vog (a BETA videoblog)

This one I've republished here at twice its original dimensions. This was 300 x 174 but it scales up pretty well so, well, I've scaled it up. The footage is shot from within a hut (or hytte and the locals like to say) on the plain behind Ulriken, which is the highest mountain above Bergen. You either walk up the mountain (a popular pursuit) or just get the Ulriksbanen up to the top and walk from there. The hut serves food and hot chocolate, which is a serious treat when you're basically out bush walking but can stop in and get food and drink. Below is what I wrote at the time about this one:

As with the face vog i've just finished another vog but this too i think ought to turn up in some bloody journal before i publish it here. My academic masters like creative work being done. they like it even more when it's 'exhibited' or 'published'.

This new one is a 2 minute shot of rain falling on the window of a hut on the Vidden near Mt Ulriken in Bergen. It was a day where in amongst the scurrying rain there was sleet and a half hearted horrible snow. the hut is open weekends and serves hot chocolate and waffles, I think it's looked after by a local walking or mountain rambling club, but who knows.

I sliced the video into 9, and then over the top I've layed three text tracks. As with the previous vog the pace of the text track is controlled by the duration of the video, and since each text track is of a different length (and length there is number of characters) it means that each scrolls across the screen at different rates. Gives the text a funereal elegance against the quietness of the video where about the most exciting visual event is a large drip down the middle panes. :-)

Then I added a series of sprite tracks, tied to the text tracks. this counts mouse entries into each text track and after a particular number replaces all the text with a different string of text. For the top two text tracks clicking on the text track disables (makes invisible) the textmovie, but clicking there again recovers it, resets the count to 0 and so restores the original text. The bottom text track works differently. Once you mouse in there a set number of times the text track is replaced with another and that's it, stays that way, and there is no mouse click event to restore it...

Because the scrolling of the text tracks is tied to the duration of the movie I can replace a sentence or a paragraph with just one word and it will stay on screen, inching ever so slowly across the screen, since i've built it so that the text track lasts as long as the entire movie which means one word will take 2 minutes to scroll if the movie lasts two minutes. What's good about this is that i can replace a sentence with a word and not risk the user/reader not knowing this has happened, since it will be on screen. And the same happens when they get the original sentence back. This also gives the work a rather elegant sort of stochastic quality, when the text goes and you get back the original sentences new patterns and series form, i like that.

So this one has events that eventually happen in response to mouse entries, but also on two of the tracks there is an action on mouse clicks too. No soundtrack, i thought about some midi sound fx for mouse overs and stuff but it gets in the way, though a soundtrack of bergen rain would've been good, just don't have one.