RESOLUTION
VIRTUAL SKETCHBOOK
Assessment Piece Large Scale Item
Resolution
My first assessment piece for the diploma is an animation of a piece of stitching based on my theme of machinery and industrial landscape which is projected onto a prepared background. Normally for a textile piece, I would present all my working notes and samples in a sketchbook, but in this case, as I need to show the progress of the animation digitally. I am using this virtual sketchbook in addition to a box of samples and my research project folder.
First Steps
As part of my research project, I worked on layers of linear pattems, in particular ones inspired by electricity pylons. The photos below show some of the ways in which I explored layers of lines on transparent surfaces. All the original samples are in the research folder, along with many others not shown here.
Wrapping A4 laminating pouches with black threads of different thicknesses, I hinged the layers so that they can be folded like a book or viewed as a 3d model.
I then spent some time playing with the pylon theme in a slightly different way. This time, I folded parchment paper to create strong lines and took rubbings with soft pastels.
Next, I tried cutting up video and cassette tapes and laminating the pieces in credit card sized pouches. I can make patterns by rearranging them in a simple slotted stand.
The rubbings were scanned into the computer. I went back to the original photos of electricity pylons and used Paint Shop Pro to remove the background leaving just black lines.
My next move was to print the images on OHP transparencies. I mounted these as a series of slides about 6 inches square and tried combining them in a stand in different ways (as with the earlier sample), looking through complex layers of lines. I realised that my interest lay in the way patterns could be changed and rearranged by layering, and this led me to working with animating the digital images.
At first, I experimented with making the pylon images into .gif animations. I layered two images of paper rubbings in Paint Shop Pro and then saved copies with the visibility of the layers adjusted so that the underneath layer gradually becomes visible. I then used this as a series as frames in Animation Shop and added smoothing transitions. A second animation was created by taking the black outline of part of a pylon as the starting image. Using PSP I made four images with the pylon repeated 1,2,3 and 4 times in layers. The second layer was a mirror image, the third flipped and the fourth mirrored and flipped. These were used again as animation frames with transitions added to take the image from white to the four layers.
At this point I had images to use and an idea for making an animation, the only things missing were any link to stitching or textiles and what the finished piece would actually be. Looking at the slides, I decided to copy the outline pylon image in simple stitching, scan it and use it as the basis of a new animation which could be projected at a large scale.
Making the Animation
My first idea was to use free machining with cable stitch to reproduce the uneven lines. I soon realised that the detail would become fiddly and that the thick thread looked too untidy. As I have an A4 scanner, I am restricted to this size for samples so making it larger was not an option. Also, when it was scanned, there were a lot of uneven shadows, as can be seen in these pictures showing the back and front.
My second sample is handstitching on white cotton. At first I used running stitch but then changed to long straight stitches. I used shades of black and grey to add variety to the lines and left it in the hoop for scanning so that it stayed taut. As I was planning to remove the background after scanning, I made a third sample by stitching on white card. This was the one I decided to use.
The next stage was to create the animation. I roughly removed the white background using PSP and created more complex images by layering 1,2 and 3 copies as I had before, then used Animation Shop to create a first draft. This starts with a white background and cycles through the layers and back to white.
I carried on to make an improved and enlarged version of this, scanning at a higher resolution and carefully removing all of the background, and then faced the problem of projecting it. In the native Animation Shop format, the animation was very smooth but in order to display it without anything else showing on screen, I had to convert it to a .gif file which lost detail and made it jerky. Increasing the number of frames per second made the file too large for my computer to handle, and for a time I thought this was the best I could do. A few months later, I came across a small piece of free software which gave an easy way of converting a folder full of the individual frames from .jpg to .avi files (i.e. from stills to a video) and reduce the total file size. This allowed me to increase the number of frames to over 600 and gave a much more pleasing result. It is also a format that can be read by more applications, making the animation more portable. This animation lasts just over 5 minutes and changes very slowly. I wanted it to be subtle so that you might not be sure of it was changing or not.
Although I was initially thinking of the encroaching lines as something slightly sinister enclosing the space, now it is finished, and having watched it many times on screen, I find the cycle oddly soothing. The chaos resolves itself, much as landscape is churned up for industry and then later becomes something else - power stations into art galleries, factories into homes. Hence the title Resolution.
You can see the final version at the end of this sketchbook, but first I want to discuss making the background.
Making the Background
To clarify my ideas for the background, I tried sticking various things to a wall and projecting images onto them to get an idea of the effect. As I did not have a data projector available, I used a slide projector so the images are grainy, but it was enough to get an idea of possibilities. In the photos that follow, the wooden stick on the left is a metre rule to give a sense of scale.
The first picture shows various pieces of fabric keeping the blue theme from the earlier work with paper. An alternative idea was to use a metallic background so I tried sticking up a few different metal samples - eg puree tubes, shim, drinks cans coloured by heating. From the picture above you can see there is a problem with reflections and with some parts being too dark to show the image.
Another idea was to wrap a panel with blue fabric and threads. This miniature sample using a printed OHP shows how it would look with the projection on top.
None of these ideas were quite right, the background needed to be simpler, so at Sian's suggestion, I started playing with blank artists canvases, arranging them on the wall in a pattern echoing the lines and shapes of the animation. Again, I projected slides to give a rough idea of the final result.
The advantage of this idea is that the background can be adjusted to suit the site at which it is displayed, using more or fewer canvases, and the size of the projected image can also vary. In order to have something a bit more concrete that can be hung and shown easily (bearing in mind this is a piece of coursework that needs to be assessed) I constructed a more portable version with the canvases mounted on a canvas-covered backboard about 1m square. I took this to the summer school at Urchfont Manor and used their projector to run the animation. This is a photograph taken while it was running.
It was interesting to see the optical illusion created by the light from the projector as it ran, as the canvases sometimes seemed to disappear and then abruptly reappear as the shadows lifted. I have tned making a vdeo of it running but it presented problems as the camcorder struggled with the bnght light from the projector, and it did not capture the optical illusion. Some things just have to be seen live.
Another way of using this animation would be to take it outside and project it at a large size onto buildings, for example a warehouse, gasmometer or storage container taking it back to its industrial roots . Or it could be very small. I intend to investigate adding sound effects to the animation - how can the mood be
changed with different sounds?
More Ideas
Some further thoughts on using the images created for this piece in different ways
1) Get individual frames professionally printed onto box canvases and hang as a series.
2) Use individual frames as a basis for further digital development eg as a tube in Paint Shop Pro.
3) Digitise a simplified version for use with an embroidery machine to produce a repeatable motif.
See the next page for the final animation.
The final animation including sound effects.
Sound effects supplied by SoundSnap.
Postscript January 2009
Since writing this piece, I have added sound effects to the animation - I think that these metallic noises add a little more mystery to the piece while linking back to the onginal inspiration of electricity pylons.
I have also found other ways of converting files and making stop motion animation using a webcam - but that is for another day.
