A Grave (Reality), a chronposite

A sequence of composites created with the cooperation of Ravage and the Muse-O-Matic midi music algorithm. Seed phrase for the music was "ravage my reality".

I've been on a streak with these chronposites. They're the closest I get to sketching these days. Now that I'm on winter break, maybe I'll find myself spending some afternoons with my long-neglected sketchbooks.

Stastny novy rok, everyone.

Video...
Raw file (Vimeo)
Web player (Vimeo)
Web player (YouTube)

YouTube embedded player...


Make MIDI music of your own words and phrases at Muse-O-Matic.

Wears Mi Mind

Composite process video collaboration with Minna. Face put together, piece by piece, over time, through space, on top of sound. Music is a heavily filtered cover of Pixies' "Where is My Mind?" sung by Minna and friend.

Vimeo version.
YouTube version.

In the limited time I have to work on art these days, I find that these timelapse video "accretions" are more interesting than laying down some definitive finished single image.

Part of the Composites Playlist.

California Extreme Arcade Expo 2007

I threw together a little video of the California Extreme Arcade Expo, which I attended this last Saturday, August 11, 2007 in San Jose. It was retrogaming heaven! It was worth the price of admission just to be able to play some of my old favorites like I, Robot and Xenon. Discovered some new favorites in Orbitor 1 and Uo Poko.

Orbitor 1 is a crazy pinball machine with a playfield made of molded clear plastic that causes the ball to "orbit" two bumpers in the center. Uo Poko is a simple, well-executed clone of Bubble Bobble/Bust-a-Move.

Attached to the Expo was a mini film-festival of gaming documentaries. I saw two of them and recommend both. I was blown away by the quality of Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball and overcome with homesickness watching the Portland-centric High Score, a movie about a guy going for the high-score in Missile Command.

Also posted on YouTube and on Vimeo.

Music by Pong.

For more coverage of this event, I recommend the ever-delightful 1Up Show. Also check out Reboot's show about the Expo.

Tabor Mountain Sequences

This video effect was created using Flash Actionscript to manipulate and replicate a series of frames from a video I shot of my friend Carrie's face. I was pleased with and mesmerized by the results.

Music by: Opsvik and Jennings.

Also on: YouTube, Vimeo and Grouper.

Chronposite Suukii

Another timelapse composite video, this time of YouTube user Suukii.

Music by Technetium.

Also available on: YouTube and Grouper.

Chronposite E

I'm on a chronposite kick these days. I'm inspired by all the faces I'm seeing on YouTube. The last chronposite was all over the place with colors and quality, so this time I went back to a single subject. In this case, YT user Alyssium. She posts a fairly regular talking-head BDSM vlog. She graciously granted me permission to scramble her visage.

Music by the amazing Two Star Symphony.

Video hosting by the nicely designed Vimeo.

YouTube Composites

I've been playing around with YouTube lately. There is an abundance of interesting faces there, and I was compelled to do some impromptu compositing. Here is a timelapse video of the process.

Music by Angi Bee.

Featured YouTubers, in order: geriatric1927, ASiiANMAMii92, ebonyangel7, jweis3029, janeeee and sxcladee16.

Lenara Meets Electroplankton

My friend Lenara came down to SF to visit me recently. Mostly we tried to escape the heat. While in the shade, I introduced Lenara to Electroplankton, a music-making toy for the Nintendo DS. I've used Electroplankton to score several of my videos, but it is the co-star of this video.

Independence Day 2006

Still down in Redwood City. I had Independence Day off, so I spent the day in the sunshine looking at things. Here are some of the things at which I looked.

Music used without permission, by Sigur Ros.

Getting Around

Been in the Bay Area for three weeks now. Only been into SF a couple of times. Here's a montage of some of the day-to-day.

