dpwolf has finished his thesis - you can download it from his site - it's called Vidgets: The Development and Use of Interactive, Network Based Video Works by David Wolf (dpwolf)
I've downloaded it but haven't finished reading it yet. he makes cool live video performances using isadora and quartz composer and the music is made with controllers and max / msp. I'd been to a workshop of his the previous year and that's how I started trying out isadora. (obviously he's more advanced than me ;)
I noticed page 138 has a photo which looks like a capture from a video I took of his & Somaya's performance at electrofringe 2006. I thought I had a photo but can't find it but I have a video. and the other photographer in the room was on the other side of the room as I recall. small world.
one of the workshops we did at electrofringe 2006 was on max / msp with Bruce Mowson
our group made a simple max patch which rotated through a few video clips we recorded of people who were in the workshop. we had limited time which is why we chose something simple - so we had a chance of completing it! we'd asked them to say something about the electrofringe / this is not art festival. the patch was basically a random video player. we only had an hour to make it. we had to show Bruce the following day. our patch worked and we were one of two groups (well our group + 1 person from another group) who turned up the next day to demonstrate the finished patch
I've just installed the alexa toolbar so I can now see my site's rating. I'm not sure if it matters to me yet - still thinking about this - it seems to rate mostly US based sites, so I guess because this is a .com not .com.au it's included, not really sure. but interesting to see movement
01/02/2008 # 1797395
03/02/2008 # 1798744
08/02/2008 # 1606121
21/02/2008 # 963009 - under 1 million! what's going on?? (this is after the drupal 5 upgrade)
06/04/2008 # 597674 - almost under 500K! (crazy - this is after the drupal 6.1 upgrade. I hadn't been able to post for about 3 weeks - which turned out to be a net connection problem no site issue)
12/04/2008 # 580183
* Aliak.com has a traffic rank of: 597674 (up 1627945)
* Speed: Not available What's This?
* Other sites that link to this site: 30
* Online Since: 19-Dec-2000
I need to make a drupal module to store / manage my video files - fields such as :
filename
date
location
subject
url01
url02
project used in
file path
version
movie format
original
camera
archived
archive location
backup drive
backup path
+ more as I think of them
attached is a text version - there's some missing as I had to delete some files from my backup drive to save space. so they'll need to be added once I find the box the dvd is stored in back in sydney (whenever that may be!) some have been lost as a backup drive I used in Auckland has broken :(
the music is an excerpt of the song 'mimi on the beach' by jane siberry (now known as issa) http://www.issalight.com
the footage is taken at bethells beach west of auckland, new zealand in early 2007
made in isadora and inspired by Will from Taylor Street Studio's work - I'm running some tests to see if I can work out how to do some of the effects he does as I love his work - it's so beautiful! http://www.taylorstreetstudio.com
this video is made from 2 separate videos. one is grafitti on the wall of an abandoned building - most of it is in English so I think it's messages for the tourists. the other is a message on a wall nearby. the second video is combined with the first and tiled into small blocks over the pattern of the first wall's video content ie the writing on the building. the message on the wall is overlayed on top of the tiled / glitch video and moves around the screen according to the position of the underlying video. so it has some interactivity to it. it's recorded in real-time. each time I run it, it creates a different output.
I saw "South Coast" a documentary about Brighton (UK)'s hip hop community by Will Jewell last saturday night at the Jerusalem Cinematheque as part of the British Film Festival. I thought the film was a great balance of original roots of hip hop, respecting the US origins, whilst highlighting the original crews from the local Brighton community and featuring some of the up & coming artists also. a great snap shot into Brighton hip hop. it feels similar to Australian hip hop in some ways.
I wrote some names during the film so I could find out about them later. (hard to read my writing so hopefully I have these right!)
I love music by bluetech and have been listening to it a lot whilst in Israel having bought a few of his cds from the music stores here and ripped them to my laptop. his music is available on aleph - zero label and he's remixed other great artists such as Shulman & Pitch Black.
his website says "my name is evan. i make sounds. rivers of music ancient & delicate flow through me.". he has 3 myspace pages for the different artist names he uses : bluetech, evan bartholomew, evan marc
I have so many ebooks to read it's hard to know which one to read. sometimes having too much choice is a bad thing. it was so much simpler when I had one thing to do at a time ...
"And then, Mog-ur used the power of his great brain."
"All those primitive people, with almost no frontal lobes, and speech limited by undeveloped vocal organs, but with huge brains -- larger than any race of man then living or future generations yet unborn -- were unique. They were the culmination of a branch of mankind whose brain was developed in the back of their heads, in the occipital and the parietal regions that control vision and bodily sensation and store memory."
"And their memory made them extraordinary. In them, the unconscious knowledge of ancestral behavior called instinct had evolved. Stored in the back of their large brains were not just their own memories, but the memories of their forebears. They could recall knowledge learned by their ancestors and, under special circumstances, they could go a step beyond. They could recall their racial memory, their own evolution. And when they reached back far enough, they could merge that memory that was identical for all and join their minds, telepathically."
multiprojector test01 - testing different methods of combining video in a single screen. this is using multiple projectors in isadora. some effects, some interactivity as the videos control each other's position
I'm watching a BBC Prime documentary called "The Human Mind : Get Smart". there's been a few interesting points raised :
1. omega 3 to improve your mind, memory and concentration. they did some tests on school kids having problems learning, and the kids improved their concentration and school marks after taking omega 3 tablets. apparently it helps set up connections within the brain. a type of real 'smart drug'?
2. visualisation - visualising a task repeatedly prior to performing it physically. sports people use this technique when learning new moves, skills. the example was a gymnast learning a new move on the parallel bars
3. associating visual images with a walk around a city, or through your house to help improve your memory. eg remembering cards in a deck of cards. the man walked the same path around London and took note of different landmarks. then for each card he has allocated an icon / picture, eg a cat, or a saw or a hose etc. then as the cards come out of the deck, he matches the icon / picture with the landmark in the order he saw them as he walked. after practicing this, he trained his mind to remember the cards quickly.
trying 3d video in isadora. I was describing a dream to a friend where I used to see planes of different worlds. testing how I could make a video to remember / simulate the dream. it hasn't quite worked out properly yet though!
just a mixture of past and recent videos and trying out some 3d video in Isadora. the videos are snippets from 4 countries. the spinning video is interacting with the other videos - changing speed in proportion to them playing out. Isadora seems suited more for live video - I still haven't worked out a high quality save option. it creates these in real time - I'm changing the video source on the fly. my computer doesn't let me save audio out either (in isadora) so I have to record it and then add back to the saved video. I need to get this working better also - there must be a step I'm missing.
I liked the sound my suitcase was making whilst walking to the heathrow express train platform after arriving back in the UK on new years day. the audio's not as clear as it was in person. perhaps it was my hearing after sitting in the plane hearing flight noise masking most sounds that I noticed it.
over Christmas a cyclone was building off the shore of Qld. it made for the coolest temperature wise Christmas in many years (at least whilst I've been there). the trees are in Mum's backyard
