I’m sure many people here like playing with video feedback, even with a simple monitor and camera with a live feed it’s a lot of fun, but even better is seeding that feedback with various things.
Figured I’d list some that I’ve tried that have worked well, and I hope others can share ideas too. I’d love to discover new ways to seed my video feedback so please share if you can!
Arms, hands and heads
Torches, lighters and lazers
Crystals
Dripping type water toys
Hanging things with invisible thread
Fidget spinners
Text from a title maker
Smoke
Probably missed a few, please share some of your own!
I’ve had success with generating some sparse pattern and keying that on top of the feedback.
A nice thing about this is if you’re doing b/w feedback this can still get you some interesting color content through the layering.
i got nice-looking results by modulating sound/music onto a horizontal bar in my vector setup, and then layering that on top of the feedback monitor.
Another thing to try is to have some way of inserting short bursts/ single frames of video from another source every so often. Done right, this gets you a strobe-light like effect, but with the feedback devolving and smearing the frames in-between.
In walk-up installation setups keying another camera into the feedback stream gives good interactivity without having to engineer the walk-up to happen inside the physical loop area or having to give instructions.
Doing this in a musical setting, you can use bass envelopes to modulate overlay opacity or overlay keying level which works well with people dancing
Colourwheels are also pretty for feedbackstuff. We made some for ourselves. Coloured foil and pattern glued on plexiglass, driven by a small motor. The whole thing is placed with a tripod between camera and TV.
I like drawing or printing images on clear overhead sheets and taping them in front of the monitor. Maybe dry erase right on the monitor would work too.
I use a pen laser that’s the same as your cat laser. I usually end up going outside and pointing it at the distant trees, lasers are so cool. We’re limited to 1mW in Australia! D:
Stroboscope is a good one, similar to transistorcats ‘burst’ suggestion, I’d love to see it in action.
Badminton / tennis racket! This is one I must get, I visit a big flea market every weekend so surely can find one, thanks for that idea!
Yes I usually run it all through my LZX gear and that usually has a shape of some sort, best when it’s moving I find.
Glitches! That’s one I forgot to add to my list. I have a few BPMC devices and also Fluxus Duo which I have barely tried out so far but look forward to it.
I’m really looking forward to getting my TBC2 as two cameras is where I want to explore with feedback the most right now. Got a few ideas and not sure how they will work, but I can imagine the idea of not needing a participant to be inside the physical loop area can be very helpful and still as exciting.
Have you used feedback loops with people dancing inside the loop before in a club or music event type setting? I’ve often wondered about this as a possible direction for installations myself if I end up going that way, but I imagine it’s not easy in a typical scenario unless you just get people’s heads sort of thing. Failing that a dedicated area for one person to dance at a time would be cool.
I have been thinking Memory Palace has somewhat taken away our need for small motors and contraptions turning things but even still I’m sure it can’t do it all.
That’s really cool creation, drop a link if you have one!
Prism filters are another great suggestion. I’ve played around a lot with different crystals (these are crazy with lasers too) but never thought about this specifically, I may even have some prism type glasses around somewhere I could try out, otherwise will look out for a proper one at a flea market I frequent.
I have not, but the problem area is probably going to be getting a powerful and large enough “background” monitor/projector as well as having the camera far enough away from the dancer perspective and focus-wise, while still having physical control of the camera.
