The Troxler Effect
Audio/visual recording
Title of Work | The Troxler Effect |
---|---|
Type of Work | Audio/visual recording |
Creator/Contributor | Sparkes, Daryl |
Year | 2023 |
Place of Publication | Australia |
Web Address (URL) | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xgdvJLhpH3qd5mBmQwC4zlJecc_9eCEW/view?usp=share_link |
Description of Work | "The Troxler Effect' is a 10 minute experimental film. This film was created in 2023 on the first ever 16mm film camera - the hand-cranked 1923 Cine-Kodak Model A - as an experiment using the techniques of filmmaking from exactly 100 years ago, to celebrate the centenary of 16mm film. It reproduces the 1923 cinema-going experience including the soundtrack performed on a 1920s cinema organ and hand drawn title cards. Originating in the early 19th century, around the same time as the invention of the computer, the "Troxler Effect" argued that distortions in light and focus affected the brain’s visual cortex which could lead to horrific or mutated images appearing when a person looked at their own image under certain conditions. Applying this theory to the practice of filmmaking I have created an experimental drama which argues that Artificial Intelligence is creating The Troxler Effect in the 21st century. As Artificial Intelligence becomes more ubiquitous in filmmaking processes, especially in the creation or manipulation of human characters and their faces, I wanted to illustrate that filmmaking technology originated with actual people as actors but has evolved over the past hundred years into digitised binary code that computers can distort and rearrange. Computers are not sentient beings. They cannot conceive of nor understand what an actual human face looks like. They are only programmed to distribute pixels across a screen in a certain way. Machine learning algorithms can be trained to recognize and classify different objects in a scene. By using mathematical algorithms they analyse data for correlations and patterns, and use these patterns to make predictions about future state, such as in a moving image. This is exactly the method that the brain uses during the Troxler Effect, trying to constitute a human face based on patterns and correlations, albeit biologically instead of mathematically. But the outcome is the same. The story of the film is a woman is haunted by a series of doppelgangers after a mysterious mirrored box appears and disappears. The box represents the Troxler Effect. Although the main female character’s shots have not been altered or tampered with, each other woman doppelganger that appears has had their shots altered through an AI generator. This has distorted their original faces, creating the Troxler Effect for our lead character. The end scene is filmed using a 2023 iPhone 14 which becomes the next 100 year leap (1823 – 1923 – 2023) and where we are in technological evolution today. This is signified when the lead character places the mirror box on her head and she moves into the technological realm of Troxler – the inverse of the original universe. This is highlighted by her clothing moving from white to black, such as the other women are wearing, and her hair moving from black to blonde. It is a realm where the doppelgangers exist. At the end the film becomes a statement on both the advances and limits to technology as more and more we merge computer code with image reproduction. It heralds the next hundred years in filmmaking craft and technology and asks how much does our humanity change, the reflections of ourselves on film distorted and manipulated, often seamlessly so that the audience does not notice, or is just resigned to accept it. Through this process we create our own version of the Troxler Effect in films. |
Keywords | Troxler Effect Cine-Kodak 16mm |
Contains Sensitive Content | Does not contain sensitive content |
ANZSRC Field of Research 2020 | 360505. Screen media |
430306. Digital history | |
470102. Communication technology and digital media studies | |
Public Notes | File reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher/author. |
Byline Affiliations | School of Creative Arts |
https://research.usq.edu.au/item/z327v/the-troxler-effect
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