Overscan is a video artwork by Sosolimited that perpetually watches, deconstructs, and transforms a live television broadcast.
Installed above the bar at Firebrand Saints in Cambridge, the piece is composed of five television screens. The leftmost screen displays the live television – showing whatever channel it is set to – and the four screens on the right cycle through a series of transformations.
Custom software looks for patterns in the video, such as faces, and maintains a memory of what it has seen. The text of the closed caption feed is extracted and analyzed with language processing software. Certain words – including emotional language and selected topics – are highlighted and recorded.
Created, designed, and programmed by Sosolimited sosolimited.com
Commissioned by Gary Strack, Installed at Firebrand Saints firebrandsaints.com
Built with OpenFrameworks openframeworks.cc