Frame[work]
Beginning.
I struggle with each project. That may seem like an obvious statement, but I can't emphasize enough the crippling self-doubt, depression, anxiety, and paranioa that accompany each and every moment of attempted creation.
My assignment is simply to create a performance. Simple. Easy. Paralyzing.
What I face now is the objective of sculpting not simply a video, but a video system. It needs to answer questions, so many of which I don't even know to ask yet. A few questions, however, are immediately accessible via traumatic conditioning over the course of several years:
1. Why live?* (That's 'live' as in 'live performance'--don't worry, we haven't reached that breaking point yet.) What makes this performance more worthwhile because it is live? Is there a need for me to be manipulating something in real time? What am I saying, visually, that needs to be said in the moment? Is it truly live if I am using pre-rendered visual sources? Is there a point at which it is no longer live? (My answer to this is usually: Yes. The point at which I can no longer ruin a performance).
2. What am I adding to the story? Is there something that the performer can't say him or herself? Am I illustrating something pertinent? Adding to the value of this experience? Or am I simply distracting from the audio, making what could be very full and meaningful somehow cheaper?
3. How does it connect? One of the easiest ways to make this connection is to use a live video feed. It draws instant parallels, it's instantaneous feedback, and people understand it. But what then? What am I saying that the audience can't already see?
4. What is the meaning? Does anyone care that they are experiencing stimuli on two planes rather than one? Arguably, they're already watching something--a performance. Who am I to draw their eye away?
5. Who is it for? Am I creating something for the audience? Am I doing this for myself? A greater good? The artistic aether?
*
I consulted my thesaurus in the hopes of finding a less confusing word. it offered, prolifically, the following:
Unexploded, explosive, active; unstable, volatile, hot, glowing, red hot, aglow; burning, alight, flaming, aflame, blazing, ignited, on fire.
ANTONYMS inactive.
Thanks a lot, words.
Nevertheless, I begin. And I'm beginning with two parameters: Time and Feedback. I begin with Jitter.
I know some things, believe it or not. I know that people like live feeds. You see it at clubs where everyone is indulging themselves with food and drink and music that makes them want to dance horizontally. Their sweaty, glazed faces mirrored back at them on a big screen, they love it. I want to represent time and identity in this performance, but it's not enough to simply project the singer's face onto the screen. What visuals allow us to do is to buffer moments. Just as we can play back audio samples, referencing what came before it, so can we reference back to movements, gestures, scenes.
My first step in this system is to create a framework within which to reference history.
My second step is to enhance the framework with feedback abilities. Why feedback? Because it's an easy way to manipulate visuals in a way that doesn't involve introducing new sources, that's why. You're feeding something into itself to output a new product. Adding this capability keeps the patch self-contained and self-sufficient.
To the left is a low-quality recording of this patch. What it should demonstrate is a single video source, set first to delay, and then to feed back, and then to rotate before being set back to normal.
My third step is to wonder what, exactly, I've made. One could argue that I've made a poor-man's version of the iTunes visualizer. Well, you know what I say to that? I say:
"Stop arguing with me, no one likes a contrarian."
I say I've made a framework in which to explore what has come before, and that exploration is twofold: buffering and navigating frames, and feeding a system back into itself. It's one source, spread over time and space, and manipulated into new forms.
February 6, 2012
Spacetime
Music = Material Over Time.
Video = Material Over Space.
What an idea. This notion, a stripped down statement, builds some interesting parallels between systems that are wildly different. Art, any kind of art, is simply material over a grander fabric of time and space. They can, of course be argued into each other: video can not exist in a place with no time, and music can not exist in a place with no space. Especially if that place with no space is space, in which case WOAH. WOAH. Why are you playing music in space, and WHY WASN'T I INVITED? The point, of course, being that all things are bound by time and space, and our art is designed for a place and a time. I would argue that we create in order to be proven: I was here. I existed. Remember me.
What interests me, though, as a live visual improviser, is the blending of these two systems. Audio has a rich and well-documented history of performance and improvisation, but video has been left behind. While music has lept forward into the realm of live synthesis and manipulation, the blending of electronic and acoustic, visuals have been stuck on the silver screen. Even the computational prowess of modern computers demonstrates the ridiculously uneven footing--Want to mix 24 channels of audio live? No problem! Want to mix 4 video sources? Might want to consider upgrading that RAM.
Progress, though, is being made, and it's being made quickly. I think of VJs playing to clubs, or visual artists hired to travel with bands and create what essentially equates to a live music video. The increase in parameters controlled by aural triggers, mapping sounds to visuals.
