Photo Dissolves

Andy Doro & Catherine Tai

This project involves the visual destruction or decay of digital images.

As the viewer approaches a framed photograph, the image will dissolve. The piece is about memory, decay, and older media forms, such as the daguerreotype, film photography. Unlike analog forms of media, digital media theoretically cannot decay.

The program takes an image and treats each pixel as an object. This allows for the modeling of some physical processes. The content of the image will have some relation to do with the physical modelling of its destruction. We are interested in the point at which a gradual process leads to unrecognizability.

We plan to model some of the following physical processes:

wind on sand or dust
frost
rust
burning
ink diffusing in water
condensation

Video examples:

Wind dissolve to the right.
disso1.mov - ~34.2 MB

Wind dissolve to the bottom.
disso2.mov - ~53.9 MB

Weighted drift.
disso3.mov - ~44.3 MB

Burn.
disso4.mov - ~9.72 MB

Frost.
disso5.mov - ~10.8 MB

Ink falling to left.
ink1.mov - ~6.25 MB

ink2.mov - ~4.00 MB

Ink falling to right.
ink3.mov - ~4.96 MB