Louisiana Story - Credit to Eagle Arnold Gift to icp.edu credit to 20th cent. fox Kunsthaus de Noche II" by Weiko is licensed with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Richard Leacock filming Flaherty’s “Louisiana Story”. Photo gift of Arnold Eagle to icp.edu Minority Report Image Credit: 20th Century Fox Kunsthaus de Noche II" by Weiko is licensed with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Full Images Credits Below
                                                                                                                                                       
DIRECT CINEMA MEDIA FABRICS is a workshop and seminar. The cinema has expanded to encompass a greater range of media and methods, transcending architecture, sculpture, theater, animation, scientific discovery and environmental art. We will explore methods of capturing moving images, sound and potentially other sensory input through microcontrolled sensors and computervision, discerning key patterns and shapes, and transforming them into creative virtual or physical forms. It is anticipated that an interdisciplinary group of students will enroll in the class, such as from design, studio art, media studies, digital music, and computer science, and that the kinds of final projects will vary accordingly. Architecture students may count the class as a VisualizationElective. The class also counts as an Integrative Elective in Computer Science. It also satisfies the Approved Practice of Media course list in Media Studies.

The course engages three phases of a data collection to a creative process. The phases are: 1. moviemaking and videography, 2. computervision and sensing, and 3. media fabrication. For example, a video recording, sound recording or a motion capture body suit may be used to collect initial data. The data is processed to discern patterns, forms or movements. In turn, the movements and other observations are creatively translated into some other media such as a movie, a video installation, or a moving fabric wall. Methods used in each phase are:

Phase 1: Direct Cinema: Workshops explore a documentary moviemaking style conducive to spontaneous discovery and observation. Subjects may include people and their environments, phenomenal studies of light, air, and water changing over time, or other elements of story and place.

Phase 2: Image Processing & Computervision: Tools are used to accentuate, abstract, analyze and expand upon captured video and data obtained from other sensors and to set the stage for creative interpretation.

Phase 3: Media Fabrics: The processed input data is now creatively translated into either physical or virtual media. This may include a physical building element that moves (e.g., a building skin), a virtual form (e.g., a choreographed animated human figure), of some other type of virtual or real three-dimensional composition.

Each phase coincides with an exercise that explores technology to be used in a final cumulative project. The final project and type outcome is developed on an individual basis. A significant part of the class will be devoted to learning to program in the processing language initially developed at the MIT Media lab (see processing.org) and learning to build microcontrollers configured with sensors. We filter captured data, and developed its analysis and interpretation. We explore how we harness this process to create new fabrications based upon our own speculative imagination. This video provides an overview of examples:

NOTES AND ADDITIONAL CREDITS

1. Direct Cinema is a genre of documentary filmmaking. Media Fabrics was the title of an academic unit and alumni conference both led by Glorianna Davenport at the MIT Media Lab.
2. The primary softwares used will be Processing (see processing.org) for graphics programming, video processing and animation and for work with mcrocontrollers and sensors. Autodesk's Maya will be a secondary tool used animation through self-paced tutorials optionally for students who have taken Arch 5420 . We will also be working with motion capture (aninazoo/motion builder),  video editing (iMovie or Final Cut), and,  to be determined, a combination of tools for sound generation and editing.
3. Left to right images: 1a. Still from filming of “Louisiana Story”, Directed by Robert Flaherty (right) with Ricky Leacock (center) pioneer of direct cinema. Gift of Arnold Eagle, idp.edu. 1b. Interactive screen from Steven Spielberg’s film “Minority Report” republished in the Daily Telegraph (www.dailytelegraph.uk. Image Credit 20th Century Fox) and initially developed after a gacuate student project at the MIT Media Lab.1c. Kunsthouse Media Wall (Peter Cook and Associates, Architects (from www.e-architect.co.uk). Source "Kunsthaus de Noche II" by Weiko is licensed with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/.