Unfortunately, I didn’t have a great deal of time for research this week, which is somewhat surprising considering the continued lockdown preventing any extended periods of outside time. Anyway, here’s what I did manage.
Project progress
This week, I’ve been thinking more about my browser-based works, and how I can tie them into the hypnotising adjective. I think ultimately I may have to create some new works altogether, although I do have some ideas I haven’t started yet.
One idea in particular, inspired by Steve Reich’s phasing technique, could look like this:
Each square, when activated by pressing the “+”, contains a bouncing ball—likely continually bouncing, with no need for physics beyond a simple “arc” function (though, it would be interesting, yet somewhat less hypnotic, if each ball exhibited some degree of physics as in my Bounce project, with some external force agitating them). When each ball hits the bottom edge of the square, a tone plays. Controls pop up on mouseover, allowing the user to adjust the size and bounce speed, or remove the ball. Size of the ball relates to the played note. Horizontal positioning of each square dictates coarse phase, with possible additional popup controls to adjust “meta-phase” within each square. Other controls could be available, such as rotating each row left/right, overall meta-phase per row, duplicating rows etc.
As with my other browser-based works, the sounds would be simple tones, perhaps synthesised marimbas or other melodic percussion instruments. Visual feedback via blinking squares could occur whenever notes play.
Another idea I’ve been thinking about recently is a “feedback” piece, which is entirely based on user input, and acts as a kind of live looper. A loop time is set (possibly adjustable), and any mouse movements, clicks, and key presses entered by the user are captured in the loop. This would include visual feedback as well as individual sounds for each action, possibly with a “decay” so the loop never gets too overloaded. It would be a little tricky to implement, possibly with the need to quantise actions (both temporally and visually), but it could be an effectively hypnotic/mesmerising work, especially if I include some form of additional pattern-based processing, mirroring, etc, such as this kaleidoscope (draw on the grey canvas), or this patterned spiral.
Research
Vision
An interesting approach for a hypnotic browser-based work could be to exploit persistence of vision, or afterimages. I’d previously relied on instinct to create images designed to mess with viewer perception, for example in the following image, one of my album covers:
However, as I continue to research hypnotic experiences, particularly in the visual domain, it becomes more evident that I should look into the mechanics of why such images are so striking. Obviously, I don’t think I want to create images that will give people headaches, as the above example has potential to, but instead subtly make use of optical illusions as shown in a few examples from my presentation in week 2.
Initial research has been interesting, especially in regards to colour perception, and the illusion of colours “spreading” from a presented image. In particular, the following image (Shimojo, Kamitani & Nishida 2001) produced such an effect, where Fig.A is the stimulus image, and Fig.B shows the resulting afterimage variants:
The illusion of a filled-in object (in this case, the central “square” created from the red wedges), even subtly in the original stimulus image before the requirement to experience the afterimage, is something that I will definitely explore. In the context of a browser-based work, it would be even more interesting to use animated images based on concepts such as those illustrated in the example above in order to produce optical illusions. Shimojo, Kamitani and Nishida’s article cited above continues with investigations into two-frame animations, however those were not presented as actual animated images for viewing, and as such I’ll have to look elsewhere or conduct my own experiments in order to investigate the effects.
A potential dead-end is my attempted research into “actual” hypnosis; currently, the only writing I can find on it seems somewhat dated and close to pseudoscience / strange sexism, e.g. “The subjects were women of average
intelligence and of medium education… The patients all
suffered from neurotic disturbances of a hysterical nature.” (Horvai & Hoskovec 1967). I just couldn’t quite take it seriously after reading that passage. Regardless of the wording used, I think any attempt at actually hypnotising the viewer would not be the intention, and instead aim for a somewhat looser definition of hypnotic.
Sound
Sonically, I’m building a repertoire of musical and sound design devices I can employ in order to produce a hypnotic experience. One such device is achieving a kind of “barber pole” effect, but on a larger, temporal scale, rather than with frequency, as can be heard in the following Autechre track:
An analysis of this track, which I conducted myself many years ago, but confirmed after reading a thesis written about Autechre’s work, reveals that the track’s tempo slows down linearly, but doubles part-way through the measure, producing the illusion of constant slowdown (Mesker 2007 p. 51–52). As such, I think a similar technique could be employed in a segment of my Capitol Theatre work, perhaps in reverse, to give the illusion of constant speed acceleration. Coupled with corresponding lighting designs (perhaps slowing down in contrast to the audio), this could create a very interesting experience.
References
Shimojo, S, Kamitani, Y, Nishida, S 2001, ‘Afterimage of Perceptually Filled-in Surface’, Science, vol. 293, no. 5535, pp. 1677–1680.
Horvai, I & Hoskovec, J 1967, ‘Experimental Study of Hypnotic Visual Hallucinations’, in J Lassner (ed.), Hypnosis and Psychosomatic Medicine, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. pp. 151–156.
Mesker, A 2007, ‘Analysis and Recreation of Key Features in Selected Autechre Tracks from 1998–2005’, Masters thesis, Macquarie University, Sydney, <https://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/services/Download/mq:71099/SOURCE1>.