At Friday’s DGP party, a projector and a webcam was set up. The webcam was aimed at the party, and the projector was aimed at a large white wall, displaying the party. This is all good and cool, and if you aim the webcam so that it sees part of the projection, then you get fun feedback.
However, the clincher was that the projector displayed what happened on the webcam 2 minutes in the past. This led to the party itself becoming self-aware, where much of the discussion led to what had happened 2 minutes ago. Since the webcam was aimed to produce feedback, then this included what happened 4, 6, 8 minutes ago too.
As the party continued and my own personal inebriation increased, combined with my recent play-through of Braid, it occurred to me that the projection on the wall represented a barrier between this world and the world from 2 minutes ago. I wanted to cross this barrier, and be in both worlds at once.
Me taking a picture of myself taking a picture:
I created a sequence of movement of myself in front of the projector that lasted about 2 minutes, and kept repeating it and repeating it. The more I did it, the more I aligned with the past version of myself. As the party kept going on in parallel worlds, I was the only person in every world at once.
3 responses to “Stuck in Real Time”
This is really fucking cool. Could you interact with anybody while you were in the loop? I suppose not by definition, but did people get tricked into interacting with you?
Sadly, no. I sort of announced what I was about to start doing so I wouldn’t look insane. Mostly, people just watched. This was around 2 am.
I suppose you could set up a way of interacting, like high-fiving across time. That would be hella-awesome.
brilliant