We are creatures of stimulus, we startle at noise and are captivated by color. There was an era of visuals in which sound was the outcast. Where 'silent films' weren't know by that name, they were just 'films.' Now we have a plethora of tools with which to merge fields, and no guidebook to reference.
Bruce McClure's Donostia is a great example of a very primal audiovisual connection.
Luke DuBois' Digits takes the simplest form of video performance (live visual feedback) and uses manipulations of time and color to enhance the audience experience.
Amon Tobin uses a VJ-style and 3-dimensional visual mapping to transform a space, synched with audio.
February 4, 2012
Hirst: Explains the Spot Paintings
A rhinestone-wearing Damien Hirst explains the theory and thought behind his infamous spot paintings in the latest short from filmmaker Matt Black. The legendary British artist, made famous by submerging mammals in formaldehyde and creating jaw-droppingly expensive jewel-encrusted skulls, has become one of the most prolific and lucrative names in contemporary art. The Complete Spot Paintings, 1986-2011, his series of 331 white canvasses imbued with rows of multicolored dots, are currently on display at all 11 of mega-gallerist Larry Gagosian’s sites around the globe. Manufactured largely by Hirst’s army of assistants, the paintings range in size and detail, with the most recent, completed in 2011, containing some 25,781 spots each 1mm in diameter; no single color is ever repeated on a canvas. Black first encountered Hirst’s hyper-symmetrical series in the mid 1990s, and found that his opinion on the works slowly developed from ambivalence to fascination. “When you are in a room full of them, they are overwhelming and disturbing; these dots staring at you creates a real sense of anxiety,” says Black. “His work always has an aggressiveness, and these are no exception.”
Damien Hirst: On the Spot
The Industrious Art Star Occupies Gagosian Galleries
Worldwide with His Complete Spot Paintings
Via: Nowness
Welcome
Welcome to my performance diary.
It is here that I'll be recording my thoughts, reflections, and progress in the pursuit of my Master's degree at Queen's University. This ezine is being created to fulfill the requirement of a diary for my performance module, where I will be working to create a large-scale audiovisual performance. My hope is to expose, in some small way, the difficulties, successes, and inspirations that are inevitable prices of admission when creating new work.
Ideas I look forward to exploring:
-Live performance, and the role of visuals
-Improvisation and its social dynamics
-The history of audiovisual interaction
-Current audiovisual composers and their work processes, methodologies, and poieses
-What inspires, and why
Ideas I will be forced to explore, regardless of how I feel about them:
-Writer's [Artist's] block
-Situations in which visuals are detrimental to performance
-Deadlines, expectations, and pressures
Disclaimer: Fair Warning
-The works presented here will be equal parts mine (amateur, self-indulgent, and perhaps, if we're lucky, successful) and professional (artists that actually know what they're doing).
-The thoughts put forth will be also be equal parts mine (judgemental, opinionated, and completely and unabashedly biased) and expert (academics who actually know what they're talking about, with footnotes and other fancy things real adults make use of).
-Finally, my personal reflections on inspiration and process may be random, jumbled, and/or profound beyond my wildest dreams. I make no promises of coherence, relevence, or any other value of worth, other than this: I'll do my best to not blog while drinking. Let's get started.
February 3, 2012
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Ira Chernova
Model : Ira Chernova top 2 Photos by: Nikolay Biryukov
IRA CHERNOVA
Brooklyn based
Photographer / Model
and this is some of IRA CHERNOVA's PHOTOGRAPHY
source: weheartit.com / Ira Chernova's photography-public shared album in Fb
model: Ira Chernova, Photo by Tony Stamolis, NYC'11
source: weheartit.com
what
See what a difference makes
Make your blog look super freaking cool
Leave the coding to the Internet nerds :)
Resize, edit and position everything with just your mouse.
is beautiful
Others blogs are awful
Other blogs are fugly
is elegant
Others blogs are bland
Others blogs are mediocre
is powerful
Other blogs require
<?php echo “html”; ?>
Other blogs are Booooring
Post title...
Change is in the bag!
Can"t be Free?
Are you looking for a FREE PROPERTY MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE?
Try this out: http://www.trexglobal.com/partner/bryan_spann
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It’s much easier than spreadsheets and financial software! Save hours of time and eliminate the tax
season headache!
Braids
BOX BRAIDS BACK!!
There are many updo's you can do for the professional setting. Youtube is covered with tutorials for them. Ive done a few looks on my blog...check it out...although I have had kinky twists and senegalese twists its the same idea) as far as breakage.
Have the stylist not braid around your edges "tightly"...and keep your edges AND nape well moisturized.
I kept my twists in for 4.5 weeks ! growth! My hair does not have issues with breakage after taking out the twists...
