Ideas for Midterm
Date: Oct 16, 2023
Whenever I think of time, I also think about space. I remember being fascinated reading about physicists attempting to crack the mysteries of space-time, to connect the vast world of theoretical physics to the quantum realm. Einstein left these crumbs to follow, but science fiction storytellers never let technicalities and unsolved equations stop them from running wild with the idea of space and time travel. And that was how I fell into the rabbit hole, of trying to make the ‘physics of the impossible’ possible. So my goto source of inspiration will always be space, the vast cosmos, the great unknown. It is where our classical physics on Earth fractures and yields to the morphing, mysterious space-time continuum. This phenomenon is very cinematically theorized in the 2015 film Interstellar by Christopher Nolan. I want to take elements of this film and incorporate it into a journey across space-time that behaves slightly differently than our classical science that intuition has taught us.
This scene from the movie shows the idea of a tesseract, a space that transcends the limitations of our 4 dimensions. I have seen many effects similar to this created with Max in some examples before. It also ties to some of the thoughts I had from the readings, about how past, present and future are concepts that exist in our minds. In this scene, the protagonist is able to look at a point in time in his past, translated into 3D space because it is the only way his mind can perceive the visualization of time.
This image is the visualization of a black hole in the movie. All that distinguishes the massive space occupied by the black hole is the light along its edges which is called the event horizon. This is the point near the black hole where even light isn’t fast enough to escape the pull of gravity.
Inspiration from the readings
The Sadness of the Machine by Ollivier Dynes inspired me to focus on our minds and the limits to our capability to perceive the world around us. Time is only defined linearly for us because it is the only way we can imagine and live with it. It is the polar opposite of our creative imagination though. We can come up with visuals and concepts that can transcend the limits of our 3D prisons. We create worlds and collectively agree to follow the order of one. What if that world betrayed us? Played with our understanding of the world?
In Crystals, Daniel Birnbaum talks about the past being embodied through us, and directing our present. The burden of memories is what cements for us the idea of the passage of time. But how do we perceive our past? some are bitter, some are fond, all colored by emotions but never the truth. It was the idea of representing our past and present existence through the crystal image that made me think of breaking up the continuous flow of time in our minds into frames. Each frame, if analyzed properly, will not even be able to tell us what the truth of the moment was. It may invoke different senses to experience again that moment in the past but with a different emotion.
Michael Newman also gave me the inspiration to think of analog moments, not perfect, but very human. It makes me think of Myron Kruger’s responsive environments, where there should be a delay in the interaction for people to think of the responsive body as intelligent – as if it is thinking. I want the response from my work to people be like a thoughtful feedback.
Abstract images in my mind
The whispers of ideas and images are forming.
I pass by a lens that captures me walking by. But it shows me the world I left behind is different than I see with my eyes. The physics is not quite right. And the more I keep walking forward my form keeps changing, darker and there seems to be an event horizon like a black hole around me. I get the feeling I am walking into the past, not mine but someone else’s.
Do I continue to exist any longer if the digital record of me shows me losing my 3D form and shape?
Visuals
Inputs:
A camera starts capturing frames of the person walking across in 500 ms intervals.
OpenCV identifies humans coming from one side.
Also tracks when they exit the frame
Outputs:
Projects on a horizontal screen each of the frames slowly morphing the person into a black hole.
It also freezes the previous frames and adds distortion to the perspective.
As the person gets closer to the end of the camera view, the frames turn black, and the person’s outline becomes like the event horizon of a black hole.
Sounds
To be continued….