"Why is it live?"


At some 242.pilots performances, audience members have asked, 
"Why do you call it 'live' video?"

The question arises for two reasons:
1) The audience is not familiar with the new possibilites of new real-time video techniques, 
and assumes that all video work is pre-recorded --
that all video work is created by arduous, time-consuming rendering.
2) Sometimes a 242.pilots performance has a coherence and complexity that rivals composed works, 
so the audience assumes that the performance must be pre-recorded and pre-structured.

A technical explanation of 242.pilots' tools and working process reveals,  
"How is it possible to improvise video? What exactly is 'live'?"

A) ____Software control

Each 'pilot' works from a laptop running his own custom real-time video software patch. 
Each pilot is constantly making decisions about his video output, and uses mouse and keyboard 
to control the software in an expressive, improvisatory way.

Some of these decisions might be:
-- selecting a appropriate video source file 
-- combining multiple images (in additive or subtractive ways)
-- applying effects to images (eg., blurring, warping, distortion, etc)
-- dynamically varying the parameters of effects (eg., depth or speed of effect)
-- tinting or colorizing images, or parts of images
-- dynamically modifying the playback speed of video file
-- layout or composition of multiple images in the frame
-- time-based effects (re-using or modifying previously outputted images)
-- freezing or overwriting parts of the frame

These and many other processes offer a huge range of options for expressive,
real-time control of the image.

B) ____Source material

Images obtained from video files and still images are stored on the hard drive are not strictly 'live'. 
But through the the techniques described in the last section, 
they become animated as the raw materials for the expressive process.

There are also two situations where the source materials do not come from
stored images:

1) Some images are synthesized by the software, live, in real-time. 
These are geometric images that are the result of generative processes, and have never been stored.

2) On some occasions, a video camera will be connected to the laptop.
Then the raw materials for processing will be obtained live from the environment of the performance.

C) ____Live mixing

There is a second level of live control in the performance process. 
The output of each pilot's laptop is connected to a hardware video mixer. 
One of the pilots will control the mixer to select between the three outputs, 
or to combine/layer multiple outputs. The mixer is used expressively, 
to control the dynamics and density of the visual flow, 
and to create the desired relationship between sound and image. 

When film is edited, decisions are made about which images to select, about the duration of scenes, 
about which images combine well together, or about
what type of transition between scenes to use. In 242.pilots mixing process,
these same decisions are made, but in an spontaneous, improvisatory way.

D) ____The Improvisation

The trio section of a 242.pilots performance occurs without any script or 
pre-determined structure. Each pilot follows his own free impulses. Yet each is
constantly reacting to the images of the others: like a conversation between friends, 
each comments on the current topic, bringing new material to the discourse that 
compares/contrasts/extends what has gone before. (Each also is constantly reacting
to the live music, which is also improvised).

And, like a good conversation, the image-discourse drifts and ranges over topics, 
rises and ebbs in intensity. There are unexpected turns in the conversation: 
unfinished sentences, well-formulated counter-arguments, whispered confidences, 
and sometimes shocking revelations.

Often the image-flow takes on the strange but familiar quasi-logic of Surrealism, or of dreams.
Then the performance is three artists externalizing the intertwined discourse of their unconscious: 
a public dreaming-spectacle.