OFFFCAM is a collaboration between Walter Verdin, video artist and Yves Bernard, digital artist.
For Walter, the project was a reminder of PASVIDEO, a project by Nervoso (Frank Vranckx and Pieter Vereertbrugghen) during the famous FILMPARTIES organised by Dirk Lauwaert in the early eighties.
For Yves, it was the opportunity to experiment an original platform connected to internet where everyone could express oneself through personal acting.

OFFFCAM proposed a mini tv studio (intimate and without any technician) where one is given 6 seconds for recording a personal video: "Smile, Join, Look, Show", do anything, pure exhibitionism, narcissim, seduction games, funny acts or 'normal' presentation of oneself. For those visitors who had understood the web publishing mechanism of the installation ('Smile at the WWWWorld'), it offered a videobooth playing with their desire for exhibition, for projecting themselves in the public sphere of the Internet. For the others, it was a reminder that most personal actions, once committed, could have irrerversible consequences, especially in the digital world.
OFFFCAM captured video without sound, emphasizing expression through gestures and visual actions instead of spoken words.



Before Youtube, privacy regulations and consent
In 2004, smartphones and Youtube did not exist (it appears in 2005) offering the possibility for everyone to publish videos. In 2004, very few people were concerned about their personal data left on internet and their exploitation or about privacy and consent. In 2004, OFFFCAM raised these questions as we did not want to explain to the users that the recorded video would be published on internet and never be deleted, and of course we did not ask their consent. Once the user has decided to sit in the booth, the consequences of this act were irreversible (and we have never accepted to delete any video).

OFFFCAM was created at the occasion of the OFFF04 festival organised by Nadine.be and Walter Verdin in May 2004 as a small alternative festival during KunstenFestivaldesArts. OFFF04 was hosted at Matrix Art Project, an art center run by artist Bili Bidjocka located on the top floor of the industrial building where iMAL eventually moved in 2007, along the Canal in Molenbeek
Walter proposed to Yves to do something where visitors would be video recorded...

OFFFCAM was then shown in October 2004 at the festival Infiltrations Digitales (Vanderborgt/Dexia art center) organised by iMAL and funded by the City of Brussels (thanks to Frédérique Versaen), in 2005 at Beursschouwburg for BrxlBravo, in 2007 at iMAL for the opening exhibition Hybrid World of its new venue. During 2007 and 2008, OFFFCAM was semi-permanent installation at iMAL, active during all the events happening in the venue such as the famous Catclub parties

A custom version was developed for Citymined in 2010, as an interactive questionnaire with text and sound. The rewriting of the capture software was made in Max/MSP by Yacine Setbi.

OFFFCAM at festival "Infiltrations Digitales", Dexia art center, 2004. The video was shot during the concert evenings organized by Boups (Exobase).



Alexis Chazard showing himself entering the cabine, recording a video and getting out to see it on the kiosk computer, iMAL, 2007

The main page of OFFFCAM website proposes a selection among the 2.750 videos, a kind of 'best of' displayed as a row of 4 video icons.
To get 4 new random videos from this selection, just reload the page (Cmd-R or Ctrl-R or click 'Reload') and click an icon to see the video



Among the 'best of' selection : people doing funny things (this one or that one), weird things, belgian politicians ( Fadila Laanan, Henri Simons,...), TV crew,
artists and cultural workers (Pascal Baes, Pierre Bernard, Philippe Braem, Alexis Chazard, Franky DC, Sonia Dermience, Trudo Engels, Ariane Fradcourt, Erland Jacobsen, Tamara Lai, Annemie Maes, Patricia Martin, Selçuk Mutlu, Piotr Osuszkiewicz, Benoit Platéus, Claudia Radulescu, Yacine Setbi, Antoine Schmitt, Atau Tanaka, Dominique Van de Vorst, Frédérique Versaen, Pascale Viscardy, Nico Wierinckx, Hughes de Wurstemberge,...), Yves and Walter and maybe your friends or children.

Hardware
An iMac was used for the capture workstation, a model with a DV (firewire) input connected to a high quality Sony dvcam. Stable and correct lighting was achieved with an office light...


User interface
The capture workstation was completely automatic, it did not require any mouse, buttons or sensors as it was entirely based on a simple computer vision software to detect the presence of a visitor on the seat of the booth. Once he was installed and not moving, a countdown was displayed on the screen, and the capture of 6 seconds of video started without any visual feedback.



Watch this video shot by Alexis Chazard showing himself entering the cabine, recording a video and getting out to see it on the kiosk computer:


Software
Written in Macromedia Director with the 'TrackThemColors' xtra plugin developed by Daniel Rozin for computer vision and motion tracking. An asynchronous ftp script uploaded to the web server the captured videos as they were stored on the local disk of the computer.

Website
Developed in php, hosted on imal.org Unix server.
Web pages were designed for the usual small screen size and the small size of the videos was compatible with the average speed of consumer internet connexion in 2004.

Website restoration
The original design was preserved, it was updated to be usable on mobile devices, but a desktop computer should be preferred.
Quicktime videos were converted to mp4 videos, php code updated to php 8, html code was cleaned.

A work by Yves Bernard and Walter Verdin.
Software development, User Interface design, 2004 web restoration, 2024 web content and development : Yves Bernard
Visual identity, flyer design, slogans and video setup : Walter Verdin

Production: iMAL, Magic Media (for the old iMac) and Corban