David Stout - Interactive Video-Sound
Like much of the work found here this description links both technical
function and conceptual foundation in the same breath. Transit-Loom is
designed as a large-scale public mural employing high-resolution projection
with live camera images mapped inside a self-generating 3-D environment.
The work is an amalgam of two earlier ideas, the loom and the mechanical
clock. The archetypal geometric patterns are rich with both contemporary
and historic associations, recalling cross-cultural motifs present in
textile designs worldwide. In essence, the work employs the rhythmic
repetition of alternating horizontal and vertical pixel generators. 
This
technique is closely associated with textile arts such as beadwork or
weaving, where the artisan works within a prescribed matrix of horizontal
and vertical grids. In Transit-Loom the pixel generators are driven by
a series of low frequency square-waves which function in synchronous
timing to form a circular repetition of faster pulses nested within slower
pulses. This clock-like mechanism drives both image and sound. Transit-Loom
consists of 31 potential aesthetic states, which are randomly selected
when the ambient sound level in the immediate environment reaches a specified
volume. These key changes are often accompanied by markedly louder sonic
gestures dictated, in part, by the "instrument". The work is programmed
to display a range of possible color palettes fed into the system via
slow time delays independent of the larger oblique rectilinear shapes.
This asynchronous approach results in unpredictable color associations
producing moments of elegant restraint or unbridled gnashing of hue.
An additional element integral to this version of the Transit-Loom is
the multiple live instances of the viewer's own image drifting across
the implied infinity of the screen. The multiple iterations of video
planes vary in number and density dependent on which one of the 31 aesthetic
states is chosen at any given moment. Just as the clock mechanism triggers
both geometric image and sound, it also systematically generates the
repetition of video images. Transit-Loom is an automated system that
visualizes both the immediate and infinite qualities of time.
