The current version of ‘Tween’ takes each of these elements and randomly blends them in one frame in such a way that suggests the frame has been extracted from a transition between scenes in a video sequence. Although the images are stills the presentation of the blended images references time-based media as opposed to a frozen moment in time. As with other forms of pictorial narrative, in painting for example, this transition can be seen as a “pregnant moment”; one where it is possible to construct events on either side of the frame.
‘Tween’ is experimental in the sense that it seeks collaboration from artists and without their participation it does not exist. Although the work has been initiated by an individual ownership is shared between those who are contributing to it at any point in time. The output from the work may be used, redesigned or exhibited by any artist participating and it is hoped that individuals will experiment with the system in order to influence the output organically.
Since the primary purpose of this artefact is to generate content automatically for the purpose of a study into narrative, the benefit to the initiator of the work is the accumulation of visual data that provides a basis for an evaluation of one collaborative approach to generative narrative. Inevitably the results from this study will enable the development of new artefacts which will again be made publicly available to artists and researchers on the web in time.
Currently there are three links above in addition to the “Introduction” page. “View-Tween” takes you to a webpage that demonstrates the output on screen from the artefact; “Description” explains the design, input/output and exhibition possibilities made available by the system; “Participate” provides a form to artists for registering and uploading the images they would like to include in the database; finally, a link entitled “Credit” will be activated when artists begin to upload their images and this will provide a list of artists currently contributing to the database. At present the database has been seeded with images so that it can be viewed in advance of artist uploads.
Although the site has been tested across the main browsers on Windows and OSX if you do experience any errors using the site I would be grateful if you could email me a note.
Paul Green
September 2008
Clicking the following link will initiate a dynamic transition. When the page has loaded use the 'Reload' button to generate a new transition.