Several more video/sound are pieces nearing completion. Jennida has several bits of footage that she shot around town of fences, walls and the river that she has been editing and I have endeavored to produce complementary tones either to accentuate or guide these visuals. Mostly I feel like I am playing until I hit that moment when something sounds “just right” and then it becomes a little bit more like work. These are also good moments to relish. There is a cathartic moment when everything turns to shit and then rebounds. I think Jennida is having more of these moments than I as she has been having more software problems along the way. We need a grant to fund our equipment needs. Our Pilottone project has similar problems as on one hand we need a certain amount of tech to conceive and prepare material, but also to perform and execute the final product. Secondary but still related, how do you store it all? We can’t always borrow or rent, but we cannot afford to buy and house it all. It is fair to say that the average video and sound artist has no less than $10,000 dollars wrapped up in something as small as a laptop at anyone time. Go to the Apple store and start by putting the top level laptop into your cart and then proceed to load whatever video, photo, data, sound programs you feel you might need and then start looking at to facilitate it all. It is ridiculous! But so fun!
Friday, December 17, 2010
12/17/2010
Several more video/sound are pieces nearing completion. Jennida has several bits of footage that she shot around town of fences, walls and the river that she has been editing and I have endeavored to produce complementary tones either to accentuate or guide these visuals. Mostly I feel like I am playing until I hit that moment when something sounds “just right” and then it becomes a little bit more like work. These are also good moments to relish. There is a cathartic moment when everything turns to shit and then rebounds. I think Jennida is having more of these moments than I as she has been having more software problems along the way. We need a grant to fund our equipment needs. Our Pilottone project has similar problems as on one hand we need a certain amount of tech to conceive and prepare material, but also to perform and execute the final product. Secondary but still related, how do you store it all? We can’t always borrow or rent, but we cannot afford to buy and house it all. It is fair to say that the average video and sound artist has no less than $10,000 dollars wrapped up in something as small as a laptop at anyone time. Go to the Apple store and start by putting the top level laptop into your cart and then proceed to load whatever video, photo, data, sound programs you feel you might need and then start looking at to facilitate it all. It is ridiculous! But so fun!
Thursday, December 16, 2010
12/16/2010
WaterfallsaffectTrack1 by Judasprime
I am really glad to have finally dusted off the audio equipment.Having them within arms reach at any second has proven quite pleasurable as well as productive. I finally taught myself how to record loops form external sources on the fly, which will enable me to make much more use of my iphone in performances. I’ve been cherry picking audio app recommendation from Michael’s post on Facebook and Instagram. Anything that is free and once and a while something that is cost effective and cheap are fair game. I am a big fan of audio for the rest of us. I have always been a low-grade noise artist in the sense that I am unable to keep time and really hate practicing- but I love playing. I think everyone should play more and forget about needing to know how to perform with an instrument to an exact rule of thumb. I do enjoy the idea of know the rules before you break them, however if you are not of that culture then those “rules” do not apply as it might normally. I do not attempt to perform classically motivated music. I am familiar with them, but I am equally in not more drawn to the slow spiral into entropy. I enjoy the point where all chaos lets loose and everything looses its form. And its also fun to bring it back out but only in the service of giving the ear some rest and time to indulge in the air between loudness and tonality. Am I talking out of my ass again? Yes, because I am not a music student and do not pretend to be, but I enjoy having my eardrums tickled by something new.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
12/15/2010
I’ve been spending a lot of time on Lynda.com over the past week or so. I’ve been giving myself a sort of grand overview of the web. I need to deal with some website issues soon and I am not looking forward to it. Simply put I am going to need to redo my sites. It’s been a year and I haven’t touched them at all, mostly out of fear. I just haven’t had time to devote…hold it! I think it’s been two years since I changed hassanpitts.com…ouch! Well as it happens, I am one of these personalities who has a hard time relinquishing control over things that maybe I can do myself. Especially if it has anything aesthetic involved. Unfortunately for me most things have some sort of aesthetic involved with it and also a lot of other stuff that I am not familiar with. Another problem is that I don’t always feel like my work, photos, videos, etc look as good in templated forms as it seems like other people work looks. I am never satisfied with the final outcome and would much rather just avoid the whole subject rather than suffer through my own anal retentiveness. So in anticipation of having to make decisions between the ultimate customization of learning HTML and the ease and quickness of a blog I am trying to learn as much as possible to accommodate as many options that I can stand! I have always wanted to learn HTML, always wanted to be able to build websites, but never had the time. I don’t necessarily have the time now but I figure I do have the time to try and research as much as possible and produce as much as possible to make this money-sucking-hole-in-my-pocket worth every penny.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
12/14/2010
We have been looking at the Transmediale/CTM festival that will happen in Berlin the first week of February. Lots going on there in terms of art, Tech, Business, and Science, plus lots of dialog about open source and sharing. Open source, sharing, collaboration, remix culture and the future modality of business are huge topics on my radar right now. I don’t claim to have an immense understanding but they seem to be on my radar nonetheless. I’m not sure if I had noted this earlier, however someone had published his thoughts on augmented reality browsers having some development hurdles specifically because of a lack of sharing between companies. He pointed to the fact that there were only several key players in the development of AR Browsers and that only one seemed to have the best chance in progressing as it made its code available as open source allowing other developers to design apps and other technologies around this code. Over all this person saw landscape benefiting greatly if all the heads came together to lay down some common foundations and standards so that a greater progress could be made in this field. Similar sentiments have been echoed by web standards advocates that site the ability to be more productive in perfecting a product rather than coding against several very different browsers simply because some companies see proprietary as a more controllable field to play in.
