jugglers in jerusalem's ben yehuda mall. my friend darren & late friend angus are both jugglers so I took this to show them. my timing was out a bit as I watched the guys juggle for a while then remembered to start filming.

08/02/2008

Click To Play

Watch the video

this is just a quick piece - playing with 3d mosaics. this week there was a terrorist bomb explosion in Dimona, in the south of Israel. multiple organisations claimed it and there were a few theories on where the terrorists came from - possibly entered following the breach of the wall between gaza & egypt, possibly they were already in the country. a policeman shot a second bomber and became a hero. one woman died and many were injured. it happened in a cafe. in a town that hasn't seen trouble before. there hasn't been a bombing for around a year. it was on the news, radio, tv, papers & online. people were commenting. I just wanted to slice up the news a bit - to remind me of the confusion & speculation - the twisting & turning of the different theories. the background is the first of the snow storm in jerusalem.

the news slices move & scale controlled by my mouse position as I move around the screen - I keep web browsing whilst the news & life is jumbled up

the music is a mixture of "Alone again so" by Kid Loco from A Grand Love Story album + "I fell once again" by Winx from the Left Above the Clouds album. I'd been wondering 'has it started again?' so I searched my itunes library for 'again' and these were a couple of the results.

06/02/2008 made in isadora. isadora patch is attached

http://blip.tv/file/651759
http://blip.tv/file/get/AliaK-newsSlicesInTheSnow510.mp4

it snowed in Jerusalem for a couple of days. the first day many of the roads were closed. the stores close - the city shuts down. my workplace was closed for both days (so a long weekend for some!). the second day by mid morning the sun was out and sky was blue.

snow in the middle east! lots of fun!

the music is "Snow" by Severed Heads off the Gigapus album
http://www.sevcom.com/

30-31/01/2008, jerusalem, israel

http://blip.tv/file/get/AliaK-jerusalemSnow649.flv
http://blip.tv/file/get/AliaK-jerusalemSnow649.mp4
http://blip.tv/file/651524

Watch the video

mimi on the beach

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

28/01/2008

the isadora patch is attached. it's 3 videos - 1 is the kite flying near the lifesaver hut, the second is the girl skipping on the beach, the third is another video of the bethells beach but has a dither patch applied to create the 1x1 squares using the extracted colours from the 3rd video. the speed is slowed down and the girl video is cropped and reduced in size and overlayed on the beach & kite video. both of these have the outlines extracted using difference patches

I started off trying to learn how Will made the squares effect and I'd done other tests on having multiple video windows playing, but when I was combining the videos I liked the outline effect so went off on a tangent to what I'd originally planned. (as usual)

Watch the video

some questions from the streets of jerusalem

25/01/2008

music is "base for alec" by Yello from the "Yello 19080-1985 The New Mix In One Go" album

blip post @ http://blip.tv/file/623494
mpeg4 video @ http://blip.tv/file/get/AliaK-gotLove452.mp4

made using isadora

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.

got love? patch attached to blog post @ http://www.aliak.com/node/14273

Watch the video

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!)

- poets vs MC night / battle
- young joe
- koaste - great beats and words about local issues / life
- cassiah (?) and danny - the park scene in the film
- deliverance
- brighton graf jam
- monkey sons
- remark
- slip jam - regular venue for around 5.5 years
- mc jam
- buzz
- brighton hip hop festival
- req 1

from what I can gather, their community is really healthy. they seem to have a few crews / people who are organising regular gigs & festivals. having a regular venue helps build a community I think, so they're lucky in that regard. and it seemed like a friendlier atmosphere as compared to london - people in the film commented on this as well. more laid back / beach town and being a smaller city I suppose.

after the film I asked Will if he could say something to the Australians as I'd upload it to show some of them so there's a message from him (the director) at the end.

there's a couple of minutes of the film shot whilst viewing it - sorry about the quality & fact this is pirated. there's hebrew subtitles overlayed.

mp4 video file : http://blip.tv/file/get/AliaK-SouthCoastBrightonUKHipHopDocumentaryByWil...

flash video file : http://blip.tv/file/get/AliaK-SouthCoastBrightonUKHipHopDocumentaryByWil...

or the blip post to play in a webpage : http://blip.tv/file/622825

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http://southcoastthemovie.co.uk is the film's website - they have videos/articles etc there.

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I recorded the directors talk after the film also - sorry about the audio quality - this is recorded on my phone camera. I recorded video but the zoom/quality is pretty bad so I just extracted the audio.

http://blip.tv/file/get/AliaK-WillJewellDirectorsTalkAfterSouthCoastShow...
or to play in a webpage : http://blip.tv/file/622851

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19/08/2008

Jerusalem Cinematheque - British Film Festival screening of Will Jewell's documentary on Brighton (UK) hip hop community - South Coast

Watch the video

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

the music is by Nitin Sawhney - "acquired dreams" from the Prophesy album
http://www.nitinsawhney.com/

made in isadora - multiprojector patch attached

blip post @ http://blip.tv/file/603528

quicktime video version @ http://blip.tv/file/get/AliaK-remuxed963.mov

flash video version @ http://blip.tv/file/get/AliaK-remuxed963.flv

blog post @ http://www.aliak.com/node/14266

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.

15/01/2008

Click To Play

blip post @ http://blip.tv/file/599206

quicktime video version : http://blip.tv/file/get/AliaK-cycloneBuilding684.mov

blog post @ http://www.aliak.com/node/14265

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