batt trees wreck wired

The Birth of Sancho Panza, a la Benjamin Button

2010-11-22T00:52:00.009-05:00

Small Break for Maya...

...

Long Time, No C

2010-10-23T02:56:00.005-04:00

It has been 16 months since I posted, but not to worry. I am ok. Just in a slight state of isolation from the e-world. I have been working on music intermittently, and am preparing for a rush back into the world of artisan instruments.

A bit ago, Jarrett D.'s dad made a cigar box guitar for Marissa P. I could not find a photo on Screaming Females blog, but I did find the picture posted above, a sweet ol' dude in Kansas, if I remember correctly, who made his very own cigar box banjo...

After seeing Marissa's new CBG and taking stock of how many cigar boxes I had, I decided to give it a go. Using the simple plan on CigarBoxGuitars.com, I put together my first CBG, Maya!

The good:
Reinforced string holes, ergonomic neck with matching finish, altogether awesomeness.

The bad:
Misunderstanding of proper measurements, neck not flush with body, a crappy hatch, and crappy hinges, replaced with good hinges, destroyed in a tragic telling-scary-stories-in-the-dark-at-Meat-Town-unhinging accident.

The ugly:
Built in Cassette Tape Distortion, crunchy sound, taped down, wiry mess.

All in all, it's a great effort; wonderfully playable with a slide in open tuning, and sexy, in a 1970's-tanning-ad kind of way.

Alas, it is time I go to bed. This post was not meant for Maya, but I am glad she got her time in the sun. This is all a precursor to my new CBG project. I will post my progress soon. Until then I can only tell you his name: Sancho Panza!

Butterfly Guitar

2010-01-17T03:03:00.002-05:00

Did many things today, and bending this toy guitar from start to finish was one of them. I did a pretty ugly job but it sounds really nice. I will post better photos and some audio samples tomorrow.

AVR Programming Blues

2009-12-22T08:49:00.004-05:00

I built an AVR Programmer from a kit. The electronics are definitely the easy part, but sadly not even half the battle. I have to install the firmware by booting from a Linux disc while doing all this other stuff I unfortunately dont understand. And THEN tackle that whole actual programming thing. The meat and potatoes of of it all are still way out of my reach, and it may be a while till I learn that Miso isnt a delicious Japanese soup and Mosi is not a typo of Miso. I guess I just SCK at programming. I am digging a hole in the GND with these bad programming jokes. Reset.

hllo hllo

2009-12-07T22:05:00.012-05:00

this blog aint dead yet. after much adventure and circumstance I am finally building again! A quick run down of the past few months in pictures:

I tried to turn a volume pedal into a tremolo pedal by using a vactrol.

Which became this. BUT was a total failure.

Participated in Bushwick Open Studios with my lovely housemates.

this was before our apt had walls.

Sometime in August Ari asked me to teach a workshop for a bunch of 5-7 year olds in Newark for the Barat Foundation. This was truly one of the most fun (and exhausting) times Ive ever had teaching electronics. I breadboarded a few simple oscillator circuits and in place of the resistor that controls pitch, put two very long wires. I then had the kids draw picture with NO.2 pencil that was effectively one line starting at the edge of the page, like their names in cursive, stick figure people, flowers, or just crazy scribbles. By connecting one wire to the edge of their drawing, they can take the other wire and drag it along the graphite and play their drawing.

Some kids really got and Jathanel, who is in the video, was even asking me how to learn more about electronics! I gushed.

Later that month I set up the incredible GRL Laser Tag system at the Sound Liberation Front's party at Little Field down in Gowanus.

A few months later I got to take a workshop with Rob Hordijk, the guy who taught me how to build this, and Jokee Nies to build 2 totally bad ass noise machines. One is the Benjolin, the Mini-Runglers bigger badder brother, and the Zeitgeist, an INSANE delay module with photocell control capabilities. Both of these are legit synth modules with CV ins and CV outs (7 for the Benjolin!).

Its always great to take workshops in Harvestworks, with its dim light, complete lack of ventelation, and tangled mess of hot irons and piggybacked powerstrips.

I think that day I was on a ratio of 2 large coffees per circuit board soldered.

The Benjolin LIVES.

There was some trouble with the Zeitgeists, bad chips and what not, but luckily mine worked and I took home what would become endless hours of insane noise making.

I started jamming with my housemate Luke so we decided to start recording these sessions. No songs, just process. I will be posting more of these jams in the future but for now here is our set up. We also made one of these things.

There was a ton of other stuff that happened, but in terms of electronics the only one that really matters is that we built walls in my apartment and lofted my bed. No longer sleeping on the floor, I finally have a real workshop for the first time since I moved outta Jersey.

Whats even better is I cleaned it and organized the hell out of it.

The first project I finished was rehousing the Zeitgeist in a cigar box.

It came out great, and is the first project I have built that doesnt need batteries!

yaaaay!

2x4s and Toys

2009-08-20T14:04:00.007-04:00

After being on an electronics hiatus for a few months I am finally refocusing again. To get some momentum, or as a warm up of sorts, I decided to do a quick 1-2 day hack of a kids toy. The toy was a simple noise maker, generating some annoying beeps, siren sounds, and short melodies. In the end I found I could add a pitch bend to it as well as a loop function that could loop the sounds. I also added a 1/4 inch out and switched the batteries from those tiny button cells to normal AAs.

Here is the completed circuit.

When I was building the circuit I had a lot of issues trying to find a suitable enclosure for it. Without a proper place to do wood or metal work, and without anything suitable or cheap enough for this toy (I wasnt going to use any nice cigar boxes for this) I was at a loss for a bit about what to do with it. Then I decided FTS I will just use what I have lying around my house. I happen to have a lot of 2x4 blocks, screws, zip ties, and random bits of spare wire, so away I went.

The circuit itself is screwed into the block of the wood in the ripped up original enclosure it came in. Going against my past, I actually tried NOT to use hot glue. So to mount the pot I nailed 4 nails around it and bent them inward slightly. It holds really well.

I really like the look of the exposed wires and contacts. Its functional in that it allows me to fix breaks as well use the exposed points as body contacts. I also like how looks aesthetically. I actually tried to work the wires into a design element here but gave up halfway through just so this wouldnt take to much time. Next time I make a circuit like this, though, the wire is going to be a design or aesthetic element and Im excited for the possibilities it brings to mind.

This is the looping switch bay. I learned a neat trick at Bent Fest where if you connect the ground from the output of a cheap toy to its buttons it can make it loop. It worked for this toy and instead of wasting switches, which I wouldnt even know how to mount on a block of wood, I just used wire wrapped screws and an alligator clip.

The output jack is held into place with a screw in the back that you can see here, a nail in the front, and a zip tie. It is SUPER sturdy. I often worry with some circuits I make about the output jack coming loose after repeated use, but I will never have to worry about this one. Its going no where.

I was really happy about the zip tie method I used and will definitely use it again. I just drilled a whole straight down into the block and then one in the side making a tunnel for the zip tie to pass through. Worked great.

Zip ties and electronics dont hang out enough.

Here is a video (I added the delay effect on the amp):

2x4 Toy from All Over The Where on Vimeo.

Pedals

2009-07-20T00:18:00.005-04:00

Years ago, literally, I told Colin I was going to make him The King Of All Chorus, a totally awesome Katamari themed, hacked up, custom designed chorus pedal for his birthday. Well I have finally started making it! Making a pedal from the ground up with a kit can be simple, or extremely difficult. Its simple if you just follow instructions, solder it all together and throw it in the unpainted plain gray box. It will only take you a few hours if you choose that route. But half if not most of the reason people buy guitar pedal kits is because they can customize and paint the pedal any way they want. This means adding mods to increase its functionality and painting some truly incredible designs on it. I chose the harder route, but hopefully it will be worth it. Because of all the mods I am adding I had to get a new enclosure and drill it myself. This is the first, and one of the harder steps about this process. Most people who do this a lot use drill presses for straight drills, templates, nice drill bits, and a good garage or basement to do the work. I had none of these, and because its my first time drilling an enclosure I had several mistakes.

This is the enclosure with all the wholes I could do at the time.

Of my many mistakes, the obvious ones are that my wholes are not in straight lines, and that I did the wholes on the left side backwards from the other two.

What sucks even more is that by this last whole my drill bit was completely eaten way. I had no mineral oil to lubricate and protect the bit and while I tried to use corn oil, it did not help at all. So as you can see the drill slipped, because of the corn oil, and messed up the enclosure. To add insult to injury, I actually ended up drilling the small whole to far away from the big one and have to get my dremel out and make it oblong so the pot can fit.

Here you can see wild and futile attempts at accuracy.

Also, even after drilling out the window of my apartment and getting aluminum shards everywhere I couldnt even finish the job in one shot! I needed to drill 2 half inch holes but the drill bit wouldnt fit in my drill! So bummed.

Once I find a drill or a drill press to finish drilling the enclosure I can get on with the fun, but tedious, part of painting and decaling. I got a few months before Colins next birthday so I think I can finish it by then!

On the topic of pedals, I had this Tremolo pedal that I made the easy way, with no decaling or painting, and decided one night to do something with it. So I covered it in shiny sticker stuff I found in the trash at MTV.

May at the Oromancer

2009-07-18T15:54:00.007-04:00

In May, Colin and I played a show at the Oromancer in New Brunswick. It was a fantastic day long show with several incredible people playing in a wide variety of locals in and around the house. Jen took a bunch of great photos I will make her post soon, and in the mean time check out the Post Neo Blog for full video documentation. Tomislav also did an incredible job recording audio of the entire days events so you can download that here if you missed it. Below are the three songs that we played that day.

#!

#@

##

Photo by Jen Sohn-Park

Shameless

2009-06-29T20:01:00.001-04:00

http://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/tag/1246061806.html

more coming soon as I get broker and brokerer

Noise Toy, Old Toy

2009-06-25T00:33:00.004-04:00

Early this month I finally got around to making a Noise Toy from Loud Objects.

It was a super easy build, no more than ten minutes to make (gotta let the soldering iron heat up) and is incredibly fun to play with. Jen and my housemates however probably disagree after several hours of this:

The best part is you can reprogram the chip to make your noise. Check the Noise Toy sites programming hall of fame for some DMB(!!). While they recommend this kit, you have to pay in euros and that sucks, so I am wondering if I can use this and modify it or find one thats 5 pin for as cheap.

Also, while cleaning up junk at my parents house I found this:

It was (I use past tense because I scrapped it for parts) a hand held magnetic tape scratcher. I put the body of a cassette tape player in a cassette tape case, used a small toy mic to hold the tape head, and apparently didnt do a damn thing about the battery holder.

Way back in 2nd grade...

2009-06-22T18:51:00.005-04:00

Way back in April I helped Terminal Reynaldo film a music video on a totally boss sound stage in Manhattan.

The director Chris Holt got the hook up with the space and the band asked me to help with some projection and set design. I had a bunch of O-Scopes and video type writers I had borrowed from Benton-C, so I brought those over to help make some control panels for this 70's space race themed video. Its incredible how with the right camera angle and lighting a bunch of old A/V gear can look like a spaceship control panel. Obviously this photo does not do the set designer's brilliant work justice but when video is finished you will see what I mean.

I also ended up doing some on the spot soldering of LEDs to make some blinky lights for the space port thing. The set designer Chris brought (I feel terrible but I forgot his name) truely did some incredible on the spot work to turn a few pieces of wood into a believable (to the camera!) space ship.

The rest of the time I helped out on set and did rear projection/projection on the band. We were supposed to some projection mapping on the bands instruments but sadly, there just were not enough hours in the day. Will post the video when its finished, I am truly excited to see how it comes out.

