GoPro’s miniature action cameras are pretty good at capturing fast motion, with great rolling shutter control and the ability to record at fast frame rates, but there are some things they just can’t deal with. One of those things is being taped to a car’s tyre and flung around at 70 kilometres per hour.
From Vimeo user Ryan Fox, Sketch Three: Avant-Garde — made for Fox’s video course at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee — is a pretty simple concept. What happens when you ‘mount’ a GoPro on one of your car’s tyres with a bunch of duct tape and drive around the city?
Well, what happens is surprisingly close to an optical illusion. The camera stays surprisingly secure, but it only captures points of light — streetlights, neon signs, and so on — in a beautiful and vaguely kaleidoscopic effect. Watching the video from the start, when you have a point of reference and a horizon to look at, it’s not a pleasant feeling to see the camera being spun over and over at high speed.
It honestly took about three seconds after the wheel started turning for me to feel sick. (Epilepsy warning: there are a lot of flashing lights in this video.) [Vimeo]