Comments on: 3 Years 3 Minutes

3 Years 3 Minutes

killdevil — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 13:57:17 -0800

Every photograph this MeFi member has taken for the past three years, artfully set to music — over 11,000 images, each one there and gone in a flicker-flash. May provoke seizures in the susceptible. [via mefi projects]

By: null terminated

null terminated — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 13:59:44 -0800

Next week, 11,000 songs played together.

By: null terminated

null terminated — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 14:00:53 -0800

Or I should say, "That's a lot of pictures, but what's the point if they go by too fast to appreciate?"

By: Pontius Pilate

Pontius Pilate — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 14:15:56 -0800

Increasing the rate of the rotation of unremarkable images to produce an indistinguishable blur does not improve said images.

By: bashos_frog

bashos_frog — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 14:18:14 -0800

Am I looking at three years running in parallel? Seems strange to do it that way.

By: psmealey

psmealey — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 14:26:05 -0800

On a positive note, someone actually might be inspired by this to use the same approach, but create something a little more meaningful.

By: CynicalKnight

CynicalKnight — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 14:27:49 -0800

It made smiles.

By: rob511

rob511 — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 14:33:00 -0800

If Death comes a-knockin', he'll be ready.

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 14:39:45 -0800

Its' all a blur. I'm not able to make out anything that's going on -- Holy crap! Onion parsley peanut butter! What the fuck!

By: nylon

nylon — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 14:51:43 -0800

I have no idea why anyone would want to do this, and, after having watched it, I have no idea why anyone would want to watch it. Crazy.

By: Busithoth

Busithoth — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 14:53:00 -0800

There's not enough speed on the planet to make my brain wrap around this project.

By: ColdChef

ColdChef — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 14:56:47 -0800

Fuck the haters. This was cool. (It was really sweet as they all hit Halloween: B, then A, then C.)

By: brownpau

brownpau — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 15:03:29 -0800

That was the best thing I've seen all week. Execution was deceptively simple. Music was fun, too. Kudos, Felix.

By: shortfuse

shortfuse — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 15:10:35 -0800

Thanks for this, I enjoyed it too. The manic quality reminded me of Squarepusher's A Journey to Reedham off Big Loada (link to a page of links to actual mp3s). There's never been a video for that awesome song, but I imagine it would be something like this. Reading the about page for the project, it sounds like the idea for the movie came after the photos were taken? It would have been a diff kind of project, but it would have been interesting if the creator already had the movie in mind as the pictures were taken over the course of 3 years. I'm a big fan of split-screen media, and I wanted to see more designed interplay happening among the 3 subframes. For example, you might take certain pictures during the same day/week/month during all three years, in order to make a collage when the movie is made. It could be a widescreen image of an open space, or a color play on RGB, or you handing over an object to yourself from the leftmost subframe to the rightmost subframe (outstretched arm in the middle frame), and so on.

By: mazola

mazola — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 15:13:14 -0800

That's like how I watch TV.

By: crunchland

crunchland — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 15:13:54 -0800

I want those three years back.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 15:19:37 -0800

I thought it was an interesting way to repurpose photographs that are otherwise, yes, unremarkable. The "blur" of someone's life going was a novel way to approach it. Yeah, basically, it's a slideshow that doesn't go slow enough for you to appreciate any one photo -- so you're forced to experience it as a totality. I can definitely see this approach being used for something with a little deeper creativity, and definitely this is something I wish I had for myself (I have about 3½ photos from the same period ...)

By: substrate

substrate — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 15:21:04 -0800

I thought it was really cool.

By: Space Coyote

Space Coyote — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 15:29:38 -0800

I like the snatches of events like a basketball game wehre you see fleeting images, it's like a very quick overview of someone's memory. Very cool. And trying to force the format into something more contrived would actually be less interesting. It's the finding interesting sequences amidst the chaos that is much more compelling than something that someone might have meticulously crafted.

By: anthill

anthill — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 15:29:47 -0800

I thought the Hillbilly Montage to the tune of "dueling banjos" was better. More spam, more Dukes of hazzard, more toilets.