Cellular Automata Delay

2009-06-20T17:08:00.005-04:00

Sometime in April after all these shows Eric called me and was like "I got these circuits I need built by tomorrow can you help me?" and I was like "awesome." After a nine hour over nighter we had a Cellular Automata Video toy with audio wired to a GetLoFi Delay kit. Sadly, I have this problem of not taking enough photos, or just not taking any photos at all when Ive been working really hard on something. Especially before during or after all nighters. So this is why I dont have a single digital image of NYCEMF, Bent Fest, and of this totally awesome circuit we made. There will be more on this later because once Eric gets it back to my place in BK I am going to house it in a Nintendo and mod the hell out of it. Here are some photos of the build process with the GetLoFi Delay.

Bent Fest part 2

2009-06-19T15:56:00.006-04:00

Picking up where Colin left off...

On Saturday I heard Tom Bailey give a talk about digital sampling and the Wheres The Party At sampler he just finished. Besides being really nice and a brilliant electrical engineer, he is an incredible speaker, somehow discussing these really complex electrical concepts in a way I can understand (read: peppered with curses, pop culture references, and excessive hand gestures). At the moment the kit for WTPA is staring me in the face....sooooooooooon it will be built.

After that I took part in one of the best workshops I have ever been too. Rob Hordijk, a synth master audio science genious who litterally wrote the book on the Nord Synthesizer, gave a workshop for building a small circuit called the min-Rungler. The circuit was designed and made by him, based of chaos theory, and is available no where else. This man builds Blippoo Boxes for over 600 euros a piece, and this work shop was 30.00. It was one of those drool inducing once in a lifetime sorta things for an electronics geek like me. Which like the true electronicrack addict I am completely ditched my best friend (SORRY RYAN!), missed all the shows (SORRY BENT!) and didnt eat (SORRY STOMACH!) for. Luckily Moiz showed up to Bent and we took the workshop together.

The circuit itself is so full of potential I cannot even begin to grasp it all. It has 3 outputs, a triangle wave, stepped, and pulsed, has potential connections to the computer, can be used to drive real modular synthesizers, and has a whole bunch more features I cannot even begin to grasp. It may be a while before I understand it all but I am using this circuit as a platform to learn about op amps and audio synthesis.

After a hectic de-install and ride back to BK, Bent Fest was done. Bent Fest 09 was an incredible experience, thank you to the organizers, artists, and friends who came out!

much more will posted soon!

Noisy Sunday

2009-06-18T02:00:00.008-04:00

Played a show on the Seventh of June. It was awesome. Here are a few picture's of Mike's set up and mine. Watch the video to listen to the whole show live. It was recorded from my camera on the milkcrate setup. It was dark, the video was mostly unintersting so I threw some effects on it and encoded a secret message in it. Good Luck:

Where Will You Spend Eternity? from All Over The Where on Vimeo.

The Enchanted Keyboard

2009-05-31T09:38:00.003-04:00

I found a Disney Princess keyboard at Goodwill:

Its circuit was solid.

Then I nailed the Disney Princesses!

The keyboard now has:
Pot 1: a battery starve bend that changes pitch and timbre
Momentary Push Button 1: Pitch bend
2 Outer Nails: just to hold the clips when not in use
9 nails through the heart:
one clip plays chords, hidden in the keyboard
the other clip causes chaos and unlocks hidden songs
1/4'' output

It also has:
A Drum Pad with 3 sounds
A Record and Playback Function (not polyphonic but can record some of the bending)
Volume Control
Various Instrument Sounds

Here is a video demonstration:

NYC Electroacoustic Music Fest and Bent Fest 2009

2009-05-02T03:13:00.012-04:00

March was a month of turbulence. Reid and I both moved into different apartments, if, in my case, you consider a sh*thole an apartment. We also both started new jobs. We managed to get together and work out the Alchemy installation for Bent Fest and NYCEMF. It took a lot of long nights and ill dip technology, but it all paid off. We were proud to present our piece and now have performance versions of our original, immobile design.

We traded fluorescent, wall wort lights for super bright LEDs. The light was not as evenly distributed, but it also gave the feeling of having various power centers in the hand. The red lights also added other connotations depending on the observer.

Reid and I sat down in the corner of my crack den of a house and went at it. I am pleased to say that I got out of that place quickly and now reside at Meat Town, U.S.A. - a house in New Brunswick that puts on a good show and houses good people.

Everybody, Everybody... Fun with rotary tool designs.

Just me and Jesus and a Japanese Piano School Cassette

We were having trouble with the hands the night before the NYC EMF. Reid was a little tempted to let it go, but that was before his support system made it on the scene. I am not one to give up. We sat at his new setup in Brooklyn, behind rainbow sheet walls, and sacrificed sleep for tweaks and adjustments, until the hands were reaching their full potential.

It is so painful to have to take everything apart and put it together again, especially at 5 am, the day of the exhibit.

But we did it! 5 hours and 10 tacos later, we were off to NYC EMF.

We were set up in the lobby outside of one of the concert halls, so we set up with headphones and speakers. It was good to see people go at it with headphones because they seem less inhibited. But I loved to hear the different crunchy and bleepy noises people were coming up with blasting on the main level of the Graduate School Building of CUNY.

The set up was not ideal. I was really happy about it, but wished it was darker. We got them to turn some lights off, but for the purposes of the area we were in, we could not cut the lights.

The video hands still had white light beneath them. I think I prefer the red in the well lit environment.

We kept getting new colors and patterns out of the Etch-a-Skletch. At one point during Bent Fest, Reid and a few others witnessed a quick flash of the video game, whose cartridge we used for as a bus for the bends!

We had a chair in front of the video palm reading table, but some people made themselves at home for the audio hands too. Tomislav rocked out.

One of the big differences between this piece and its predecessor is that all of the controls are accesible to the subject. The design is meant for performance and we wanted people to explore the full range of sounds that they could manipulate manually.

I arrived to Bent Fest 2009 a little late: I had work early so Reid had to set up by his lonesome. I set up the exhibit at NYCEMF by my lonesome though. The difference was that Reid had to carry everything himself this time... up three flights of stairs. Our installation was upstairs. At first, no one new it was up there. But there were a few workshops up there, and our piece got some people's attention.

The performances the first evening were stellar!
Dr. Bleep opened up with a crap load of Thingamagoops - I picked one up for myself.

This is a video of his performance at Bent 2008:

Bent NYC '08 - Dr. Bleep from Dr. Bleep Videos

Wil Lindsay blew my mind with VBLANK - Check out the videos page for a sample. It was great to see on a big stage with a large projection in the background.

Chris McDonald stunned everyone with silence. It took a long long while for his laser to run across the stage horizontally, bottom to top and then he changed his position as it ran vertically across the stage. Most people stayed in their seats, some got up and left. Most people did not know what was going on. Everyone maintained silence. I noticed a tripod on the stage and moved a little closer. I tried to get a long exposure picture, but my camera was not up to the task. The following picture is 15 seconds of exposure:

After the laser stopped its second pass, Chris moved forward on the stage, took hold of the camera (an old Polaroid model) and ripped out the following brilliance:

After the reverence for the stage people showed for Chris McDonald, Galen Richmond of Computers at Sea invited everyone up to see his set up. Again, people's jaws dropped at the sight of beautiful bentstruments embedded in old books!

And then we all rocked out to his slammin' music! It was so slammin' that he had to ask it nicely to stop every now and then to get to the next slammin' song.

Rythymmemory kept the hot beats droppin' and the sweet bends screamin'! Not to mention the ridiculously awesome video montage they had playing in the background, which contained Arnold Schwartzeneggar and the original Black Power Ranger among other cultural beauties.

My personal favorite of the evening had to be Playboy's Bend, whose rockin' beats were accompanied with a lot of pizazz. The whole night was inspiring. Below is one of Xavier's fuzzy Playboy Bends:

The next evening, Reid was away doing visuals at the Museum of Natural History and I was spending more time with our installation. Before Reid left there was another awesome workshop:

Reid got ready to go.

Nicolas Collins had a book release party for the second edition of Handmade Electronic Music -- an excellent reference for anyone getting into electronics or circuit bending -- He did a performance based in sound reactivity to a candle burning on top of a small, light-sensitive instrument.

As they played the DVD included with the book, I took picture of people playing with our installation. In the following picture, it looks as though a camera is focused on the instruments we built, being projected live. The video, however, is of a completely seperate instrument that just looks as though it is set up like our handstruments.

Then, I busted up onto the roof of The Tank theatre to check out the New York night. It was beautious! I talked to my mom and girlfriend, Renae, while I took some truly cool pictures:

I spent most of Friday trying to make signs for people to go upstairs to see our installation. I missed most of the performances or just sat in the lobby area and watched from a distance. Concert #2 was still breathtakingly awesome and mind-blowingly sonic.

This is where I leave off an Reid takes over... I was not there Saturday night. I showed someone at the open bend session the secrets of the Swording Beacon and Ohming Beacon. I left Saturday to see my Naeners and Screaming Females record release/tour kick off.

Pictured below is the last Bit Blob from Bleep Labs + Loud Objects. I wanted it so badly! Maybe next time...

Reid!? What can you tell the folks at home that I've sadly left out?

Hardware Hacking DVD!

2009-04-27T13:32:00.003-04:00

Nic Collins book Handmade Electronic Music is one of the best books I have ever read about hacking electronics and audio art. Simply put, if you want to get into electronics get this book.

At Bent Fest last week, Collins released the 2nd edition of the book, and while I normally hate new editions, this one is fantastic. Tons more projects, more artist references, and new illustrations are among the many changes to the book. In addition there is a DVD which contains 87 one minute videos of artists projects using hacked electronics and I am proud to say that I am in one of those videos! The project I worked on with Dan Wilcox this past summer at interactivos at Eyebeam is on the DVD under "Dan Wilcox: soundMetal." Luckily Dan put it on the youtubes!

Check it out.

And here is a video of NOIS-E, a cardboard circuit I made during that crazy 2 weeks last summer.

hello, yes

2009-04-27T00:06:00.005-04:00

A while ago I edited a video on Slovenia for a professor at Rutgers. Through editing that video I made friends with Rok and Ursa who live in the capital Ljubljana and are in this awesome band called new wave syria. They just released their first album - hello, yes - and asked me to make the cover art. This was a while ago right before NASA and I was pretty much going crazy. So I gave them a few ideas, spent literally 2 hours taking some terrible photos, and sent it off to them with an email heavily laced with apologies. Here are a few.

I like the idea but my execution is terrible. To do this I put pieces of paper on my desk and moved my desk lamp around while using my point and shoot. What I really should have done was use a nice cam, a nice light, and a studio. But sadly I dont have any of these things.

Eitherway, Ursa and Rok took the idea and did it 1000 times better than I did.

They sent me a CD and it is absolutely gorgeous. The packaging, printing, the color, everything is so well done. Oh, and the album is great, perfect music to solder to which I have done several times already. So go to the net label they started, Cheap Tunes Records, and go download the album for free! OR if you want to get the real deal and support some artists and friends across the globe, buy the cd.

NYC Electroacoustic Music Festival

2009-04-03T06:37:00.007-04:00

Starting Off w/ Bent Genius!

Today Reid and I set up our new, performance-oriented Alchemy hands at the NYCEMF !

We were having troubles until I arrived in Brooklyn a little after 3am this fine Friday. Among other troubleshooting bulls eyes, (I don't think I have ever written out that expression... is that right?,) we realized we were lacking in the 1/4 inch stereo jack department. I told Reid I could figure out making one, but I never imagined it would be so easy! I was about to start soldering extra pieces of metal all over a jack, but then I took a second look at its automatic shut-off switch. Take a look:

This is a mono jack with a shut off switch:

With some literal 'bending'...

It becomes a stereo jack!

