PERM © Ulf Langheinrich
This piece, also entitled PERM, is the first abstract “iFilm” created for the EVE Interactive Cinema system designed by Jeffrey Shaw and has a running time of approximately six minutes. The basic aesthetic strategy in the image design is the exclusive use of a small number of treatments and processing techniques, some of which make use of randomly found low-resolution material. This material is used as samples or templates. They are looped, ground, filtered, dissolved, melted, virtually digested, and finally reconfigured into a layered structure, a network of homogenous and formally strict moving images. After such a process, very little is left of the original material. This is called synthesizing.
After a short initial phase everything moves in constantly drifting motion. Areas dissolve and fade into one another. Each area moves in various simultaneous layers, each with independent speeds.
In PERM, sound is synthesized and structured independently of the image and is only sometimes or in certain aspects in strict synchronisation with the image. This partial synchronicity may and should enhance the perception of distance between the virtual sonic environment in the visitor’s head (via head-phones) and the distant visual environment projected from the beamer’s spotlight. Here sound functions as an almost independent feature, but which nevertheless relates to the image and greatly influences the overall experience.
Using the relatively narrow window of the projector like a torch dramatically alters the visitor’s experience and is quite unlike the normal cinematic situation. Within PERM, the visitor is challenged to "(re)search and comprehend", rather than to simply "sit and enjoy" as in standard cinemas or even planetariums.
The main impression is an overall flow of various moving abstract streams, stripes and layers, with a subtle pulse, a rumble from the centre. The visitor is surrounded by a sonic and visual image which feels like a virtual landscape or some virtual audiovisual matter in a primary state : both rich and void, due to the lack of distinctive objects within all the constantly drifting and matter.
PERM was first presented at the Cinémas du futur exhibition at Lille 2004 – European Capital of Culture, from December 2003 to February 2004.
Image, sound and light composition: Ulf Langheinrich
Compositing and 3D assistance: Wolfgang Schwarzenbrunner, Tanja Tomic, Silvio Canazei
Sound assistance: Maximilian Joseph
Playback software and conversion to EVE Cinema: Adolf Matthias
Using the EVE interative cinema conceived by Jeffrey Shaw at ZKM
Software: Adolf Matthias, Torsten Ziegler and Torsten Belschner
Production: Epidemic Paris
Curator: Richard Castelli
Co-production: ZKM - Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe
