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

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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

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 :(

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

Watch the video

blip video @ http://aliak.blip.tv/file/596636

mpeg4 video version @ http://blip.tv/file/get/AliaK-clappityClapAtHeathrowExpress290.mp4

flash video version @ http://blip.tv/file/get/AliaK-clappityClapAtHeathrowExpress290.flv

blog post @ http://www.aliak.com/node/14264

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.

What is Scion City is a futuristic interactive machinima video movie series made in Second Life. the website has 6 episodes and links to different formats, an FAQ and a submit link where viewers can upload more episodes or related material (photos, documents, movies, etc) discovered about the series and Scion City. visit http://whatisscioncity.com/ for more details and to watch the films.

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

Last November I took part in NaVloPoMo - videoblog posting month. it was a lot of fun and was a good way to remember to do something creative in between working. I know a lot of people can't help but be creative all the time, but I find sometimes I get so tired from work that I become passive and tend to watch more than do. so this was a good reminder to get into the habit.

in 2008, Semanal is happening - similar to NaVloPoMo but posting one video a week instead of one each day. this is much more manageable for me at least as I can usually make one on the weekend. the hardest part then becomes finding time to watch everyone else's videos!

http://semanal.ning.com/ is the Semanal site - a worpress blog is also being setup (I'll post the link here also once available). usually people post their videos to their usual video hosting site (eg blip.tv, youtube, archive.org etc) and their blog if they have one, and also post a link / embedded version to the Semanal site. this time you can post to the wordpress site blog also, which will have an RSS feed so you can easily watch the other contributors videos (or watch them directly on the blog site as I tend to do)

I'd love to see more Australian videos there from friends and creative people I know / know of! they can be any type of videos - personal, talking to the camera, gig videos, shows, interviews, arty & experimental, generative, computer generated, Second Life video - whatever you'd like to do. there's a mixture of beginners and more established video producers, so everyone is welcome. sometimes someone picks a theme and people use that, other times they do what they like. you can use your phone camera, happy snap portable camera, webcam, HD / professional camera, or even do remixes of archive.org or other existing footage - whatever suits you. it's a good way to practice different techniques and see what is in the imagination of others too, and even just a good way to learn a new skill such as web video and/or software / video editing techniques. the community for the project is great too - very supportive!

from http://semanal.ning.com/ :
"Every week in 2008, we're posting videos. 52 videos by the end of the year. Post on your blog, on Seesmic, Facebook, YouTube, whatever, wherever and however. You can do anything you want. As long as it moves."

Rupert explains the term Semanal chosen for the project :
"Semanal is Spanish and Portuguese for 'weekly'. And I think it has a nice echo of the English word Seminal, defined here as:
"Highly influential in an original way; constituting or providing a basis for further development: a seminal idea in the creation of a new theory."
and at Wikipedia as: "a work from which other works grow... an intellectual or artistic achievement whose ideas and techniques have been adopted or responded to in later works by other people"

hope to see your videos there!

a mobile video post. I took the video the other day whilst at Southbank in Brisbane. emailed it to my blip.tv email account (aliak. pwd @ mobile.blip.tv). it automatically posts on blip.tv and is posted to by blog. which then sends it to my rss / xml feed & facebook etc. currently I need to approve / edit the post on the blog site, but I might setup a workflow to make that automatic also. though with the N95, I can do this from the phone now also too!

very cool!
not new.. but since I've only just got the N95, it's new to me. I'd tried it ages ago with my palm pilot but it was too slow and the apps didn't integrate as well + there was no video in that attempt. so this is working much better..

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20071207 Bethlehem 01 - driving into Bethlehem - the guide is talking about peace, jerusalem stone exports / work and tourism

original movie @ http://blip.tv/file/545338
blog post @ http://www.aliak.com/node/14253

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a walk around Yesilyurt this afternoon. perhaps it's because it's winter, but it looks a little run down - the colours on the buildings seem duller than they once have been, and the waterfront in this area is a little dreary. the local shops are ok though - there's a few nice looking cafes. many cake & sweets stores!

10/12/2007

original video @ http://blip.tv/file/530841
blog post @ http://www.aliak.com/node/14251

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this is snippets of the taxi ride from my visit to hagia sofia and sultan ahmed / blue mosque on 25/11/2007. (other camera)

original movie @ http://blip.tv/file/527442
blog post @ http://www.aliak.com/node/14246

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sections of the Jewish quarter of the Old City, Jerusalem

music is "Some Place (intro)" by Coolooloosh - a great local Jerusalem based / Israeli band

04/12/2007

original video @ http://blip.tv/file/518655
blog post @ http://www.aliak.com/node/14245

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they're everywhere!!
video @ http://blip.tv/file/514174/

I must like these as I've just found I'd already uploaded a silent version - almost like a lumiere but a few scenes cut together.
video @ http://blip.tv/file/442303

nov? 2006, Delhi, India

NaVloPoMo 30 - day # 30 Turkish Delight & thanks to all the Navlopomo videobloggers!

original movie @ http://blip.tv/file/514153
blog post @ http://www.aliak.com/node/14243

Click To Play

thanks from me also - I've had fun making little videos and watching other people's - plenty to catch up on! my last one mirrors my first of the month - in my pjs again, this time after a late night flight instead of an early morning one. I took videos at the Istanbul airport last night but hadn't put my memory stick in and so none of them saved. flight was delayed so I didn't get back to Jerusalem until around 3am and slept since then. very tired! so a quick goodbye & look at some of the Turkish Delight I bought at the Istanbul airport gift shop.

see you all around on the net somewhere!

kath