The previous Alchemy Installation (<=check it out) was a triumph for us, and it all went so smoothly, (or so our selective memories led us to believe,) however after creating something with such great sound, looks and control, we wanted to create a (pardon the pun) Hand-held version ever since. The sound generating circuit is from the "super nice dude" (as Reid just put it) Ray Wilson. His Weird Sound Generator is where the project gets its sound. We have made this circuit quite a few times, I still don't know if we have made the same one twice. This time we printed a board posted on the page.

Reid did a lot of work on the images of the hands. The projects driving force was a delving into the world of palmistry and chiromancy. The circuits for both the audio and video respond to the interactors' hands, getting 'readings' of each individual's energy through aural and visual fields.

We prepared the press n peel for the hands. Previously, to more assuredly protect the copper, we covered the whole thing in Sharpie marker.

We went through the whole thing again, çoloring over the whole outline, while listening to a live set Screaming Females recorded for Beastin' the Airwaves with Keili on WFMU - A good ol' time was had by all involved...

Almost completed but not really even close:

Just because they look cool:

After agonizing over so many troubles, instead of three hands, we ended with doubles. Another huge difference is the self-contained light source for the beautifully back lit hands. This time we used Super Bright Leds instead of flourescent flower and Jesus lamps. Reid also did a alot with the video hands. Check it out down below.

We'll see you at the NYCEMFest! and Bent Fest 2009!!!!!!!

Pictures and Captions 2.13 - 3.29

2009-03-29T01:57:00.013-04:00

In February I helped out with Benton-C and Chris Jordan on another One Step Beyond party at the Natural History Museum.

Lots of fun toys to play with.

I was lucky enough to go G33k Xmas.

I ended up with the Discman.

Mountains of memory.

In March I helped Andy Wolf with the audio portion of his thesis installation. We discussed ideas and types of gear needed to do certain things. I modified this beautiful old ham radio microphone with lots of buttons to just be simple microphone without buttons.

I also taught Andy to solder

and we made a really nice 3 headed content mic. I am excited to check out the final piece this Tuesday when I see the starving artists canned food drive. Its up till the 3rd so be sure to check it out!

I etched some Weird Sound Generator circuits in Brooklyn for the Alchemy installation. This is the first time Colin or I have ever etched a PCB to be used for its actual intended purpose.

The set up, before.

The set up, after.

Finished!

And this is my desk.

The drilling machine pictured here is Colin as he drills around a 100 tiny little holes into the 3 boards. Making these boards is the most professional thing Colin and I have done so far.

I had my first solo visuals show at the Alfa Art Gallery March 12th. All these photos were taken by Natalie Trainor, who also curated and organized the show. This band is Sugar Glyder from NC.

2 projector set up.

RGB

Sadly my camera died just as Terminal Reynaldo was getting started. They are great. I am going to be helping them film a music video in April.

I met Bjork! I arrived 2 hours early to an electronics workshop in SOHO and decided to kill time at my favorite cafe/used book store Housing Works. Then Bjork shows up with her daughter and does an impromptu ipod dj set. It was magical. Anything you would imagine to be on Bjorks ipod is probably on Bjorks ipod.

RGB LED WRK SHP at Bug Labs.

I made this happen

Went to Build It Green NYC and got all this lumber and a delivery for 35.00 total! The 2nd beam from the left came from a huge old ship and has spherical indentations in it. Hopefully we will start building rooms soon. I hear that walls and privacy are really cool things to have in an apartment.

Started work on the new Etch-A-Skletch a few days ago. 36 wires go to 36 points on the device.

Finished the case tonight. 36 wires go to 36 terminal strip connections. The hands have 18 contacts each and will be wired to the other side of the terminal strips.

The inside.

Close up.

All caught up...much more to come! Stay tuned.

NASA and Other Important Programs

2009-03-04T20:10:00.007-05:00

Firstly,

Nasa FundRager
Newark, NJ

These are the images from my proposal when Space Camp was developing into the awesome night it turned out to be:

Here are some of the photos of the resulting suit:
(Reid can I get the ones from your camera?)

These pictures are from LNY and Jamie Bruno.

Reid and Eric Barry Drasin did awesome visuals!

More information about NASA and photos from the event can be seen at the NASA Website!

_______________________________________
Secondly,

A formal apology goes out to the blog. I have been idle. When it rains, it pours and when there is a drought, life dies... I have been livin' at my mom's house, which is on the market. It has made for one of the worst situations as far as personal space and setting up any sort of ongoing work. The space suit was constantly being shoved into and out of a box: (one of the reasons the backpack was deflated by showtime.)

Anyway, I am just getting settled again after returning from Korea and the Fall 2008 Screaming Females tour. I will be moving back into New Brunswick and setting up shop. The ensuing glory of circuit bent instruments and music will be awesome.
_____________________________________________
Thirdly,

In the meantime Reid and I are in two NYC shows:

The New York Electroacoustic Music Festival

and

BENT FEST!

I am excited for both of them and we will be posting stuff about those later!
_____________________________________________

Finally,

Here is a picture of a performance I did on top of a public restroom in Hongdae Park, Seoul. I must say it was pretty good but not as loud as I hoped. (There is only so much you can do with a battery powered amp.) A few friends started firespinning below me and I broke into Casio Beat DJing.

El Colin - using the Swording Beacon, Awesomeator, and a Bent SK-1.

In the Ultra Zone!

2009-02-18T15:58:00.004-05:00

Here is a quick run down of the crazyness that has been of late:

Colin got onto a Tiger Claw Records compilation called Do Not Bend 2. Check it out here. Download it here
yaay Colin!

We got the Alchemy installation into the New York Electroacoustic Music Festival which runs from Apr 2-4. I have a strong feeling I will spend another birthday soldering...and drinking beer...

We also applied the Alchemy installation to Bent Fest 2009 **fingers crossed**

The NASA show was truly a fantastic party, thanks to everyone who came out supported!!! Video will be posted in a week or so as well as an Instructables about the crazy projector mounting system Chris Jordan taught me. You can check the write up (no pictures) on the NASA blog. I now have the power to mount a projector or camera onto a n y t h i n g ! At the event Eric Drasin and I did remixes of Zardoz, 60s space movies, and vector graphic 80s arcade games. Colin will have to post all his 3d models and documentation of his totally rad audio modulating space suit. The Awesomeator was already awesome, but now it looks astronomically awesome with a new chrome/silver exterior.

And today at work I decided that instead of sitting around on gmail or blogs I will learn Processing.

NASA Space Camp

2009-02-02T21:04:00.002-05:00

Colin is building a space suit complete with audio modulation and wireless vdo transmission. Eric Drasin and I are doing live visuals all night. There will be dancing, portals, temporary tatoos, DJs, beer, haircuts, VJs, bands, face painting, teleportation stations, pedal powered waterfalls and MORE! Come come come! Bring your dancing moon shoes.

December Randomness

2009-01-25T13:22:00.004-05:00

Barracks expedition

Tried to help Shawn fix his Roland 505. Sadly it was to damaged to revive.

3 Amigas!

on an unrelated note....

2009-01-16T13:59:00.006-05:00

Ive had this song in my head for the past week. Its by Boris Gardner, off of the Trojan Souful Reggae Box Set, and has the most oddly familiar melody and chord progression.

Yesterday I finally figured out why it sounded so familiar!!

How do people do mash ups/bootlegs?? I want to combine the two songs so badly!

December - Finishing the TV Robot

2009-01-14T23:47:00.015-05:00

December started unnoticed as Tomislav and I were busy finishing Bud Spotch the TV Robot.

With 4 TVs installed (!!!!) we were actually allowing ourselves to think that we might be able to possibly just maybe pull this ridiculous project off.

A view from the back

More plexi/circuit glam shots

This is the control panel that Tomislav and I made. The TVs were manufactured with the normal type of controls, on/off, volume, input select, etc, but these controls were attached to a cumbersome PCB that took up way to much space and was impossible to work with. To solve this problem we decided we would have to wire up our own control panel for all the TVs. This is the bottom control panel for the lower 3 TVs before it got mounted.

While anything with a bunch of knobs and switches instantly catches my attention, I think these are pretty sweet looking control panels.

5 TVs done!!!!!

In the late hours of the night Evan and Joe stop by and hang out in the fury of our productivity. You can tell Evans laptop is so jealous of Bud Spotch

Joe and 5/6ths of Bud Spotch's face make introductions

6 TV's!!!!!! (and 6 more for emphasis after working for 2 days straight on this-->!!!!!!)

Here is a side view of the bottom to give you an idea of the insane rats nest of wires and circuits we dealt with

The other side with mounted control panel.

Oh holy WOW we did it!!!!!!!@#$!%!!!&!*!!(!)!

To summarize
We installed 6, 3.5 inch, B&W, TVs, we got for free from Hasan Elahi, vertically, in space where only 4 should fit, in a completely hand made metal and plexi case, with entirely rewired controls, inputs, and power chords, that is attached to a metal stand on which a body of a mannequin rests, on which we will put a suit and call it Bud Spotch.

In case you need a recap:

The next big steps were wiring up custom video input and power chords. We didnt make custom wires just because we had some time between 4am and 11am but because these TVs use an 1/8th inch jack (like on your headphones) to receive modulated video signal. So we used a fat stack of VCRs to modulate signals and some very professional looking alligator clips to get these wires together as fast as we could.

The power chords were made by cutting up a 100ft extension chord, electrical outlet pieces from Home Depot, and a bunch of duct tape.

Next was the big moment: turning it on. With several cameras and extinguishers ready for any electrical fires Tom bravely switched on the TVs.

AND IT WORKED!

Some Indiana Jones testing

After a round of high fives and cautious placing aside of fire extinguishers we turned it off, took it apart, and installed it in Mason Gross for Tomislav's class the next day.

Of course 1 minute after I took this photo the top middle TV flamed up and burnt out. Luckily no other TVs were hurt. Sadly, we didnt catch this on video and still have to repair it.

Despite that minor fire, it looks pretty great

Speakers were attached to the frame with power of magnetism

Ive come to realize with 'new media art' a lot, if not ALL, focus goes into making 'the system' for the delivery of mediated content and content is dealt with last. This project was no exception given incredible amount of work required to build the beast and quick deadline hanging over our heads. Luckily Evan Damerow saved the day and set up and shot the videos with Tom. The horse head images stem from these photos that Tom made that deal with the greater mythology surrounding Bud Spotch and the British Anti-Mafia.

The power strips lining the wall worked really well for us as we needed 12 outlets.

It feels a little strange summarizing in two posts something that took over 3 months, but so it goes. More December endeavors after I sleep.

November

2008-12-19T12:44:00.015-05:00

In early November there was the Praxis/Poiesis show at Alfa Art. Curated by Jen Park and myself, it contained the work of Ariana Barat, Alexander Conner, Olivia Kaufman-Rovira, and Matthew West.

I helped Pete Edwards aka Casper Electronics teach a circuit bending course at Harvestworks.

Work on Bud Spotch continued. By the middle of the month we finally got an input signal into the TVs and spent way to much time in home depot looking at stuff.

In October Eric Drasin invited me to collaborate on some live visuals for an experimental percussion ensembles performance at Monkeytown in Brooklyn. We had a simple goal of using hi-tech and lo-tech gear to make a complex network of feedback loops that could be controlled and manipulated with a laptop and physical objects. What that means is that I went up to Purchase with a car load of junk, multiplied it by a car full of Erics junk, combined that with Benton-C's sweetashell hacked video mixer, and finished it off with some fancy studio gear courtesy of PTV.

PTV studio

The first system

Second system

??? system

Final set up at Monkeytown (more junk outa frame)

This is the view of Monkeytown from the video booth. What was on screen was just some random videos they put on before the show

One day at Harvestworks I built an Audino, a synthesizer made out of 5 pots, some code and an Arduino.

To end November there was a huge push to finish Bud Spotch the TV Robot by December 2nd.

There was metal cutting with Dremels late at night. I would like to take a moment to honor the two unsung heroes of this entire project: clamp lights and rotary tools.

