Video Feedback Fractal Genesis

Ordinary video feedback is created when a video camera is trained on a monitor that displays the camera’s live video image. The relative position and orientation of the monitor’s image within the cameras field of view represents a translation of scale, rotation, and position. Each time the image recirculates, the translation is reiterated.

In order to create fractals, the cameras image needs to be multiplied and recombined so that the images may overlap freely. My standard technique is to place a monitor behind windowglass so it directly faces the camera. The glass is set at a 45 degree angle to the camera and reflects the image of a second monitor at a right angle to the first, so that the reflected image appears superimposed over the direct image. The combined image is then recieved by the camera and the signal reiteratively sent out for another translation.

The easy but more expensive way to achieve this effect is to overlap the images of two or more video projectors. Projected images can be fun because one can introduce themselves into the feedback by standing in front of the screen.

(C) 1997 by Peter Henry King