A drawing sample from students in class
Friday night I trekked out to Washington, DC to join the Motion Graphics Festival. The workshops all sounded wonderful, but it especially piqued my interest when I read that VJ Shantell Martin was teaching a workshop in live-painting. On the practical side of what I do, my instinct was to take the After Effects class, but the VJ side of me couldn’t let go of the opportunity to hang with other visualists from around the world, so I signed up.
The class introduced the idea of using a wacom tablet mixed with painting software to drawing live and intuitively to music, while recording your session and being able to cut it up and re-use it as animation in performance or later for editing. I found this particularly useful because I never record what I’m doing directly from the screen. There is a program called I Show You which does this perfectly, creating a high res quicktime file.
While much of my personal VJ style has been to mix motion graphics & after effects work, with video files, I’m interested in seeing what direction the concepts I learned in class could take on for me. Definitely a lot of fun, and definitely a new tool to play with and explore.
Thanks to all of you who I met this weekend. I hope our paths cross again soon!
Hello all! I’ve been back for a little over a week and it has taken me this long just to catch up with life, time zones, and the digital realm of documentation. Our first european show was so incredibly fun and soulful. Many thanks to Camilo Tribin of Makinola who organized, promoted and put the whole thing together. Gustavo Osorio and his amazing photographic talents. Margarita Rojas of the Crayon Incident for her creative inspiration and beautiful performance with us at Miscelanea. Emily and Bryan Dunn for letting me run around with them all day and crash their honey moon. And of course Kodomo, whose music continually inspires me to do what I’m doing. Many thanks to all the lovely people that I met along the way.
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Just a quick collection of snap shots around town, during my whirlwind adventure in Spain.
Videos to come!
Thanks to Jimmy Deane & Ryan McCann (aka Media Victim), I got to meet some really wonderful VJs from around the world at Burning Man this year, during their organized VJ meetup at Center Camp. Ryan was sweet enough to give me this wonderfully edited clip to capture a few words during my playa adventure at Burning Man as a VJ.
Thanks again guys! From this point on, I’ll learn how to speak in front of the camera lens!! Usually I make a point to stay on the other side. Nor do I usually wear kitty ears. Well, sometimes.
Below is a link to the full segment of all the VJs.
Photo by one of my lovely campmates, Rebeka Bieber
Grateful. I’ve just re-entered the digital abyss after two weeks of a disparate connection. Hot generous sun, moon and mountains behind me. The laundry piles from my desert journey have each a layer and a story. Not one item of clothing was spared. Just one step forward into this ethereal Black Rock City, into the Black Rock desert of Nevada. The inevitability of overwhelming dust takes over you and all that you have. You have no choice but to embrace what comes.
It’s a desert dream. A whirlwind sand storm. Blink your eyes and it’s over. A powerful oasis of magic and art if you choose to see it that way. Liberated matter of the formal routine. A re-awakened world that doesn’t compromise our personal art and expression for practicality purposes. Art for the sake of doing, being, sharing. Life for the sake of living simply, yet extremely. No money exchanged, only energy and ideas.
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Click here for our info on Monkeytown’s website. The calendar for August was just launched.
We’re getting excited for our upcoming show!! Mark your calendars and send an RSVP here. August 6th, Thursday at 8:30 PM. We are currently looking for a second act to play with us, open to suggestions!
Soon I will be posting the massive amount of photos & video that were taken this weekend in the Chrysalis Dome from the festival we performed at in upstate NY this past weekend. The rain gods did not hold off on any rain that they had planned for us despite my plea, but as a result the adventure became that much more spontaneous and unpredictable.
Unfortunately we were only able to get Chrysalis up for two nights before the rain turned everything into swamp lands. We then took our cables, projectors, tarps and equipment over to a smaller inflatable dome to keep the party going to finish out the weekend. Either way, the project continues to become more interesting with each launch.
Thanks to everyone who made it all the way up there and stuck it out through the rainy conditions. I had so much fun working with everyone and experimenting with this amazing project.
Monkeytown with the Cutlery
Thanks to all who managed their way to the couches of Monkeytown last night! The haunting jingle jangles, clarinet, record player, typewriter and banjo strings of the Cutlery ominously echoed the walls and brought a sultry, nostalgic mood to the shadows.
