Spirits Floating - a Selection of Processing Outtakes for River Styx

While entitled as "Spirits Floating", perhaps these should be seen as experiences of the Astral Plane, Dreamtime, Bardo, awakening from deep sleep, or near-death / post-death transition? Selection of mainly digital processing outtakes for River Styx video program. 

Done with a number of different SW apps in my toolbox (and often with rescanning) applied to various segments of found video footage.

Some Wobbulated Video Outtakes for River Styx Program

 In the 80's and 90's I had a number of artist residencies at The Experimental Television Center in Oswego, NY where I had the opportunity to utilize their custom built Paik-Abe Wobbulator unit. It's easier to watch a few video examples than to explain the analog processing FX in detail, but suffice to say that the Wobbulator allows distortion of a CRT's horizontal and vertical deflection raster, as well as adding a third special deflection coil (termed an "S" coil) which creates a sort of S rotational wobble to the raster. One thing to note is that with such signal distortion, the only means to record the Wobbulator's FX is via RESCAN of the CRT with another camera - a traditional analog video processing / recording technique.

Although many video artists have used the Wobbulator in more extreme raster distortion modes, my typical use of it has been to create slow waves, shifts, wobbles to the image. This is then keyed on top of the original footage to achieve the desired dream-like effect. Below you can view a "ghost walking up hill" segment originally processed at ETC (perhaps around 1986?) followed by a recent re-processing addition using the Phosphortron app (described in the previous post).

Spirit Fire Dance

I have started working on footage for a larger video project entitled "Crossing the Styx"... As you might imagine based upon the Greek myth, this will be about the Underworld, Bardo, Dreamtime... About crossing over. More details and samples as I develop the script further. Suffice to say in a section involving Shamanic journeying, I plan to use found footage of UTE fire dancers. The samples below show some of the processing that I am achieving using a really nice Mac-based video synthesis app called LUMEN.

 

Buddaverse Variations: In The Beginning

As I began to work on my new set of Tibetan inspired digital glitch animations ('haikus'), it seemed like a natural starting point to harken back to some of the Forest Guardian anims from last year as a starting point. Below are a couple of early Buddhaverse Variations haikus paired with examples of the Forest Guardian anim(s) that they derived from.

haiku 2

haiku 6

Forest Gods 11

haiku 18

Forest Gods 12

ETC Sample Footage: Ghost Walker

This is an example of footage I compiled and processed at ETC under the topic heading of 'Dreamtime'. It seems very hallucinatory or perhaps like a shamanic journey vision. The source footage was recorded at Storm King Art Park. Processing included the greytone 'wobbled' imagery rescanned from the Paik-Abe Wobbulator and keyed over the original. In this preset, the Wobulator control signals were set to create only a slight ripple in the horizontal scanlines, rather than creating a fully distorted 3D 'wrapped raster' effect. (This effect would be almost impossible to generate via today's digital apps.)

Jungle Spirits Revealed

As described in a previous set of postings (Hidden Nature,  Hidden Nature #3) I created a panoramic jungle screen within which to place / hide totem spirits and ancestral figures. At the time I wrote that the adjacent and overlapping leaf patterns are perceived as 'symmetrical totemic / figurative forms.  The impact [is] similar to Rorschach inkblots. If you look carefully (in the enlarged images) you may begin to resolve images of figures and animals concealed in the jungle.'

I noticed that uncovering the hidden figures within shared digital reproductions (e.g.; smaller JPG files) was difficult for many viewers... That figure-ground issues challenging the viewer was fundamental to the work, after all. This could be understood as a metaphor for ongoing 'search & discovery' underlying shamanic and meditational practices.

In the back of my head ever since the Jungle Panoramas were completed, I've envisioned them as coming to life in a way that would shift focus between concealing and revealing the various underlying figurative elements. Of course, hopefully not 'over revealing' so as to maintain some of the mystery.

Hidden Panthers Redux

Here are some new Rorschach panther totem visions. These animations came about as I played around with adding motion via animation to my previous Jungle Panoramas - as described in post above. (Previous Panther visions here.)

