Flagons Den

Memory Stream is an interactive gallery of memories, comprised of deconstructed portions of time captured with a head mounted timelapse camera to detail my simultaneous movement through the 3 dimensions of space and through the 4th dimension - time.

I wore the camera in different scenarios and captured the footage over the course of a four months, to obtain a variety of imagery. Some memories were captured with a longer gap between images and so are shorter on playback, this adds to the feeling of compressed time. Some were taken at ten second intervals to create a longer more detailed account of my movements, but still retain the disjointed and deconstructed version of my memories.

I had no idea what the images were going to look like until I downloaded them, very much like an old film camera, but I hoped they would be able to depict the passage of time in a way that would be dechipherable. Not all the memories were captured - which was disappointing - but which also served a salient lesson about the arbitrary nature of the camera and of the recall of memory. After long periods of wearing the camera I began to “forget to remember” as I wanted to see what the camera had stored instead. Therefore the camera became a digital prosthetic memory, augmenting my own by capturing images to illustrate moments that I wasn’t even aware of at the time - for example the capturing of movement.

I have finally finished, and the file is online…

The only slight problem is that some of the swf’s being called in are huge, one is 20 MB which means they run pretty slowly for the first cycle at least and then loop at high speed. I reduced the size of the images and lowered the resolution, but I didn’t want to compromise the quality too much. SO it will have to exist as an offline entity to work exactly as preferred, but I could accept a drop in quality for an online version. I also dropped the non catcam footage completely to ensure it all sat within the same aesthetic premis and I think it works better for it.

The file is here…memoryStream

I have added all the functionality - ironed out the odd bug, added some sounds - the computer voice from the video simulation  - and have a finished swf.  I have to show it to Mike first before I draw the proverbial line under it - he may not like it.  But to be honest I can’t do much more with it.  Some of the memory swf’s are pretty short, depending on how long I set the timer between shots on the catcam.  Some of them are 500 - 700 frames whereas others are just 15. But each one is a distinct memory so I think they work and provide a good contrast between each other. I am going to leave alone for a while anyway - I must have seen each stream about 50 times.

Right I’m off for a coffee.

I haven’t been up this late for a while - at least not working. I have completely rebuilt the Flash for the memory stream, I had to scrap the idea of a 3D interface completely - I need to get this finished.
Heres how it is looking so far…

Screenshot of Memory Stream

And heres when a stream is playing…

Screenshot of streaming timelapse

I have added some nice fades and transitions to make it look a bit slicker so although there is no 3D, it still is fairly plush. I have spent hours in Photoshop image processing to resize all the catcam pictures in order to remake all the .fla files so the swf’s can be called in at the right size and with added “blips” etc. But I think I will finish it off tomorrow - I am starting to see things as if the world is in timelapse now.

Illustration of the 3D Curve Wall

I have perservered with the free 3D Curve wallfrom flashmo.com in an attempt to recreate a similar interface to my simulation but no joy. The thumbnails either overlap or try to exist in the same space and flick between each other - which looks rubbish. I have to admit that me tinkering with the actionscript trying to tweak out these issues is only making it worse. So it’s time to dust off my flash skills and build this sucker from scratch.

This could be a long night….

Well I had my meeting with Mike and showed him the fruits of my labours - a short video as previously described detailing the online envisaged library of accessible memories.  I had been up till silly O’clock the past two days finishing it - I’m still a bit of an After Effects noob and iMovie is a bit limiting so to make it slick took some ingenuity.

Unfortunately, he didn’t like it. Well, he sort of liked it but he thought the artifice of the interface, with the fake selections and 3D camera movement was unnecessary - which was a bit gutting as I thought I had created a simulacra of the environment in which these memories could be played out - and it had taken fricking ages. So now it is down to me to create a real selection interface in Flash so users can choose each memory as they wish.

I have looked at 3D wall galleries - using papervision 3D - but most of them are commercial products costing about $90. Hmmm.

