Created by Henning Marxen, Crossvision is a series of video art sequences of recognisable yet disorienting sceneries that combine the popular slit-scan capturing technique with a specially designed camera slider. The video sequences are just as true or false as any conventional video would be. However, by rearranging the dimensional planes they no longer simulate the human sensory perception, instead they rearrange pixel data taken from a tracking shot where no visual information was added or lost in the process.

“Modern philosophy deems it impossible for man to ever achieve an objective grasp of reality. So, in today’s popular culture, TV and social media all focus lies on comparing the individual perceptions of shared experiences. Sometimes, however, a reminder is needed that even the impressions we can agree upon are deeply subjective and specific to the human race.” – Henning Marxen

Every single frame shows the complete duration of the shoot, from left to right, while the timeline represents a shift in perspective. The horizontal perspective distortion is completely nullified, while everything in motion, e.g. humans, animals and cars, is depicted in a width relative to its speed or duration of stay.

The project uses a self-built camera slider powered by an Arduino and a Pololu DC Motor shield. Camera Lumix LX 100 used in 50p mode for more horizontal resolution and the videos were rendered using a customised Processing script. The original script was written by Martin Dixon. It took about two days to render each video and the final resulting images were adjusted in Adobe Lightroom and then pieced together in Premiere Pro. Created at HfK Bremen.

Project Page | Henning Marxen

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