Calligraphic Video is a field of video computed as textured light that varies according to movement or gesture. Movement from cameras or other sensor data are treated “as palpably as water, smoke, or other continuous media to accommodate painterly gesture”.[Calligraphic video is computationally produced visual textures, or lighting with which a person can interact by moving a hand or the body to affect the color or motion of the visual pattern. This sort of bodily, painterly interaction leverages our pre-verbal intuition of physical materials that we learn from infancy. Experiments with calligraphic video also leverage advances in computational physics and GPU-based or parallel hardware processing, exploring impact of such advances for corporeal experience and the ways in which bodily relations are felt and understood.
The IL Y A project is an exemplary case study in calligraphic video. It presents a double-sided video installation that comes to life only when at least two people look at each other through its membrane. The project is an investigation into the material and architectural substrate of sociality.