Inevitably Tom got a metal splinter

On a side note, Tom has a really nice terrarium

Finished the head and successfully attached it to the torso.

Colin stopped by and hung out in the chaos

wiresssss

Testing out the bottom shelf with 2 TVs

Installed the first TV which had to be mounted upside down. Both middle TVs had to be hung upside down to make room for all six circuit boards. Logistically a nightmare. Aesthetically, pretty rad.

After we installed the top middle TV we attached the head to the torso because we werent sure if we were going to be able to put it on again after all the TVs were mounted.

Then we installed the bottom middle TV. It was much more difficult than the top because we had to mount it into the plexi glass shelf. This was very stressful because we needed exact alignment for drilling holes and exact measurement to make sure it wouldnt interfere with top TVs. The drama was heightened even more because one bad drill or cut with the plexi and it would break.

Thankfully it actually went really smoothly.

Plexi is sexy

Installing the third TV

And the 4th

At this point it passed midnight and officially started December. To be continued....

2nd 1/2 of October

2008-12-14T12:32:00.005-05:00

Work continued on the TV Robot. Tomislav dubbed it Bud Spotch. Both of us being vidiots we learned how to cut plexi-glass the hard way: spending a whole night using a dremel and then trying the score-break method (which is MUCH better for many many reasons) and saving ourselves several hours per cut.

Sunglasses for safety

This is the head frame we built that would hold the TVs. We originally planned to use four TVs, two up top, two on the bottom. The plexi shelf isnt fully installed yet.

Top down view of head with plexi shelf.

Then there was a pumpkin carving party at Mikes house. From left, my pumkin Unky Punky, Carsons Check Engine Light, and Andy's incredibly Obama.

Get Excited

2008-12-12T23:22:00.001-05:00

email for more info! time is running out!!!!

lots and lots and lots

2008-12-12T14:06:00.008-05:00

Its been a while since I posted on the blog. Not because of laziness but because of business. Now is catch up time.

Here is the first half of October.

I started a large scale video sculpture project with Tomislav Butkovic. The idea came about simply enough, he had a bunch of four and half inch gutted B&W T.V.s he got from Hasan and I found a mannequin torso in the street one day, so we decided to do some simple addition and put them together.

One of the T.V.s

The entire project would need some serious fabrication to build a strong enough stand and head-piece. This meant a lot of trips to home depot.

Then there was an incredible pot luck at the warehouse in Newark.

Saw Marie and Ryans aquaponics system which is brilliant and beautiful.

My two internships collided when Benton-C played at the Harvestworks Benefit show at Galapagos in Brooklyn.

(there was an open bar, so naturally only 1 image wasnt crap out of the 20 I took)

Lenny organized a Box Wars Melee at Eyebeam, which could be one of the best days EVER. Check his site for more amazing images and video.
My costume was modeled with Katamari in mind and had TWO faces. One you could see normally, and a secret face that you would only if I was about to kill you.

Random Selection of Pictures: On Tour With Screaming Females

2008-11-06T14:24:00.006-05:00

Smallest Space, Awesome Show: Souix City, Iowa

All Night Drive Antics

Tracking the Big Red Pig

Flannel, Stripes, and Too Much Make-up Party
Screaming Females chose the Black Metal Make-up Motif

Trash Sculptures on Landfill Peninsula in San Francisco Bay

Marissa Throws Her Guitar on Her Back for Guitar-free Rocking

Mike Watt (Minutemen,) King Mike (Screaming Females,) Awesome Drunk Dude (Croatia!)

Mike Looks Superfly at the Beauty Bar, Las Vegas

Dinosaur Bites a Man's Head Off, Arizona

The Scariest Things: Idiocracy in the Present:
"take your BIG AZ TACO"

Truck Accident 1: Big Screen TVs

Less than 20 miles away
Truck Accident 2: Blown to Bits

Ghost Town on Old Route 66

Jesus Rules

We Paid Less Than 2 Dollars for Gas

Lisa Frank'd Guitar!

Mike's Underage at the Bar Tats

Yes, I Saw Hulk Hogan Get on the Jaws Ride

Horror Nights at Universal Studios

The Red Ranger and I Flashing Gang Signs

Praxis/Poiesis

2008-10-23T23:18:00.004-04:00

Jen Park and I are curating a show at Alfa Art Gallery that opens Nov. 7th. Just finished the postcard with exactly two weeks till.

colin drew this

2008-10-23T14:33:00.000-04:00

and it makes my day.

Screaming Females

2008-10-13T14:38:00.002-04:00

I am on tour with Screaming Females right now.

Check out their blog for some pictures I have been taking.

I will put more pictures up here when I have more time!

finishing a thought

2008-10-02T17:58:00.004-04:00

Cleaning my room I found an unfinished sculpture project from my sophomore year and decided to finish it. From what I remember, I think it was supposed to be a pixelated paper lantern version of something. A unicorn? A T.V.? Self portrait? Cant remember. Either way, there were a few hundred pre-cut unfolded cubes that I am going to recycle, and just enough already made small paper 'pixels' to make a boring ol' cube. I put a 60 watt bulb inside and it didnt really shine through to well. I worry if I put anything higher its going to burn really quickly. Oh well.

electric animals

2008-10-01T23:44:00.001-04:00

learning is a constant state of mind

2008-09-29T18:42:00.003-04:00

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

2008-09-26T12:58:00.003-04:00

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

2008-09-25T15:50:00.005-04:00

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

2008-09-23T17:36:00.003-04:00

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

2008-09-19T19:54:00.005-04:00

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

2008-09-19T04:17:00.003-04:00

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

2008-09-18T04:05:00.004-04:00

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

2008-09-06T14:04:00.002-04:00

IHTFP
endlessly entertaining and inspiring

Summer Recap

2008-09-04T14:53:00.011-04:00

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.

The Swording Beacon

2008-08-06T12:38:00.003-04:00

!!!! A new development for the aural discovery used in the Ohming Beacon !!!!

The Swording Beacon!

Outside of the world cup qualifying games in South Korea, Adjemas sell hand held neon glow things. One of them had the Sword of Destiny. It peeked my interest because of the LEDs but I second guessed myself and tried to pass it up, but destiny, working through my awesome girlfriend, bought me the sword anyway. The world was never the same.

The sword makes the most brilliant sounds and visuals to go with them. And, by another stroke of fate, or awesomely converging coincidences, the sword modifies the sound that the top circuit made from the Ohming Beacon!

Here is the video right before it was all put together:

I finished it all in one night - I couldn't put it down. Here are some quick snapshots:

The amp cord is secured with the hand so you can get wild with it.

The same circuit from the Ohming Beacon is an extension of the hilt. It is secured with Hot Melt Glue, just like the original Beacon. It is just the perfect size for the on/off switch to sit securely on the blunt side of the blade.

The 1/8'' output, the green button that operates the sword lights, and the switch that toggles the top circuit.

Simply Awesome

Feel the Power!

It is late - Better pictures, audio, video and descriptions all to come.

prototyping

2008-07-03T22:50:00.002-04:00

Today at Interactivos? I made these:

A covert soda can speaker for a covert soda can circuit

and an Atari punk console using a cardboard box, some Muji speakers Marta gave me and gaffer tape. The red wires allow us to connect the circuit to metal objects and turn them into body contacts for audio modulation (fancy speak for making some harsh square-noise). I didnt have a switch so I had to improvise with some hardware and an alligator clip.

Interactivos?

2008-06-29T22:57:00.005-04:00

I got accepted to be a collaborator for Interactivos? at Eyebeam and started the intense two week workshop this past Friday. I dont have a sufficient command of the English language to begin to describe how incredible it has been, so I will just post a few bad photos, some captions, and some links to the talented people I get to work with.

The project I am working on is Sound Metal, proposed by Dan Wilcox. That wooden thing is a Crackle Box, an incredible electronic instrument designed in the 70s in the Netherlands.

After the first day Dan and I went down to the South Street Seaport to see King Kahn and the Shrines and A Place to Bury Strangers. King Kahn rocked my face off while A Place... was loud, noisy, and intense in a whole different way. The seaport does shows well: free, in a great location, no tickets needed, just walk up and rock out.

The second day at Interactivos, there was more working and a presentation by Taeyoon Choi of Charlie, the image digesting, tourist duck. In this photo you can see Justin trying to explain what is going on to a parks patrolman.

At the end of the day 30 of us went to a tapas bar on 14th street somewhere. I ordered the worst dish on the menu. What I thought was going to be like bruschetta ended up being ketchup and garlic on toast.

I didnt get to take many photos today because of the rain, but after our soccer game got rained out we hit up this fantastic bar/cafe in dumbo called rebar. Inside I found a painting by Pasqualina Azzarello who was my teacher several years ago. After watching the 2008 Eurocup, 10 of us, with several upset Germans, piled in Rory's sweet station wagon to try and see David Byrne's Playing the Building. Sadly it was closed when we go there, so we went to Battery Park to finally play some soccer. At the park there was a festival going on so we had some awesome salsa music as a sound track to our game.

Here is a short list of links to the amazing people who are running, have projects in, or are collaborators for Interactivos?

zachary lieberman www.thesystemis.com
friedrich kirschner www.zeitbrand.de
taeyoon choi www.tyshow.org
john lui www.justpossibly.com
sunghim kim www.sunghunkim.com
aichen lin www.aichenlin.com
Dan Wilcox www.robotcowboy.com
patrick grizzard www.gneumatic.net
lee von kraus www.leevonk.com
tobi x www.tobi-x.com
leanne wagner www.leannewagner.com
tine papendick http://ti-pi.de
andrew mahon www.andremahon.info
Justin Downs http://johnhenryshammer.com

**will convert to actual links soon!**

bragging + blogging = blagging

2008-06-12T12:25:00.002-04:00

I just got FREE Sonic Youth tickets for July 4th!!!!!!!

I tried to get more to share but it sold out as I was filling out the form!

woooo!

holy grapefruit its 3:42am

2008-06-10T03:42:00.002-04:00

and i wake up in 5 hours and 12 minutes for work...

i have been working with indexhibit all evening and FINALLY got it to work!!

i really like the ease of use (after you get through 5 hours of install/setup problems) and the incredibly simple and clear organization.

i dont like that i dont know enough about html or php or mySQL or a million other things to really customize it and make it my own.

im thinking, if its possible, maybe have the site twice, one way as the indexhibit version and the other version done with my caveman html skilllz.

eitherway, if you see the site, i just threw up old stuff from 06, so enjoy your swiss wedge savior,

and

2008-06-09T01:39:00.002-04:00

finally got something on alloverthewhere.org
as it says, its a temporary place holder, and it points you back here
but there will be more in the weeks to come!

old photos

2008-06-09T00:59:00.001-04:00

finally

2008-06-06T13:55:00.003-04:00

this may sound sad, but for the past several months i have been trying to figure out how to make gifs in adobe image ready. i FINALLY figured it out and made a gif of these stop signs colin and i stickered a while back. (pictures by colin)

The Ohm-ing Beacon

2008-05-08T09:28:00.004-04:00

The new instrument, The Ohm-ing Beacon, is not built from an audio device at all. By happy accident, while trying to use the LEDs from a spinning top toy, I discovered they produced tones!

The tones are varied; the alternating brightness and colors of the lights produces different notes. This isn't the one I used, I didn't think to take a picture of it since I thought I was just salvaging components, though I would love to get my hands on this one now. The two I got were taped to cereal boxes. In Korea, you get a number of random things for free at the grocery store that are just taped to other things!

The tops I used have 3 Leds, red, blue, and green. One of them had to be shut off for the sound circuit to work, connection to the green light made the best audio loop, but turned the brightest light off. The green Led still produces sound from what I can tell, but no light anymore. It wasn't until I saw the following picture I realized a connection between the light and sound: Both are the same circuits but for some reason, one is brighter than the other. Interestingly, the darker circuit plays in a lower key than the other! I am thinking that the pulses you see in the picture are the visual representations of the aural oscillations.

