Torpor Rules

I Can See the Future - Chris Zabriskie

Elliot, the creator of Spectrum Shift visualization software put this video together with pieces from several places. The tune is from the band lo-fi is sci-fi. The video was made using the Spectrum Shift visualizer for WMP and iTunes with a time lapse video of clouds. 

Once upon a time, personal computers had a small table they used to determine what colors were actually displayed. Digital images contained codes for the colors that were to be displayed, but these codes were only indexes into the palette table where the actual values for that color code were stored. Those values were sent to the DAC's (Digital to Analog Convertors) that translated those numbers into voltages that were sent down the wire to the display. Tweaking colors with that kind of arrangement was child's play, all you had to do was change the values in one, small, table, the palette table, and your whole world went psychedelic.

     That is when Elliot got started with this. Since then the hardware has evolved and there is no longer just one palette table. There might not even be a palette table at all anymore. So Elliot has had to get creative in order to get in the there and munge the video data stream as it is flowing to the display controller.

You can sometimes see similar effects in the movies, and it's relatively easy to do, easy that is if you have access to a zillion dollars worth of specialized video equipment and all the time in world to play with your 15 second video clip that will get cut to three seconds when it gets spliced into the movie.

With Elliot's Spectrum Shift you can try it now with a personnel computer for free.