To the Metreon

Went into San Francisco from Redwood City for the first time on Saturday. Had a little false start trying to find the CalTrain station, but eventually found the KX bus stop I needed. It was a grey day, so I went to this kind of technomall called Metreon. Used to be a big Sony project, but I read that they sold it off to other investors over the years. Here's a short video of the trip.

San Francisco 666

On 6/6/6, I took a train to Redwood City, California from Portland, Oregon. I'll be living in RC for two months while working as a UI programmer at a videogame company. I'm pretty excited about the job, it's my first time working on a major game and at a game company. Kind of a dream come true.

Here's a simple montage of video clips from the trip.

Technorati tags: train, geese, scenery, Redwood City, water

Robin Ator

Here's an interview with Robin Ator, a Portland comic artist, cartoonist, animator, character designer, illustrator and all around swell guy.

Robin also appears briefly in the Big Time TV Free Geek Fair video.

Related links:
Glow in the Dark Pictures
Robin's SITO homepage
Robin's Flickr stream

Technorati tags: Robin Ator, sketchbook, art, interview, drawing, cartoon, comics, animator, Portland, strawberrymobile

Idle Hands Play Things

A quick little montage homage to my dork little secret, gaming. See if you can name all the games being played in this video!

The music is a song called "Dad is a Dork" by a father and sons team called The Egerton Boyz.

On a related note, these viewables...
Board Games with Scott
Tripod singing a gamer's love song
Stefan Stignei's game reviews

(some vague) Technorati tags: tabletop games, video games, video, RPG, hexes, cards

Ici Deus

For several years now I've been making these Cubist collage portraits, I call them composites. These are constructed by digitally layering and combining dozens of close-up photos of a single person. Here's a timelapse video of a recent effort.

The process itself is meditative, which is one reason I enjoy making them. As I layer on the new angles and various crops of shots, I see unexpected mixtures of emotion and form in the subject's face. Soon the person in the image becomes a kind of product of the equation generated by the range of thoughts expressed during the time the images were captured. The most extreme emotions are tempered by calm, but I think, I hope, the kinetic and emotional energy of the person is highlighted in the finished image. For timelapse videos like this, I can kind of worry less about the finished image and just take a trip though the possibilities. Viewers are encouraged to freeze frame anywhere along the process to find their favorite frames.

My laziness is your gain.

Music by The Pen Name.

Similar videos I've made:
Interactive Composite in Flash.
Demon-stration is another timelapse.
Snowcha is a timelapse with model commentary.

Del.icio.us tags: composite, surrealism, cubism, timelapse, video, juxtaposition

Technorati tags: composite, surrealism, cubism, timelapse, video, juxtaposition

Roadtrip in Intervals

Cor and I went to the coast to visit her brother. On the way, I shot a short clip of video every five minutes. Did the same for the trip back. The result is an abridged version of our roadtrip.

Tags via Del.icio.us: roadtrip, Oregon, DairyQueen, driving, Moolatte, Camp18, breakfast, video, Portland, Wheeler

Tags via Technorati: roadtrip, Oregon, DairyQueen, driving, Moolatte, Camp18, breakfast, video, Portland, Wheeler

Sushiland

There's something fun about novel food-delivery systems. Sushi joints tend to have the best, in the form of boats, trains and, in this case, a conveyor belt. R-type, Lonveig and I had lunch at Sushiland. Little did I know, my camera was on the whole time. Enjoy the video.

Other videos about sushi:
Boat Sushi via Whats On Tonight
Tokyo Sushi Bar via Google video
Sushi: A Japanese Tradition

Tags: sushi, Portland, restaurant, lunch, loops

Antiquarium

Here's a brief video tour of the Antiquarium bookstore in Omaha, Nebraska. I've spent days of my life in this place, buying music, books and comics. The bulk of my collection of "Heavy Metal" comic magazine was purchased at this place. For Omaha, this place is very progressive politically, hosting meetings of activist groups like Youth for Peace. The very top floor has always served as an art gallery, but as you'll see in this video, now also seems to be a meeting room.

