DAM TYPO! :: Tara Rynders & Maximilan Shiffman

20110325

"In 'Typo', Tara and Max use text to generate movement, imagery and sound. 'Typo' brings together several disciplines in a dynamic environment.  Text drives the performance, controlling video, sound art, and coreography.  While 'Typo' is a technological performance rooted in its time, Tara and Max push the limits of text using it to communicate on numerous levels."

 

Golan's inadvertent contribution

Tara and Max were given the opportunity to perform alongside the Blink! exhibit this past Friday.  This is such an honor to be invited to help out and document, and I was very proud of Max and Tara's performances.  Max performed music and text that was both planned a improvised based on text messages from the audience.
Tara was able to interact with both a Jitter patch (framesub), and an installation by Golan Levin.  This interactive projection creates noise and colored shapes as you cast shadows on the screen.  The shapes are created by closed spaces, like if you made a circle with your thumb and forefinger, for example.  This is a very fun part of Blink! and was a cool addition to the  performance.

Ok, so there's a really awesome video at the end here, but you're only allowed to watch it if you read the whole article :)

A Digital Media Explosion

Well, the end of February and beginning of March certainly kept me away from my creativity time.  Fortunately, now that my employers are all on Spring Break, I've had the chance to work on some music, video, patching, and all kinds of art.

A sample from one of my Glossom collections...
I suggest you try it for at least give it 1 second,
it is interactive and is a unique concept.

My main goal has been to continue to increase my net presence... to I've added quite a few social networking sites to the mix.  Twitter (@iEEEj), Scribd (a site to publish papers), and my personal favorite, Glossom.  This site lets you create a collage of your work (video or picture or text w/ links) in a grid you must conform to.  It is a very interesting concept, and I suggest checking it out if you have any things you want to share on the microwebs.

Additionally, I've been making lots of digital art, both music and video.  I even overloaded my Vimeo upload limit, so I have to wait a week to post "Digital Paint : in 2 movements" (the second video).  So here are a some of the videos that I made over the past few days... I'll give some details after each one.

Fact of Life

This is a sound responsive physical and digital melding. The video is of TriLEDs (LEDs that can output any combination of red, blue, and green). They are controlled by filters that respond to the music being played. There's a little editing at the end, but it was just to keep the piece short.

... Yes there's more; I figure if you're interested I might as well just keep it all on the same page...

iVVVj

I was invited to this online portfolio site called Glossom...  I was skeptical at first, but it is actually very cool.  If you check it out, when you mouse over each image, you can watch the videos they came from.  Check it out!

Sneak preview of Blink! at the DAM

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Blink! - Light, Sound and the Moving image

I was fortunate enough to be invited to the opening reception for Blink!, at the Denver Art Museum (DAM).  The exhibit, which opens on March 13th, is an exciting new media exploration with works ranging from the mid 80s through 2011.  A wide variety of works are shown including digital and analog film/video, new media sculpture and projection art.  There are even a few interactive pieces. 

The Denver Art Museum

Tim Eriksen and the Batteries Die Media Ensemble

The Batteries Die Media Ensemble

20110305

Over the weekend, Michael Theodore held a reincarnation of the What I Saw at the Apocalypse show from February of 2009. He brought Tim Eriksen, a "shape note" or throat singer, back for the very special reunion. The Apocalypse show was one of my first shows to work on at ATLAS, and this reunion was, by far, one of the most complex audio patches I've built in the space. We routed about 30 channels to the FOH mixer and about 24 channels into the ProToolsHD system. Additionally, we documented the concert with a live-mixed three camera shoot.

Here is an edited video from my Zoom Q3-HD:

More info and pictures after the break...

Feburary bLOrk-taculair

20110225/6

Last weeks bLOrk concert was an amazing collaboration of musicians, dancers, and digital artists. Here is a full video from the uStream copy of the Saturday concert if it is still being hosted (It starts around the 20:00 mark), try this link.  Keep reading, I also have a high quality, edited version of the Friday night show, and a few pictures.