This is the original circuit I accidentally attached to a speaker in an ass-backward way:

March of the Light Emitting Diodes

As a bus for some of the multiple connections, and as representation of the spiritual elements of the instrument, I used two totems.

Humanity: wired to the mind, clueless, and wide eyed. There is not much control here try as it might, just things flowing in and out of the mind.

Divinity: god of music. The soul of sound. Keyboard at hand and omnipotence in a three-eyed elephant face.

Two synthesizers. Two totems. Lots of Hot Melt Glue!

I turned the switches around on the circuits and balanced the boards on a ruler I shattered. It has a 1/4 inch output from an old tape player. I didn't bother to remove it from the old circuit board. You can see it on the

Bottom:

Side:

Other Side:

Front and Top:

The name refers to the electronic Ohm, the Hindu/Buddhist Om, and a homing beacon. It is an aid in finding one's way.

The video does not have properly recorded audio. It was made before the instrument was finished for documentation in case I destroyed it accidentally. I hope you find what you are looking for.

finished for now

2008-05-05T22:39:00.004-04:00

Finished the Tremolo build.

Unfortunately I didnt do anything with the housing because I was to impatient and just wanted to get soldering. Even though the plain unfinished metal has its own aesthetic, I decided to start covering it with some felt I had lying around. The googly eyes were also lying around and fit too perfectly to resist.

My real plans are to make a vest or "coat" (?) for the pedal out of felt. Its going to be one piece of felt with holes cut where the knobs, LED, and jacks are, and wrap around the pedal. I can then glue and sew things onto this base. There will be velcro on the back for a snug fit and so I can change the batt trees. More on that as I begin my trial and error process of cutting and sewing.

Tremolo

2008-05-04T23:50:00.004-04:00

FINALLY got around to building one of the effects pedal kits I have been sitting on for the past few months. This is a Build Your Own Clone Tremolo.

I l o v e the digital macro function on my camera, components never looked so good.

This shot is for Colin. He knows why.

I started around 7 but unfortunately could not finish it all in one sitting because I am an old man with a full time job and a bed time.

abb cents

2008-04-30T22:01:00.012-04:00

I offer many apologies for my extended absence, here is a quick run down of the past months activities

I helped Jen with her thesis in early April. Several hundred plastic bags, a phone call from the fire marshal, and a furious 24 hour finale later, it came out a total success! I will be sure to post pictures once Jen finishes her finals and has some more time on her hands. It took me 6 months to post a video of my thesis on this blog so I am in no position to hurry her.

I helped Benton-C Bainbridge on a collaboration with experimental drummer Bobby Privet called April in New York 2008. It was 5 nights of performances at a Swing Space at the South Street Seaport with a different musician/dj/artist collaborating with Bobby every night. Benton, who is a VJ, was experimenting with "video as lighting" and created different environments and configurations every evening with various lamps, gels, Xmas lights, flat screen TVs, and projectors. The whole event was filmed to be made into a DVD sometime in the future. Here are a few photos I took of the different set ups before the event started each night.

This picture is the sound check on Wednesday with Mike Pride. Probably my favorite night in terms of the music played. Mike Pride, aside from being awesome, has the most righteous mustache I have ever seen.

This is from Thursday with laptop artist Ikue Mori. Note the totally sweet flat screen TV tables we made. You can thank the magic of artists grants for making this ridiculous(ly awesome) use of expensive electronics possible.

This is from Saturday with DJ Olive when Jen helped out as well.

Before all of these events occured I had my first "real" opening at City Without Walls in Newark for their 1800frames|Take4 exhibition. I got three one minute videos in, biking, driving, and throwing. You can watch all the videos from exhibition on the cWoW website or here.

This past weekend there was Bent Fest 08 in the city. It was a fun time, but a little disappointing due to poor location and organization. Workshops that could have been incredibly informative went on to long and then were cut short before any real useful information could be obtained. This is the first year I stayed for the shows in the evening, and that too was a bit disappointing. Way to much listless boring noise. Spunky Toofers brought some much needed energy to show with his bent-hendrix-noise-flailing that melted a few faces and my favorite band of the evening was definitely Alias Pail, who rocked out some wonderful glitchy bent pop music.

Thats about it. Not many eel lock true nick things happening in the past few months, which, however unfortunate or necessary, will be corrected shortly. TONS of stuff just sitting on shelves, in harddrives, or in my brain that need to see the light of day (and by that I mean the internet), so expect some house cleaning and updates on regular starting.....now!

Fortune Favors the Brave

2008-04-13T11:06:00.007-04:00

1. The Wee Ones at the Base of Mount Dreamy Plans

The Wee Ones gathered around
to decide the fate of their town.
The idle mountain, avalanching tears,
caused the villagers panic and fear.

The mountain cried to them,
“I’m coming down!”
but the Wee Ones protests resounded:

“We need dreamy plans. We need dreams.”

Said the mountain, to everyone:
“You best get out of here.
The time has come.
The pressure’s too great
up in the clouds,
so I will join you all,
down on the ground.

Then came rumbles underneath
all of the Wee Ones steady feet.
Mount Dreamy Plans
saw them stay.
The mountain begged them
to go away,
but the Wee Ones
wouldn't move,
filling Mount Dreamy Plans
with love.
Inside Mount Dreamy Plans
it all built up.
Instead of coming down,
it did erupt!
Now, Mount Dreamy Plans
is piled high.
The Wee Ones let out
a smiled sigh.
The Wee Ones
at the base of Mount Dreamy Plans
lived their lives fine.

2. Fable for the Future

There was one Wee One that did not stay to support Mount Dreamy Plans. The special connection Gϋbi shared with the mountain’s spirit gave him insight into why the mountain was feeling anxious. Mount Dreamy plans, now loftier than ever, could no longer feel the ominousness brushed against its face by the wind. Before the mountain could come down or hold up, Gϋbi made haste to the village archivist’s hut. The lone Wee One set to the task of recording the premonition that struck him like a finger flick from god. Ensuring he spoke slowly and clearly, but unable to keep his voice from trembling, Gϋbi recollected the danger that all living things would face in the foreseeable future. The capsulized record was the only Wee-made item to survive the village.

3. Motorboat Rainbow

Before his daydream materialized, Gϋbi set out on the Ones’ only vessel, across the foggy Sea of Forgotten Friends. Having never traveled away from the village before, with no insight as to which direction to go, and knowing his memory would be extinguished during the journey, he pointed himself toward the unknown horizon. Gϋbi hid the archive capsule in the hull of the boat. It was the only memory that would survive from the Village of Wee. He needed to protect it from himself, while traversing the sea. The memory would be coveted, conjured and quickly ebb with the tide in a last effort to maintain the sanity of an anchored memory

How long have I been out here? How long has it been since the day I left the shore? How long? How long do I have to...

I'm waitin' for my rainbow; searchin' for my pot of gold. If a rainbow's a circle there is no end and I'm becoming my own best friend.

Telepathy is possible when your all alone, but it's still hard to hear the thoughts and where they're coming from.

Where am I coming from? Have I forgotten so soon?

I'm lost in a sea surrounded by rainbows. I cannot see.
I'm lost in the ocean surrounded by water I refuse to drink. I stay thirsty.

I'm running out of gas.

I'm hungry for a rainbow.

I gotta paddle back.

I haven't tasted the colors, save for gray.

I have to paddle back.

I have to paddle back.

Maybe that's it.

Gϋbi had lost himself, both in person, and in location. In a final panic, as the last memory disappeared into the fog, he frantically paddled the now gnarled boat. How did the boat come to be gnarled? How far? How long? Now Lost, with the rest of the How’s, Who’s What Where and Why, the If’s, And’s, or But’s and When; it was all gone.

4. The Day the Field Workers Were Forever Frightened

The Wee Villagers didn’t have enough time to realize Gϋbi was gone before mayhem struck the serenity of the scene. The rumbling of the mountain had only subsided slightly when a new rumbling came over the horizon. From behind the mountain appeared a monster. Those who tried to escape were annihilated; and everyone tried to escape. Explosions were not rendered in slow motion, as if they were a scene in a movie. They came and went with the speed of lightning bolts; the sound mixing with nightmarish screams and damning bellows. The path the monster blazed scorched the Earth. The village was destroyed. The monster concentrated on bringing darkness to every corner of the land.

Mount Dreamy Plans was the only entity that did not fall under the monster’s determined destruction but the mountain was still affected by the event. Unable to bear the pain bestowed upon his symbiotic surroundings, the mountain plunged into a coma. Years passed as the mountain lay dormant. The Ghosts of the Ones surrounded the area, but after the monster was finished with it, not even ghosts dared inhabit it.

The only thing we have is fear itself.

5. Buildings

Gϋbi, unaware of his name, his past, or his whereabouts, continued into graying skies until he reached a village much unlike the one he had long lost and forgotten. Things were strange. Gϋbi knew he had lost the memory in his brain, but in the new surroundings, even his subconscious instincts were thrown into loops. He doubted every decision, was unsure whether to come or go. He sank into himself for comfort, but there was nothing left inside to warm the cold that had fallen on the outside. In seclusion and anonymity, even Gϋbi’s core emotions were lulled into dormancy, and though he had contact with others, they too were blank faced and empty, adding to his isolation.

Despite his emptiness, or maybe in response to it, Gϋbi sensed something welling up inside of him. It pained him to have no outlet. He was on the brink of insanity and revelation, of despair and desperation, but there was nowhere to go with any of it. Almost torn as he was, Gϋbi stabilized himself in an unnatural system in hope that something would change before his whole being burst.

6. The Mad Machine

The Mad Machine was planned long ago. It was brought into being by a few likeminded conspirators who were eventually consumed and outlived by the monster. All living things were forced to do its bidding. No plant, animal, or microorganism was spared from suffering its order. The only being able to remain stable in the new environment was The Mad Machine. Its adaptation was almost immediate to evolution of its own motives.

The machine’s control over the entities of the world became a sinister dance, an orchestral operation conducted by an evil engine.

I’m telling you:

The buildings went up and the Wee Ones went down.

None of them knew they were robots.

The Mad Machine destroyed their dreams.

El Colin is The Mad Machine.

None of them knew they were robots working for The Mad Machine.

7. A Meditation on the Myriad Life of the Metropolis

While working for the Sanitation Commission setup by The Mad Machine, Gϋbi saw something unlike anything in the machine’s world. It was bright and glowed with life. There had not been one day since he stared that Gϋbi left work early. It was the way things worked. He only had one bag and that bag was disposed of by the Disposal Commission exactly when his shift ended. Gϋbi abandoned his sanitation bag and ran to his domicile, passing many other automated entities along the way. He did not stop and his presence was barely noted. His discovery was concealed with his anonymous identity in a nation of stagnation.

When he reached his designated place of sleep, Gϋbi burst through the door. Immediately, the room was filled with the life of the light. He had forgotten all of his inabilities. His surroundings melted into a canister of hope placed directly in front of his fixed eyes. Risking the newly obtain feeling of warmth and acting on the first autonomous thought he had since before he could remember, he pried open the capsule. At once, like a vivid dream, the memories of his life bombarded his dormant mind, leaving him paralyzed with wonder.

Gϋbi saw the mountain, saw the families of his forgotten race. He knew he had to confront the worst feelings he had ever been subjected to. Instead of retreating back into the cold shelter of the darkness, Gϋbi faced the future with an exhilaration he had not felt in years. He remembered his name. He knew his place: He was Keeper of Mount Dreamy Plans! He must find the mountain before all that the Ones lived for was lost.

