Given my interest in finding what triggers a stronger evocation of the past of the place in a user, MRI imaging and the way the brain reacts to differing stimuli is of clear relevance. I wanted to catch some of this visually in my realisations, but after scanning the Internet, the MRI images I found all appeared to be in copyright.



On reflection this was not an issue, and played to one of the other themes of my work - that of testing Barry Truax's assertion that often the synthetic can be more evocative and powerful than the authentic.



With that in mind, I have begun developing some Silverlight "MRI live imaging". Some of the work in progress is shown below and will undergo further development as I work these into some larger scale works.











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Tyburn Tree, where so many were hanged, stood somewhere near Marble Arch. The plaque indicates somewhere on this traffic island. This is a work in progress, moving images coming next ...



Technorati tags: memory London Tyburn Tree enhanced reality history innovation creativity Web 2.0 palimpsests research time maps time streets time Silverlight creative technologies composition IOCT psychogeography psychotemporal

I’ve started work looking in more detail at audio palimpsests – hidden layers of sound rather than just image.



This first piece is a test harness with a variety of sounds embedded around the image and waiting to be discovered. All sounds present can be heard in the background when the piece is launched, but when the mouse cursor moves over the precise location of a sound it is brought to the foreground. It slides back into the background when the mouse moves on.



This is a relatively small scale work at present – I’d like to populate an image like this with far more sound sources. And to link various locations together as part of an extended narrative. More on that over coming months.



I’m keen to achieve something similar as well to what Deepzoom Composer enables in the visual dimension – and find a way of embedding sound not only in X and Y co-ordinates, but Z as well. So that the more we penetrate an image such as this, the more the audio reflects our position within that “3D” space as well. I’m a bit tired of audio being the poor relation in all this.



These are currently a variety of initial sounds lifted from the Random TimeRadio, but will be replaced and/or supplemented with other sounds, both original and synthetic. As with the visual work elsewhere on this site, I’m also looking at increasing the use of moving images.



Part of the current challenge lies in locating original footage of London that is either out of copyright, or which the rights holder will grant permission to use for the purposes of this research. (Let me know if you can help!) In the meantime I’m going to see what additional life might be breathed into old out of copyright still images like this through a bit of creative manipulation …



Some lessons learned already include the need to ensure all source sounds are prepared to similar native DB sound levels (unless a specific effect is being sought that calls for them to be otherwise). Also, given that these sounds loop endlessly, smart ways of ensuring there is no undue pause between the end and the re-start are required (again, unless a specific effect, such as an intentional silence or beat, is being sought). Both images and sounds have also been processed to provide reasonable fidelity as well as streaming acceptably fast over the Internet. However, it is rare for images and all sounds to execute synchronously. For these current works, this is not an issue, but could be for works requiring precision.



For an installation, greater fidelity of both images and sounds would be possible subject to better bandwidth being available. This would also enable the projection of works such as this onto large-scale surfaces, such as within a gallery installation or onto the outside of buildings (ideally in the locations to which the images relate to enhance our appreciation of those places over time).



[Incidentally, old images used are taken from vintage postcards in the researcher’s personal collection. These are, to the best of my knowledge, all out of copyright. If you know any different, please let me know.]



Technorati tags: memory London London rivers enhanced reality history innovation creativity Web 2.0 palimpsests research time maps time streets time Silverlight creative technologies composition IOCT psychogeography psychotemporal

I've added a second "Fleet River" this time using moving images of the Fleet River beneath the surface .... more work coming, both in terms of the contemporary street (moving images too) and the inclusion of appropriate now/then sounds ....



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Early part of a work in progress, exploring how to make more visible the forgotten rivers of London that still run between the streets (or over our heads in places like Sloane Square tube station).



Interim graphic below and you can play around with still images + slider here. Next stage is the integration of moving image and sound.







Technorati tags: memory London London rivers enhanced reality history innovation creativity Web 2.0 palimpsests research time maps time streets time Silverlight creative technologies composition IOCT psychogeography psychotemporal