Process

I began this project by trying to understand optical illusions, and how the brain processed them. I watched videos and read papers on how optical illusions worked. After feeling like I understood how the brain turned static images into movement in the mind, I went about trying to find suitable optical illusions from around the web to describe the connection between movement and statics. While looking at Youtube, I found a video of a "hypnotic" spiral that was supposed to "make your surroundings move in psychedelic ways" for up to five minutes, which was intriguing, but upon watching the video, I found that it was actually really boring. You stare at this video for something like three minutes, and nothing really changes but your eyes get more and more unfocused, and when the video ends, suddenly your eyes cannot process the lack of movement, and inserts movement into everything you look at, even if it's static. However, with viral things, it's important to hold the user's attention; I wanted to combine that sort of static-movement concept with some other concepts. 

Originally, I spliced the hypnosis video with other videos that represented static-movement ideas: a room tilting around a static rocking chair (instead of a rocking chair tilting in a static room), optical illusions that projected movement, but actually remained static. However, I thought this created too complex of a story and moved away from the static/dynamic comparison, so I then sliced the video with static images. The images I chose were from a shadow artist named Tim Noble, who creates piles of trash that turn into meaningful shadows on a wall. I thought this was a good complement to the static/dynamic idea; the shadows don't move, and neither does that trash, but somehow together they create a sort of anticipation that they will move. 

However, I received feedback that the video was too busy, with the huge swirly movements of the video mixed with the complex images of the shadow art; I was advised to put generic, everyday life pictures in instead, lessen the complexity of the video.