Progress

Here.

It’s hit me that my time here at the Fish Factory Creative Center is almost over. How? How has it already been one month. I wish I could stay longer. I’ve been working on 360 VR while here, and in the last few days have had a bit of a break-through. I’ve taken hundreds of 360 images of the landscape and was bored. What was the point. Google has already cornered that. I tried finding scenes that showed the passage of time, of the former life this place had. This was a little less boring, but not much. I tried altering/distorting/glitching these images. eh. Finally, this weekend, I realized that this place feels anything but real. It’s surreal. So I sought to capture the surreal. I took my camera in the pool while on our trip north and played with taking images and video while under water. The water was murky with minerals, so the images are ethereal. They’ve created interesting static images and quite disorienting in VR. 

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(If you don’t have a VR headset, get one. Not for my sake—for yours. They’re cheap, and there is plenty you can do with them beyond looking at what I’ve made here.)

These images felt like a break-through for me. They captured the way I feel. As a group, we had artist talks last night, and everyone else agreed. One of the volunteers here found an old fishing pole and helped me setup to fish for images in the ocean this morning. Since I wouldn’t be holding the camera to release the shutter, I took video, which stills could be drawn from later. I’m still going through the images/video, but I’m excited about them. I think the video is interesting alone, but I would like to manipulate/cut/compose them, as well. I guess have a lot of work to fill in my last day and a half in studio… tear.

(Watch the video in the vimeo app for 360 effect.)

 

The flattened 360 images are pretty cool, in and of themselves.

I’m very inspired by this prospect, and I’m excited to do more experiments when I get home. Can I manufacture this aesthetic? Now I wonder where I put my fish tank…

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