a few david sylvian songs were the soundtrack for day11's #vlomo09 video. they make the train ride home from work a bit more interesting... these are video paintings - I made the isadora patch file - see attached. it's based on one I made for vlomo08 day 1's video : train ride home. most of my videos seem to end up with a similar theme - drive/ride to work, travel, hotels, some isadora files, some music/arts gigs or festival videos. such is my life I suppose. david sylvian's "secrets of the beehive" album is one of my favourites - it's perfect for when I'm feeling down (as is depeche mode) as I always feel better afterwards. I think it's the male vocal. and piano in sylvian's case.

promise (part 1)
David Sylvian's Promise (the cult of Eurydise) with isadorian footage of the western line express - part 1

11/11/2009

north sydney - parramatta

vlomo09 - day11

view other people's videos @ http://videobloggers.mirocommunity.org

.mov movie file ::: .flv video file ::: movie page on blip.tv

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september (part 2)

David Sylvian's September with isadorian footage of the western line express - part 2

11/11/2009

north sydney - parramatta

vlomo09 - day11

view other people's videos @ http://videobloggers.mirocommunity.org

.mov video file ::: .flv video file ::: video page on blip.tv

:::

let the happiness in (part 3)

David Sylvian's Let the Happiness In with isadorian footage of the western line express - part 3

11/11/2009

north sydney - parramatta

vlomo09 - day11

view other people's videos @ http://videobloggers.mirocommunity.org

.mov video file ::: .flv video file ::: video page on blip.tv

:::

isadora file attached

Rupert Howe, the amazing & enthusiastic videoblogger is running a video project. he's invited artists & people to create a video based on two videos made by other participants. for my video I wanted to practice using Processing so I wrote a (very basic) program which allowed me to "paint" with one video on top of the other, whilst drawing thin lines on the screen & between the videos as a way to link them together. my inspiration videos were made by Ryanne Hodson and Kevin Buckstiegel.

attached is the final version of the processing patch file I made, and also the initial version (& also here)

the inspiration / thoughts I had whilst watching the source videos :

atoms of life remuxed together
codes building blocks
diving into the infinite universe of code & atoms
video painting
interactive - controlled by mouse movements & 2 videos affecting each other (when creating the video, not playing)
lines draw points between the two - connecting them too

initially I used the audio from Kevin's source video but I wasn't sure if he'd made it so wasn't sure how to reference it properly (it was part music & part muffled conversations from what I could tell), then I read some emails about Stan Brakhage on frameworks and remembered the readings / viewings I'd done of his work when I was looking into Len Lye's work, so remembered he used to create videos with no sound as "visual thinking". so I've left the final version having no sound track (not quite a lumiere though) as a homage to his amazing work.

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I had some problems uploading the videos to youtube - the drawn lines turned from thin straight lines into aliased dotted lines. the video looked OK if played from my own webserver, but really bad from youtube.

Rupert sent me some conversion tips :
1. save as .divx & upload
2. use the settings below for mp4

Don't upload at 640x480 - upload at 480 x 360
Use the following settings:
H264 encoding
.mp4 not .mov
480x360
Bitrate: 12000 (really!)
Framerate: 29.97
Audio Codec mpeg4aac auto bitrate
Stereo 48000 sample rate

this is the .mp4 sample video using Rupert's mp4 settings : this video looked OK

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I also tried re-making the video using linewidth=2 (instead of default which is 1) & exporting as divx in QT pro. this looked OK. I ended up using this video for my project submission (well, this video with 10 seconds of black added to the end & no sound, so technically the final one is based on this version..) the final versio came out at 42 seconds duration - which is not 23 but 42 is a good number for life ;)

drawing divx test
line width=2 divx version

I took a video from the train on the Wednesday Sydney awoke to the red dust storm and then another on the next day. the videos were taken with my nokia n95 camera, so it lost most of the redness, but you can see that the sky was dustier than the clear Thursday. they're not completely in sync, because I wanted dune day to be slightly ahead of clear day, so you can watch it from left to right and see the scene & colours change as your eye reaches the second panel. I'm not sure if this effect worked as well as I planned though - perhaps I should have lined them up so they were in sync after all.

made with Isadora - the 20090929_dune-day_clear-day.izz patch is attached

I always have problems saving the Isadora video files as they always lose video quality and end up with lots of compression artifacts. I tried exporting at 5% rate, but it somehow increased the framerate and sped up the video! so this was saved at 95%.

other videos taken on the day - with my sony camera so the colours show up properly :

This Is Not Art festival 2009
This is Not Art is the parent arts, music festival of experimental and underground arts & music held annually in Newcastle, North of Sydney, Australia. The 2009 festival was held between October 1-5. The festival comprises of various festivals, listed below.

