Gertrude by Christopher McDonald
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http://www.vanitaphonecompany.com/media/piksel08gertrudedocumentation.zip
Gertrude is a machine I built that uses stepper motors to move a tricolor RGB LED up, down, left and right (see attached file: gertatrest.jpg). With long exposure photography (sometimes as short as 10 seconds and sometimes as long as 20 minutes), these traces made by Gertrude form images ranging from complex and algorithmic to photographic and figural. I wrote all the software and it runs independently of a computer--on a circuit consisting of several digital potentiometers (for the tricolor LED), h-bridges (for the motors) and an Atmel Atmega8 microcontroller to run the software. Essentially, Gertrude is a 24-bit color printer where light takes the place of ink and a long exposure photograph takes the place of paper.
The photos are not edited at all--which is very important to me. One main aim of the project is to produce images that confuse the viewer's Digital Age sensibilities: the images look digitally manipulated but elements of the image challenge that assumption. For instance, the glow on the desk in "Christopher and Daniil Not Talking" (see attached file: gertrudechristopheranddaniilnottalking.jpg) gives a very real grain, depth and presence to the cube. Often, as in that photo, I leave Gertrude's frame (original wooden Gertrude, in this case) as a clue to the mechanical origins of the glowing lines. I've started using polaroid photos as in "Lauren Portrait" (see attached file: gertrudelaurenportraitpolaroidscan.jpg) to add to the digital manipulation dialogue. As singular material objects (instead of digital photographs which are reproducible, editable, etc.) they are necessarily unedited. In "Lauren Portrait", the image is hazy and old-fashioned, delicate colorful lines (produced by Gertrude) frame the subject's head and the subject is framed once again by Gertrude's frame (2'x2' polycarbonate Gertrude).
In the performances, I either distribute the photographs to the audience at the end or I use a program I wrote in Processing to simulate a long exposure photograph in realtime (see attached file: gertrudeselfportrait.mov). At Evolution Festival in Leeds this May, Gertrude performed as a choreographical accompaniment interacting with the Loud Objects' live noise set. In addition to watching Gertrude move, there was a digital projection fed by the "long exposure" Processing program. At an installation I did for the Bent Festival 2008, I set up a photo booth and visitors came and posed (often for more than 4 minutes while Gertrude moved the LED slowly behind them). At several New York shows I used a digital camera and printed multiple copies of the photos for people to take home with them. At some performances, I have Gertrude "sing" melodies while she draws by modulating the speed of the stepper motors (to hear what she can do melodically hear attached file: gertrudetwinkletwinkle.mp3).
I submit an audiovisual performance using Gertrude that bridges the subsections of procedural text and real code. As a machine, Gertrude exists as the intersection of software and material. I've used Gertrude to "remix" a selected text--allowing her memory limitations and the size of her char arrays to rearrange the text. The text overwrites itself and creates unpredictable recombinations [see attached file "oneday.jpg" for an example; a text of Nietzsche's Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life yielded this phrase]?. At the same time, the final products of a Gertrude performance--a long exposure photograph--is a document of a duration of lived time, unedited, unmanipulated but collapsed into a single moment where the lines she draws form complex images and text. This process provides a platform for considering issues particular to the role of time in our experience of the real and the codependence of time and being.
Tech:
Gnu C Compiler (AVR), Processing
hig-res image:
christopherdaniilnottalking.jpg