So glad to see this place still exists after all these years. Not only does it merely exist, but it is apparently expanding. When I visited this time, in December 2005, there was a new expansion at the back of the first and second floors, a balconied room with high ceilings.

• 'Official' Omaha, Nebraska site
  
• Satellite map of Antiquarium
  
• Flickr photos
  

Tags: Omaha, books, bookstore, Old Market, Nebraska

Obscurio

A video of short patterned sequences. Discrete whimsical folding of a typical experience.

Tags: window, loops, music, repetitive, rain

West Burnside After Dark

Powell's Books is a huge store in downtown Portland, Oregon. Powell's is on Burnside, a major street that divides Portland into North and South. The shots that make up this short montage were captured one night while I waited for the #20 bus to take me home.

• Powell's Books
  
• POWELLS tag on Flickr
  
• Powell's Books on Wikipedia
  
• Related videos: Broken Time and
  Break Time
  
• Music by 2-RD
  

Tags: Portland, Powells, night, composite, Burnside

Omaha Aquarium

The Henry Doorly Zoo(Omaha, Nebraska) has added some impressive new exhibits and structures since I last visited. The desert dome and the jungle are amazing and immersive, but nothing is as awe-inspiring as the alien world in the aquarium. Check out this video I put together.

UPDATE: Uploaded a new version of the file that should "fast start" (play while downloading).

Tags: aquarium, Omaha, zoo, fish, octopus

November Vlogger Meetup

This was my first test of the rickety bike-mounted camera, a ride from home to a vlogger meet up with Will and Kazia at Urban Grind Coffee. This ride takes place on November 13, 2005. Check out the video.

Links:

• Will's vlog of the meet-up
  
• Urban Grind Coffee
  
• Taylor Street Studio blog (Will)
  
• Del.icio.us tag "lookround"
  
• Six Reasons to Be in NYC (Kazia)
  

Tags: Portland, meetup, vloggers, bike, cycling

Twiddle Beta

Ariel and I have been toying with the idea of making a podcast about videogames and, last week, we recorded an ad-hoc trial run to test the technicalities of recording Skype conversations. From that audio, I distilled a few minutes to mix into a video... here is the end product.

In the video, you'll see "reviews" of We Love Katamari(PS2), MotherLoad(Web) and Psychonauts(Xbox).

We're going to try an actual structured show soon. Maybe you'll hear a podcast from us someday. The "Twiddle" beta version is about 20 minutes long and is mostly us just joking around. You can download that audio here.

Oh! And go watch all of Ariel's OOGLOO + ANJU cartoons.

Tags: videogames, Psychonauts, Ariel, Motherlode, giggling

Crass Pollenation

Here is another timelapse drawing video.

Soundtrack constructed from bits of audio from thefreesoundproject using GarageBand. Included are samples of footsteps in snow, the interior of a refridgerator, a mosquito flying inside a jar and a coin spinning on a table.

A week ago, I attended my second Portland "vlogger meetup". There were three attending, including me. The others were Will and Kazia. I shot some video but haven't had the energy to edit it together. You should check out Will's kaleidoscopic montage of the event. As with last time, the talking was fast and furious about all the ideas we have for community-centric world-exploring videoblogs (as opposed to exclusively posting personal diaries). Will said it best with the phrase "pointing the camera away from, instead of toward, ourselves".

I have a half-dozen videos started... but nothing quite complete. Coming (soon?) will be an interview with artist Robin Ator, some more on-the-scenes with Petr Sorfa's Project Nine, a video trailer for a gaming podcast I'm developing with Ariel Martian and more Gridcosm video.

Tags: drawing, timelapse, art, process, heads

Interactive Composite

WARNING - This entry contains NUDITY. If this offends you, immediately rinse your eyes, strut like a chicken and engage in primal scream therapy.

I'm posting this mainly as a test-of-concept. I want to see if this Interactive Composite video (made in Flash) will show up in aggregator software like FireAnt. In theory, it should.

