Volume Displacement

procedural / image based

For 'Volume Displacement' an input picture or video is projected onto a volume, modifying properties such as density, color or voxel position. The naturalist information photography provides helps to achieve an analog and haptic feel to the newly created form.

The resulting images can retain their connection to the image fed, or deviate far beyond any recognizability. Although definitely art-directable, this is an explorative and slow process. 

I first developed Volume Displacement as an approach for the Safdie Brothers' 2019 movie 'Uncut Gems', and have recently decided to explore the technique and its potentials further.

The greater the difference between projection -and viewing angle, the stronger the distortion.

Volume Displacement study on existing photography...

...And on moving image

The examples above use close-up footage of natural processes (a canary wrasse 'breathing', and the neutralization reaction between hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide) to alter density, displacement and absorption color of sets of spherical volumes, birthing them into something new entirely.

The videos below are work in progress shots for a fashion film. Here, footage of the talent alongside environmental recordings are used to create an opening sequence that - while in stark contrast to the remaining piece - retains an immediately recognizable connection to it.

Organic/Abstract

simulation / procedural shading

Organic/Abstract is an exploration of the uncanny. The gray area between what's familiar and what is alien, and the uneasy intrigue it provokes. 

Fur can be reminiscent of animals, plants, mold - but the association is always one with a living being. 

A quick detour testing "Runway"s generative image to video with guiding text prompts

A more conceptual approach is the use of motion information - in this case the particle vectors of a billowy cloud of smoke - to create hair-like geometry. [theoretically all this is also possibly without the christmas-lighting]

Eye Candy

Motion Study / Simulation

A work-in-progress abstract short film - currently schizophrenically produced in both color and black&white

Nonlinear atomized motion as a vague description of emotion. Constrained to a sometimes visible, sometimes hidden cloth, the pieces are dragged with the flow of air as a whole body while retaining their individual relations. This notion of predictable chaos is reinforced by a soundscape of water and gravel at perpetual play.

Motion In Space

concept / video to geometry

Traditionally a video is displayed as a sequence of still images, one after another, at circa 25 images every second.

This series explores the deconstruction of that approach. Rather than offset in time, all frames are displayed simultaneously, but with offset in space.

The motion input thereby creates its own space and can be viewed as a whole, all at once.

moving through a solid object

concept 

Only a single proof of concept, this exploration attempts a visual move through a solid, transparent object like impure glass. [Originally developed for Uncut Gems]