"Did you know it takes exactly 24 hours at 24fps to display each pixel on a High Definition Television screen?

Initially, an animation is created by translating an image of Nam June Paik's TV-Buddha with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. Achieved by breaking down the image so that each pixel of the original image creates one frame of the animation. The animation runs at the standard movie rate of 24 frames per second (fps), resulting in an animation that lasts exactly 24 hours.

A television displays this animation, and a webcam positioned directly opposite it records it at 24 FPS. A computer processes the data entering the camera and, after 24 hours, reconstructs it back into a 1920 x 1080 image. However, due to errors caused by ambient light and other environmental factors, the new image will not be a replica of the original. Subsequently, this new image is processed again to generate a new animation for the television screen. This cycle repeats for several days until the original image's features are erased or corrupted beyond recognition. The setup of the installation also involves a real-time display projected onto an adjacent wall showing the progress of this process. This projection also intermittently shows the initial seed image and all previous days' reconstructed images.

This project is a commentary on the limitations of AI / digital technology in capturing, preserving, and understanding the transient, complex nature of our reality. The algorithm would copy the image perfectly if run solely in a virtual space on the computer. What that highlights is that our reality and the virtual reality of the computer are fundamentally different spaces, and what applies in one reality does not necessarily apply to the other.

High-definition video 1920 x 1080 pixels.
The total number of pixels is 2073600.
2073600 pixels ÷ 24fps = 86400 seconds
86400 seconds = 24 hours


Credits:
Software: Martin Nadal
Seed image: Nam June Paik, »TV-Buddha« 1974