Continuization Loop

source: highlike

Work: In Continuization Loop, a single 35mm film loop is pulled up and down over more than 150 guiding wheels, creating a wall of film. The frames of this piece of film are only black or transparent. When the loop travels through the mechanism, the image of video static appears. While film as a medium normally makes images appear through projection in combination with the transport of celluloid through a projector, Continuization Loop omits the projection and makes the image appear by means of the transport only. The installation combines and imitates visual elements from three generations of visual media: the material aspect of film, the empty signal of video and the binary logic of digital. But at the same time the most important attributes of these media are absent: there is no construction of an illusory filmspace, there is no real video image and there are no computers involved.
Photographer: Tim Knapen
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source: werktank

Static/Continuization Loop are two works by Wim Janssen about the phenomenon of television static. The same recognizable and commonly known image of television static is being generated through two completely different techniques. Not the image itself, but the way it is reconstructed and materialised, is the most important part of the Statics-series.Television static is not just an abstract image, but also a figurative one. It is in fact an artifact of technology, a physical phenomenon and unwanted by-product. It is recognizable as what it is, static, but also has a certain iconic meaning.

Wim Janssen tries to imitate and materialize static by means of an apparently slow and inefficient process.

In Continuization Loop, a single 35mm film loop is pulled up and down over more than 150 guiding wheels, creating a wall of film. The frames of this piece of film are only black or transparent. When the loop travels through the mechanism, the image of video static appears.
While film as a medium normally makes images appear through projection in combination with the transport of celluloid through a projector, Continuization Loop omits the projection and makes the image appear by means of the transport only.

The installation combines and imitates visual elements from three generations of visual media: the material aspect of film, the empty signal of video and the binary logic of digital. But at the same time the most important attributes of these media are absent: there is no construction of an illusory filmspace, there is no real video image and there are no computers involved.
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source: mediaartdesign

clearCinema in the end is an affair of light and until only just recently, it was essentially an affair of film, if and only if you omit the stories, the emotions, the trends and the styles. And the filmmaker, Paul Sharits, who has devoted a part of his life to making films that flicker, would not deny this. The installation “Continuization Loop” by Wim Janssen, which is presented at the Cyberart exhibition at the OK Centrum, is an interminable loop of 35mm film where there are only black and white images or frames. From top to bottom, as from bottom to top, they scroll before our eyes one column over another while alternatively masking the powerful light that is an integral part of the work. The cinematographic installation, even though resolutely analogical, could easily contain a message encoded in binary language. But who would even want to decode it when we are simply captivated, literally hypnotised by the uninterrupted flow of images of shadows and light. Cinema is also an affair of scale so one steps back to only see noise in the image without being able to turn away.
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source: imal

Special Werktank
iMAL invites the artist collective “De Werktank” to talk about some of their projects. Among those, “Static” and “Continuization Loop” by Wim Janssen – who received a honorary mention in last September’s Ars Electronica festival – or “Heads”, Ief Spincemaille’s newest project. Finally, Kurt D’Haeseleer will present the brand new “WERKTANK” publication that illustrates the collective’s installations.

Static / Continuization Loop by Wim Janssen
“Static/Continuization Loop are two works by Wim Janssen about the phenomenon of television static. The same recognizable and commonly known image of television static is being generated through two completely different techniques. Not the image itself, but the way it is reconstructed and materialised, is the most important part of the Statics-series.”

Playing with polarising filters and 35mm film loops set in motion by a structure designed by the artist, Wim Janssen’s work explores the vision phenomenon with a very analogue approach, in a world soaked with high definition pictures. imal

Heads (work in progress) by Ief Spincemaille
Using a mini-camera fit on rotating arms, Ief Spincemaille recreates a 3D projection device without the use of a powerful computer. This system allows 5 spectators to view a 3D projection that accommodates to their movements.

As always in Ief Spincemaille’s work, low tech and its high tech potential collate in a set up that challenges the spectator’s view on himself and his environment.

About Werktank
The Werktank is a new organisation for media art, which focuses on the practical aspects of the artistic work, rather than the theoretical. The Werktank is a bastard child of the Filmfabriek and has mutated into a fully new lifeform. The core team consists of Kurt d’Haeseleer and Ief Spincemaille.

In our headquarters in a reconverted milk factory in Bierbeek, artists from different backgrounds are investigating how to transform glass into pixels or how to turn human heads into photo cameras . They are building 3D mountains from steel wire, try to look behind the horizon or are subtracting memories from subtitles.