Along the same lines of glen’s experiments, I wanted to see what etching video frames in acrylic would look/feel like.
I wanted the effect to mimic Dorothy Hodgkin’s electron density contours.
You’d have a block of acrylic frames to represent your movie.
They’re not as evocative as the brain model or Hodgkin’s contours, I think - perhaps because the frames are rectangular in shape, and because the frames don’t have any continuity in the image. You can’t really see the shape of the whole.
I also tried using light to help see the different layers: tiny success, but not useful enough.
This was an interesting experiment, but I wonder what to do next with it. In this image, the video slices kind of have a wavy topography:
Maybe the waves could represent something that gives more form to the video. Some kind of notion of sound? Importance?
I wanted the effect to mimic Dorothy Hodgkin’s electron density contours.
You’d have a block of acrylic frames to represent your movie.
Then you could scrub back and forth by touching the frames.
You could take a frame out and put it on a board to see discussions, organize and group ideas
And you can put different frames together to remix/create compilations of video.
I also tried using light to help see the different layers: tiny success, but not useful enough.
To iterate on the design, I wrote ‘fake’ scene titles in whiteboard marker, and attached magnets to the frames, so they’d click together, and that you could stick them to the whiteboards.
There’s an interesting quality to the text fading when you stack the layers on top of each other - blur representing how far away the scene is in time.
There’s an interesting quality to the text fading when you stack the layers on top of each other - blur representing how far away the scene is in time.
I then drew on the contours of the etching with permanent marker. This seemed to be the most interesting way to present the frame. 
p.s. I had a dream that I sent an e-mail to dynamic that was all text, and everyone was scoffing that it wasn’t more visual.
On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 4:02 PM, Glen Chiacchieri wrote:
After reading The Hand by Frank Wilson (and thinking about Bret's rant), I began to wonder what dynamic material would feel like. What other things are dynamic?Water is dynamic. You can splash, push, and pull it......and it can splash, push, and pull you:Animals are also dynamic. You can interact with them......but they have a will of their own:Video is a moving, living thing:
Robert and others have tried to flatten it so we can experience something that would be impossible while it was still dynamic:
I was trying to imagine what holding a video would feel like. The first thing I thought of was this:But then I wondered what a video grid would feel like. Using the laser cutter, I engraved a piece of particleboard with our favorite test video:The intended interaction is to run your finger along the groove, playing the video. I don't know if I'll ever get around to that, but it's nice to feel something in the meantime, even if it is kind of nasty particleboard.
