"HDR" Performance Art on Your Street
In our photo blogs, there are some stunning examples of high dynamic range (HDR) photography, which creates a hyperreal image by combining different exposures. The idea is that the human eye is more sensitive to the range of light and dark than a camera, so by layering a range of exposures of the same scene, you capture more detail.
What if that technique were applied to other media?
I've written before about Darwin Chamber's multilayered ambient soundtracks, which compose a new reality from numerous short field recordings.
In "Street with a View," some Pittsburgh performance artists heard that Google Maps' Street View mobile was coming to town, and so they staged a spectacle for the car's 360° camera. As you trace the car's path along a one-way street, you see a parade, a marathon, and more.
One site describes the event as a prank, but after watching the behind-the-scenes video, I began to see it as more of a high dynamic range tour: These are sights you might have seen if you'd walked the neighborhood at the right times, and the joy on the participants' faces as they show off their home is charming. Sure, people do wacky things when they know they're on camera, but that's revealing as well.
As an editor and composer, I'm always striving to boil concepts down to their most exciting bits to achieve the maximum impact. "Street with a View" is a great reminder that sometimes the silly, human bits are the most memorable.
Here's the video:
(Thanks, Dan!)
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Creativity
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Digital is no longer the "under dog" of the marketing world, campaigns and strategies are now built around digital media with digital media becoming the centre piece of any activity,
so a digital agency really needs to work at that strategic level with their clients.
@Dan: Very good points. It's like seeing into another dimension, where you can explore time as well as space. Right now the time axis is under Google's control, but it will be fascinating to see a future Google Maps version in which the viewer can scroll through time as well as location. Think of the stories that could present — and the creepy surveillance applications.
I just love this piece -- the way these artists flash-mobbed the Google Maps 3D infrastructure into a frame on which they could layer their work, the weird way time and place hold hands as you move forward into, for example, a confetti shower, the joy of rotating around to see, as you say, their happy faces, the way it takes the age-old urge to make faces into the elevator camera to such a high place. Surveillance art rules! :-)
-Dan