Audio and Programming for The Silent Witnesses

While I was making the project, I always imagined that I would combined all the videos in one single movie file with edited audio, I played it as a background, and then I placed the real-time capturing webcam image in the reserved black block position of the movie file. Until all the videos are done, I realized, it's impossible to put them into one single file and still maintained its looping, since the videos have very different length of duration. So, the solution is, to write a program that loops all the videos and also capturing the webcam image at the same time, meanwhile, it controls the audio.


The program is made with Processing. I included JMCVideo library for reducing the load of my 2008 small MacBook and this library also allows me to control the audio.

The requirement of the audio is to play the sound of one video for 30 secs, introducing a silence break with random duration between 2 sec to 20 sec, then it plays the next video for 30 secs, and so on. This 30 secs of sound makes the audience look for the source video of the sound(zoom in to one video), and while the silence intervenes, the audience loses the focus of the source(zoom out). This method creates a chance of letting the audience switch his/her focus through the videos and being able to make the combination of various videos, so that the connections between videos have the chance to be made. Besides, the channels of the audio are adjusted according to the virtual locations relative to the installation room. With the sound, a virtual surrounding of rooms will be created.