Video Mirror

Throughout my experimentation, I wanted to layer a bunch of different outputs and top it off with a feedback loop. I wasn’t really sure where this was going to end up looking like, but I just fiddled around until something looked cool. 

I started off with creating a video looper and a separate video that chroma keyed noise onto my camera feed using the suckah object. 

I used jit.op and used the absdiff operation to layer the chroma keyed camera feed on top of my looped video. I also added a slider so that you can manually pick a frame from the loop and have a still image rather than a continuous looping video. 

I added in a feedback loop on the jit.op output just to see what it looked like and it was pretty awesome and left behind this cool trail where I waved my arms, but eventually it wouldn’t change much. 

I then inserted a step into the feedback loop by oping the chroma keyed video with the loop output, and revealed an interesting effect when my skin in one video was layered on my skin from the other video.

I created another layer in this set up by adding a jit.rota on top of the chroma keyed video before it is sent to the video feedback loop. I played around with the different options for boundmode to see what each would look like, and by far the clamped effect made interesting patterns when layered onto the loop. 

At this point, the camera feed was getting kind of lost through the random zooming and turning, so I wanted to create the option to use your camera feed as the main video and leaving the option to create loops as well. I had to make a few changes to my patching to make this work, and it took me a bit of trial and error to finally get it right. After all that, I just messed around with the two operators for the jit.op objects to see what kind of effects were the most interesting. 

final patcher

teamLab

I’m not entirely sure if they really fall under the umbrella of VJs, but I think teamLab’s work spans many different forms of art, whether it be light, video, sculptural, interactive or experiential art. teamLab is an international art collective whose team covers a wide range of practices from artists, designers, engineers, programmers, mathematicians, and architects that all work together to create a multitude of installations and experiences all around the world. Their work often focuses on the relationship between the self and the world with an emphasis on how we interact with nature and vice versa. 

I think I originally found them through Instagram as their aesthetically pleasing projection/light/video installations garnered a lot of attention for being good Instagram photoshoot material. After seeing so many posts, I looked into their own Instagram and saw an enormous breadth of work, many of which featuring beautiful representations of nature through these massive immersive installations. I can’t say much about the experience of it since I’ve never been to one of their installations, but I can imagine how tranquil yet awe-inspiring their works would be in person. 

As I learned more about their work, it was surprising to see that many of their installations weren’t just projected videos looping throughout the entire experience. Many of their pieces include an interactive element that allows the audience to connect with the piece more meaningfully. The audience can interact with the digital natural landscape, and their actions directly impact the state of the piece. teamLab’s interactive installations often include a theme of ephemerality as things are constantly changing around the audience because of their existence within the space.

https://www.teamlab.art/w/butterflies_otherside/

https://www.teamlab.art/w/universe_of_water_particles_tank/

https://www.teamlab.art/w/graffiti_nature_reborn/