Riverfront Art Gallery Presents
‘When Color Is Not Enough'
Opening Saturday June 20th 2-5pm
Exhibition Dates: June 20-Sept 26, 2026
Location:
Riverfront Art Gallery
Yonkers Public Library, 1 Larkin Center 4th Floor, Yonkers, NY 10701
914-308-7072 • thegallery@ypl.org • https://www.ypl.org
Excerpt from Incantations - M.Gilliland ©2025 - 3 channel video - 10:00 running time
While I'm documenting the internals of Touch Designer for those who might be interested, I thought I would show the network I threw together fairly quickly that allowed me to record all three channels of portrait (9:16 vertical format) video from my new video piece entitled 'Incantations' into a single channel HD video for online venues.
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| Setup to record the three channels into one. |
Incantations is a new three channel video piece (10:00 run time) that makes use of lots of the processed video clips I've been building up in the studio over the last year. In particular, it is based upon my favorite Prayer Wheel footage showing a close up of the rotating mantras on the wheel's surface. The very nature of the prayer wheel when intentionally rotated spreads its mantra (Tibetan glyphs on the wheel itself) outward, envisioned as a spiral flow of blessings into the environment at large. This is the underlying prayer incantation, often accompanied by ritual chanting or music.
A series of visual themes came into focus in roughly three groupings:
Maya - delusions of the world: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Mind
Dharma - path & practice: Ritual, Mantra, Meditation
Karma - cycles of life: Death, Bardo, Rebirth, Redux
As I worked on a range of variations of these themes, I realized what would be really interesting would be to present the footage (set into a vertical aspect ratio as determined by the original prayer wheel footage) on a series of side-by-side vertical monitors. Thus, there could be simultaneous variations and visually repeat rhythms across the channels not possible on a single channel display. The basic presentation configuration is three HD display panels side-by-side, visually mimicking the way multiple prayer wheels are often mounted side-by-side in a temple compound so that a visiting perambulator can walk past the row of prayer wheels and simply activate (turn) each in turn. Although the digital displays don’t offer that level of hands-on interactivity, a complex meditational space can still be achieved.
In order to present the 3 channel video in this online context, I recorded all three simultaneously as one HD program.
This program is too large file-wise and really deserves a higher definition encoding than provided by Blogger. So, please view the complete program on my Vimeo site:
Incantations - https://vimeo.com/1146248666
Here are some (.gif) samples of the range of video processing that I have been applying to footage of a 'Spirit Bark' assemblage sculpture by the artist team Sylvain and Ghyslaine Staëlens that I recorded at 2022 Outsider Art Fair in NYC.
Eventually, selected segments are destined to be included in my currently under script development multi-part video program entitled 'Crossing the Styx.'
In the first demo using my Ghost Bark footage, several of the colorizer bands have 'live' fire video inserted into them from a second file.
The second sample of Eric Souther's TD Colorizer shows the effect of the temporal mapper with the flames video being the displacement map applied to the colorized Ancestors footage.
The final sample shows the effect of the temporal mapper with a low rez star sky rotation time lapse video being the displacement map.
It's great to see new digital tools developed based upon analog tools (in this case multi-channel colorizers) designed in the 70s and 80s by artists like Bruce Hern or David Jones.
Note: even those the last two samples are SD rez, the Colorizer can handle up to 4K 60hz processing input / output.
A related post - here is the same 'ghost bark' footage (from previous post below) processed thru Touch Designer using a custom-built network I've named "Phosportron4" - after a MAX-based standalone app ("Phosphortron") build a few years ago by Eric Souther & Laura McGough. Like Eric, I tried to emulate the main visuals relating to old green phosphor CRTs - "blur" (decay), "burn-in", and "edge detection." Also, included the ability to mix between source footage and phosphor-induced footage.
After those examples posted previously (below), you might ask just how would I incorporate reaction diffusion into my video work? Here is an example compositing with my 'ghost bark' footage.
The following short video segments show processing of footage from my library of personal video tape (this one from a lake shot in 1982 using an early Betamax portable VCR). The source footage has been processed in various ways including use of a public domain App called Phosphortron (developed by Eric Souther) that layers on the green outlining FX.
I've been working on and off on the script of "River Styx" now for several years. It's just about ready to go into production. The focus of this program is on transition (death, dreaming, wake/sleep, reincarnation, and more...) from a psychological perspective, mythopoetic perspective, meditational perspective.
As part of this process, I've been reviewing my library of video footage, both "documentary" travel & vacation stuff, as well as processed stuff (such as done in residency at The Experimental TV Center years ago). I've been employing of a number of software packages (Apps) to perform processing. I have been making use of dedicated hardware (glitch devices, wobulator). And I have made limited use of AI (Dali-E 2 & Crayon) to explore scene generation sourcing for later manipulation in Photoshop and misc. other apps. - Quite a range of tests and exploration!
I want to post a few examples of the AI-derived work for early last year to let you see short outtakes of scenes that may appear in the final full length edit. Enjoy!
The psychedelic background source originated by Bill Tavis who created a fractal processed version of this Tara image a few years back. His tumblr can be accessed here: https://billtavis.tumblr.com/
Haiku 69 - Medicine Buddha & Offerings with Prayer Wheel (00:19)
I can hear you now: What? The Blue Pill?? -- Recall that Tibetan Buddhist practice grew from roots in both Indian meditative practices & teachings, as well as the regions own (indigenous) shamanistic visionary religion 'Bon'. And there are many mystical / visionary practices to be uncovered in the hidden doctrine.
You may download or copy any image file (limit of 3) for use in your website as long as proper credit is provided: "Copyright 2003-2025 by Mark Gilliland - http://www.image-maya.org" This credit tag may be included as a caption, or alternatively within the IMG element's "ALT" attribute. (See details of the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License via link below.)
Please email to notify me about any such use of my art. Thank-you.
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