vidéo : video feedback test (one hand is place between a monitor and a camera)
image 1: general view of installation
image 2: detail

Feed is a video installation which will be produce in 2007. Feed is using the principle of video feedback and the auto regulation of living systems. Feed want to create a correlation between one fundamental principal of video, the video feedback, and the behavioral structure of human’s entities in their environment.

Feed will deploys an ecosystem, a living environment formed of multiple open feedback loops, which will immerse our self into a conscientiousness process regarding the appropriation mode of our self as entities working with, and in, a dynamic and self-regulated complex system.

With Feed, my intention is not to force the user to extract the information presented under a predetermined form but to propose a living system in perpetual change that take visual shapes determined by a multi loops video feedback system capable to integrate and to answer the activity of the user.

Feed will then become much more then a simple interactive system where the user just change the video proposition by calling or modifying different video samples. Feed will give back in real time the new images created by his own action on the system for witch He will be one of the elements. In other means, Feed will install a dynamic dialogue between each component of the system and the user himself, herself.

Physical presentation of the installation

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Entering in the space of Feed, visitors will then be in presence of three armchairs place in circle. In the center of this circle will be take place three round video screen. Visitors will be free to sit on the chairs. By sitting, the will become elements of this ecosystem and will then be able to influence it visual behavior. This influence will then be the core of the art piece.

The video feedback armchairs

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The three armchairs will allow the viewer to sit comfortably. A first surface mirror will be place at one extremities of the arm of an each chair. A video camera and a video monitor will be installed over the sitting space. The camera will take the image of the monitor reflected by the mirror.

The video projection structure

Three round screens will be place and suspended in the center or the three armchairs in a triangular form. Inside this triangle form by the screens, three video projectors will present the same image. The users and the public will then be able to see the final image resulting from the collective feedback process.

The technological structure

Feed will be a analogue installation with a low-tech structure. No computer or digital components will be use in its conception. There will be no calculation implied in the production of the video images coming from the feedback process. Feed will be an entity that once put in function will never stop unless someone shot it down. No computer programmation will influence its development or behavior, only the elements of this ecosystem (cameras, monitor, mirror, mixer, cables, etc) and the inter-actors will be the active programmers of the system.

Distribution schematic of the video signal

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Scheme of functioning of the video feedback

Feed will be an installation in a constant state of change. Once put in function, Anima récursive will live in an autonomous and auto regulated way. This open loops feedback system will offers three doors to the users (the three armchairs).

By acting in one of the three feedback loop propose by the systeme, the users will be able to interact whith the system and by then having a visual and gestual dialogue with it. To achive that, they will just have to put there hand on the mirror placed at the extremity of one arm of the chair. they will then feed the feedback loop of new informations (the fingers, the hand, their gesture, the change of light, etc.) that will be incorporeted in the video feedback loop.

As doing this, users will then became one element of the ecosystem proposed by Feed. The inter-actors will also be able to change the angle of the mirror on two axel. That will create new behaviours from the video feedback because the angle of view of the camera toward the monitor will be dynamicly changed.

Psycho sociological approach of the project

We seem to be entities that reflect off our environment, the culture, literally the culture in the bacteriological sense. This is the languages, the mythical structures (behavioral and symbolic), the political culture and the 'scientific' framework. These are the means of interconnect between the brain/minds of each of us. We generate analogies to how we see things in the dataflow. These analogies are models of the things being perceived, functioning as descriptions for communication or means of working out on the idea. (These are our world-view, our philosophies and our religions)

One means of projecting onto the concept or culture space is to build a model, i.e. a description of the thing. We then work (out) our own thinking about the thing on the basis of information contained in the model, by, in some sense, testing it with our acts upon it, working through the math or figuring out how to build it; this then modifies the model and we build up a solution for our question that satisfies most of the necessary criteria of the system that we are building up.
The output we generate is reflected back to us, onto us, by the culture/environment within which we generated in the first place. This is the feedback.

The consequences of our acts can be seen and noted, they modify the way we act in the next cycle. As we live in the world we build up a sequence of loops of output being used to regulate our acts in the process of generating more output. Living systems are self-regulating systems that rely on feedback for the parameters of the self-regulating.

The world feeds us and we feed the world, our actions and thoughts feed forward into the world and the world feeds back and we regulate ourselves according to the feedback. If there is only the world and me I am in a closed loop. But you are there and impact upon me. My needs for food and response demand an opening of the loop. We exist in open loop relationship with the world only in the sense that others impact upon us from within their closed/open loops.

It is the feedback that returns from the output of my system that brings me into awareness of the otherness, of the impact of others, and brings me to consciousness of the system.

Loop upon loop of information and energy are the content of our being in the world in relation with the world, as we know it. It is the openness of the loops which allow us to grow and develop. It is the generativity of our consciousness which allows us to project and feed forward into the world and the feedback which helps us stay there and continue and develop. Loop upon Loop of interaction and experiencing, bootstrapping ourselves into the future in real time.