Electrofringe
Sound Summit
Critical Animals
National Young Writers' Festival
Crack Theatre Festival

video playlist : (all videos taken at the festivals - individual videos also in separate articles below)

I thought it'd be cool to get a personal projector and project videos onto the ceiling of the train for people to watch during the ride to & from work. have a website where people could suggest videos, or perhaps they tweet them or sms. they could rate them too on the site. I was thinking art or landscapes - trainscapes. but I suppose eventually it'd be overtaken by advertisers or spammers. would be nice for a while though! just look at all this ceiling space doing nothing - apart from the bright lighting in the train, this would be ok for an adhoc screen. 29/04/2009

http://blip.tv/file/2050621

yesterday, @DustForEyes posted an "AR scratching" video by vanderlin to stealth board & twitter. it's tagged with tags such as AR, augmented reality, opencv, and openframeworks, so I googled some of these. the AR markers seem like the fiducial markers found in reactable - note there's going to be a performance / demo of one of these called dubtable at ripped next week which would be cool to check out.

Electrofringe is now calling for proposals for the 2009 festival. We are looking for creative expressions from artists, sound artists, performers, media makers, digital filmmakers, researchers, cross-artform practitioners, curators, producers, writers, experimenters, enthusiasts and anyone who doesn't fit these boxes.

Electrofringe is a five-day festival of electronic arts and culture held from the 1st - 5th October 2009 in Newcastle, Australia. Electrofringe is part of a group of festivals collected together under the This Is Not Art umbrella. Electrofringe is committed to fostering creative and innovative use and re-use of technology and electronic artforms, while focusing on artistic development and skills exchange.

Narghile is an AV performance project of Brisbane's video & sound artist Lloyd Barrett. Lloyd has also worked using the name Secret Killer of Names / SKON. I googled N4rgh1l3 and found some video works. absolutely amazing! he mentioned he uses Isadora. it's amazing what he gets the program to do - if only I could get it to do half as much I'd be happy!!

this is a video piece submitted for the surface mapping projection at the Queensland Library at the Opening of the "Game On" exhibition (early arcade games & consoles). I went to this exhibition during Christmas holidays - it was great. unfortunately I didn't attend the Opening night as I was interstate. plenty of fathers showing their sons the games they played when younger. visitors were allowed to play the games, and they could read a bit about the history & background of the games. the Japanese 'dating' games was a new one to me!

http://www.vimeo.com/2393663

N4rgh1l3: Game On surface mapping projection from Andrew Thomson on Vimeo

Narghile v0.01 part 1 : Part one of two. First performance of Narghile's new audio visual processing processy thing. Videos made from still images and DV footage taken by the artists and processed live by Isadora and extra audio processing by Audio mulch and a Chaos Pad.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=4cy9Byqofhs

(read more to see videos)

SCANZ 2009: Raranga tangata
The Weaving Together of People

Solar Circuit Aotearoa New Zealand (SCANZ) is the interCreate Research Centre's major project, a two week residency for artists, producers, writers, theorists and curators will be held in New Plymouth New Zealand from January 26th to February 8th 2009. Project partners are the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and Puke Ariki integrated library and museum.

Raranga tangata refers to the weaving together of people, a phrase used to describe the internet and adopted by Sally Jane Norman and Sylvia Nagl in their work. The aim for SCANZ 2009 is to weave an enduring fabric of people and technology, located in this place: Taranaki, Aotearoa New Zealand, Pacific Ocean.

Residency
January 26th–February 8th

Symposium
February 7th–8th

cicada is a collection of artists who work with landscape - urban, natural, constructed and imagined... a combination of results occur, including site-specific installations, performances and interactive pieces... cicada also make other bits of sound+image works for theatre, dance and performance projects... and occational urban gifts of unexpected enlightenment...

