This work consists of a database of up to 200 "film noirs" spanning the decades of 1930-65. Depending on context the piece has flexible screening times ranging from 30min to an unlimited cycling of days, weeks or months. The system reads a film randomly from the database and extracts only the color black from the image in real time and presents it in inverse visibility against a letterboxed tableau. The outlines and shapes of the black areas of the image are tracked and trailed, blurred and processed over time, resulting in a languid and almost luxuriant re-telling of the film(s) rendered in an ink black and grey scale image which oscilllates between silken abstraction and representation.

This film has two states in which it can be shown. The first is that the piece is scored live. This can, depending on circumstances, be by TIP (this is process), an ensemble consisting of myself and Ian Ilavsky (constellation records, sofa, a silver mt.zion, re; ++) and eric craven (hanged up, a silver mt. zion, tony conrad, patti smith, tom verlaine ++). In another context it can also be more of a solo live work, incorporating the TIP ethos and sample bank while still being able to function in a stripped down fashion (laptop only, no live instrumentation).The projection in this instance is at a cinematic scale and the piece can run approx. 30 minutes, an average performance length screening - however this can be shorter or longer as need be. In this instance the source film being processed is either a single movie chosen specifically for the screening or a custom edit of several films.
The second option is that it is presented with an accompanying soundtrack, which is amenable to screenings in varying scales from LCD screens to large projections including cinemas and building facades and is independent of the live performance. This iteration can run for any length of time.

credits: Elie Zananiri code (built using openframeworks)