Thursday 31 July 2008

Life after the...


Photographed on a light post, Balaclava.

Wednesday 30 July 2008

Censorship as form


I don't often post videos, but in this case I'll make an exception. 'Toe Jam' by The Brighton Port Authority (AKA Fatboy Slim), featuring David Byrne and Dizzee Rascal. Good fun.

In other Byrne-related news, him and Eno are releasing a new collaboration! Must... contain... self.

Four steps...

In the beginning, there was the:
Followed but the emergence of the:
Which led to the:
And culminated with:

From a failed attempt to extract some digital video data for a friend of mine. You know what I'd like to see? Glitch Tetris.

Tuesday 29 July 2008

Stuff in my studio - part 3: ((ºДº;))


On an interesting note, almost all of the paraphernalia on the left-side of my monitor is greyscale. Go figure.

I picked up this little guy in a gashapon machine as I liked the typographical qualities of the toys the machine offered. To my knowledge, it's ">>1-san" from a Japanese BBS. However the description doesn't completely fit, so I'm not sure who he really is and if, indeed, he really is a he. His mouth is comprised of the Cyrillic letter 'De' and he looks kind of frightened or stressed.

Wednesday 23 July 2008

Listen to the Yan Yan


The other night I was eating some Yan Yan (snack) [wiki] at a friends house and photographed the text for 'Rhinoceros'. Listen to the Yan Yan. It knows stuff.

Thursday 17 July 2008

Walking to another place

It's been a while since I've posted any music since I have precious few megahoots left on my web server. With luck, this will soon change.

I was coming into my studio this morning listening to 'And Their Refinement of the Decline' [Amazon] by Stars of the Lid, who are perhaps my favourite ambient outfit. This one track was playing while I walked down the back-lanes to my space, I heard the train in the background (I think listening to ambient music on the train adds much to the experience), the weather was overcast and the whole thing felt pretty good.

Stars of the Lid - Articulate Silences, Pt. 2 [8.2MB mp3 file]

Download the file, put it in your headphones and go for a walk. Then buy the album. Then go for another walk. A long one.

Wednesday 16 July 2008

ABC1 = AWOL

So I switched over to Channel 2 (does anyone still call it that?) last night (12:50AM) and was treated to HALF an HOUR of wierdo test patterns and blackness accompanied by a high-pitched tone. The whole thing was incredible and like watching some abstract video-art, never knowing when it would finish. The array of diverse test patterns and colour bars were truly inspiring so I got out my camera and started photographing the screen.


There's something about test patterns and calibration screens that fascinates me. I'd like to make a documentary looking at test-patterns through history and their purpose and call it 'Please Adjust Your Set: A History of Test Patterns'.


The test pattern above suggest that the problem was limited to the Victorian and Tasmanian transmissions. There was a program scheduled, but I went to bed before I saw if (and when) it resumed.


The full red screen above was isolated in that there were no full green or blue screens that I saw.


If I could have recorded this stuff, I totally would have. I mean, how rare is dead air on it's own? And all of this other stuff? For over half an hour!? I told my wife that this is the tele-visual equivalent of Halley's Comet, but perhaps that's stretching it a bit too far.

Tuesday 15 July 2008

4 weeks of progress

Technology is a boon I tells ya! A BOON!!!

Monday 14 July 2008

Words of advice...

On a clock in Degraves Subway.

Tuesday 8 July 2008

A directional follow-up

A follow-up to the 'Directional' post I recently published, here is a sketch for a video idea I'm working on. The arrows are from the 'Sub Space Emissary' mode in 'Super Smash Bros. Brawl' and I intend to make a video work animating the whole adventure together just using snapshots of the arrows used to prompt the player in a certain direction.

The snapshot technology in the game is sometimes flawed, so arrows can't always be perfectly centred or consistently zoomed, but I like how that adds some movement to the overall piece. It's also nice how you get flashes of an edge of an objects or a part of a character in the frame, adding a peek or clue to the position of where the arrow is in the world. For example, watch out for the peanut.

The animation:

Political

And I never knew he was detained.

Monday 7 July 2008

Predictive text ...

... never predicts enough. Taken from a detail of a real-estate billboard.

Saturday 5 July 2008