The B&L Cosmos is a long-term project aimed to create a special system of artistic visual production, which would enable artists to construct any complex still and motion pictures independently from common up-to-date technical video standards and restrictions. With the beginning of the digital era the word has started to suffer from a chaotic senseless visual overproduction, so instead of producing redundant repetitive images we can use already existing ones as 'ready made' visual elements to exploit the products of overproduction in creative artistic processes.
Bolek & Lolek Cosmos. Structure v.0.01
BOLEK & LOLEK COSMOS
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CONSTRUCTOR MANIFESTO❧
From Chaos to Cosmos
The whole sphere of visual production is a domain of an all-consuming ever-growing Chaos. It seems that there is no any more a single physical or mental object in this world left, which would not have already been depicted or visually represented in some form. We, Artists, are unwillingly involved in this chaotic process of endless reproduction of visual clones. We waste our time and creative energy constantly reproducing and duplicating these bits of the Visual Chaos.
We take in the ten million twenty third time the picture of a tropic sunrise, dewdrops in the morning, a chair and a table or traffic in the city; we scan in the ten thousand twenty first time Renaissance Venuses, baroque Cupids, impressionistic clouds and pop-art tin cans. Instead of all that we could directly use the already captured ones.
We could even go further. We could fission the very matter of an image and direct the liberated energy of emerged elementary visual particles to form a new visual substance. We could create the Cosmos of the Visual – our New Universe of static and dynamic Pictures.
So far the Chaos of the Visual is a raw matter to be formed, it contains all the constitutive elements of the cosmos to come, it contains already the cosmos in its potency.But like any Chaos it needs an Instance that will actualise this potency; it needs its Deus Constructor, its Demiurge that will turn the Chaos into the Cosmos.
So we, Artists, who by the right of vocation are consecrated to the very essence of demiurgic act, will become Dei Constructori of our New Visual Universe – the Bolek & Lolek Cosmos.
The Structure of the Bolek & Lolek Cosmos
The Cosmos is the Chaos that has been put into order. We, Artists-Constructors, offer the following order of transformation of the Visual Chaos into the B&L Cosmos.
The current state of the Chaos of the Visual needs first of all a study and a systematisation of its content. Here we can use the experience of our colleagues engineers and programmers who have already done the first steps towards organisation of the entire digitalised information chaos with the help of the global search engines and indexation and systematisation of the available data.
However we will concentrate our efforts on the Visual and start to collect dispersed visual information, and will organize it into the structured open source database. Everywhere we will look for the visual materials, analogue or digital: in archives and libraries, in public and private databases, in fine arts museums and galleries, in video stores and cinemas, on TV-channels and radio stations, in newspapers and magazines, in scientific laboratories and copy shops, in philatelist collections and family photo albums.
The Accumulator
At the initial stage we will use already existing Internet search engines. However, the logic of image search does not in the least overlap nowadays the logic of the Visual. To get the wanted image from the Internet is almost the same as to find in the middle of the Ocean a message in a bottle, which was once addressed to you.
Like Borges’ Library of Babylon it is an endless information labyrinth that contains everything, but where nothing can be found. We can never be sure, that we will be able to find the same information the next time when we will look for it, especially if we are looking for a particular visual stuff.
Therefore, together with our friends Scientists and Programmers we will work on the development of special B&L search system aimed exclusively at the visual information.
Our ever-growing Database will become a core of the Accumulator – the initial component of the B&L Cosmos. For the Accumulator we will develop special tools, which will process collected raw material in order to prepare it for the further transit from Chaos to Cosmos.
Our main task of this initial image processing is to extract the basic image elements through particular standardisation procedures. We will classify and arrange them into groups of elements to get them ready for the next level of our cosmic production.
The Constructor
The next essential component in the structure of the B&L Cosmos is the Constructor. The Constructor is the place where the groups of elements, initialised by the Accumulator, will be turned into the B&L Details and then used as building blocks for our new visual objects and compositions.
Formally the Constructor is a set of special tools and methods for the B&L image processing. These tools can be differentiated into four main types, where the following procedures will be provided: metamorphosis tools – fusion of two-dimensional visual elements into virtual-spatial time-based B&L Details; curvilinear transformation of the B&L Details; constructing tools – spatial jointing of details into objects; arranging details and objects into hierarchies within complex compositions; compositing tools – classical image processing, i.e., modification of certain visual parameters of both details and objects, like, for instance, the change of size, colour, position etc.; animation tools – tools for ‘traditional’ (key-frame based) and so called ‘behaviour’ animation; methods of inverted kinematics, lip-sync tools, character animation.
The Constructor will consist of several independent software modules, which can be flexibly connected to each other in different configurations, depending on particular tasks. Such an organisational principle of the Constructor and standardisation of its Program Interfaces will make the whole system open for updates and further developments. The Constructor is designed as a complex structure, which components can be any time modified and replaced. Anyone will be able to contribute into construction of the Constructor.
The Projector
The main distinguishing feature of video objects and compositions made by the Constructor will be their independency from the established visual formats and resolution standards. This independency will return us, Artists-Constructors, the initial freedom of artistic expression, when Artists still were not restricted to view the world as 3:4 or 16:9.
We will be able to organise and appropriate visually any room and any surface. Everything will become a scene for our B&L Cosmos Pictures: from QuickTime miniatures on displays of cell phones to video projections on skyscrapers facades, from video games to opera electronic scenography.
For that we will develop an accomplishing component in the structure of the B&L Cosmos – the Projector. The Projector will be a launching platform for the B&L video production. To be launched to the outer world, the B&L products first should be transferred from their virtual existence in the B&L Cosmos to the substance, which could be compatible with the ‘physics’ of outer world, i.e., with the restrictions of available video equipment.
The heart of the Projector will be a core engine, specially created to render the objects and compositions, which were assembled in the Constructor. The main task of the engine is to provide the Artists with the possibility of Real-Time rendering, what would open new horizons for interactivity in video and cinema.
Adaptation of our free B&L Pictures for strict compulsive limitations of the World of Machines requires innovations in software solutions and hardware implementations. We will concentrate our efforts on the three main directions. We will develop exporting modules to provide our outputs with the broad field of application. We will build up unique systems of video playback and projection. At this stage we will use the already existing equipment and combine the singular units into complex configurations of modules. For these standard- and resolution-independent systems we will need special software applications, which will be able to synchronise different uncoordinated hardware units.
The work on the Projector will be the final phase in our B&L cosmogonic process. After the differentiation of elementary visual particles in the Accumulator and their formation into cosmic objects by the Constructor, potential energy of our B&L Visual Substance in the Projector will be transformed into kinetic energy of B&L Cosmic Artefacts.
Artists-Constructors
The magnitude of our cosmic endeavour will demand a long-term intensive cooperative work of the whole army of activists-pioneers – artists, programmers and engineers. This collaborative work will lead to ultimate fusion of their still completely segregated activities. It will give a birth to a new type of creative personality – to the Artist-Constructor, who will unite the three crucial aspects of the up to date artistic doings, who will become an embodiment of the Creative Triad of our days.