim while being able to rotate vertically 360 degrees. At 180 degrees, every other signal is upside down and its this bouncing back and forth to infinity that generates patterns. Just like you'd draw a star, that angle makes stars. But you get the same sequence of patterns in reverse order in the up-swing from 180-360. If you split the feed into several projectors projecting images close together and film it, the images begin to work as one.
Crutchfield's paper is massively influential for video artists. I've done very similar things to this. The key is to have an image processing system in the feedback loop. In this case, he's using a Sandin IP (you can see it at 1:05), which is an early video synthesizer (that you had to build yourself. there weren't even kits. Just a manual). That's where the colors are coming from, and I would guess the black and white fields that are obscuring parts of the image at points. I would bet he's using a black and white camera, too. To pull of video feedback like this successfully, you need to have control over all aspects of the video signal and you need a camera that allows you to manually control the iris and focus. That said, it's amazing and a lot of fun. And LZX industries makes something similar to the Sandin IP today.
I'll say that at the very least, you need a TV with analog contrast/brightness/saturation/hue controls, and a camera with manual iris. These feedback systems are very sensitive, and the more control you have, the better the results.
I wish there were a instructional portion the video. My soldering iron would already be warming up.
I'm so relaxed watching this...
That must have been fun, Jim, and a lot of work!
The pattern at 4:40 reminds me of the educational video about how to turn a sphere inside out
This is really interesting. Do you have any information about the music at all?
Agree, music is wonderful
How did you create stable objects whenever I've tried it all goes mental fast
Zoom out, lock in a whole number symmetry, turn down your saturation, then bring it back up slowly.
I like your style.
Looks like a video camera version of a spirograph.
Finally a documentary about the creation of the universe.
Inverted camera + screen = creator machine = moebius strip = symbol of infinity in maths ∞ . It tried this experiment at home in mid 80's and I was creating a pulsating yin yang = symbol of chaos, harmony and self orientation.
"According to legend, yin and yang were born from the same chaos that would eventually create the universe."
Would it be accurate to describe this system as a kind of analog computer?
I came to the right place
who made the music? this is pure beauty
richard burmer - excerpts from "mosaic"
eberhard schoener - "bali agung" - Nadi
m nature - rio chama*
*I can't find anything about this artist or track on the internet.
And if you can find it, a similar soundtrack accompanies Fortuna Records/Synopsis Video "Watercolors" (VHS). Another one I can't find on the internet.
You just opened me a path of incredible knowledge, thank you very very much for this <3
Then allow me to save you the trouble of finding that tracklist. (I should have just posted it with that other comment!)
-------
Watercolors video track list (1989)
steve roach - levels
richard burmer - excerpts from Bhakti point
steve roach - reflections in suspension
richard burmer - winter on the wind
mike christopher - fire walker
steve roach - snow canon
richard burmer - physics
richard burmer - 88
steve roach - spheres
kevin braheny - lullabys from the hearts of space
richard burmer - riverbend
richard burmer - Ela-A (theme #2)
steve roach - the ritual continues
kevin monahan - blue future
steve roach - canyon sound
a year has past, cant thank you enough for this soundtrack <3
This is what happens when you leave my teenage self alone with the video camera. The subsequent LSD trips are enigmatic.
This is gold! Thinking about all the Math comments...Math is limited, as it is a human expression. Mathematical solvers, derivatives, etc. can only ever propagate a partial of the full construct.
Also love all the synth tunes in this one!
Mesmerizing effects! Is this how emergence will raise?
Doing this is pretty easy. It's just a feedback loop. I used to do this in 1991 or 1992 with a small handheld camcorcder hooked up to the input on my tv. Started recording it one night, and created some amazing videos(they are around somewhere on an old hi8 videotape). Set them to music, showed some friends in college how to do it and never really thought about it again till tonight.
you should upload those if you find them
"Legal Notice" by Robert David Uballe iCopyrighted All Right’s Reserved on Parts or all of whatever’s with or byproducts of Apple Software the origin software and hardware Apple computer company and ibm dell radios television and telegraphs Morse code pony express and trans Union Pacific.
L7 - 2015-10-08
I've been dabbling with this stuff since art school in the 70's and I've found there's a huge difference in the effects that different camera-monitor combinations can create. I was able to get things with VHS and tube monitors that I can't get with the digital equipment now (and vice-versa). Also, if you mount the camera you'll get more-controlled, steady images, but not nearly as creative as hand-held can produce by moving through different parts of the image. But a hand-held feed-back loop is an extremely sensitive thing to maintain and the micro-panning required takes the patience and control of a Zen master.
Betamax Flippy - 2016-06-19
B/W cameras/TVs are probably the best to make clean cycles, just look at the Doctor Who theme from 1963
Don Hopkins - 2017-09-23
The secret of maximum chaos is to use a video camera (or analog video processor like Jim Crutchfield does in this video, or I suppose you could use a digital computer if you really wanted to) that inverts the brightness (plus whatever other less dramatic distortions you want to mix in). That way black goes to white and white goes to black, so it never fully washes out to white or fades out to black, and there's always something exciting happening, since the candle can never blow out. I once had an old video camera that actually had a built-in switch that did that, and was perfect for video feedback!
Charlie Newman - 2018-11-06
L7 I had similar experience with analog and digital guitar/synth effects.