project.init

Altératon — artistic and experimental device film / code / transformation

status

instrument .............. operational
test corpus ............. proven (Super 16, ~5000 frames)
delegated capture ....... upcoming (Super 8)
image ↔ sound loop ...... open work
exhibitable form ........ in progress

Research phase cleared: the instrument exists, it works, and it has been tested on real film material. What is missing is the corpus it was built to read.

overview

Altératon is a device founded on:

• delegation of the filmic gesture
• distributed capture
• real-time algorithmic re-reading

Inspired by Cinématon (Gérard Courant), the project proposes a reconfiguration of the relation between:

• capture
• author
• image processing

The constraint is displaced: in Courant’s work, the filmed subject is what follows a protocol. Here, it is the delegation of the gesture itself.

instrument

No editing or processing software is involved. The engine is written for the project and holds the whole chain.

playback

• streamed decoding of the digitized film
• parallel worker threads, constant video memory
• corpus traversable with no duration limit

Full transport: variable and signed speed, reverse, freeze, free positioning, in/out points, loop, ping-pong.

deformation

Thirty-four stackable transformations, applied in a fixed order:

• geometry — zoom, rotation, pan, kaleidoscope, mirror, tunnel, tiling, twist, fisheye
• distortion — wave, glitch, pixelate, scanlines, chromatic aberration, displacement, lens, shear
• colour — hue shift, invert, saturation, contrast, exposure, threshold, posterize, sepia, palette cycling
• finish — feedback, strobe, vignette, grain, bloom, fade

Each one neutral at rest, continuously dosable, calibrated one by one.

persistence

A high-precision frame buffer is fed back into the next frame — offset, flipped, attenuated.

→ trails, echoes, spirals, afterimages → the material dissolves into its own re-reading, sixty times per second

control

A score typed live (Orca), sent over OSC and MIDI.

• one character = one transformation
• the value that follows = its intensity (0 → z, base 36)
• commands stack and stay on

The same score simultaneously drives sixteen synths, a master FX chain and a sample bank written for the project (SuperCollider).

→ sound and image are not synchronized: they share one source → one keystroke, two outputs

hot rewriting

Shader recompiled while the film is running, GLSL errors displayed, uniforms exposed Shadertoy-style.

→ writing the code and playing the instrument are not two separate moments

capture — the instrument played, uncut

Here the grid runs transparently on top of its own render: the score and the result share the same frame. Every lane is labelled (#zoom#, #glitch#, #feedback#…). Nothing is pre-recorded.

Footage: Benjamin Sebbagh / Lothaire Charuel — Super 16 film.

Stack: C++ / OpenGL / GLSL / Dear ImGui / SuperCollider / Orca.

protocol

00 — test corpus (done)

Close to five thousand Super 16 frames, scanned on a professional scanner, filmed by Lothaire Charuel and Benjamin Sebbagh under the delegation protocol — no intervention on framing or subject.

→ test bench for the instrument, from scan to projection → delegated material resists the device instead of dissolving into decor

01 — delegation (upcoming)

A Super 8 camera is handed to a participant.

• no aesthetic constraint
• temporary operator
• uncontrolled gaze

Super 8 is the only format compatible with the protocol: a light camera passed from hand to hand, film whose development can be handled autonomously, an economy that makes a series possible.

02 — capture

The participant films freely:

• gestures
• contexts
• their own intentions

→ dissociation between capture and overall structure → provenance kept on record (who, in what context, for how long) → written authorization from every participant

03 — re-reading

Developed reels are digitized frame by frame, grain and defects preserved (scratches, jumps, fogging, burns).

→ accidents are not corrected: they are the material → the image leaves the photochemical domain for that of the signal → it is not processed, it is played

constraint

No editing or processing software is used.

→ transformation exclusively through code

This implies:

• no GUI
• no post-production tools
• direct access to data

Code becomes:

• a tool for analysis
• an instrument of transformation
• a medium of writing

The thirty-four transformations are not “filters”: they are the keys of a keyboard — stackable, dosable, something you learn to play.

research.axes

delegation

Redistribution of the gaze → fragmented authorship

alteration

The algorithm as operator:

• translation
• deformation
• reconfiguration

materiality

Film:

• grain
• instability
• materiality

Processing:

• discretization
• computation
• rewriting

code & number

It is not only the effect that counts, but the method that produces it.

• slow motion paced by the sequence of prime numbers
• repetitions set by recursive sequences
• image / sound polyrhythms drifting apart over time

→ editing is no longer dictated by taste but generated by number → a temporality that never “lands on the beat”

seriality

Accumulation of contributions

→ open archive → potentially infinite form

sound — state of play

what works: the shared score

One grid, two outputs. MIDI/OSC goes to SuperCollider for the sound — sixteen synths, a master FX chain (delay, chorus, chebyshev, crush, tremolo, vibrato, phaser, wah, reverb, stereo width), one-shot samples with transposition, speed, playback bounds and reverse — and to the engine for the image.

→ not by illustration, not by after-the-fact synchronization → by common origin

what remains to be written: the image ↔ sound loop

Super 8 never had an optical soundtrack (unlike 35 mm, whose lateral strip encodes sound as a light pattern). Altératon aims to invent one for it through code — both ends of the circle are still open:

Reading (image → sound). Pixels from each frame read as an audio signal. Luminance becomes amplitude, the scan path (raster, column, spiral, Hilbert curve) determines timbre. The film becomes its own score.

Inscription (sound → image). The inverse operation: an audio signal inscribed into the lateral strip of the image in variable area, in the manner of 35 mm optical soundtracks — McLaren (Pen Point Percussion, 1951), Fischinger (Tönende Ornamente, 1932), Sholpo (the Variophone).

The round-trip. The signal passes through the visual medium. Grain, compression and digitization artifacts become a physical filter on sound. Iterated, the process produces successive generations (gen_00, gen_01…) where the sound degrades like a photocopy of a photocopy — a principle akin to I Am Sitting in a Room (Lucier, 1969), except that here the sound travels through visual space.

Sound as control. Turning pitch, intensity and timbre into a full-fledged source of control over the image — continuous values, where the score today offers only thirty-six steps.

positioning

Intersection of:

• experimental cinema
• algorithmic art
• glitch
• delegation practices
• live coding
• graphical sound synthesis (McLaren, Fischinger, Oram)

Tensions:

• control / indetermination
• analog / digital
• individual / collective
• indexical fidelity / algorithmic betrayal

bank of viewpoints

By multiplying the reels handed to different hands, the project builds an archive of real, situated, irreducibly human gazes.

In an age of generated imagery, synthesized from aggregated data, with nobody behind the gaze:

→ here, not a single pixel is invented → everything comes from a gesture filmed on film, chemically inscribed → code deforms the material, it never fabricates the real

Building and preserving this bank is, in itself, a documentary act.

outputs

• video installation (continuous playback, never identical)
• open archive (interactive variant under study)
• serial projection
• live played session
• synthesized optical soundtrack (upcoming)

intention

Producing a cinema without a center.

• disseminated origin
• computational transformation
• ongoing process

Technically, no final file: the work only exists while it is being played. What is preserved is not an edit — it is the bank of gazes, and the instrument that knows how to read it.

The film becomes:

→ a structure → a flow → a system

navigation

statement of intent full project dossier (PDF, 15 pp., in French) devices & sessions

tags

#experimental-cinema #super8 #super16 #algorithmic-art #delegation #glitch #image-processing #creative-coding #live-coding #realtime #glsl #supercollider #protocol #series #media-archaeology