On the same evening that Zero was exhibited in the Tank DaDa was projected onto the wall opposite. I was pleased that the work I had put into making the image readable when projected onto the wall was successful, there were clear sections of light and dark that described the movements of the hands.

The treatment of the video produced a new piece of work that responded to the location that it was going to be exhibited. Producing this piece alongside Zero was an interesting counterpoint as it felt to me like a different path to explore the same question; What can moving image media be? With Zero I felt that the process of theory and practice integrated to develop the piece of work. I never felt like I managed this same integration with DaDa, I feel like I was asking too many different questions for a piece of just thirty seconds.

I think the missing step for me here was not asking myself about the question of choice of tools; What is the strength of Studio Artist? In not exploring this critically I was left feeling a detachment from the tool, I think this was mostly mitigated in the final piece because of the number of revisions that I did. Trial and error eventually led me to a product that worked but the process of exploration was not satisfying. I think that this will be an important consideration for Kino as the fairly open area of exploration could lead to a lack of direction and difficulty gaining momentum to the process.

After showing DaDa triple and watching some of my peers work I decided that there were too many competing elements in that version so I decided to focus on repeating one of the processes across the three panels. I also made a final adjustment to the colour and contrast to hopefully help with the clarity when projected.

Following on from the previous series of experiments I went back to the original rushes and processed these further before taking them into Studio Artist. I was looking to focus the viewer specifically on the hands and also the repetitive nature of typing. I decided to crop, repeat, and loop one of the sections. I also further exaggerated the contrast in the footage to give it the best chance of being visible in the exterior environment, this is something that I was very conscious of after the experience of the Concrete project.

Adjusting the Studio Artist presets by turning off specific steps during the processing I was able to manipulate the output to give me a look that worked to give me a look that was tailored to what I was trying to achieve. I settled on these three looks as I felt that they all integrated the different aspects of the image, creating a surface where it was difficult to separate human and machine but the movement of the hand was still identifiable.

I then combined the three panels in Premiere, I think this helps focus a viewer of the repetitiveness of typing.

Lots more experiments with Studio Artist to find a process that works with the footage, the intent, and the delivery environment.

Working with the second version of the raw footage, the rectangular treatment is interesting and references the building that is being projected onto. The camera angle doesn’t really emphasise the hands.

The previous two are good examples of several of the processes that I tried where the end result looked like an effect applied to video. Although the hands and movement are still clear the process doesn’t add anything other than a superficial look.

I have previously worked on some theatre and outdoor projection projects and have seen that image contrast is important in getting a projection that has impact when projected onto a surface that already has texture and colour. Subtle textures and patterns were often lost as well.

I could have taken this into consideration when lighting the footage that I shot as the basis for this project as the raw footage is fairly flat. I tried to try and rectify this by pre-processing the footage before taking it into Studio Artist.

Towards something that works

I think the process here has started to enhance the original footage and started to explore the relationship of the hands to the machine, the merging of the hands and the keys into the same surface treatment starts to explore the interaction between humanity and technology that I was interested in. I think the line work around the letters currently draws too much attention.