"Lone Star Destroyers" by mikrosopht 2010

http://mikrosopht.godxiliary.com/LSD/

27 Audio Files & A Short Film - Freedom To The Galaxy

--------------------------

none's description : Glitch investigation of the Star Wars digital compressions.

pure phucking awesome

Well I don't know what mikrosopht's objective was when creating, but as the viewer here's some random things which churn in my mind when watching.  (I've e-mailed mikrosopht about the thread and my initial impressions, might be one of those creators who just creates)

Like 21-87 (Arthur Lipsett's film which was an inspiration of an young George Lucas) 'Lone Star Destroyers' can be classified as an experimental film.  Both films implemented a form of collage to inform a different story/message.

Where they differ is 'Lone Star Destroyers' might rely more on the creation process and how that reinterprets the final displayed image sequence.  As a fan of glitch and the methods behind them, seeing the implementation of a process and learning how to reproduce something which at first impression seems irrational, is part of the fun.  Having been to experimental and underground film festivals two past methods come to mind. Much of the phun is the doing, trying out playing things in the wrong way and seeing what comes of it.

A. Using an old player with newer codecs.  Have a recording of a presentation by a graphic artist guy where he took an (i think) MPEG2 (DVD) version of Tron and played it in an MPEG1 only video player.  Because the MPEG1 video player did not understand the regenerative process of the codec, the updated parts would continually show up and without having any complete overall image regenerate.  You end up with a fractured image.

B. Another method I learned from a guy at the NYUFF, was he was able to go into the raw video file and remove the keyframe from a sequence.  So all you end up with are the partial frame updates, and that leads to the slurring recomposition which is partially happening in 'Lone Star Destroyers'.  An pay on this would be to switch the keyframe from one sequence with the regenerative frames from another sequence and this could produce a lot of the slurring seen.

Another methodology which could have been used in this film is compression and recompression.  If you take a video and purposely apply high compression rates, then reprocess back to full resolution and back and forth, you can take advantage of artifacting to produce results which as the title implies, you might only get under the influence of mind altering substances.

So that's part of the story.  The other half is then why 'Star Wars'.  mikrosopht's obviously used the DVDs.  Maybe this was done out of ease and the need for a digital copy, but since the other material in the film allude to other less popular aspects of Star Wars lore (Radio Drama and Holiday Special) maybe mikrosopht shares this places disdain for the DVD presentation.  Or just an affection for the early years of the Star Wars.  The part of the Holiday Special which is used, Diahann Carroll's "This Moment Now" which used video feedback techniques to produce similarly hallucinogenic results, is a nice nod to the past but also works well as audio accompanyment.

Glitch culture spends most of it's time finding imperfections and instead of surpressing them, make them the focal point with results that often defy imagination and linear story telling.  But it can produce some very unique moments which will eventually get incorporated into traditional film making somehow.  For instance the sequence in 'Lone Star Destroyer' of Ben in the cantina (10:50) and his head keeps flipping up, could make for an interesting sequence in a Lynch film.  Also love the Leia 'eye blink' sequence. (12:40) which leaves you with ghosted silouhette as she's drugged by Vader.

So besides experimental films these techniques are used by VJ who create backdrops for DJs and other musical acts.  'Lone Star Destroyer' seems more of a in house production.  video masturbation in a sense. Another aspect of glitch is being able to do this on the fly and have continually evolving results.  Making a system which can infect itself but not to the point of termination.

Would have liked a little more variety in the audio interpretation, but that's a minor quibble.  The video techniques out excel the audio manipulations, which often seem like backdrop instead of part of the interaction.  Like towards the end there's a long passage of minimalist audio almost motor whirling sounds.  This reminds me of how when working on creating glitch, there's often long stretches of zero useful results, then you get these bursts of findings.  Also really like the R2 smudge where things bleed/blur into the shape of the x-wing. (29:15) 

Maybe because i'm really square and don't do drugs or alcohol, films like these are my only experiences with this type of imagery.  Yeah it's not for everyone, but with the amount of fan film culture SW has produced this is a rare (and great) example of an experimental view of this culture.  Plus with all the different LFL variation, preservations and fan edits it's just a nice respite from tradition.   I find it really neeto.

Musique concrète meets really bad early digital television reception. I could listen to it for ages but suffering from epilepsy I can only watch it in very short doses. There were some interesting effects (like when Yavin seems to be blowing red gas into space at one point).