The Plexiglas box contains a small HD camera and HD monitor that displays what the camera sees. This creates a video feedback loop.
You may have seen video feedback as wild spinning colors in '70s Hendrix videos. But when the feedback is tightly controlled, as with the Feedback Machine, it can be quite sophisticated and intricate, creating beautiful morphing organic shapes found in nature.
This amount of control comes from the camera's ability to move smoothly in relation to the monitor. The Operator sits in the chair and uses something much like a yoke on an airplane to very smoothly move the camera forward, backwards, and 360 degrees around its axis. Small changes in degrees of rotation and distance create amazing changes in the feedback image.
On this yoke are four control dials: Brightness, Contrast, Color saturation and Tint. These affect the monitor in the Plexiglas box and allow even more control over the created image.
The image being created on the monitor in the Plexiglas box is mirrored on the large HD monitor, which is what the Operator (and others in the room) will be viewing.
I say this creates a small "universe" because the world we live in is a complex feedback loop. All biological functions operate on a feedback loop and it is no wonder that the images created using video feedback are so organic looking.
Ecosystems, geological systems and social systems all operate on feedback loops, and they operate according to the inherent rules of that system. In the Feedback Machine, these rules, or laws of the universe, are the camera's angle, distance from the monitor and control dial positions.
But where does the image come FROM you might be thinking, and where does it actually exist? It comes from itself, and exists only because it exists.
Something worth pondering."
- Big Dave Wave (and it's totally copyright)
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