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The Prix Ars Electronica Archive is a collection enabling search and viewing of all the submissions since 1987. The award-winning projects are documented with catalogue texts and audio-visual media. All other submissions can be searched by title/artist and displayed with year, category in list form. Please cite the credits (artwork name, artist and photographer) and only use the materials if your article is related to Ars Electronica.
Displaced Dice
Thomas Zancker
Original: PR_1994_displaceddice_001_o.jpg | 3862 * 2705px | 7.6 MB
Original: Displaced Dice | 4429 * 3024px | 42.6 MB
Original: Displaced Dice | 4429 * 3024px | 42.6 MB
Original: Displaced Dice | 4429 * 3024px | 42.6 MB
Original: Displaced Dice | 4429 * 3024px | 42.6 MB
Original: Displaced Dice | 4429 * 3024px | 42.6 MB
Original: Displaced Dice | 4425 * 3017px | 42.9 MB
In the film 'Displaced Dice', a die without eyes appears in a rotating beam of light from a spotlight. What follows is unexpected: the film-image, showing the die in the light of the spotlight which is encircling it, re-forms itself, folding up into itself backwards at the same time. Rarely witnessed scenes develop in front of the eyes of the beholder, in which the lights protrude out of the picture as highs, and the picture itself becomes a landscape and a shape.
The two-dimensional projection has become three-dimensional. A new thing takes shape in film, in which it is no longer the portrayed die, but the film itself which becomes the depicted object as a wab function of its brightness values/ luminosity. This feedback, in which the previously calculated film itself becomes the raw material for a new instance, repeats itself twice, whereby the chaos seems to get ever wilder. In fact, there are neither random generators nor 'chaos formulae' in the calculation of the geometrical shapes. The self-representing complexity is exclusively a result of the emerging luminosity, of the rotating, changing lighting, and of the program used. The camera movement at the end of the film leads through this landscape and through the holes (eyes) appearing in the floor, back to the original motive, the next blind die.
Technical Background
HW: Hewlett-Packard HP-735 (Cluster of 6)
SW: mental ray, Version 1.8
The two-dimensional projection has become three-dimensional. A new thing takes shape in film, in which it is no longer the portrayed die, but the film itself which becomes the depicted object as a wab function of its brightness values/ luminosity. This feedback, in which the previously calculated film itself becomes the raw material for a new instance, repeats itself twice, whereby the chaos seems to get ever wilder. In fact, there are neither random generators nor 'chaos formulae' in the calculation of the geometrical shapes. The self-representing complexity is exclusively a result of the emerging luminosity, of the rotating, changing lighting, and of the program used. The camera movement at the end of the film leads through this landscape and through the holes (eyes) appearing in the floor, back to the original motive, the next blind die.
Technical Background
HW: Hewlett-Packard HP-735 (Cluster of 6)
SW: mental ray, Version 1.8
Thomas Zancker (DE), born 1956, studied liberal arts at the Hochschule für bildende Kunst in Hamburg under Prof. Sigmar Polke and Prof. Fritz Heubach and computer science at the Universität Hamburg under Professor Schefe and Professor Brunnstein. Since 1991 he has been working at the mental images company in Berlin.