SurrealDigital

SurrealDigital is a visual experience, partially generated by machine explaining automatized editing techniques with the goal of researching both man-made and artificially generated visual surrealistic tendencies. Created as 3rd year major project by Danielius Maskolaitis

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Explanation of how my code works with footage pt1

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Explanation pt2

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Explanation of how my code works with my footage pt3

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Final project rendered video.

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Project evaluation

Concept

Concept for my project started out as quite simple, I wanted to do editing and not just any kind of editing, but that of moving image manipulation and since my young days I enjoy creepy stuff I decided to enjoy myself by making it to focus on surreal and uncanny aspects of image manipulation. But making a video for final project is not a Creative Multimedia project as much as it is plainly simple filmmaking. To spice things up I decided to add code part, to try and generate image manipulation tools to create another video to play it side by side with my project. During entire research period my concept changed and shifted.

Development

During my development so far I faced major shifts. After making a little demo using after effects I sort of put it aside and tried to match it with my code. By tunnel-visioning onto certain coding problems I wasted very large amount of time. My idea was to use openframeworks add-on openCV to detect parts of my image and do something with them. I managed to get detection working to certain degree but detection was not working with images containing alpha channels – in other words, images containing transparency, and I banged my head quite a while into this issue. After speaking with tutors and researching older surrealistic material I realized to get rid of image feature detection and instead to prepare my source images in such way that code could easily use them with quite good editing potential. In my final project I managed to put together 4 different coded effects, while adding some after effects to enhance the way it feels. After first time making my entire piece and showing it to people they said that it felt slightly boring, but they liked effects, where they were not bugging out. After this feedback I tried to add some glitches to give my already surreal more vibrant digital feeling, making it truly SurrealDigital.

Final output

Primary idea was to have two videos playing side by side, but it shifted to single visual output merging both, after effects/man made effects and coding. I was very pleased when people said that they couldn’t tell when it is code or when it is editing. Goal achieved!

Degree show

For a degree show I plan on adding posters with explanations about my project and having a leaflets explaining my project instead of business cards. Displaying my project on TV is saving me a ton of worries since I do not require setup for projector, also I already have built in speakers.

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Leaflets

I plan on making small leaflets explaining how my project functions .

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My poster for final exhibition 

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Idea for my business cards.

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risk assessment?

Possible hazards: Tripping on cables People hitting walls in blacked out room. Seizures caused by flashy images. Fire hazard 

Solutions: Hide/tape cables Not completely black out room Have flashy images warning No smoking inside(duh), fire detectors in case of spontaneous combustion and no dodgy wiring

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Add tablet.

First idea was to have additional tablet explain some background my project, displaying my research but felt that it might feel a bit off. Instead, to add some background to my project I plan on showing explanation of how my project actually functions.

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What i learned

Surreal part thought me a lot about human mind, why we like some things, and hate others, why looking at something is uncomfortable. Digital part thought a lot “hard” skills(actually know my way around after effects, way better knowledge about coding and machine learning, (witch accompanied by HCI lectures, wish I had them earlier though). This opened my eyes for different paths after I graduate, I found video editing/manipulation very … satisfying?

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Redefining goals/aims

Personal: Explore generative art, code and visual manipulation. What I wanted people to learn from my project: I wanted to get people thinking about how technology is invading our imagination and that human eventually might become obsolete even in creating art.

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Feedback v2

so feedback on improved version was that everything was fine except bug at 36seconds and that at times glitches were a bit overkilling. 

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So to make it less boring i added some glitches,(basicly created big overlay box spawning at random intervals and random locations. It basically just scales things randomly as well. also created a displacement map in AE sort of matching music. 

also added noise to make background better.

There is still a bug at 36seconds, but everything else is fine

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Feedback

Feedback on video, was surprisingly positive. From user testing i learned that project:

Felt boring

background very blank

All the visual bugs were noticed.

That i needed more intro instead of just diving into action

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first variation of my final piece, i am going to dhow it to other people and improve, there are couple of bugs, and beginning is slightly messed up. 

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more or less properly working first bit