I was fortunate enough to perform alongside new and returning members of bLOrk, and even performed my piece about tuning and calibrating the laptop orchestra, 'Tuning Up'. This time, I included a malfunctioning computer which is designed to give me troubles throughout the piece. We were also excited to have Trace Reddell and a couple of his students from the Digital Media Studies program at DU showcase Jitter patches they have developed.

New levels of interaction

Feburary Pendulum

20110223

Wow, what a week.  Pendulum followed by blOrk only two days later.  The Pendulum New Music Series showcases new works from composers at CU, and this month's performance had a very eclectic bill. This installation of Pendulum included these world premiers:
Kari Kraakevik  - Canyons Leading Home: Los Angeles to Lost Angel (2010)
Keane Southard - Two Symmetries for Disklavier (2010)
Cole Ingraham - Chaos Geometry (2010)
Leanna Kirchoff - The House Explodes
Hunter Ewen - Invasion of the Monkey Mind (2010)

Also featuring "Open Score," an audience-participation piece with Paul Miller and Jeff Nytch.

Poster

Catherine Havasi: Digital Intuition through Natural Language Processing

ConceptNet Map describing
relationships between concepts

20110221

As my faithful readers will know, I have recently become very interested in data processing.  This season's ATLAS lecture series has been excellent so far, and I couldn't pass this one up.  Catherine Havasi conducts research at the MIT Media Lab in the field of Natural Language Processing or NLP.  This is the field that is defining the way  we use computers to analyze data, specifically in the linguistic realm.  For the past 12 years, she has been working on  a research project, Open Mind Common Sense, which shifts the focus towards Natural Language Understanding.  Using assumptions about how things work and the connections between objects and concepts, conclusions can be made about very large data sets.  She presents these conclusions in a three dimensional vector space known as AnalogySpace (built in Processing) and a database known as ConceptNet.

Upcoming Events!!

There's lots of cool things happening in the Black Box in the next few weeks or so... be sure to get your free tickets, a lot of these will reserve fast.  However, if they do get a full list, still put your name on the waiting list.  Most of time, people on the waiting list still get in.  Do this especially for the blOrk show, because I'm performing a piece I wrote!

Ian Bogost: The Material Constraints of Art and Programming

Double Plus Good... I was planning on attending this lecture, and then was asked to work the event.  Score.  I got to get paid to go, and had a few extra moments to speak with Ian.  Not only that, it was amazing.

Ian Bogost at ATL&S' Black Box Theater

Ian Bogost is a media philosopher and designer who focuses particularly on video games.  He is a professor at Georgia Tech and accomplished author.  This afternoon Ian gave an excellent presentation about the evolution of not only video game media, but also some of the theory behind material constraints.  For example, he programs for an Atari system, but is limited not only by the amount of RAM he can use, but also the number of addressable sprites and objects is 'limited'.  These boundaries, Ian poses, help to define the creativity that goes into the utilization of these types of tools.  This goes for older systems like Atari, or even newer platforms like like the XBox360 or PS3.

Let's make some hip-hop... why not?

So my friends Mike and Morgan have been making some hip-hop songs at their cabin up in the mountains.  This inspired me to mix some lyrics to a couple of my songs.  The first is a combo of Five25 (an acoustic song of mine) with Method Man and Redman.  The second (after the break) is an old Latchkey Kids song spliced up with ODB lyrics.

These aren't the most kosher lyrics in the world, so if you offend easily, just don't listen.

OGcheebacheeba (feat. Method Man and Redman)



  OGcheebacheeba (feat. Method Man and Redman) by iEEEj

World premier iEEEj video right here...

Having ProTools on my own computer really changes things for me.  I've been able to edit samples I've brought in from my turntable with a deadly efficiency. And, I finally got around to making a recording that I like, of this song that never really had a name.  Adam called it Zelda Come Home once... I'm calling it Five25 right now until someone thinks of something better.  I also took this opportunity to stitch some jitter stuff together to make the world premier iEEEj (my DJ/musician/electronerd handle) music video.  If you want to download the song or just listen to it without the video, click the link after the break.