I have been experimenting with the catcam - a lot. I have been trying to capture the passage of time using it’s timelapse abilities whilst driving, walking the dog, gigging, rehearsing with the band, doing stuff round the house etc. Now I have a wealth of data - and I don’t know what to do with it.  My latest and probably most workable idea is the simulated “memory bank” idea. A piece of software which enables you to upload and download memories via BCI. I envisage it being a sort of social networking flickr type scenario, where you and other users can download datastreams of memories of events - either banal or exciting. Like a trip over the Torpoint Ferry for example.

It will look like the piclens software addon to firefox - a floating 3D gallery of keyframes each leading through to a memory stream.

Example of piclens interface

I am building it in After Effects and Flash and adding voiceover and some mocked up interaction - load bars etc. My exploration is with the idea of the movement through 3D space and capturing that with snippets of time to create a compressed narrative. A moving point perspective timelapse through each memory, and a commentary on the process of storing time and recollecting memory. Also the sharing of these memories of streamed “real memories”.

I was under the impression that the most pictures the catcam could take was about 190 - but I underestimated it’s capabilities immensely. Today I left in running in the car and it took 760 photos! This is a record so far - due to the randomness of the camera’s performance the number of pics can be as little as 4 or 5 if there is some sort of glitch.

I filmed an entire gig with the hatcam the other day and the display said 240ish pictures, got home and the memory disc had corrupted so I had to reformat it and lose all the data. Swine! It adds an element of chance as to what is recorded - which is actually kind of cool. Obviously not at the time, but in hindsight when I consider the fallability of my own memory - the concept that my memory’s digital augmentation is equally as inconsistent adds a nice touch of authenticity to it. A sort of humanity.

I am having concerns about how to play out the narrative/story of the catcam pics. Should I deal solely with it as a straight life logging tool? This seems a little narrow-minded for the potential it has. It is a means of capturing moments of time - 4D - whilst I move through space - 3D. The movement therefore has to be incorporated to transmit the concept of passing through these moments - rather than just a flickering timelapse style. Saying that; a timelapse is deconstructing time too, especially if there is an actor/agent in the footage moving at a vastly reduced speed. Thus creating contrast and a commentary on the passage of time - especially if the rest of the shot has lots of movement.

I made a catcam timelapse of crossing the ferry and driving home - the ferry crossing when I was static is a great contrast to the otherwise hectic movement through space, even though you can see the movement of the ferry clearly from the background. 

I remember when I was living in London in 97/98 I was going to a club in Soho and there was a woman walking at an animated style pace towards a fixed camera which was taking timelapse photography - around her would have been a blur of people and she could be seen to move normally if the playback frame rate was right. I’m sure it turned up in a music video.

I have done some timelapse with the catcam and the most interesting thing is the contrast between the milling crowds and the clouds moving sedately by. However there is such a huge amount of this sort of material in existence - it would be better to be more innovative.

I am more concerned with the life logging aspect but maybe in a different way. Say the footage could be usd to convey some sort of recall process? Maybe a mocked up AI program accessed by BCI which allows you to download or upload memories? Kind of like the memory sequences in Strange Days where the recipient could watch the neural recordings of someone else. As the catcam is still images I could make it a bit more disjointed and like the “blipverts” that were in Max Headroom (showing my age now). Like a compressed and more intense memory where a passage of time is made more impressionistic rather than acted out in realtime.

Sounds like I need to mess with After Effects.

I have compiled the catcam footage from a band practice and put it into iMovie to see how it looks - as it was just a test I rushed it a bit and unfortunately when exporting from flash I set the stage size wrong… but it looks pretty good.  Very hallucinatory which works well as a sort of streamed memory, this is due to the aspect of movement in each frame as it was filmed utilising my patented catcam hatcam - and some of the shots were really interesting. I did have a chat with Mike regards looking at the captured images for ‘ghosts in the machine’ a while back as the camera captures shots that I may not have noticed, even though I was there at the time. For example;

The individual frames are almost like impressionist paintings, capturing the passage of time.  It reminds me of a David Rokeby piece - Cheap Imitation which captures the movement in a Marcel Duchamp painting “Nude descending a staircase” (you could describe it as Tralfamadorian art). My pictures are a lot more blurred, but they deal with a similar issue of capturing movement.

The movie I put together is now on youtube -