The room had a nice mellow feeling of serenity throughout our set, and was a lot of fun to edit live in my spontaneous ways of vision. I planned to have the visuals take you on a journey through time. We spent most of the evening floating between the 1920s and 1930s. Flappers, poetic meanderings, dramatic romances, cryptic cartoons and a side of Charlie Chaplan. In addition, lately I’ve been missing one of my very best friends, Zora, who passed away a few years ago. Her and I had just begun to collaborate on beautiful things together in the year before she passed. I know she would have loved the type of work that I’m doing these days. I always wonder what we would be creating today if she were still around. In our short time together we collaborated on one stopmotion film, Fascade Filosophia (also posted below), a few bare experimental tests of painted waves (will be posting soon) and animated sand.
Fascade, full of dark puppetry and mysterious castles, was a big hit last night from what I heard after the show. It felt amazing to have her with me last night, breathing through the walls. I’ve been missing her something fierce and showing that film reminded me that she’s still here inspiring me everyday. For me, last night’s set was dedicated to her.
That venue is so intimate and personal, I wish I could project visuals there more often. It’s absolutely my ideal space, and motivates me to make better and better work.
Last Thursday and Friday I was privileged to spend my normal workday at the F5 Motion Design conference held at Roseland in NYC. I kept my eye on this conference from the early stages last year and watched it bloom into one of the biggest, baddest lineups of designers from all over the world. After being exposed to all the presentations, I’m personally going to keep my eyes on 1st Avenue Machine, Dvein, and Moment Factory. These guys blew my minds eye and have opened me up to some new ideas & approaches to design. Here are some of my other favorite speakers from the day, to note a few:
Dvein, Prologue, Psyop, Black Heart Gang, 1st Ave Machine, Imaginary Forces, Rachel Maddow, Moment Factory, Jonah Lehrer.
Since having worked in the corporate world of video production for the last few years, I haven’t had much opportunity to immerse myself in the art world (or even the commercial world) of motion graphics the way I wish I could. Thankfully, conferences like F5, after effects meetups and the VJ world have brought this back into my life in many ways. Most nights after I come home from day to day editing, I begin to collage my own new work and find myself experimenting into the early hours, to create a bigger, more original and more ecclectic library for future live video performances.
The F5 conference reminded me just how powerful motion graphics are, and how much I love that world & the people who make that sort of magic happen. Not only did the conference showcase some of the best work I’ve seen in years, but there was a really interesting discussion about the state of creativity, and how it works from a scientific angle. We talked about how to better access innovations from the left side of the brain, and how we should be open to all new endeavors that allow us to create connections, and draw inspiration from experience. Insights seemingly flourish best when not forcing creativity. Some highlights for me were seeing & hearing all of the bizarre places that people reach to for inspiration. Found everywhere from rubberbands that were made into stop-motion spaghetti to one person dipping their hands & feet in cement just to see what it would feel like to wear on their limbs for a week! Ideas are formed in some of the most oddly beautiful ways and it has always been a passion of mine to explore how other people’s brain’s work.
Later this week I’d like to transcribe my notebook that I had with me for the two days and capture the raw thoughts I had while listening to these fabulous heros of mine. As a result of the festival I’ve already taken some of the advice and put it towards a new identity scope for my danger visuals.
A few frame grabs from new Danger intro visuals
Lastly I want to mention how VERY excited I am to say that a new collaboration is underway with electronic musician Kodomo. It looks like May 6th will be our first performance at the Delancey for the next Warper Party. Details soon to come!!
Apr 11, 2009 |
Inspiration
Over the last few days I’ve been diving headfirst into a huge number of experimental films and collections. The last film in particular that caught my eye and is holding a fascination for me right now is called Color + Modulation by Rob Tyler. With a variety of oil & ink mediums he hand-painted glass frame by frame and caught them on 16mm film. It was then digitally manipulated and edited to music to produce 8 films within this collection. I find them each to be an absolutely alluring piece of work that keeps my eyes entertained and my brain stimulated throughout the entire transition from one color to the next.
Rob’s music videos are also pretty incredible. The one posted above is just one example of many beautiful pieces. He captures something that I’ve been digging deep to find within my own work. A sort of innocence and simplicity that exudes an energy that holds you in the moment until it’s ready to release you back to earth.
Inspired by the hauntingly beautiful music of the Cutlery ladies and the poetic words of Nick Cave. I created this piece with an old wooden frame & collaged imagery found from fashion photos from around the world. It almost came together in a seemingly unconscious way, and became an animated photo album that expanded from the corners of my imagination. The photography was altered, animated, arranged and woven into these treasured memories. This piece was created to be projected during the Cutlery’s live performance of this song, and was debuted on the four walls of Monkeytown last Friday night. Looks like we’ll have another gig there in June!!
