Thursday, October 28, 2010

Alternative Party 2010

The theme of this work was machine-assisted meditation. The installation consists of a Wii Balance Board and an Elation Design LED 36. There were welding goggles affixed to the LED brick. As luck would have it, they were a perfect fit.

machine assisted meditation from Valmet Children on Vimeo.
The experience of using the contraption doesn't quite make it through in the video, so I'll do my best to explain. Your center of gravity controls the speed of the light, and when you get it just so, the slow rotation of the lights intensifies to veritable strobing. The fact that the pattern of the lights is a rotary one seems to induce patterns, at least in myself, that would fall under Category II: Spirals in this paper with particular ease, but other types are also attainable. I had two people tell me that they had seen recognizable shapes, such as people, escalators and a helicopter leaving an opening dome.
A major source of inspiration was Brion Gysin's Dreamachine, and the phenomenon of visual perceptions brought on by stroboscopic stimulation. If I'm not mistaken, Gysin got the idea from sunlight that filtered through tree branches onto his closed eyelids when riding aboard a train.

No comments:

Post a Comment