Occasionally, I build interactive doodles with a program called Macromedia Flash (MX 2004, etc). I'd like to post some of these as part of Big Time TV. Programming in Flash Actionscript is primarily how I've made my living for the last few years, though not so much lately. For the past few months it has been Perl CGI with SQL database interfacing. Know of anyone who needs a Flash-kateer? Let me know.

This particular interactive video is responsive to the mouse. Roll-over parts to "feed" them movement energy. Click parts to bring them closer to the top layer. Drag parts to rearrange them. I'll include links to static composites I've made with Sitka, the model for this interactive.

• Dusk Litany of Optimisms - Sitka composite
  
• The Wake of a Dream - Sitka composite
  
• ActionScript via Wikipedia
  
• Seedling is another of my Flash doodles (press SPACEBAR to re-grow the tree)
  

Tags: Flash, interactive, art, nude, composite

The Five

Drawing + photography / cryptic vocals = video.

• Five in relation to Phi
  
• Johnny Five is Alive!
  
• Pentagram symbol
  
• The Fifth Element
  
• Beethoven's Fifth (midi)
  
• Jackson Five
  

Flashy Gridcosm

I recently reprogrammed the Flash viewer for Gridcosm, a collaborative art project I first developed in 1997 for the art site SITO.org. The project has been ongoing since then and is still the most popular collaborative project, among many, on the site. Here's a video of the new Gridcosm viewer in action.

Music in the video is a song called "Cosmos" by Option42 via Music.podshow.com.

Links:

• SITO.org
  
• Gridcosm collaborative art project
  
• Gridcosm Flash viewer - Starting at the same level I started at in the video
  
• HTML version of that same Gridcosm level
  
• Other collaborative art projects on SITO
  

Broken Time

To create this video, I composited several distinct framings of each location into a single screen of information. Each facet depicts a separate moment in time. The sounds of each facet layer together to create a folded-time cacophany.

I'm not really sure why I like creating composited images so much. There's something about it that's interesting and fun. Maybe the allure is that I'm able to play with time and space simultaneously. Each of these composited scenes is made up of 7-second video elements shot one after the other, but compiled in a unified space on the screen. So in a four-element composite, you're actually seeing 28 seconds of time simultaneously.

This is a follow-up to Break Time, a post I made in September.

Some places featured in "Broken Time":

• Outside Muddy's Coffeehouse
  
• Genie's Cafe
  
• Backspace Cybercafe
  
• Tiny's Coffee SE
  
• American Dream Pizza
  
• Bipartisan Cafe (latter part of article)
  
• Caffe Scozia
  

Jack-o-Lantern

Corinne carved a pumpkin this afternoon. Here's a video of the cosmetic surgery.

From what I read, the original Jack-o-Lanterns were carved from turnips and lit with embers. The pumpkinized form is a mostly American tradition. The tradition started with Irish and Scottish immigrants and their stories of Jack of the Lantern, a fella who'd tricked the devil and peeved God and wasn't allowed into either Heaven or Hell. Jack was left to wander the Earth with his turnip-ember lantern. Or so they say.

I love the Halloween holiday, but it depresses me to see stores full of prefab cutesie crap merchandise. It ruins the mood for me.

Some Halloween links:

• Wikipedia 'Halloween'
  
• Wikipedia 'Jack-o-Lantern'
  
• Zadi's 'halloweenvlogfest2005' collection
  
• Blip.tv 'halloween'-tagged videos
  
• halloweenvlogfest2005 via Technocrati
  
• A Samhain/Halloween e-card by yours truly
  
• Halloween drawing on SITO by the late James Widmark.
  James, I miss you most around Halloween.
  

Unfeigned Cells

Here's a wee bit of video doodling that kept my interest long enough that I thought I'd share it. One part coffee, one part cream, two parts Isadora and a dash of Dr. Who.