Overscan. Linking words, ideas and images
16/12/2011.
by Sosolimited. [Cambridge, MA] USA [VIDEO]
metalocus, INÉS LALUETA
metalocus, INÉS LALUETA
Overscan by SoSoLimited is a permanently installed TV remixing artwork at a bar at Firebrand Saints in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA (USA). Live television is fed into a PC running custom software, which analyzes/watches, re-processes/deconstructs, and mutates/transforms the video signal and text data coming from the broadcast, and then puts the result up across five televisions screens behind the bar. The leftmost screen displays live television - whatever channel the bar chooses - and the four screens on the right cycle through a series of transformations of the broadcast.
Custom software looks for patterns in the video, such as faces, and maintains a memory of what it has seen. The text of the closed caption feed is extracted and analyzed with language processing software. Certain words, such as emotional language and selected topics, are highlighted and recorded.
Setup: Regular HP desktop computer, nVidia graphics card, 2 x Matrox DualHeadToGo external DVI doublers, 5 x 40 ” Samsung LCD’s, C++, openFrameworks & a custom-hacked version of Theo Watson’s videoInput library to process Closed Caption data.
The piece was commissioned by Gary Strack, the chef and owner of Firebrand Saints. The entire application was programmed in OpenFrameworks.