8. Dance of the Downtrodden Optimist

Gϋbi’s spirit was reconnected with the mountain. He was shocked to discover the close proximity of Mount Dreamy Plans. Buried in the middle of the metropolis, the mountain was resting in a concrete cage, surrounded on all sides by the faces of windowless buildings. The overpowering sensations building in Gϋbi caused an explosion. Gϋbi’s body was flung through a wall in his designated domicile and he landed, miraculously, at the base of Mount Dreamy Plans!

The abrupt impact of the One woke the mountain. Gϋbi felt as though he had been broken, but suddenly, he realized the sensation was that of breaking free! He danced around the mountain, proud to be reunited with a small piece of his past. Celebrating and sharing strength, the mountain and Gϋbi reveled in each others’ company.

The concrete at the mountain’s base started to crumble and grass began to grow from the forsaken ground. Hope was flooding all of Gϋbi’s being. Mount Dreamy Plans fed the feelings and gave comfort to Gϋbi when remember the great loss of the past. Gϋbi rested on the mountain and slowly finished taking in the memories of his life. As Gϋbi regained his color, so did the world around him. Spreading out from the mountain, a natural equilibrium fell on the immediate area.

A new system was sprouting inside an obsolete machine.

_______________________________________________________

The new album is here! This is the official release! You can download it for free!

Go to this website:
http://www.archive.org/details/AllOverTheWhere-FortuneFavorsTheBrave

**It may look confusing but follow my simplified version of the page in the next to pictures:

To download the music:
Click on "VBR ZIP"
---see the picture below
(If you own a mac, I think you hold 'option' and click)

To download the art and the story,

Click on "271.4K"

----see the picture below

I apologize because, no matter what I tried, I was unable to get all the information for each song file save on the file, so you may have to do some work editing song name, album name, artist name and track number. It bothers me but I did everything I could... a small tweak in an otherwise well arranged release...

The idea was to release the album as fully downloadable and free. To make the art and music as obtainable for a stranger on the street to my best friends and family... All of whom, are too far away for me to simply give a cd at the moment.

The original hope was to release the album on Feb 29th - Leap Year Day, but having only worked on it for about a month or 2 at that point, I knew there was a lot more to be done with the concept that was shaping. There are still improvements that could have been made, however I am eager to move on to the next projects in music and instrument building.

The album is mostly a product of a gray winter away from friends and family and anything familiar.

If you need help, have questions, wanna start something or anything else, just drop me an email.

-el colin

seoul, republic of korea, 4/14/8

Dance of the Downtrodden Optimist

2008-04-01T14:14:00.000-04:00

The Making of...

2008-04-01T13:43:00.003-04:00

The making of the new album, Fortune Favors the Brave, has been fun, painstaking and is just short of coming to a close.

It is my pleasure to debut one of the songs from the album entitled "Dance of the Downtrodden Optimist" with a brand new music video!

The making of the video was extremely fun. A lot of the credit is owed to my girlfriend, Renae, who was half of the videoing team! - Thanks to her, I remain sane throughout this project.

Finishing the video is huge for me - the end is almost near! Expect the album in the next few weeks! Until then enjoy this preview of the preview... a few pictures from the process of the videoing.

My 2 favorite characters.

People on the subway didn't seem bothered that I gave up my seat to a plastic shark.

The frog-typed thing was a child's purse. It cost 800 won @ the Beautiful Store.

My newly obtained desk was detained for the project immediately.

...and lots of smiles were had by all.

it lives!

2008-02-21T00:57:00.002-05:00

Mana-Fest @ Seed Gallery this Friday

2008-02-19T00:00:00.005-05:00

Doug Oneil, Philippe Garcesto, and Asad Khan are putting on a show, Mana-Fest, at the Seed Gallery this Friday the 22nd. The Seed Gallery is at 239 Washington st. Newark, which is a few blocks away from ECC, Rutgers, and Penn Station. [Directions] .

It starts at 8 with performances, interactive media art, food and wine, and then I guess turns into a party as it says it goes to 3am. There is a cover, so if you plan on going I recommend printing a flyer so its cheaper and drinking/eating/dancing your monies worth.

They asked me to show some work so the Where will be showing Divination, the interactive video element from the thesis show last year. This time Im using a Sonic cartridge instead of Tiny Toons.

Brave, But Not Stupid

2008-02-14T23:49:00.002-05:00

Although all of us have probably had to dumb ourselves down a bit over the past 7 years, we can at least take away lessons from G.W. Bush's mistakes. The lesson applied here is that if necessary, previous comments and commitments must be amended to adjust for current situations. Due to new developments in sound, storyline and production,

the new album, 'Fortune Favors the Brave' will not be released on the original date of 2/29/08.

It would be a glorious date to release on, but it was even ambitious to presume completion by the 29th, and that was before more ideas started to develop.

The album, will most likely be released in March, if not, in April.

The reasons are as follows:

1. The sound, although aesthetically fit, can still be improved through editing.

2. The album is a concept album. It fits to a story and the story and artwork must be presented properly. To this date, the artwork and finished story are not completed.

3. The album will now be co-released with a DVD of videos for songs on the album! The videos are yet to be completed.

The goal of the release is to be accessible, sensible, artistic and supportive.

The written story, 2D art and Sonic pieces of the album will be released for free online!

The DVD and some limited edition CDs will be released as the physical manifestation of the album and will be available through members of All Over the Where.

Until Next Time...

Be Brave!

this is what i do at work

2008-02-03T17:34:00.000-05:00

at my new job we dont have internets, im not supposed to be on the phone, and we cannot read magazines or books. but we do have ms paint. so for the last week, this is what i did.

inspired in part by colins songs for the new album and jacki's work ms paintings

more news from this side of the vvorld vvide vveb soon.

The New Album

2008-01-13T08:16:00.000-05:00

The new album is set to be released on the extra-est day of the year; February 29th! 2008.

A day that only happens once every four years is the key to unlocking greatness. It is the day my hero and cousin, Daniel Nester, was born and will be the day the new album is released.

The name of the album has yet to be discovered...

As a teaser trailer of sorts, to the album, here are a few of the song names in a semi-particular order:

The Wee Ones at the Base of Mount Dreamy Plans
Fable for the Future
Motorboat Rainbow
Buildings
The Day the Fieldworkers Were Forever Frightened
Simultaneous Singular Migration
The Mad Machine

There will be a few more songs added, possibly some taken away, surprises and wonder galore...

I am excited... I know you are too.

This post will self destruct in 18 days. A new post, with the final track listing, will be posted on February 1st. The album and artwork will follow 28 Days Later - on February 29th.

recently

2008-01-07T15:01:00.000-05:00

Music Video

2007-12-14T09:02:00.000-05:00

"How High the Sky, How Far the Moon?"

from Electric Animals Go Sleepy Bye-Byes and Other Byoots

Go to the source to watch it fullscreen!

Discography

2007-12-04T20:11:00.000-05:00

I am working on a new album! It will be released under All Over the Where. The details again are spectacularly fuzzy. I thought you might enjoy these sacred relics though.

The "Blue Collar Sessions" CD is the first aspirations for glory. It is a live album. The initial session includes Faeli on Guitar, Jango on Drums, Me on Keyboards, and Reid on Bass.
The Second Session is included and has Bujak and Jesse thrown into the mix on guitar, drums, and maybe keysboards I think.

It is a poorly recorded album but the quality is there in the heart of the music. The album also includes "The Lost Track" - a track that wasn't recorded on Reid's computer but was captured on my cassette recorder! This album was ultra-limitedly released. It is a gift from Reid to me and consists of one CD. There have many illicit copies and who cares.

It is called the Blue Collar Session because all or most of us were wearing blue collared shirts at the time.

The "Wires and Adapters" CD is the 2nd release and the first release that captures the direction we have been heading in from the beginning. It has a wide array of sounds, mostly recorded on "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" 4 track recorder and some on my hunker cassette recorder or the dictation machine. Our wildest dreams are on this CD in audio format. It includes songs that tell a short story about chipmunks that end up drunk driving, a love song for the bottom of a lake, a song for wallowing when the donkey lost, and a song for the judicial trial of a milkweed bug, just to name a few. Another gift of a release from Reid to me - there is only one actual released copy of this album with plenty of other copies made for those who are interested.

Rend A Clonic Hell was never released:

Before my first solo album, "Rock Me Hardplace" was released, this was another potential album cover and name. "Rend A Clonic Hell" is an anagram of my name. Another one is "A Chill Clone Nerd" but was saving that one for a follow up album. Well the anagram album was altered and was eventually released as "Rock Me Hard Place" The release included 50 CDs. Each one has original art work inside as well as a number and a WOB (Word of Booklet). I still have number 1. My WOB is "Whippersnapper." This CD was still a collaboration with Reid because of the circuit bending sampling that was a main base for the album. It is considered an All Over the Where release.

The album was released at a halloween costume party, which was fitting. The charge for the album is anything you want, an idea which Radiohead stole from me for their new album, which I haven't listen to yet... I ended up making almost enough money back to pay for the party so it was worth it. The album got a great response. The artwork for the outside covers looks like this:

As with all of these you can print this out and copy your own All Over the Where album. I will send copies of the songs for each album and maybe even more artwork by email if you contact me about it!

The hit song from this album, Marsupial Moonshine, is still on my myspace page: El Colin .You can see the drawing it was based off of in the artwork. Sam and I had a bet whether a Tasmanian Devil was a marsupial. I won saying 'of course it is' and Sam had to make me a drawing, but I fulfilled my song side of the bet anyway, inspired by the drawing.

After the "Rock Me Hardplace" album (which is me between a rock and a hardplace if you didn't notice,) there was a stretch of focusing on creating new instruments and experimenting on circuit bending that took All Over the Where to a new level.

We developed "The Frog Opera" over months with some new and old instruments. There are a number of Frog Opera recordings, but the one that was released was "The Frog Opera: Live at Lovemonster's" This CD is a Live CD of the performance at Lovemonster's house in December of 2006. There is a video of the end of the second to last movement and the last movement, or 'song' here:

It is really poorly documented video wise. There is not enough light to see what is going on but The person most shown is me, Reid is in there somewhere. This was the wrap up of the whole "Opera" that turned out to be a hip hop track called "Bringin' it Back".

The "Frog Opera" has a 'booklet' that was given to the audience with a concise description of the performance:
Act 1
-Life on the Surface
-Stuck in the Mud
-The Great Storm
Act 2
-The Whale in My Pond
-Bringin' it Back

Above is a picture of the setup. "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" 4Track is working as a mixer and recorder. All of the audio is pumping out of the large bass amp. We were working with multiple circuit bent instruments, including a new invention of the summer I will post about at a later date. We switched tapes on the last song to a prerecorded. circuit bent, casio beat, and recorded out rap live. The rest of the performance is fully live. The high five before the last song is for not recording over the prerecorded tape we were about to rap over. Although "Bringin' it Back" was planned into "The Frog Opera" long before the performance, we did not write the song until the day of the performance. Although there were some mistakes in flow on my part, I still claim the overall performance of this song could not have been beat for the time and place. The rest of the 'opera' was executed perfectly and spontaneously but save the end of "The Whale in My Pond", mo more of it was caught on tape.

There was another very limited release of CDs for 'The Frog Opera'. About 5 were traded for other pieces of art at a gallery exhibition Reid and I performed at. There were about 5 others made personally for friends who were there through most of the process. These are two of the custom collaged covers. All of the covers included a frog and a whale and some other elements of the 'Opera':

If those of you who have the other copies of "The Frog Opera" could scan them and send the images back to us, it would be greatly appreciated. The same goes with the El Colin CD artwork. You will be rewarded for your cooperation in this matter. Ha ha ha ha (evil laugh).

The last album released is documented on the blog. Right before I left for Korea, with even more new breakthroughs in circuit bending and instrument building and song development, "Electric Animals Go Sleepy Bye-Byes and Other Byoots" is the perfect transition to a new era of All Over the Where. The description of the original release is here. Byoots stands for beauties. It is a transition album from Wires and Adapters into the new release coming soon. Again This album is inspired by, and inspires, dreams.