By: Phantomx

Phantomx — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 15:34:21 -0800

What I liked most about that was the effect from taking multiple pictures at a time trying to get the right shot so the camera moves a little bit. Throughout most of it you get these glimpses of a movie where the camera just moves left and right ever so briefly. It was enough to make your eye change focus and then get frustrated because by the time you look at it its gone. This is interesting to watch but I can't really say I enjoyed it or anything.

By: disgruntled

disgruntled — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 15:35:00 -0800

There's a movie titled Smoke with a character played by Harvey Keitel who has a photo album filled with photographs he's taken from the same spot on a street corner, at the same time every day. I thought that was cool.

By: AmbroseChapel

AmbroseChapel — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 15:40:16 -0800

I'm downloading it because my poor old iBook can't cope with a page containing a 27MB embedded file, it seems. I think it would be a dumb idea if you couldn't pause it, but as you can, it's interesting to glimpse something in the stream, stop and look at it.

By: TheGoldenOne

TheGoldenOne — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 15:40:32 -0800

11,000 in 3 years? The guy's an amateur. Try that many in 3 months... Maybe I should make a tri-yearly montage.

By: annieb

annieb — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 15:57:34 -0800

It made me smile. I liked it, though maybe a tad slower and a few hundred less pictures. I thought it was fun trying to pick things out as the pictures sped by.

By: snsranch

snsranch — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 16:00:08 -0800

I started watching with the speakers turned off- it sucked. When I turned the speakers on- it ruled! Nice job here.

By: kirkaracha

kirkaracha — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 16:11:52 -0800

I thought the Hillbilly Montage to the tune of "dueling banjos" was better. I was going to link to that, but the link in the MetaFilter thread was busted. I'm very happy you found it.

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 16:13:27 -0800

Yeah, the music totally made it. Cute baby y'all had this year, too.

By: Substrata

Substrata — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 16:14:12 -0800

great job utterly boring

By: drstein

drstein — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 16:28:12 -0800

Hey, finally, something fairly interesting on the boring ol' intarweb. I kind of liked it. :-)

By: delmoi

delmoi — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 16:49:13 -0800

I hate quicktime.

By: Guy Smiley

Guy Smiley — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 17:06:57 -0800

Wow. I don't know why, but I feel really...beautiful for some reason now.

By: mrgrimm

mrgrimm — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 17:14:40 -0800

I like how you can see the guy mature from year to year.

By: MetaMonkey

MetaMonkey — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 17:29:53 -0800

Cool. I very much enjoy flicker film. I had the exact same idea for the exact same reason, but never got round to doing it. Glad to see it done, but I would like to see it done in a single, full-screen window. Though I guess it would then be either three times a long, or three times as fast (eek). Those who enjoyed this may enjoy some of these flicker films, particularly this one.

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 18:21:41 -0800

that was great (despite having to install some itunes related software and reboot my computer three times). how much editing went into it? it seems like the order isn't exactly the same as the order the photos were taken - there's the occasional flashback. and does the rate change with the music or is that just an illusion?

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 18:22:41 -0800

oh and how much was taken with this in mind? seems like sometimes there were sequences that were planned to be shown as successive frames.

By: bumpkin

bumpkin — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 18:37:23 -0800

big ups. There's something incredibly poignant about it. What would my three years look like? The pictures are intentionally snap-shots, slices of life ... yeah, most of them are banal. That's what our lives look like. Great music, too.