Open source or not I am fairly excited to check it all out. Some of the people who are up for awards at this festival have had some pretty fun and interesting projects. Seppukoo.com is one, a second interesting idea is from the creators of Wikapedia Art:
“Wikipedia Art is a conceptual art work composed on Wikipedia. The ongoing composition and performance of Wikipedia Art is intended to point to the 'invisible authors and authorities' of Wikipedia, and by extension the Internet, as well as the site's extant criticisms: bias, consensus over credentials, reliability, accuracy and vandalism.”
You should wikipedia Wikipedia art.
There are other project up for awards, check them out here:
and
Internet eggheads should definitely check out the open-web-awards as one of the choices that YOU may vote for is a social media/microblog concept that uses “finger!” J
Monday, December 13, 2010
12/13/2010
I find that my thoughts are gravitating more and more towards Germany. Our stay here is almost at an end. To a point where it is pertinent to start considering travel plans, and preparing to be in another country. My brain is less likely to flip back and forth as much between trying to remember the little Czech I know. Unfortunately that means that more and more I am answering questions in German by default.
Questions loom over our heads as we begin to think ahead to what we shall be doing in Berlin. I am beginning to research QR codes. One avenue is to try and have a small show with QR codes as stand-ins for actual pieces. The QR placeholders are squarish barcodes that you might notice on a FedEx package or UPS perhaps. With the right reader the info from the QR can direct an Internet enabled device like a cell phone to a website with our work. Video can be cumbersome to show, as it is very much dependent on tech. It maybe possible to stage an event with no art on the walls!
The second thought is a work around for my locative ideas. Since I do not have a 3G enabled phone at this point I must rely soley on WiFI but others may not have this problem. The comprimise could possibly be similar to the dead man’s chest of thumb drives I’ve been reading about. QR stickers could be placed strategically where others may find them. The QR code itself may act like a sign to those who are familiar. The access point to an audio message that will only be accessible by happening upon the code itself. Of course if you know the code or have the Internet address a head of time then it defeats the purpose of the discovering the location, but that just means I have to keep that info a secret. My ideas and thoughts now are growing to include more of just what that audio will pertain to. I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the geography of Berlin as I have never been there, I do not have a sense of where things are and their spatial relationship in terra firma. I am also curious about the history of this building we will be housed in. Lots of questions, not to mention the unfinished ones I have already stated. I read in Der Spiegel that there is a 3D version of Berlin on Google Earth.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
12/12/2010
Today was the third day of Advent in the town square. Despite the fact that it seemed like it another day of kids- kids- kids we decided to attend one the less. One reason was to actually avail ourselves of the fine Czech cheese and meats of the Christmas market but also there is one certain truth in pursuing an art form; if you don’t think there is anything new to do with something, this is the time to try all of the crazy things you wouldn’t normally try. I don’t know if we tried anything truly crazy but we shot some photos, relaxed a little, and indulged in some of the fresh cut potato chips and market sausage. Despite the fact it was snowing it really wasn’t that cold, however either the snow kept folks away or the huge kid draw might have also been the culprit. Note to self: Large bag of potato chips should be consumed either before or after sausage, especially when it is snowing. The chips will be more enjoyable and not so soggy.
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