|| 5/12/2008 || 12:25 pm || Comments Off || ||
Exhibit Fly-Through in Reverse Slow-Motion @ Artomatic 2008
Last night I took a 42 second fly-through of my Artomatic 2008 exhibit that I recorded on Friday afternoon and stretched & reversed the footage into a 3 minute and 30 second abstract animation. The video starts at the RECORD book, then pans & zooms into Freedom Plaza on Federal Triangle Quilt #4, pans across Nova et Accvratissima Totivs Terravm Oribis Tabvla [2008], zooms up close to Charlotte Spheres, and pans back over to Nova et Accvratissima Totivs Terravm Oribis Tabvla [2008] and ends.
Audio is from two tracks on disc one of Cold Krush Cuts by DJ Food & Coldcut (Ninja Tune 1997). It features a sermon I believe to be from Rev. Billy Graham about the Bug’s eye view versus the God’s eye view.
::::::::::Text of the sermon::::::::::
People who fly have a different view of the world than those who spend their lives on the ground. A very wise man once wrote a poem while he was flying, and he called this poem “The God’s Eye View,” and he said that this view was entirely different than the view he always had on the ground, which he called “The Bug’s Eye View.”
Out there, somewhere, in the air we fly through, exists an old Persian legend much like this poem about a bug who spent his entire life in the world’s most beautifully designed Persian rug. All the bug ever saw in his lifetime were his problems. They stood up all around him. He couldn’t see over the top of them, and he had to fight his way through these tufts of wool in the rug to find the crumbs that people had spilled on the rug. And the tragedy of the story of the bug in the rug was this: that he lived and he died in the world’s most beautifully designed rug, but he never once knew that he spent his life inside something which had a pattern. Even if he, this bug, had even once gotten above the rug so that he could have seen all of it, he would have discovered something – that the very things he called his problems were a part of the pattern.
Have you ever felt like that bug in the rug? That you are so surrounded by your problems that you can’t see any pattern to the world in which you live? Have you heard anybody say lately that the world is a total mess? That, my friends, is the Bug’s Eye View, and seeing only a little of the world, me might be inclined to think that this is true.
A better quality version of the video is viewable on Facebook.
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|| 5/5/2008 || 1:15 pm || Comments Off || ||
The Base Map Installation @ Artomatic
About a month ago when I was planning out my Artomatic exhibit I came up with the idea to do a time-lapse video as a means to promote & showcase my upcoming exhibit. My friend Brian Liu made a similar styled video and I thought it would be fun to make one that shows both the location of the exhibit and teases viewers into seeing the actual exhibit.
The process involved in making the video was rather straightforward. Back in mid-April I went through my collection of printed maps and picked out a few that I didn’t care for. Then I went to my nearby CVS and purchased about 6 more DC, Maryland, and Virginia maps. I cleared out my dining room and laid out all the maps to see if they would cover the 12′ x 8′ space that I am alloted at Artomatic and once I realized that I had enough maps I began to cut them into roughly 1′ x 2′ sections. After that I went to the hardware store and purchased some wheatpaste and a paint brush. Finally, I contacted my friend Robin who’s done similar videos before and bounced the idea off of him. He thought it was a decent concept and after a few minor delays on Friday, April 25th, 2008 we went to the Artomatic space and recorded the entire installation from start to finish. About a week later I got the raw video from him, last night I edited it in Final Cut Pro, and today I uploaded it to YouTube.
I chose to use the tune “The Dub and the Restless” by Sonic Boom because it’s been a favorite of mine for ages and I felt it captured the essence of the time-lapse video quite well. I have contacted the musician and hopefully he’ll continue to let me use the video without issue.
Tomorrow I am going to the Artomatic space and will be doing some touch-up work to the wall because after my last visit to the site I noticed some of the map’s have become unstuck and I need to make sure they are securely fixed to the wall. Later this week I will be going to the space and putting up my maps over “the base map.” I’ll probably need to get some extra lighting in place and after that it should be ready for Friday’s opening! I have a couple other ideas for the exhibit, but they’ll be shared here when the time comes.
If you are in the Washington, DC area this Friday, please stop by and say hello!
Looks like someone from NOMA gave the Artomatic organizers one crappy raster graphic to use— notice the pixilation on their logo!
