learning is a constant state of mind

Here are some different places that teach classes about different things in the NJ/NY/PA area:

3rd ward - bk
lemur bots - bk
nyc resistor - bk
harvest works - nyc
make workshop - nyc
the hacktory - philly
eyebeam - nyc

I will add to this as I find more. If you know a place that I missed please let me know!

1800 Frames @ video_dumbo

If anyone is going to the Art Under the Bridge Festival, check out Galapagos tomorrow afternoon for a screening of 1800 Frames: Take 4. video_dumbo has the whole program for this weekends festival.

catalog//catalogue//plastic disaster

From exactly 5pm Sunday to 5am Wednesday Colin and I worked with furious productivity to re-burn/collage/print/xerox our entire back catalog. As with everything we done, this is a hand made, sharpie on CD-R, photo copies, and glue sticks affair.

We made 50 Electric Animals Go Sleepy Bye-Byes, 25 Frog Operas, and 10 Fortune Favors the Brave. We burned all the CDs ourselves and actually had to re-burn all 50 of Electric Animals because we used some bad data and the last 3 or 4 tracks were glitched and staticy (in a bad way). Lesson Learned #1: Always double/triple check the files and songs you are burning.

Frog Opera was very fun to make but took a significant amount of time to collage together. Xeroxed inserts are on the inside. Lesson Learned #2: While professional printing would be great, nothing really compares to something that is hand made and unique.

Fortune Favors the Brave was an expensive endeavor because we got some color print outs of Colins msPaintings and decided to make a booklet out of the images and story. Lesson Learned #3: Double check your measurements and math! We totally messed up the size of the images and had this awful white margin on the side of all the print outs. Colin, in a brilliant show of creative problem solving, turned it into a design feature that ended up being better than anything we could have done on purpose.



These are available only on the Screaming Females latest cross country tour. Unless you can convince Colin to save you one, these are it for these releases. They will be online by next month.

Eitherway, it was a comedy ("I made the stamp for the booklets but forgot to make it a mirror image") and tragedy ("I left the collage in the scanner in NYC") of errors.



To make the CDs we used jewel cases Ive collected over the years, Colins stash from home, and a huge bin of cases we got from Shawn Giannattasio. While we were making burning the CDs I researched how to recycle the cases we wouldnt need and found this out:

"Jewel cases are made out of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a petrochemical-based plastic that is notoriously difficult to recycle and has been linked to elevated cancer rates among workers and neighbors where it is manufactured. Also, the lead often added to strengthen PVC can contaminate water, soil and air around PVC manufacturing sites.

Worse yet, because it contains a variety of additives and lacks a uniform composition, PVC is far less recyclable than other plastics. Its quality degrades after only two or three "cycles." Greenpeace has identified PVC as the least recycled of the six major common plastics. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that less than one percent of total post-consumer PVC is recovered or reprocessed.

As a result, most municipal recycling centers do not accept PVC products, meaning that millions of CD jewel cases either take up room indefinitely in landfills, where they won't biodegrade, or are incinerated. And unfortunately, the burning of PVC creates airborne dioxins." -- E: The Environmental Magazine, Nov-Dec, 2005 by John O'Dwyer, Bianca Hoffman.

This was incredibly surprising because I have always assumed you could just recycle jewel cases like plastic bottles and cans. It makes me wonder about the record execs who decided to use this material knowing full well their goal was to produce millions upon millions of these plastic cases that are dangerous to make and cannot be recycled or disposed of safely.



So wtf do I do with these? There is a company called Green Disk who can recycle them but you have to pay 7 bucks plus shipping to get it to them. They are located in Washington and estimated total cost for these CDs is just under 20 dollars. I dont know if I can drop that to get rid of them but then again, if I throw them out all they have left to do is sit in land fills for the rest of eternity poisoning ground water. We figured the best thing to do is to keep re-using them so we put all 50 Electric Animal CDs into cases but there are still a bunch left and I have no idea what to do with them. Any suggestions? I am going to try FreeCycle them but I dont know how successful that is going to be. If anyone wants a ton of jewel cases let me know.

The Frog Opera

In limited edition of 25, The Frog Opera has been "re-printed" with delicious looking hand made collages. Available on the Screaming Females tour.
The first is by Colin, the second by me.

Yesterday Evening

I helped Benton-C Bainbridge do a visuals gig at Roulette for ok|ok, a Brooklyn based experimental group that was having a record release party. I filmed the whole thing and messed around with in camera effects using concave mirrors, weird lenses, and other plastic bits. The live footage was sent into a mixing system, fed through a Tivo to create video delay and feedback, and then projected back onto the band creating another feedback loop. Also mixed into the system was Eric Barry Drasin who used VDMX to manipulate clips on the fly (seen in the TV monitor is some insane Japanese kids show he was using). The Tivo is now in my possession and I hope to post some experiments soon.

fou ah em

Meet You on Earth Someday

dont know what to classify it as. in an obvious way its a music video, but real music videos (or well made ones) have footage shot, edited, and arranged for/to the music. this video and the first are just footage samples from various projects, experiments, or ideas that have been thrown together to Colins incredible songs. Im thinking they are more like sketches, or visual ideas. shot in the ny botanical gardens in the far bronx, song recorded by Colin in seoul 2008.

ah

Im trying to make a widget, which I realize now is definitely not an impulsive endeavor. Spent all night and so far I can do this:


I am trying to make a Decamp Bus schedule widget that wont require the internet to check on times. Once I figure out Dashcode, it shouldnt be too difficult.
Tomorrow or soon after I will finish.

update - dashcode only works on leopard! I have a tiger. Dammit.

MIT hacks

IHTFP
endlessly entertaining and inspiring

Summer Recap

In no particular order:

The end of interactivos? and the Double Take exhibition


our e p i c wiki page is here

All Points West:

CSS



Girl Talk




Radiohead




I made a stop motion video using GSV AppleScript.


Lenny found the code and I put it into action. This is just a preliminary test, we will be pursuing this idea and many others in the near future.


I made an Arduino blink a few LEDs. Spending a few hours a day learning how to program this thing.



Introductions 4 in Washington DC is over.

Thank you Peter for making DC a wonderful time!


**lighting bolt** SPRINGTEENICA!!! **lighting bolt**
A cover band that covers Metallica covering Bruce Springsteen.
Jen came up with the greatest bar trivia night team name/band name e v e r.

Jeb made this incredible poster/album cover, now all we need is the band.