The CD is a 50 album release so far with other copies being made by request. The album art can be downloaded and printed. The artwork was copied at my previous employers and each CD was simply folded into the piece of paper the artwork was printed onto. If folded properly you can fold the side flaps into each other, securing the CD in the paper. The other songs on my myspace page are from the 'byoots' album.

An unreleased version of the studio "Frog Opera" song "The Whale in my Pond" can currently be found at the All Over the Where myspace page as well as two other unreleased awesomes.

There will be a sort of audio 'teaser trailer' of the new album appearing on the blog soon. The other audio is definitely worth checking out for now. Keep updated and email me :
elcolin (at) gmail.com
for copies of previous albums and artwork,copies of unreleased songs, and the like.

Strobe Light Tremolo

2007-12-03T14:02:00.000-05:00

I got a free volume pedal from Build Your Own Clone and decided to try modify it somehow. I attached a photocell to the volume pot so now the volume can be controlled either by the pot or a light source. This may seem like a pretty silly thing to put on a volume pedal but my reasons are two fold. One is to allow ambient light effect the volume of particular instruments (for when it gets warm again and I move my set up outdoors) and the second is to try and make a strobe light/vactrol powered tremolo. Here is the video:

As you can hear the main the issue Im having is the clicking or clipping sound that happens when the volume cuts out. Not to sure how to fix that. Trimpots and resistors come to mind but I think the problem is the strobe light itself so the next test I am going to do will be with a vactrol and a pulse circuit. More to come.

forgot...

2007-11-28T02:53:00.000-05:00

...to mention that i posted this video clip of my thesis show. this is the first short clip of several i will be posting in the coming weeks. this one is of evan demarow.

Stop Motion

2007-11-19T17:12:00.001-05:00

I found this stop motion video bye Colin and Renae on my computer. They havent put it on youtube yet so I figured I would. Here it is, and sorry Colin and Renae if you wanted to post this!

some things i did today

2007-11-15T02:17:00.000-05:00

Fixed Jacki's drum machine. This thing is acid house music in a box. I could literally sit with it for hours using samples and drums to make minimalist house techno. Tons of fun, but unfortunately designed poorly, the power adapter plug port thing easily brakes, and turns a perfectly functional techno machine into junk.

Also finished Jacki's keyboard. Didnt do anything too out of the ordinary with this one. Standard pitch-bend and body contact with a 1/8inch output. I also added two LEDs which ended up being totally useless. I tried to wire them to the audio output so they would flash in time with the music but using one two of them would make the audio too low to hear. My next thought was to use it for some photocell action, but then realized that if they dont change with the music or modulate in some way its sorta useless. Although I did figure out a neat little trick to make them turn on and off with the keyboard without having to deal with those really annoying PCB slidey switches all circuit benders hate. All you gotta do is add a new wire from the LED to the + of the battery and attached the LED ground to the speakers ground and it works perfect. I tried to think of cool things to do with the lights, but nothing work so Im leaving them as is. I also tried to etch/scratch it with a dremel but the plastic was really brittle and proved way more difficult than I anticipated.

Started building a really simple volume pedal I got for free from Build Your Own Clone. Its the simplest possible pedal, but it is apparently pretty nice, so Im adding among other things a photocell to control the volume. I dont know if this is a terrible idea or not (Im guessing it probably is) but I think it might let me make really ghetto tremolo effects in a dark room with a flashlight with some delay. Put some reverb on that, and I could probably get some nice volume swell effects going on as well.

Tomorrow I am going to Hand Made Music (scroll down a few entries on the cmd blog to find info) with Jen. Its a very cool looking/sounding event in Brooklyn dedicated to homemade instruments and audio devices so expect some photos and words on that later.

Most amazing bike/scooter/robot ever

2007-11-13T11:32:00.000-05:00

A few months back while walking home from Mason Gross, Jen and I saw this AMAZING bike contraption. It was sitting in the sidewalk in front of Tumultys with no owner around so I took some quick photos to remember the total beauty of the thing. I definitely have some innate attraction to anything that looks hand made with wires, switches, knobs, and random electronic components hanging out all over the place, so it naturally caught my eye. When I got closer though it transcended and destroyed any notions I had about it, bikes, or electrical design by the sheer attention to detail, resourcefulness, and the oddly organic way it was built. ***YOU HAVE TO DOWNLOAD THESE PHOTOS OR AT LEAST CLICK ON THEM AND ZOOM IN TO REALLY SEE THE AMAZING ATTENTION TO DETAIL PUT INTO THIS BIKE. BLOGGERS PHOTOS ARE JUST NOT BIG ENOUGH TO CATCH IT ALL***

This is the bike from the side. From this you can notice many upgrades and interesting customizations. Starting more generally, the bike itself seems like it used to be a motor scooter that was retro-fitted with bicycle pedals. I dont actually know if the motor works or if its 100% pedal power, but from the looks it seems like the pedals are there for a reason. Next most obvious thing is the front wheel. Obviously a totally sweet addition done by the owner. Mountain bike wheels and shocks are perfect for the crappy sidewalks and potholed streets of New Brunswick. As I stated before I love anything with an excessive amount of knobs, switches, wires, and buttons. This bike has them all with the steering wheel/front (I really dont know what to call it) of the bike has two or three joysticks (one is wood!) a whole lot of wires, and a bunch of switches. Most of them look like they were installed by hand and werent originally there. Also note the totally sweet fan for those hot NB summer days.

This bike is a total mystery though, when I saw it, it completely defied all normal, professional, or rational electronic/design thought and theory. Which is exactly why I am utterly in love with it. It completely defies any notion of logic when it comes to building and modifying with electronics, and in a discipline based on the laws and reason of math and science, this sort of illogic is pure brilliance. Here are two photos of the front of the bike:

First of all, note the amazing World Heavy Weight Champion plastic belt piece I remember friends having when I was in Elementry school! Also, many smaller details such as the "bend and peel here sticker" and the definitely hand mounted switches (I wish I knew what they did!). Also visible, maybe a bit better in the first photo, is a totally sweet rear view mirror.

This photo really shows the brilliance of whoever made this bike. Ever have trouble seeing at night while biking? Why not use a light bulb?!

If you look closely at the first photo you will notice on the "head" or thing with all the joysticks on it there is a bunch (8) of speaker wire inputs. It took me a while to put this together but who ever built this has an entire stereo system set up within the bike! It is shown much better in this photo:

If you look closely there is tape deck! And I didnt get a good shot of it, but I swear on the other side there is cd player!!! The black rectangular box that is directly below the chair (which I realize now is also totally added on their and not originally part of the bike) is a cd deck. I counted at least 3 maybe 4 speakers all around the bike. In this photo there is one sorta under the seat, and if you look by the pedals there is a speaker facing up, and sorta under the seat another potential speaker.

After looking at all these photos and seeing all the amazing hacks and additions to this bike, there has to be a battery somewhere inside the back of the thing. Theres no other way to power a cd player, tape deck, light bulb, and those really cool orange and red car lights that he attached to the bike.

Another thing that boggles my mind is the drill mounted upside down and inside the chassis of the bike! Not only is it mounted perfectly but I have no idea what it does, why its there, and how its being held into place (upon further inspection I see there is a spring that is holding it in place). There is no battery on it so at first I thought it was just sort of there, BUT, I just looked closely at the photographs and there are two small white and red wires coming out of it meaning that the drill is ALSO powered by some sort of internal battery. Now this is a total stretch, but why would someone have a drill pointed inward like that? Maybe its to turn the gears/chain! Which is fucking genius, such a simple thought, it turns, probably with enough torque (although this thing looks pretty heavy) to move it, but it must be so much more complicated to implement like that. You can buy tiny motors for your bike that cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars, but this guy did it with a frickin drill!!! The utter resourcefulness of this bike is completely inspiring.

This photo shows a few more nice details. The tupper ware top patching up a hole, a nice leatherish pouch for holding stuff, and my favorite, a tape holder mounted directly on the bike next to the 2nd drink holder. Or it could really be the tape is also patching up some sort of structural flaw, either way both are cool with me. Also note sweet green hubcap attachments, and a knob to the right of the drill. I wish I knew what this knob did!!

This is a photo of the back side. More cool orange and red car lights, a ton of stray wires, a random 2 chord power chord from somewhere, and my favorite part, a power outlet!!! I dream of being able to talk to the guy who made this and ask a million questions only to be answered in yoda esque cryptic messages and riddles. And for the icing on the cake, a z100 sticker, fanny back (if the bike had a "fanny" the pack is placed in the appropriate area) and antenna for receiving radio transmissions from space and beyond. Or maybe....BROADCASTING transmissions to space. Probably not, but this thing took off with a hidden jet pack or something I would not be surprised.

To this day I wish I sat next to this beautiful bike and waited for its owner/mad genius builder to show up and had a long conversation with him (I know its a guy btw because I saw him later that day when I was driving by George and Albany). But I was in hurry probably to something unimportant and missed my chance. If ANYONE knows ANYTHING about this bike, who built, anything at all PLEASE EMAIL ME!!! reidbingham [[at]] gmail [[dot]] com. I would be forever grateful, especially with winter coming up and my chances of seeing thing outdoors diminishing.

El Colin is el victorious!

2007-11-08T13:20:00.000-05:00

El Colin (aka Colin) won the circuit bending challenge!!!!

Go to creatdigitalmusic.com to see the deets about the challenge, all the other submissions, and the other 2 winners.

CONGRATULATIONS COLIN!!!!
With MacGyver like skills across the world, making the rockinest bent guitar ever.

coleco bending

2007-11-08T00:08:00.000-05:00

I started bending the Coleco Vision plug n play video toy I got an amazing yard sale a few weeks ago (3 of them for 2 bucks each!!!).

These are the things I learned.
-It only has sports games--> Base/Basket/Foot/Raquet Ball, Soccer, and Hockey
-The graphics are definitely Coleco Vision quality pixels and colors
-If I apply a jewelers screw driver to a certain components I can pick up a pretty clear radio signal
-Short circuiting and crossing connections on the main chip create all sorts of glitches
-You can still play the games while glitching out the game
-Some glitches will freeze the game but still allow more glitches
-Sometimes the freezes become covered in a single color, usually green, causing the whole screen/image to break down
-Connecting the component that causes radio transmission with the main microchip create feedback of different tones depending on where on the chip the connection is made
-Batt tree deprivation bends work but only freezes the game first then deteriorates the images on screen till its all black. Use a 1k pot, turn slowly.
-If batt tree power is lessened during the opening game animation of the exploding football helmets, it will freeze on that scene of the explosion and repeat the exploding sound. The batt tree bend will then degrade the quality of the exploding sound.

This is a video of some glitching, which shows that you can still play the game while bent, the buzzing tones are the feedback, and the random speaking and singing is the radio signals the toy is picking up.

This is a video of bat tree deprivation bend that causes the beginning explody sound to loop.

Please forgive the quality of the videos and photos, they are all done rather hastily. I will post a better quality comprehensive demo of the possible glitches in the near future.

NearFuture plans:
-Wire out to 4x4 patch bay with intensity controls for each row
-Audio Responsive????????
-Wire out to keyboard so playing a keyboard will create glitches and activate a corresponding tone of feedback
-Interface with one of the sports the game has to create glitch (use a soccer ball to create glitches, or a racquet ball racket {or is it a paddle?}, etc)

F R I D A Y ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

2007-10-31T19:14:00.000-04:00

New-s-Pooky-Monster-Awesomeness

2007-10-30T09:42:00.000-04:00

I am not sure what happened when I wired it, but the speaker is also a microphone now as well!
It made a crazy feedback that I have never heard the likes of through the Awesomeator

reids circuit bending challenge

2007-10-29T02:22:00.001-04:00

this is the yard sale where i got these toys...

a my music maker keyboard, a toy cassette tape player, and a odd barbie keyboard dance mat thing for a buck fifty

the barbie dance mat keyboard proved useless so i went for the good ol music maker

for the final product i added a pitch bend...

body contacts...

a switch to turn on/off...

the photocell

all with a 1/8 inch output automatic shut off

the finished bent challenger, somtime around 1 or 2am

its threee am! all is done, ill edit the movies tomorrow. happy circuit bending challenge day!!!

