Another Time, Another Space (1993, 1999) is an interactive digital artwork by Japanese media artist Toshio Iwai which uses slit-scanning techniques to beautifully warp and distort the fabric of space-time, displaying the results of a series of large screens.

from The Leonardo Gallery: “Another Time, Another Space (1993, 1999) consists of four video cameras capturing live video images of visitors; these images are then manipulated in eight different ways by eight computers. For example, the images may be manipulated through the scanning of each line in a given number of video frames and altering the time reference, creating time-lapse delays, slow-motion effects and time compression, or through scanning individual horizontal pixel lines within frame stacks and combining these as output.

All of these processes could, theoretically, be achieved using traditional film-editing techniques, but not in real time. Another Time, Another Space exploits the possibilities afforded by computer-manipulated real-time video technology. This live sculpting generates strange and beautiful distortions of time and spatial dimensions displayed upon a rig of eight viewing monitors.”

There seems huge parallels between this work and my initial concept for an installation which explores digital decay. This project could prove seminal in the progression of my thesis!

Looking into how I can ‘digitally decay’ video, I came across some Processing scripts which produce this ‘slit-scanning’ effect. 

The scripts work on both a real-time feed from a webcam and on a pre-recorded Quicktime movie. Below are some stills from my webcam, going to look into running this script on a movie file tho…

[click for the full Flickr set]

There are some great pieces of image based artwork on Flong. Im straying a bit off my topic here but Andrew Davidhazy is worth a look. His articles on strip photography and slit-scanning are incredibly interesting.

Bryan Mumford works with ‘Streak Photography’ which you may recognize, I think it ws on a T-Mobile advert recently or something… 

Eddie Elliott seems one of the first to look into slit-scanning techniques with digital video. “As early as 1992, he describes a variety of both utilitarian and playful uses of digital slit-scans, which he called “Video Streamers”. Elliott principally used Streamers as part of a larger visual interface system for editing and manipulating video; later, however, he developed an educational/artistic exhibit (shown at the San Francisco Exploratorium) which computed Streamers from live participant video. Elliott also created playful transformations of Streamers, such as the folding paper box template shown above. Elliott’s work is extensively documented in his 1994 PhD Thesis, which he produced in the Interactive Cinema Group of the MIT Media Laboratory” [Flong.com]