Cicada projects have included :
* Mob - an installation exploring the crowd as a discrete organism.
* Saltmilk and other wonders - work resulting from a residency in the West Australian wheat town of Kellerberrin.
* Amensal - an interactive street level installation, a purely negative urban symbiosis.
* Re_Squared - an immersive outdoor audio visual performance celebrating moments of discovered beauty in the city.

visit http://www.cicada.tv for more details

Expanded Cinema is an online platform for experimental film, early video, and sound-based, durational work. All of the material is being curated from available media online, emphasizing an overlooked facet of the archival function of new media. The site has collated videos of Derek Bailey, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Mark Leckey's "Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999)" - a video exploration of subcultures, iconography and dancing with footage from 70s-90s in UK. plus many more. visit http://expandedcinema.blogspot.com for more details

today I watched a video Senthil Kumar posted a video on WADI facebook group called "Arjuna the Archer : AD 2008" - it was based on the techniques of Patta Chitra Katha

I wanted to find out more about this artform and technique, so I googled (without much luck, due to googling the wrong things) and asked the Sarai reader list and received lots of helpful information from many people. after reading about it, it reminds me a bit of the multi-media of a few hundred years ago. multiple paintings / panels on scrolls are read and music played whilst they're read, so there's a mixture of images, music, text, written / spoken word. the artists travel to different villages - equivalent to the communication methods / networks of today transmitting the multimedia messages & works. originally the works were made on cloth using vegetable based paints but these days modern paints are used and most works are done on paper. I hope the traditional methods are not lost completely! the style of painting comes from Orissa and West Bengal. modern artists use both traditional, classical topics as well as current topics & stories - they are trying out new variations of the art too, to keep the method alive and to learn new techniques & skills.

I wrote a blog post (ongoing) about Patta Chitra Katha @ http://www.aliak.com/content/patta-chitra-katha-traditional-folk-art-sto...

VloMo08 - day16

http://vimeo.com/2260235

VloMo08 : day16 - Patta Chitra Katha - traditional folk art of storytelling using visual language from kath on Vimeo.

looking for digital arts, new media & urban research projects or exhibitions in mumbai - I'm only here for 2 weekends so might not make it to any festivals. here's some I found so far - some are past projects & some are not strictly mumbai based but I came across them whilst following links for mumbai related items

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Comet Media & COSMOS
a non profit group working in educational communication & new media. they have festivals, projects & publications
http://www.cometmedia.org
http://groups.google.com/group/cosmos_mumbai
upcoming events
aliak.com Comet & Cosmos page

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Digital artists - THE WEBMUSEUM CYBERCULTURE RESEARCH LIBRARY page
http://www.lastplace.com/page177.htm

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CRIT
http://crit.org.in

knitting resources and links

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knitty (online) magazine
http://knitty.com

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online knit communities

knit-list
wooly thoughts yahoogroup
wooly thoughts site
subversive yarn

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knitted toys

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/knitlist/message/90742
Squid Hat
Chicken hat
Knit Spider
Knit Veggies
Knit Dinos
Jess Hutchison - Her pattern booklet is fantastic!! but now out of print (i have a copy)

Horse Bazaar in association with Melbourne Fringe & Film Victoria presents DIGITAL FRINGE 08

1's & 0's in your eyes. Digital Fringe pixels will catch your eyeballs somewhere this festival season. Digital Fringe is the digital arts arm of The AGE 2008 Melbourne Fringe Festival. Digital art from all over the world will be streaming into all sorts of nooks and crannies, across the Melbourne, Victoria & the world. See international emerging artists in your local pub, library, or shops. Have your eyeballs hijacked by MPU's guerilla projections as you wander through the cityscape at night.

Super Massive headlines the launch of The Mess - a new art-meets-art night for Sydney - this Thursday 16th August at Candy's Apartment.

The Mess
Thursday 16th August
Candy's Apartment
22 Bayswater Rd, Kings Cross, Sydney

Super Massive (Headline)
Great Apes
Stopwatch
Champagne Shoes

Doors open 8pm. $10-

THE MESS..

On Thursday 16th August Candy's Apartment hosts the launch of THE MESS, a monthly event to be held at Candy’s Apartment in Kings Cross in celebration of great local music, art, fashion & culture.

The second edition of the Streaming Festival ended on the 28th of October 2007.

The festival broadcasted four programs; documentary, fiction, animation and art plus three special programs.
Composed by the KAN festival was a special program presenting a select number of films including films from Agnieszka Smoczynska, Anna Maszczynska and Anna Pankiewicz.

CultureTV brought a special program with selected international video art works. Including works from Pipilotti Rist, Grimanesa Amoros, Gaelle Denis and Bathtime in Clerkenwell by Alex Budovsky.
Visit : www.culturetv.tv

Isfth broadcasted in a special program films from James Harvey, The City of Photographers by Sebastian Moreno and four recent works from Dré Didderiëns www dredidderiens nl. This program was curated by Mak Kapetanovic.

We screened 18 hours of independent films from more than 100 filmmakers from over 20 different countries. The Festival was proud to present these films and their makers to you.