Moleskine A6 front (01/01/16 – 16/05/16)

Media Watch for the LOLs

Perhaps it's a sad state of affairs, but I don't LOL in the purest sense of a L.O.L. as much at the TV I used to. This could be attributed to a number of factors - getting older, the slow-creep of cynicism, the fact that my sense of humour is getting more oblique. Perhaps. In regards to the last point, one thing that I find hilarious (and makes me LOL) is errors in broadcast media. I wait for these zen-like moments like an astronomer watching the sky for shooting stars. I've even caught and documented some in the past.

Recently broadcast media had to scramble for the latest significant event (The Ridding of The Rudd) and mistakes were made. Fortunately, ABCs Media Watch collated these and the result was (for me at least) hilarity as well as an interesting peek behind the curtain of current media. You can stream/watch the episode here (serious LOLs start around 07:47).

My favourites:

And now, the news... In Kyrgyzstan (better in context)

Laurie Oakes caught off guard (as a looping animated gif):

David Stratton gets glitched

David Stratton gets glitched (detail). Reminds me of something ...

A still image, which lasted for one and a half minutes.

Take note: this isn't so much taking pleasure in the mistakes of others - I work with screen-based media and am very familiar with its peccadilloes and there is an element of schadenfreude - rather these moments offer a moment of unexpected beauty honesty and hilarity which seems in stark contrast to the highly polished smug un-funniness of most contemporary TV.

As technology gets more baroque, more room for errors occurs. However, the errors spotted by Media Watch even persisted in Radio, which would be a more straight-forward medium than digital TV. While producers of said media would prefer that these mistakes get swept under the carpet or are eventually banished altogether I believe they are important part of where we are technologically and conceptually. In a way, the upheaval of getting a PM ousted was reflected in the media itself - the state of the country reflected in the state of the broadcast.

Emptiness must be perfect

'Nietzsche's Mirror'

'Axiomatic Re-draw: Silence'

'Slight Delay on the Journey Home'

'Progress Through Reduction'

'The Dandy'

'The Isometricity of Loss'

'Axiomatic Re-draw: Silence (Redux)'

'The Fuzzy Cog Gets the Blog'

'Greater Definition Through Tools'

'The Illusion of the Illusion of Depth'

Selected from a compendium of in-between iPhone screens, 2009-2010, 320 x 480 px. Digital.

Remedial of Wolpertingers of yore

Empty iPhone SMS speech balloon, 2010.

Old is the New New

Television displaying PS2 memory-card loading screen via newly purchased component cable.

Slightly modified.

Artists and banner ads

I just noticed the work 'The Young Family' by Patricia Piccinini on one of those "quiz" banner ads.

Does this make for a new piece of net-art? The definition of real vs. fake is kinda grey. I mean, the work is real, but is the quiz asking if you think that the probability of a Dog-Human hybrid is real? Or if the image is real or PhotoShopped. Is it actually referencing the idea of an image itself? Is an image real or a representation? 22.3% seem to know the answer.

I clicked on the link, which naturally led to one of those lame SMS-based subscription services masquerading as an IQ test (with a link to a MASSIVE terms and conditions page). I didn't click all the way through, but the first question had nothing to do with Piccinini's work.

At the time of writing, Piccinini's Wikipedia page has "multiple issues".

Latest Mac OS X can take screengrabs of DVD Player!

Ehh, just kidding. Actually, in a way this is true. Under previous Macintosh operating systems the user wasn't even able to take a grab of the whole screen if the DVD Player application was running. Even if the window of the DVD playing was behind other things or you were selecting a quadrant of the screen not including the Player window you would get an alert and be unable to make the capture. Now, with OS 10.6 or Snow Leopard, whole-screen grabs are OK. Selection grabs are OK and even the Grab application can capture a DVD Player window. However, as you can see above, it sees only gives you a lovely grey grid. Luckily, my latest experimental film is 98 minutes of a grey grid formatted especially for the DVD Player application.

It's a love story.

Nobi Nobi Stills

I was playing Nobi Nobi Boy with a friend last night, the latest game directed by Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi. The game has a feature where you can take video of your gameplay. We ended up using this as a technique in an attempt to create abstract digital art. Here are the results:

I plan to upload some of the video material one of these days.