El Colin and the Circuit Bending Challenge

2007-10-28T10:27:00.000-04:00

This is a day that will go down in history for me. I am tired, burned, bloodied, and so happy that it doesn't matter.

I have two videos that will explain most of my ups and downs today.

There rest I will try to put in words and show you some pictures.

I just recently moved to South Korea. It is hard for me to find the things I need sometimes and I don't have everything I need for circuit bending yet.

At first, I wasn't able to find anything.

I found some proof it is the 28th.

I found this keyboard but it wasn't very exciting.

I bought a blue version of this guitar a week ago. I was wary to buy it but the rules said find one today! So I bought this one. I like pink better anyway. Experience the sweetness feel to flying the music sea! I decided to go with the guitar, mainly because of that saying.

There is a pretty simple, black-blob circuit, with a cap and a resistor.

I found this hunker in the street the first day I was here.

I tried replacing the cap with other caps, a transistor, and what I think is a mega transistor, but I still don't know.

The mega transistor is super money! It makes everything perfect.

My modest set up with the few supplies I have collected (see the video for more details.)

I went to the stationary store two blocks away to find body contacts.

I couldn't cut the 'Supa-clip' so I had to go back to the store. I tried to cut smaller clips. I eventually gave up and used little binder ring things.

Everything goes wrong as soon as I decide to start finalizing everything. I ripped part of the circuit board out of the black-blob. Luckily, I had the same guitar from a week ago. (Circuit "Bending" the rules a little.)

The aftermath.

From the ashes of the dead, a godly creature springs forth to create happiness.

The Monster.

Below are the Videos. The Challenge video is everything leading up to the end product. It is about 10 minutes long. It is fun and shows me freaking out and having a blast and talking to you; a video diary of sorts. The outcome video is the final performance before midnight. It is an awesome little guitar and I am happy even though it is so terribly planned out. I have made some nice instruments before but this one has a special place in my heart. Thanks Circuit Bending Challenge! I can't wait to see what everyone else ended up with.

Reid, I wish you were here for this.

Video of "The Challenge"

Video of "The Outcome"

The guitar sounds great. The cigar box pedal in the beginning of the clip (The Awesomeator - see the earlier blog post) actually makes the same sound that the guitar does. It has something to do with the transistors and radio signals. Twice I got a Yankees game to come on through my Awesomeator!!!!! I can't wait to play this guitar using the Awesomator as a pedal for it; that will be spectacular. It would keep me up all night though and I need to go to work tomorrow, so good night and for the rest of you still working, good luck and have fun. I look forward to seeing the results of this most excellent day.

Check out the other benders here :

getlofi

createdigitalmusic

Need I Say More?

2007-10-28T00:45:00.001-04:00

Keep posted today for progress.

Jazz Hero Live in Seoul

2007-10-27T23:17:00.000-04:00

alloverthewhere dot org

2007-10-22T03:09:00.000-04:00

i just did some crappy ach tee am elling to get the all over the where site back up again. i definitely spent wayyy to long trying to get that color fade.

i also finally got the glitch hikers guide to the galaxy up on the vvvvvv.
as i say on aotw i suck at graphic design and html and didnt know how to present it in a easy user friendly way. it ended up being a 950kb file that is 800 pixels tall and you scroll sideways to see. if you know of a better way to present it so people can actually use it please let me know. anyways, hurrah for the free exchange of information and sharing of ideas. it really does make my heart glow happiness when i see soldering irons on peoples desks and circuit boards strewn about.

oh, and on oct 28 is the international circuit bending challenge. im doing it, who else is in? if we work together, it will be better!

Experience the Sweetness Feel to Flying the Music Sea!

2007-10-21T19:28:00.001-04:00

I bought a new toy guitar that wants to remind everyone of the sweetness feel to flying the music sea. Also, I performed live on stage with the Hero guitar this weekend! It was awesome. The Korean crowd was diggin' it. A video will be up soon.

Glitch Suit

2007-10-18T17:17:00.001-04:00

Here are some video experiments/sketches I did a few days ago. These are just the first tests, there will be more to come, hopefully with better content. All the footage is from past projects I had lying around, just recycling old videos. The dancing thing I do apologize for cause I look like an ass but that was point of that particular project. I was doing a reinterpretation or response to The Perfect Human and as seen from the The Five Obstructions. I filmed the head torso and legs of myself dancing and had them on three stacked tvs so it was life size. Anyway, my eventual goal for this idea is to have all the original footage replaced with keyed out videos. Posterize the video into 4 colors, photoshop each frame four times (once for each color) to create a mask for each color and then re composite them back together so every color is now replaced by a different video. Sorta like animating with multiple layers of videos. Kinda hard to explain but once I photoshop a few thousand frames youll get to see the final result.

the white version with one layer (black) keyed out

The glitch version with two layers keyed out

oh and the song in the white one is crystal castles "February" and the other song is professor murder "free stress test"

check youtube.com/alloverthewhere for more videos and descriptions.

Katamari Chorus

2007-10-15T20:40:00.000-04:00

While searching for images to make Colins Katamari Damacy themed chorus pedal, titled Katamari Chorus or King of All Chorus here are some interesting things I found.

a top 5 list

a New Criticism (Marxist, Post-Structuralist, Feminist, etc) critique of Katamari Damacy. Part 2, Part 3.

a nice quote from the games creator Keita Takahashi:

'Everyday life is full of many fun and stimulating things. The feeling of just riding a bicycle or the sensation of sand on bare feet when you walk along a beach […] the happy feeling you get when you just decide to skip, or the increase in heartbeat when you decide to stop in the middle of a road crossing. You couldn’t really say that they're punk rock things, but all of them are stimulating, and all of them help to make you realize that everyday life can be quite fun as well. Things like these have ended up making me think that you don't necessarily need games to have fun, and you possibly don't even need games at all,' (2005)

and an amazing croquet pattern to create your own little prince.

act now while supplies last

2007-10-15T17:17:00.000-04:00

Go to Jeffrey Thompsons ArtForum Ad Project and buy yourself a 3/16' inch of real estate. Also, tell your 3,900 friends they can buy a square as well.

soots

2007-10-14T04:37:00.000-04:00

wish i could wear this to the parade

Colab got its website up!

2007-10-12T11:41:00.000-04:00

http://colab-arts.org/

fiffe created it and its looks amazing, so go check it out if your wandering around the world wide interweb anytime soon.

Eel on Hold

2007-10-10T11:40:00.000-04:00

because it is so hard to hold on.

reel to reel stereo tape recorder archeology

2007-10-10T02:26:00.000-04:00

or sketches with a tape recorder
or tape recorder reconfiguration remix
or How To Remix A Tape Recorder

start out frustrated (see previous post)
get archaeological
take apart tape recorder
save every screw, washer, nut, plastic, metal piece possible
salvage as many electronic components as possible
think about all the other metal parts in the machine
wonder what you can do with them
think about tim hawkinson, tom friedman, and dieter roth
try to dissasemble entire apparatus and cataloge each part
or reconstruct the entire tape machine inside out
get frustrated again with metal dust, stripped screws, grease, and cuts
drop that idea and salvage what metal pieces you can
layout all metal pieces, screws, and assorted gears
take parts and reconfigure them, using only parts from the machine, into new things
tiny sculpture thoughts, three dimensional drawings, purely aesthetic/design oriented thinking
document
take apart sculptures and re-reconfigure them to make new ones
add rare earth magnets for extra fun
put in box
clean up
blog
go to sleep

in the beginning

looks like a face

guts in a box

guts out of the box

magnet and screws

again, magnet and screws

the last one, magnet and screw person

random reconfiguration

random reconfiguration

random reconfiguration

there are a few more but im really tired and my camera sucks so i will post them later. i really like playing with the rare earth magnets and the screws. i really do enjoy making small things, robots, objects, whatever. and using magnets could be a lot of fun.

car ant lee and a quest john

2007-10-08T16:09:00.000-04:00

currently

and seriously, WHOS GONNA MAKE THIS HAPPEN????

colins last bend in the brunz - syn(th)ister

2007-10-07T15:07:00.000-04:00

this was a keyboard colin was holding on to for a while. as is the nature of so many of the weird objects lying around our old apartment, we dont know where it came from. maybe we found it, or maybe it found us. in the last few days we were in new brunswick colin bent it into a crazy howling monster of a keyboard. there wasnt much to find in terms of glitch but after experimenting with the amplification circuit, colin hit feedback gold. the thing sounds absolutely sinister with a distortion/overdrive pot, and a harshasfuck feedback switch. there is also a glitch button but that ended up being as useful as an appendix. the video is of colin playing a lil ditty on our ol'back porch.

assholes

2007-10-04T13:04:00.000-04:00

why do people throw out awesome old electronics like this stero tape recorder and tape deck and CUT OFF THE POWER CHORDS??!?!! this is the third time this has happened to me. the feeling undeniable joy from a great find during a midnight bulk waste run, and the subsequent crushed hopes and dreams of a cut power chord. makes me want to throw this tape deck through their frickin window! is there some sort of unwritten rule of homeowner assholes that says before you throw out tvs, vcrs, audio equipment, or anything else of potential value, that you have to ruin it and make sure no one else can use it??? so selfish! so frustrating! is there a way to fix this without electrocuting myself or creating a fire hazard? how can we raise public awareness about the importance and simple joys of trash picking. so many questions...i must make a psa.

SLURRKIT BLENT UNSTROWMUNTS

2007-10-03T17:09:00.000-04:00

the workshop last night went pretty well. it was a small group of 5 so everyone got a toy from my stash to bend and it kept the group to a manageable size for me. everyone got to go home with a finished bentstrument toy. except olchar (sorry!) who experienced the dark half of the glamorous life of circuit bending - failure and frustration. although it was totally not his fault, crappy keyboards and stripped screws are the bane of any bender. last night was when i acutely realized no one else knows circuits like colin LBJ challender (the LBJ stands for Lyndon B. Johnson {the B stands for Baines}). **cue violins** and not only is his friendship dearly missed but his technically expertise and enthusiasm for the art of circuit bending. damn you south korea! anyways here are some photos

the set up - soldering irons, solder, wire strippers, wire, strippers, safety glasses, glasses, alligator clips, alligators, assorted screw drivers, glitch hikers guide the galaxy #1, and electric animals go sleepy bye-byes and other byoots

all hands hard at work

warren added a photocell to this dollar store keyboard that i seriously must have been holding onto for 2 years. it comes with a fan and im glad it has finally been put to good use.

jen took the toy i wanted to bend, but because she did such a good job ill let her keep it....for now. she added a pitch pot to the drum toy, bringing its total octave range from shrill headache to mechanical whale.

not pictured was lnys awesome bend of a pink glittery cell phone toy i got from a cvs a while ago, and philippes bending of the pink beeper that came with it.

this is warren and lenny making some noise with their bent toys

vvvvorkshop

2007-10-02T10:21:00.001-04:00

ill be giving a vvvvorkshop on circuit bending today at space ii iiii iv (234 raritan ave highland park nj). bring toys, instruments, and cassette tape players if you want help hacking them. ill be giving out copies of a zine colin and i made about circuit bending basics and will try to hit up a good will or tuesday morning before the workshop so i can provide some toys for people. see you there.

h i t e c h l o w t e c h ! ! ! 1 ! 1 1

2007-09-28T02:09:00.001-04:00

all this weekend check the up to date awesomeness