Two sequential stills from Simultaneous Opposites 2009 Escalator

An artist--like a newborn--comprises all history, natural and cultural, and confronts a new world. -rbe

Robert's Simultaneous Opposites program loads a video file and initial parameters for loop length, center frame # of loop, and frames per second. The program uses these parameters to play through the loop away from and back toward the center, one frame at a time, simultaneously in opposite directions.  The opposing movements through the video file fit together like a zipper.  Once begun, Robert varies the parameters in real time, traversing the file.

The center frame between the two ends of the simultaneous opposites loop becomes a temporal focal plane, with the length of the loop a temporal depth of field. The flow of the original images is shaken down, and the surfaces and tendencies are brought forward as subject. Depending on how objects appear and move in the frames, one finds both new ways of noticing, and new contexts to explain how we notice.

Inquiries: rbedgar@gmail.com

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Simultaneous Opposites 2009: Dung Syi

Electro-Acoustic Music 2006: The Duchamp Examinations

Robert's electro-acoustic music CD is available at www.electro-music.com.

CD available at www.electro-music.com.

Sand, or How Computers Dream of Truth in Cinema

Interactive Computer-based performance system

August 1994

The central theme of SAND: OR HOW COMPUTERS DREAM OF TRUTH IN CINEMA comes from a well-known quote that Cinema is truth 24 times a second. I grabbed stills (and sometimes generated images using 3D animation programs) of a sequence 6 frames long. I changed things in front of the camera between the shots. I then took the separate images and allowed the computer to imagine what happened between the frames--I did this using a morph program. Usually morph programs are used to change one object into another, but in SAND I used it to create an explanation (a visual one) for the changes that happened between the information that the computer had (it had only the separate stills). Of course, it didn't always guess right: things may move from left to right, when they actually were pulled apart, etc.

The mistakes--the artifacts from the morph--create their own poems, from their difference between what actually happened and what it "guessed" happened. My goal in the piece was to invent a new poetic space, which I believe I succeeded in doing here. And of course, there are parallels among all the media channels in the piece, as rememberances, arguments, occurrences, repeating riffs appear and advance in time.

Amiga 3000 computer,

Video Toaster,

AmigaVision, AREXX,

MIDI Guitar, MIDI sound module

DVD 1985 - 1995 Portfolio from rbedgar@gmail.com

Living Cinema

Live Computer-based cinema performance system

1988

Living Cinema

After programming Memory Theatre One, I wanted to move to mis-en-scene, not design fixed data for display. I looked to create cinema in real time, like one played music in real time. I used video footage I'd collected diary-style, texts from musings, audio recordings, cells to create short animation loops, graphics etc, and programmed software to allow me to select and combine all the elements in real time in performance. I was also able to save the performance decisions and cursor moves I made and re-play them into the system, later during the same performance, for a kind of structural repetition with differently set up screen imagery.

Often I was joined in performance by Dutch Knotts on keyboard sampler.

Living Cinema

12 mhz Computer

Targa frame grabber

Sony videodisc player

Voice Synthesizer

Original software programmed in C

DVD 1985 - 1995 Portfolio from rbedgar@gmail.com