In which we discover a mythical snake. Twice.

I'm not sure I should be blogging about this. I was playing 'We Love Katamari' over the weekend - an absolute giant of a video-game that never gets old - and I discovered an instance of a rare, mythological Japanese snake - the Tsuchinoko.



I've mentioned the Tsuchinoko before, and this isn't the first time I've found one in a video game context. Below is one I found in 'Metal Gear Solid 3'. It was significantly harder to find than in 'We Love Katamari':


Tsuchinokos don't like to draw attention to themselves. This is the reason why I'm reluctant to blog about it. The one in the image above doesn't look too happy about being photographed (or perhaps being potential for food), and I'm subverting superstition. Keep your eyes peeled.

The Universe is a dome ...

... And the Moon's a balloon.

While researching some work I've been exploring the Google Earth app, which is helping me think about stuff. Recently they added maps of the ocean floor, Mars and the Universe. I was intrigued by the Universe map, and how Google Earth would interpret this. After "flying" around for a while I noticed this:

I thought at first it was an odd cluster of stars, but it looked too neat, too precise. Note that you can see the facets that make up part of the rest of the Universe in the above picture.

The Universe "model" is actually a (relatively) enormous polygonal dome (or two domes forming a sphere), with images of aspects of the Universe laminated onto it. What these images show is the point on the dome where the textures converge. The nadir, I guess.

We can go a little closer in, until it becomes a beautiful, noisy explosion of picture-shards.



The whole Universe/dome thing made me think of the Flammarion Woodcut:


I started wondering what lies "outside" this representation of the Universe, and all I could think of was data without end. The pilgrim looking beyond the veil in the Flammarion print represents a looking beyond preconceived notions of the known Universe and also beyond representations of the Universe. I think with digital technology we also can look beyond the representation until we spy the workings underneath it all, even if they are entirely conceptual. I mean, you need to take a conceptual break looking at the stars to not consider them part of a dome as we are trained to see them this way after living all our lives on a sphere-like object.
Google Earth does an excellent job of serving up the harvested data of the Universe in an easily navigable and accessible way. I reckon it will only be a matter of time before technology can gather actual 3D representations of the Universe, piece by piece. Maybe.


With apologies to David Niven.

My life ... As a cloud

The recent past: I decided to log into Second Life, as it's been a while and I had a few in-world matters to attend to. So I downloaded the latest client, installed it and started wandering around. Then some problems began. My avatar was immobile and I eventually got kicked off. Another attempt, same problem. The third try presented me with this:

I was able to move slightly as if I was an eyeball hovering millimetres off the ground. Eventually, this:

So I left it for a while and logged in again to some limited success. I attempted to teleport to a friend's gallery space and was promptly turned into a tiny cloud.



And happy birthday, Kerryn!

They like the hi-fi

Last week I went to the screening of Mink Engine's DVD 'Acres of Diamonds' at ACMI's Studio One. it made for an entertaining night and I was well impressed by the manifestation of their hard work - it's been a phenomenal production and the end product looked great.

The DVD was impressive - a technicolour Katamari-esque ball of gesamtkunstwerk with contributions (my friend Leebee built the Mech pictured below) and vox-pops from around the globe. There were some genuinely funny daikon-related moments too. My only beef was that it wasn't loud enough.

So if you're in Melbourne this Thursday, Mink Engine are doing a follow-up live gig at the aforementioned Studio One as part of Synaesthesia, which is happening every Thursday PM until May 14th. Some of the other events look interesting too. Photos in this post thanks to Fleiss (with more pictures of the screening at the link).

Plasma Babylon

Between browsing, a little piece of death

Screengrab of the minute

Camo-Poop from Takeshi Murakami's Kaikai & Kiki.

Hungry?

Fruits and Vegetables gradient swatches, Adobe Illustrator CS3. Yes, I'm still using CS3.

Koala note

An iPhone note using this.

The story of my life...

...Sometimes.

Stands in

Cymbal stand descriptions via ebay on the iPhone.