Bridge Over Troubled Water

Bridge Over Troubled Water is a collaboration between Yoko Takashima and myself.

The project is an generative video piece, exhibited as an interactive installation. The video is a live morphing of many faces simultaneously singing the song “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Simon And Garfunkel.

One of millions of possible generated versions

A projector displays the video against a wall of the space. When a person enters the empty room, there is silence. As you approach the video projection you begin to hear the voices of the people shown. The faces are blending into one another, and the volume of their voices changes along with how visible they are in the mix.

This project is a generative art piece. As it plays it creates itself anew, each rendition is a different combination of faces and voices. The result is an ever changing choir, with video imagery that varies from the beautiful to the grotesque.

We captured 37 amateur singers singing “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” We used a green screen behind singers during filming, allowing us to add a video background in the post production. The captured videos were then synced together so the timing was identical between clips. I created a piece of software using Cycling 74’s Max, which is where the mixing and generation of the final work happens.

Each time a loop of the song begins, 8 clips are randomly chosen from the 37 available. A bit of JavaScript decides how visible each of the 8 videos will be. The images are combined using slab processing. This is very computationally intense, so a powerful computer is needed.

An Xbox Kinect is the hardware we used to add the interactive component of the piece. The Kinect’s depth camera captures viewer distance from the projection wall. The distance of the viewer from the projected image is captured and results in the audio output levels.

Bridge Over Troubled Water was first exhibited in 2015 at The University of Victoria’s UVic’s Legacy Gallery in Victoria, BC. In 2016 it was exhibited at the Chapel Gallery in North Battleford, Saskatchewan.

A big thank you to Dodd’s Eye Media for documenting our opening at Legacy Gallery!

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Generative video still showing multiple faces layered on top of each other, the background is a blue watery image with light beams.
A glass door at an art exhibit showing the show title and artist names "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and "Yoko Takashima with Ruby Arnold". A writeup about the show appears below in small text.
A darkened room at the UVic Legacy Gallery with a projected image on the far wall, the image shows the mechanics of the generative video project Bridge Over Troubled Water by Yoko Takashima and Ruby Arnold
Generative video still showing multiple faces layered on top of each other, the background is abstracted pale pink.
Generative video still showing multiple faces layered on top of each other, the background is greyscale and shows beams of light descending from above.
Artist Ruby Arnold operating a film camera in a room with lights and computers.
Artist Yoko Takashima stands on a beach overlooking the ocean, operating a camera on a tripod.
A dark room with audience silhouettes and a projected image showing the artwork Bridge Over Troubled Water by Yoko Takashima and Ruby Arnold
Generative video still showing multiple faces layered on top of each other, the background is a grey image of the ocean and a clouded sky.