Forest Protectors Revealed

After completing the panoramic "Hidden Nature" series, I continued to wonder about the issue of invisibility/hiding and exactly how far I had taken that - such that the figures perhaps have become a too-faint hallucination against the jungle foliage pattern. Had the background itself became the subjective foreground overwhelming a viewer's ability to decipher / discover the (intentionally concealed) subjects?

I set out to make work that in some ways was a visual simplification of "Hidden Nature." In these new pieces, the Forest Protectors would be less concealed, faces revealed within the chaotic canopy leaves and branches.

Forest Spirits 01

Forest Spirits 02

Forest Spirits 03

Forest Spirits 04

Follow-on note: for the Upstream Gallery's "Small Works 2020" show in January, I had these images output onto a metallic white paper, creating quite a nice optical depth.

Forest Protectors Embodied

I liked the faces of the Forest Spirit protectors emerging through the leaf canopy of the forest. I started to think about how in reality, the leaves and branches would be swaying or shuffling in the wind, constantly changing the appearance and visibility of the Forest Protectors. With an eye towards earlier forest Goddess animations, I played around with similar a layered approach, with the addition of sound, to build new animations (saved as short .mp4 videos). Here is a sample of a few:

Note that the SW tools I use included IOS apps including D'efect, GlitchArt, and Hyperspektiv. Final layering and sequencing is done in PS on my Mac.

Shaman Dreamtime

While collecting forest canopy images showing inherent "crown shyness" (the observation of trees' branches not interfering with each other - rather leaving open space between each tree in the high canopy) for use in my Forest Spirits pieces, I decided to expand upon the previous playful images of myself with antlers. This time inter-connecting / contrasting the free floating leaf camouflage pattern with highly abstract, yet uniquely organic, "crown shyness" clumping of the upper forest canopy.

Full Moon Shaman

Last fall we had a pig roast with everyone sitting at long tables outside under the Autumn full moon. A friend took several photos of my friend Gaylord and me goofing around with a pair of antlers. What you see below is a set of transformations as I modified the original images to be more 'visionary.'

original photo

original photo

leaves & enhancements

leaves & enhancements

mask added

mask added

Final: Vision Quest

Hidden Panthers, Oh My!

The jungle in shamanic practice is a dreamtime filled with plant and animal spirits, as well as ancestors, guides, demons, protectors. Here are some Rorschach panther totem visions.

More Glitch Tests

I wanted to play around with a larger, more complex image to apply the various glitch processing upon. I chose a Jewel Tree image as the base with the following results:

This is the original unmodified image:

Forest Goddess Redux

Some more plays on the Forest Goddess / Forest Spirit theme - the hidden, sensed, almost seen:

Rite of Spring - Medicine Offering

Gif by Bill Tavis - tumbler site: http://billtavis.tumblr.com

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Wanted to give a 'shout out' to Bill Tavis's new project - a Kickstarter project for his Mandelmap poster.

From his tumblr: Now live! Go there now to receive a poster as a reward for pledging. Meticulously researched and compiled, this poster functions as a thought-provoking guide to the astonishingly complex Mandelbrot set. - http://kck.st/23HsEZW

More Glitch Experiments - Glitched Forest Goddess

This is an experiment in creating a glitched forest goddess loop to be positioned 'under' (camouflaged by) leaves, flowers and other offering elements. See the accompanying static image (below anim) for an example of my Forest Goddess series from last year... Now imagine a more layered effect with the leaves (etc.) as the top layer, and one or more glitched figures as background layers. (I'll update this post with an example as soon as I have taken this to the next step...)

Springtime!

The energy is really starting to flow now! Everything is waking up. Spring bulbs blooming, trees leafing out, birds singing.

Gif by Bill Tavis - tumbler site: http://billtavis.tumblr.com

Deep Dreaming in Egypt

From an original artwork "Temple of Sekmet"

Alien Dreamtime #2

I fed another one of my original artworks - Inka Dreamtime - into neural processing by the Deep Dreamer Mac app, similar to the settings use in previous post. This is 100 levels of deep dream (the current maximum allowed).

Alien Dreamtime #1

I fed my original artwork Spiral Dreamtime into neural processing by the Deep Dreamer Mac app, testing one of the "Level 5" settings, and generating an animated zoom into the hallucination.