BIrdman Processing Via Touch Designer

 Over the last few months, I've been working on a custom Touch Designer network inspired by the Dave Jones Frame Buffer (which I first was introduced to in the 1980's during my residencies at the Experimental Television Center). Although I started with a focus on the core functionality his device provided, of course I couldn't help myself from adding extra features as I build out the project. 

(More details on the DJFB project later. For now I simply want to show a couple of interesting processing presets applied to some found footage from Ancient Aliens of a Native American Bird Man ritual dancer.)

source footage

keyed mix of colorized fog

slo-mo with keyed edge detection

variable bit plane resolutions with colorization

edge detection applied to previous video

Using the Color Mixer from Philosophical Tools

Eric Souther (Philosophical Tools on Patreon) has released a new Touch Designer TOX processing network based upon the 8 channel Color Mixer hardware device developed by David Jones.  I initially encountered the color mixer while at my first Experimental TV Center artist residency in 1987 - and I immediately fell in love with the beautiful layering of multi channel video "slices", each of which could be keyed and colorized independently before being summed together on output. Eric's TOX network provides a nice emulation of the original hardware mixer.

The sample footage I'm sharing originates from my original video tape library documenting visits in the early 1990s to several Mayan sites including Chichén Itzá and Cobol in the Yucatan Peninsular of Mexico. Selections have been fed thru the Color Mixer processing network to achieve my desired look and texture. 

Note that edited / selected segments of these raw processing flows will be used in my upcoming River Styx video: the specific section of the program deals with the Journey thru the Mayan Underworld (descent into flames and darkness) and the Voyage to the Ancestors (climbing the sacred mountain into the Sky realms).