I also tend to spend a lot of time on trains, which I love. I often have my camera with me and I have loads of footage taken from trains, particularly of the electricity lines passing overhead.

I recently combined these things to make software that analyzes the video footage in real time and looks for lines. When it recognizes a line it will draw it on the screen. By pushing various parameters the software will begin to see lines that we don’t see, and make connections between them. I automated these various parameters and applied them to some of my footage from trains. It’s a very basic idea that uses some of the most standard features of the cv.jit library, but I found it to be very moving. I was originally going to have it generate sound, but I have come to really prefer it silent. I will probably improve it slowly, eventually adding music and better video footage, but for now I’m very happy with it.

This video, and indeed the ongoing project, is dedicated to my sister Gwen.

Sound and Vision explores the influence of sound and music on artists’ work, revealing a distinctive stylistic approach to film-making. Artists such as Katy Dove and Craig Mullholland integrate experimental music into their practice whilst others, including Sam Spreckley and Will Duke, use a range of manipulated sound recordings to create unsettling soundtracks.

If you happen to be in Scotland be sure to check this out, it’s at the Dean Gallery and is completely free!

In a nutshell, the Rough Cut Nation project is a bunch of Scottish artists who took over the Portrait Gallery, which is closing for renovation at the end of the summer. They covered the walls with their work, which looks absolutely brilliant. I got involved by making an interactive temporary paint installation!

Check out the video I made, featuring music by the one and only Handface.

Together with Kristina Johansen, we also made a glove using conductive thread and embedded LEDs to make the interaction a bit more natural:

I originally got in touch with Richie Cumming, the organizer of the show, to help him set up a sensor system for switching on some UV lights. The idea was that they would light up every so often to reveal hidden textures on the walls that were painted with UV-responsive paint. Long story short, we ended up not going with that plan, and instead I built something that was a lot more interactive and loads of fun to play with…I got some UV LED’s from Patrick Hickey at Nipht Technologies and turned put them into jars and boxes with little buttons. When brought near the walls they made the phosphorus paint glow in lovely magical way.

The jars and boxes felt a lot like futuristic spraypaint cans…I started thinking that maybe the different types of containers I put them in each represented what spraypaint cans will become in various divergent futures. Hmmm.

In any case, the UV LED things fit really well with the whole show, because it gave people the opportunity to paint the walls themselves in a fun and temporary way. It went down a storm at the opening on Friday!

Rough Cut Nation will be open to the public until August 30th, and it’s free! It’s also your last chance to visit the Portrait Gallery for a couple years, so get in while you can. There’s also a nice little café they’ve set up just for the show. You can find out more on the Rough Cut Nation Page of the National Galleries of Scotland website, and on the National Galleries Blog!

Here’s a short video of the Gelkies in their current home at the Hannah Maclure Gallery in Dundee!