Psychedelic Dancing as Exercise 03 – Video Feedback with Dan Zen

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Here is a mash of two mixes – psychedelic dancing as exercise to Inagadadavida by Iron Butterfly. The song (not the mash) is a 17 minutes and makes for a great work-out without a dull moment – try it at home! If you can dance to the whole song as I have done many times, then guaranteed you will improve your physic, your balance and control of your body – all without the monotony or difficulties of other exercises.

The first mix shows a controlled feedback where a video camera is pointed at television that shows its signal – the video camera is set to black and white and inverse so light is dark and dark is light. The triangles come from the corners of the television. Just a slight shake, sends quakes down to the infinite center. Moving closer to the TV effects differences in spoke smoothness.

The second mix is a view of infinity itself broken up as the edge of chaos is traversed. An awesome effect! Please note that the feedback video is a 15 year old VHS video played on the TV and video’d with my camera. So the quality certainly could be better…

Both these mixes make use of the fact that Zen Mix can use a previously made Zen Mix in place of a picture. So you can superimpose flv video on flv video – here is how:

1. Upload your videos to Vimeo.com or Blip.tv (not YouTube). Then open Zen Mix and paste the URL to the flv (it must have .flv on the end not .swf) into the flv field in Zen Mix. Zen Mix will not play without a graphic so just use http://www.danzen.com/graphics/s.gif – an invisible little graphic. Continue to set the size and position of the video by following Zen Mix instructions.

2. Save your Zen Mix and continue until it gives you the HTML code. Copy the HTML code into a text editor (for instance notepad) and copy the URL to the .swf file. It will be something like: http://www.zenmix.com/zenmix/mix.swf?danzen/psychefeedback01. Save this URL for the second part of the next step

3. Refresh Zen Mix, create a new Zen Mix and paste the URL to your second Vimeo flv file into the flv field. Then paste the URL from step 2 into the picture field.

4. Press continue to position and resize the videos and then continue again to set the blend effects. Save your file as the final mix.

5. Note that control of the first video will not work if the video controllers for both videos are in the same place.

All this sounds complicated but once you do it once or twice it only takes five minutes. Hope you enjoy the mash! Remember that you can make them too at http://www.zenmix.com!