4ourX5ive

a trial run posting...

The initial impetus being that I wanted to incorporate my video work into my design site. I wanted a more creative approach than the standard one-video-at-a-time presentation. Part of the consideration was also the time factor. Video's take time and if someone's flipping(clicking) through several portfolios or doesn't have much time to watch, this could render the video(s) rather ineffective. So I came up with this grid of simultaneously looping videos, and that's where the work began... Everybody knows that videos take up a lot of bandwidth so it was equal amounts art and science to get 20 videos to play efficiently simultaneously.

For the geek-minded: the 20 vids weigh in at 2.34 MB; if you multiply that by 5 or 6, you'll end up with the size of your average YouTube music video... lean and mean for sure. Mean, as in meaning that is. Although initially unforeseen, after I first played it, I really liked the effect of a continual repetition that never repeats itself. The 20 loops are inherently repetetive, but since each loop is of a different length, when the images intersect at any given moment, the overall image is always different, potentially infinitely so (I'd need a mathematician to verify this).

While conceptually appealing on the one hand—not to discount the eye candy factor!—I could also see that playing 20 videos simultaneously may potentially be overwhelming, annoying even... voila the ENOUGH! button to clear the field with the (virtual)analog paintbrush...
I liked that you could obliterate a video with another video. There's a lot of untapped potential for digital video usage.

More geekness: Sounds were recorded, sequenced and implemented by me. Flash and as3 leave much to be desired when it comes to sound implementation... I learned the hard way (ideally I would have liked to have had the sound pause—rather than stop, and start from the beginning again—in the video section, but this proved impossible to do without glitches when working with looped sound). There's always those pesky browser issues too... one reason why I'm giving this a trial run here. Even to post this here I had to add some extra code to circumvent security issues, since the files reside on a different server than the one Blogger runs from... blah blah blah
Basically I did all the front end (design and visuals) and back end (buttons, navigation, controls; actionscripting—as3). If you want to know more, ask and I'll spill the beans. And rice. And sauce. And