EG  SERENE  Software

Download the software   |  Get source code in new window

EG Serene Software is freely available software by Barbara Lattanzi. It is based on the film, "Serene Velocity", by the artist Ernie Gehr (1970, U.S.A.).

EG Serene software is used for improvising the playback of digital video in real-time. The software adopts and "open sources" the structure of an important work in the history of experimental, "structuralist" film. The software uses the 1970 film as basis for a time-based reconstruction of your own selected digital videos in Quicktime movie format. Since you can make changes to the video playback dynamically (in real time), EG Serene software can be used as a video instrument for performance.

EG Serene software, as other related software by Lattanzi (HF Critical Mass and AMG Strain.), can be used to experiment with many types of Quicktime movies. These especially include any videos with extended shot durations such as unedited footage, "out-takes", home movies, porn videos, surveillance videos, tactical and activist videotapes, etc.

EG Serene software is based on the structure of the film "Serene Velocity", a structure which produced in Ernie Gehr's film a brilliant simulation of visceral and vertiginous movement out of a sequence of still frames (non-moving images). In contrast to "Serene Velocity", the EG Serene software uses both sounds and moving images that it finds in your selected Quicktime movie. What EG Serene software does borrow from the film "Serene Velocity" is that film's global time structure. EG Serene software enables interesting perceptual patterns to emerge out of the incremental alternation of your selected Quicktime movie between segments from its first half and its 2nd half.

For example, we can describe a division of your selected Quicktime movie, into time-segments of an arbitrary duration, as:

AB, CD, EF, GH, IJ, KL, MN

EG Serene software will play your Quicktime movie in a different order of time-segments, starting in the middle, then alternating between overlapping segments from the first half and second half of your movie:

GH, HI, FG, IJ, EF, JK, DE, KL, CD, LM, BC, MN, AB

At the "end" of the Quicktime movie, the sequence starts again. In addition, EG Serene software will allow you to change the duration of the time-segments while you are watching those segments, in real time. Any time you want, you can define a new "mid-point" in your movie by clicking a button gadget. This makes EG Serene software automatically adjust the video playback to the new sequence of time-segments almost instantly.

EG Serene software also has a slider gadget to slow down and speed up your video. And there are button gadgets to fade out the video or audio of your Quicktime movie. (Click those gadgets again to make the video reappear and to make the sound again audible.)

HOW DOES THIS SOFTWARE RELATE TO THE WORK OF ERNIE GEHR?

In Ernie Gehr's film "Serene Velocity" the image resonates in "sympathetic vibration" with the perceptions of the viewer. And this becomes the "game" and goal of the EG Serene software: to explore video playback for resonant frequencies by means of shuffling time segments.