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|| 4/24/2008 || 11:00 pm || Comments Off || ||
The Athan Drum & Bass Mashup via YouTube Doubler
The other day I wrote about Brian Kane’s YouTube Doubler. Continuing on the same style of taking a beat track and adding a new element, today’s mash-up is similar to one that I made before using dub reggae back in December of 2004. Unlike the last version, which was created before YouTube even existed, this mashup features the Muslim call to prayer, known as the Athan, combined with a very techy drum & bass mix.
First and foremost, if you are reading this and are offended by my use of the Athan, I apologize. It is not my intent to debase or make fun of the Athan in any way, rather this mashup was designed to expose others to different ways of hearing the Muslim call to prayer. One of the fundamental tenets of Islam is tolerance and I hope you are able to tolerate this mashup. Drum & bass is very abrasive form of electronic music and the Athan is normally sung without any instrumentation, so I feel it’s an interesting sonic juxtaposition.
What I like most about the Athan video is that it features mosques from around the world. So not only do you get to hear the beauty of the call to prayer, you are shown the beauty of Islamic architecture as well. If you are interested in seeing/hearing a different Athan, check out the call to prayer being sung inside of a al-Masjid al-Haram mosque in Mecca. It’s the holiest site in all of Islam.
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|| 4/13/2008 || 3:32 pm || Comments Off || ||
YouTube Doubler [Scratch Slavery Revisited]
This weekend I found Brian Kane’s YouTube Doubler and smiled. In August of last year I coded a proto-version of YouTube Doubler to create my first YouTube mashup “Scratch Slavery.” The mashup juxtaposed Rory Mayberry, a former subcontractor employee for First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting Company, giving testimony at the Oversight Committee’s hearing on “Allegations of Waste, Fraud, and Abuse at the New U.S. Embassy in Iraq,” with a simple beat track by DJ Loomy showing the Vestax Controller One turntable.
What I would like to see next is YouTube Wall. In November of last year, I was able to place four YouTube videos together to create a YouTube Quadrupler. I think it would be interesting to scale down the size of the YouTube videos and create video tiling where the different video screens make a design. It would also be interesting to use multiple scales to create border of videos with a large video in the center. A random YouTube selector (a la Lost Series) would be a lot of fun because of the vast of amount of videos that could be chosen.
|| 3/28/2008 || 12:14 pm || Comments Off || ||
An anthropomorphic reflection on society
Or maybe just a cute dog.
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|| 3/24/2008 || 3:59 pm || Comments Off || ||
Do X in Dildo [a historical linguistic anamoly from 1932]
Present day english could describe “Do X in Dildo” as some odd porno rave, but according to page 181 of Vikings to U-Boats: The German Experience in Newfoundland and Labrador By Gerhard P. Bassler, Do X in Dildo has a completely different meaning:
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|| 3/19/2008 || 9:38 am || 1 Comment Rendered || ||
Youtube video of yesterday’s freeze-in at Union Station
You might have seen Improv Everywhere’s Grand Central Station Freeze-in a few months ago. This Youtube video is from yesterday’s anti-war freeze-in that took place in Washington, DC’s Union Station. For being less than 24 hours old, my friend did a great job editing the video.
Related Activism:
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|| 3/15/2008 || 1:54 pm || Comments Off || ||
Cambio de Vida
Although I don’t have an exact translation, I really enjoy this little rap (even if its a commercial). Releasing the contents of this website is a significant Change of Life in many respects. Anyways, I am now a fan of Sara Da Pin Up and will see if I can get her to come to DC sometime.
|| 1/16/2008 || 10:00 am || Comments Off || ||
Queremos Paz – Gotan Project
Been a fan of Gotan Project for a few years and last night I found this video. It really captures the specific time (December 19, 2001), place (Buenos Aires, Argentina), and sound of the city (Tango). If my memory serves me correctly, a good friend of mine was there when that took place. I’ll have to ask him about his recollections. I was in Saint Louis in December of 2001 at home with my old girlfriend on Christmas break from school.
Related Music Entries:
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|| 3/16/2008 || 4:47 pm || Comments Off || ||
the wildlife of an idea
[Youtube Link]
French creative agency, Callegari Berville Grey, took a popular viral video of African water buffaloes valiantly defending a newborn calf from lions & a crocodile and anthropomorphically reassigned the roles of nature to that of an idea in our modern workplace.
The final and overarching message is that we should all struggle for our ideas- whatever they are. Like a raisin in the sun whose seeds have found their way to moist soil, ideas and their subsequent dissemination face many perils along the way from conception to execution.
Related YouTube Entries:
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