As for washing the longer the hair the heavier during wash so you may benefit from dry shampoo.
MOISTURE MOISTURE MOISTURE MOISTUR MOISTURE!!!
There are so many updo's you can do for the professional setting.
In celebration of braids and their awesomeness, and also to providesome inspiration for those considering braids
In Celebration Of Braids And Their Awesomeness!!
Post title...
ON THE COLOR SCALE BETWEEN RED AND YELLOW ORANGE IS PLACED.
BLACKIE
Spring 2012 color trends
Everyone approaches color differently. While our wardrobes are usually dominated by one or two of them, often when we shop we’re partial to investing in some seasonal colors. Read our spring 2012 colors guide to find out which colors are dominating the minds of designers when they set about creating 2012′s fashions.
I am very excited to meet the New Year. I’m hoping that the Year of the Dragon will provide me more opportunities to express my passion for fashion. I will leave 2011 behind with a promise of hope, faith and strength. I will also explore the fashion world with resilience and diligence so that I will become a catalyst of change, specifically in the field of sustainable fashion.
Alysha Nett: Lunch Break
PIZZA TIME!
Damn, as always I love Alysha Nett. Always looking good doin' the day to day!
Via: Poldberg
F Blogs and F You
This is how I feel
tonight...
(so leave me alone!)
Please Come Back
David Choe x Facebook
$200MILLION in stock market float via:dailymail.co.uk
who took shares instead of cash
who took shares instead of cash
DAVID CHOE, 35- Graffiti Artist
for painting Facebook's first HQ seven years ago, now making
A graffiti artist who painted the walls of Facebook's first headquarters seven years ago is set for a bumper payday of $200million after he agreed to take Facebook stock instead of cash for his work.
David Choe, 35, was asked to paint the offices in Palo Alto, California, in 2005, and was offered the choice by then-president Sean Parker of being paid a few thousand cash or the equivalent in shares. Now, after a blockbuster $5billion Facebook stock exchange flotation moved a step closer last night, he is one of at least 1,000 company employees finally on their way to becoming millionaires. viadailymail.co.uk
and this is his art in Facebook Headquarters building
Mark Zuckerberg collabing with David Choe at Facebook HQ.
Executive Producer: Wang Newton via: You tube
Fitness Friday #1
Fitness Friday!
1st Tip: Workout In The Morning!
Working out in the morning really makes all the difference. Firstly, if you workout in the afternoon, there is more of a chance of you skipping your workout due to conflicts. Getting your workout in right when you wake up guarantees that you work out. Also, you can get it over with and won't have to worry about it later. Another cool thing, is that you burn more fat in the morning. It takes about 3 minutes to start burning fat right when you wake up, where it takes about 12 minutes in the afternoon. This happens beacuse your body has to burn through all the sugar you've eaten beforehand, and in the morning, your body hasn't had any sugar yet. In conclusion, if you workout in the morning, EVERYONE WINS!
2nd Tip: Do 8 Minute Abs Before You Go To Sleep!
Okay this may sound weird, but I've been doing this for a while, and I gotta say, I have abs of steel. It's only 8 minutes, and it really gives your abs a good workout. If you can't do this everyday, I would suggest doing it at least every other day to get good results.
3rd Tip: Keep Calm!
Being fit and healthy is somewhat of a challenge...For me, if I mess up and eat a big, fat juicy burger, I don't freak! It's oaky to mess up! When you over eat or forget to excercise, just drink a lot of water and try to be healthy for the rest of the day. A bunch of little steps make big changes!
Welcome...
Anne Vyalitsyna/Harri Peccinotti in Muse
Anne
in Muse
These stunning photos were taken by Harri Peccinotti for Muse Magazine, The Fashion Art Magazine. This striking model is no other then Anne Vyalitsyna and you can find her in the spread "Sun & Soda." Is it hot in here or is it just me?
I stole these great photos from the amazing blog Anatomika.net. I can't read much on that site but the visuals are amazing. They have some great scans from all of the magazines. Makes for good inspiriation.
Via: Anatomika
Shelter Dogs - Photo Book and Series
"Shelter Dogs" is simply a collection of close-up portraits of homeless dogs. All images were taken while the dog was in an animal shelter. Some of these dogs found good homes, others were euthanized.
"Shelter Dogs" is available at all major bookstores, online at Amazon, etc. and on the ASPCA web store. A percent of all proceeds from sales are being donated to the ASPCA, so far we have raised over $25,000.
Shelter
Dogs
Aww, you have to feel for these dogs. Just look at the raw emotion in the eyes of these beautiful animals.
Via: Shelter Dog Book
the world is not enough
Hola Mundo
