Artistic and Educational "Street" View

Are you in or around Washington, D.C.?  Will you be there anytime soon? If it’s before June 2, get yourself to the West Building of the National Galley of Art for a peek at James Nares’s Street. It’s on the ground floor, on the west side, right next to the Kaufman furniture galleries.

Nares used a Vision Research Phantom Flex high-speed HD camera and an Angenieux Optimo lens shooting from a car moving at high speed through Manhattan streets. Then he slowed the sequences, added music, and created the art work. The results are exceptional from both artistic and techno-educational points of view.

From an artistic point of view, the piece explores conceptions of reality. Sometimes the people on the street appear to be actors in some special-effects commercial rather than real people doing real things. Lights, signs, and LCD screens flash on and off — as they actually do in real life, but too fast for us to notice. There’s a review in The New York Times here from an earlier exhibit: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/nyregion/in-james-naress-street-taming-the-galloping-city.html

From a techno-educational point of view, notice how crystal clear the material in focus is, even though the car was speeding by. Even in “4k” and “8k” ultra-high-definition demonstrations, you’ve probably never seen moving images this clear. Watch as signs move across the screen, even their fine print easily readable. If you’ve been wondering about the effects of higher spatial resolution vs. higher temporal resolution, this is must-see material.

If you can’t get to the National Gallery of Art, here’s a sample from the artist’s web site: http://www.jamesnares.com/index.cfm/film-video/street/.

Watch for a showing at a museum near you.