Enhanced Vision – Digital Video

Digits digital video image still
Image Still from the Digits digital video

I received an email the other day from ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community of which I am a member. The email alerted me to a new ACM SIGGRAPH (Association of Computing Machinery Special Interest Group-Graphics) project. Titled Enhanced Vision – Digital Video, it is billed as "an international survey of today's most exciting and innovative digitally-enhanced video art works". The thirty videos included in this exhibition were curated by a committee of ten experts in the field.

The videos are supposed to tell a story – some worked, some didn't. Be that as it may, my focus was on the imagery itself and the technical skills and imagination that went into their creation. On this level, a number of the videos did not my level of expectations.

While I watched all the videos, I have opted to comment only on certain ones. The list of videos and my comments follow.

  • 366
  • Apotheosis of Glasgow High-rises
  • Arcadia
  • A Small Fee
  • A Written Perspective – in black and white, it appears to have used thresholding and/or edge finding to process a standard video. While it has no soundtrack, this was one of the more visually interesting videos with its white on black outlines flickering across the screen.
  • City.Flow() – also visually interesting. Its use of multiple exposure video of urban activity made for an interesting visual effect that lent itself to the story the video was telling.
  • Composition Fukushima 2011
  • Deephorizon
  • Digits – visually the most interesting with varied image processing techniques applied to the video. Identified as a "video that refers to the symbolism of ten numbers", it featured a short individualized segment for each number.
  • Don't Know Where To Point
  • Fashion To Die For – used no image processing or CGI (computer-generated imagery) but did have a very interesting opening with its use of video taken of machinery in a garment factory that was fascinating to watch with its spinning spindles of thread.
  • Filament
  • Grotesques
  • Horribile Pictu 1
  • Mudland #1 – a striking video, it is both visually surreal and bizarre – I like it. Its strength is its very imaginative use of compositing.
    Mudland #1 digital video image still
    Image Still from the Mudland #1 digital video.
  • My Meds, from the series Testament
  • necrolog of robin williams or the suicide of irony
  • Not To Scale At All
  • On China Sea – a visually interesting video of the motion of water in the wake of a ship.
  • OU TOPOS
  • Particle Daydreams
  • Printed Clothes DIY (4 my catcaller)
  • Raw Quinoa
  • Shatter/Flood/Mud/Houses
  • Simulacrum
  • Slip Away
  • Soft Pong Inari
  • Surveillance Siddhi
  • The Dust Machine Variation – probably the most sophisticated of the videos, it also easily had the most sonically interesting and imaginative sound track.
  • Water

If you are a maker of videos then you should give these a look. Each video comes with a brief description as well as a list of the software that was used in its creation. You may also want to contact a video's creator(s) to learn more about how the created their work.

All the videos are accessible from the Enhanced Vision – Digital Video Collection

Happy Screening

| Return to the Blog Index | This entry was posted on Saturday, May 9th, 2015 at 6:59 am and is filed under Videos.