By: fake

fake — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 21:31:49 -0800

Interesting. As an art project, I made something similar, and perhaps just a little more cohesive, as it was intended to be displayed this way. Time Lapse Camera 15mb .mov It's part of a traveling exhibition now, here's my artist statement: No Pictures, Please. Kodak DC-50, custom electronics, fabric. 2004. Surveillance cameras are ubiquitous fixtures, like light bulbs or faucets. Likewise, they are subject to about the same amount of attention. Strangely, many shops, malls, stores, and public areas prohibit photography, while photographing themselves. They create an interesting condition: a record of a publicly accessible space which is completely private and unavailable. To counter, question, and upset this imbalance, I created a camera which operates in a completely inverse way; it creates a record of both private and public space- wherever I am - and makes a public record, an unedited diary of where I've been and how I've spent my time. While somewhat hampered by practical consideration (the camera couldn't see well at night, and batteries had to be charged), the results and reactions were positive. To create the device, I acquired an old digital camera, a Kodak DC-50, and modified it to accept modern compact flash memory. The modification allowed the camera to take in excess of 1,200 photos on a single card. I created a simple timer circuit which depressed the shutter every two-and-a-half minutes. The end effect is a long stream of accountability, a record of where I was, and when. A body of approximately eight or nine hundred photos a day. I also sewed a sling and satchel for the camera, allowing it to easily be carried at waist level at all times. I wore the camera for about three months. The images available here are from the first week of its operation.

By: bigmusic

bigmusic — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 22:28:10 -0800

Reminds me of this music video by Fredo

By: bigmusic

bigmusic — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 22:28:25 -0800

Although Fredo's thing is better.

By: edlundart

edlundart — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 23:45:52 -0800

i think what i liked the most about this was that i found myself "time traveling" with just a slight movement of my eyes. i can't take in anything unless i choose to focus on one of the years. after watching one year for a while, i skip across to another year because otherwise i feel like i'm missing something. in fact, i constantly feel like i'm missing something. nevertheless, this ability to scan across years in an effortless way is an interesting contrast to how the creator has lived these three years fully. he did not have the power to 'skip', nor to so easily think of his life on a macro level. even with this project in existence, the creator is unable to see this work the way other people will see it, since he knows too much about each individual image. we constantly think of external things in broad strokes, but it's harder to see or comprehend our own lives that way.

By: dgaicun

dgaicun — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 08:29:03 -0800

Did anybody catch any nudie pics in there? That's the hope that kept me watchin'.

By: narebuc

narebuc — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 08:51:07 -0800

I can see this becoming a Madison Avenue type thing soon. I was almost expecting a "Life takes Visa" slogan at the end.....And, fake, amazing concept....but, sadly, I think, as people were saying, the music thing helps. And, why specifically a lower-resolution, older camera?

By: rafter

rafter — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 09:06:21 -0800

Here's one I made for my girlfriend this Valentine's day (I had given her a series of these spanning the past two years on DVD for Christmas). No editing whatsoever — it's remarkable how much your mind tries to make sense of the pictures (especially with regard to lining up with the music). I like Overshadowed's a lot, too.

By: dirtynumbangelboy

dirtynumbangelboy — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 09:37:06 -0800

I think this was just lovely. There's something very sweet about seeing someone's life like that, in all its banality and all its glory. Kudos. [This is good]

By: peacay

peacay — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 10:09:12 -0800

It took me a while. I was non-plussed and close to hitting 'off' in the first minute but it has a zen quality to it that develops over time. Reminded me of the Koyanisquatsi (?sp.) et al montage films. The trick for me is to sit back and try not to hyperconcentrate, attempting to take in as many 'screen caps' as possible but rather, it was more palatable when I let it sort of wash over me. I'm sure I saw some illegal behaviour in a couple of the years nonetheless! Good job as an art project but don't be giving it to your mother as a keepsake, she'll probably slap you and rightly so.

By: fake

fake — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 11:50:31 -0800

And, why specifically a lower-resolution, older camera? It was all I had to work with (I had a difficult enough time buying memory for it)... and it had some advantages- for example, it was easy to get it to work with compact flash and easy to interface with the old circuitry. Old means really small pictures so you can get thousands on a card. Old means you can disable the power management really easily. I'd put it to music if I didn't have such a specific intention. I think for my purposes it might make the piece more entertaining but it would distract from the original idea. In any case, it was a fun experiment, good results. Thanks for watching, and for your comments.

By: nthdegx

nthdegx — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 12:05:17 -0800

I agree with ColdChef. Good stuff.