Analysis of time based media

Analysis of time based media

‘Time based media’ refers to works of art which depend on technology and have duration as a dimension.

This was the quote/definition provided to me on the start this unit. It was taken from Tate Museum website and I went on to research about time based media. They have quite an extensive section on their work and part of it is devoted to time based media. I read through each section and found it widened my knowledge about time based media. The areas covered include:

• Time-based media art
• Time-based media conservation
• Video
• Film
• Slide-based works
• Colour display transparency light boxes
• Audio
• Computer technologies
• Performance and intangible works of art
• Interviews with artists
• Display
• Tate Time-Based Media department

I particularly focused on the media conversation as I could link this in with the work by Boltanski and particularly Borofskys Molecule Work as this was interpreted over a number of years at different sites throughout the world, including Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

The aim of a time-lapse movie is to compress a long event, like a flower growing, a painting being painted, or a game of chess, into a short video in which the action appears to transpire rapidly. Three things will determined how long your final video will be:

1. The duration of the event being captured
2. The amount of time between photos
3. The frame rate of the final video

It might take a flower 30 days to bloom, whereas a chess game might last only an hour. The interval between photos will depend on how much things change from one moment to the next. A flower might look no different at 1 p.m. than it did at noon, but after 24 hours will have changed slightly, so a good interval might be one day.

Frame rate" means how many pictures--frames--are shown every second. The higher your frame rate, the shorter your final movie will be. If you take one photo of the flower every day for 30 days, you'll have a total of 30 frames. If you show them at 30 frames per second, your movie will be only one second long.

In this unit we did time lapse photography in the form of a video (when we built cardboard city). Time-lapse photography is an interesting technique that records a scene or objects that has a slow state-of-change and turns it into a video that plays back in high speed. The easiest way to do it is to have your camera stationary on something/people/an activity.

I think watching a time lapse video is interesting and I found some good one on the internet on the following link.  www.time-lapsevideos.com

I think the time lapse part is really interesting because it captures a long moment in a bit size idea. At first I found the actual filming a bit boring because I was certain what the time lapse would look like because I had never done one. However when I saw the end result I was really pleased and in retrospect found that I have enjoyed it and learned some new things.