Neo-triptych

 

Thematically,  this piece is intended to fit with my self portrait.  I tried to use bright colors on angular shapes to convey a sense of energy and movement, and accentuated that with splashes of paint.  I gave the image a black background as opposed to a white one because I felt that white space overpowered the colors and diminished the effect I intended.  Initially, I had the objects separated by three sections, but clear separation between the objects didn't have the same effect as their overlap.  I'd rather not say what the initial letters were as I feel the piece took on a different directon from the initial intention during it's creation.  You can all feel free to guess at what I started with for my own amusement, however.

Electronic Music: GRUM

As much as I'd love you, I won't bombard you with synthpop artists.  Today I'll show you some stuff from the Electroclash/Disco House/Post Disco/Nu-Disco/synthpop (whoops) artist "GRUM."  GRUM is a one man operation, Graeme Shepherd of Scotland.  He released his debut album "Heartbeats" in May 2010 to positive reception, and it has been compared to Daft Punk's "Discovery" and Mylo's "Destroy Rock and Roll."

His music videos are simultaneously amazing and hysterical.  Yes, they are official videos.

Can be purchased at:  http://grum.bigcartel.com/
and probably itunes or something idk

San Fran Music Hack Day

On February 16th and 17th the "Music Hack Day" in San Fransisco took place.  That's two days, but who's counting?  Every Music Hack Day offers participants 24 hours to conjure up inventive new ways of interacting with music with the aid of technology.  Here were some cool results from this years event.

LSD
Taking the idea of the collaborative playlist and applying it to visualizations, LSD “allows people in the audience to control the visuals projected on stage at concerts and festivals, all using their smartphones,” explains creator Tyler F. Each visualization acts as a kind of room — people can log onto the site, join in, and take control of visual effects. Even better, they can add in visuals that they’ve recorded on their phones and add them to the mix.

Tweet Concrète
This jokingly pretentious offering from Ryan Fitzgerald generates short sonic collages based on randomly selected tweets from your account. Think of them as tweet soundtracks that last as long as each tweet takes to read. Or, if that doesn’t take your fancy, then why not try…

Nightingale
Apparently, Nightingale ”crawls through your Twitter stream and matches keywords and phrases to song lyrics by utilizing text processing and sentiment analysis” to deliver an “amazing playlist” that matches the mood of your tweets. While the bar for “amazing” is set at an unclear height (and every playlist seemed to have a Black Eyed Peas song in it on our tests), it’s pretty good at picking stuff on Spotify that goes with the taste of each tweeter.

The Bonhamizer
If you’ve ever found yourself wondering what a song might sound like if it had been recorded with John Bonham on drums, look no further — Paul Lemere’s Bonhamizer is just the ticket. Lets you upload a song and choose from four types of Bonham — “Basic Bonham,” “Hammer of the Gods,” “Double Time Shuffle,” and “Bonham Shuffle.”

Code Music
This site, from Daniel Imrie-Situnayake and Ryan Brown, turns valid JavaScript into music by mapping the “structure, nesting and errors contained within” onto a compositional waveform.

Soundvine
Matt Montag’s Soundvine lets you pair up your Vines with a track of your choosing, control the playback speed, and generally “remix” the looping video/audio format. Lots of the Music Hack Day projects focus on Spotify and Twitter, but it’s likely that Vine will become equally important over time as the format grows in popularity.

LazyListen
If you’ve ever wanted to be able to listen to Pandora without having the stress of having to use your hands to say you love certain tracks, Peter Watts’ LazyListen will help with just that. Using your computer’s webcam, the radio will stop playing if you get up and leave — and if you “rock out” to a track, it’ll automatically give it a thumbs-up.

Tweedio
Possibly perfect for parties, Tweedio (from Justin Mahon and Sean Po) lets people text or tweet to add songs to a collaborative playlist. Not only can new songs be added, but songs already on the playlist can be pushed up so they come on sooner.

Electronic Music: Perturbator

Little is known about the French electronic music artist "Perturbator."  Well, at least my google searched didn't turn up anything for information on the person behind the music.  Much like "Miami Nights 1984" he does 80's inspired synthpop.  However, his takes on the self proclaimed theme of "Dark and Retrofuturistic music inspired by the 80's."

His album covers honestly look like they'd be 80's metal albums. which is sweet.  Scholarly fact.

Sample:

 When searching for information on this guy, I learned that he recently had done tracks for a recently released video game.  Here is one of them.

The soundtrack is pretty good, I'll probably be checking that out.

His music is available for FREE (or name your price if you feel so inclined) at:  http://perturbator.bandcamp.com/

Fowl Imagery

No statement.  Only hardship and tears on your journey to discovery. 

Electronic Music: Miami Nights 1984

Miami Nights 1984 is Michael Glover from Victoria, BC, Canada. Miami Nights tries to embody the soft warm feeling of an 80s John Hughes film, characterized by smooth synthesizers and nostalgic solos. Born in 1982 on Vancouver island in British Columbia Canada he has been able to draw inspiration from his surrounding environment and romantic dreams.

His obsession with the 1980s has led to the founding of Rosso Corsa Records and a revival of synthesizer music. With Rosso Corsa he is championing many artists such as Mitch Murder, Lazerhawk and Jordan F to make 1980s-inspired music with modern fidelity. 

The genre of the music could be called a number of things; electronic, nu disco amongst others, but the most accurate would probably be "modern 80's synthpop."
And here are a couple of my favorites from the artist:

 

 

 His albums can be purchased at: http://miaminights1984.bandcamp.com/

Didn't notice before, but nostalgic imagery seems to be a theme in the music I like. 

More Framerate Stuff

So remember all that science I dropped in that last blog post?  Me neither.  Like me you'll probably be able to make more sense of it if you actually have something to look at.

Luckily, I found this: http://frames-per-second.appspot.com/

You can compare what various framerates will look like at different settings for motion blur and velocity.  Keep in mind, movies traditionally are set for 24fps, YouTube maxes at 30fps regardless of the source file, "The Hobbit" was shot at 48fps, and your monitor probably doesn't go above 60fps.  I personally think this affirms my belief that we're moving in the right direction by upping the video quality of movies, I'm sick of not being able to see anything but blur during action scenes. 

Stuff About Framerates.

Remember Jared's presentation on the Hobbit and how they chose to film it in 48fps vs 24fps?  This is related to that.  Actually, it references that exactly.

Article: http://www.cameratechnica.com/2011/11/21/what-is-the-highest-frame-rate-the-human-eye-can-perceive/

"24fps looks just artsy and unrealistic enough to remind ourselves that we are watching a movie." 
The framerate a person's eye can actually perceive, however, varies based on a number of factors including distance from stimuli, size of stimuli and its luminescence (brightness).  It seems generally the ideal framerate is around 60fps, where the eye's ability to perceive generally drops off.  Luckily that happens to be the display rate standard for most LCD televisions and monitors. 

More Neat Photograpy from Space

From Landsat’s Amazing 40-Year Record of Earth From Space

Volcanic dome known as the Richat structure in Mauritania, taken by Landsat 7 on Jan. 11, 2001. 

California's Death Valley, the lowest and hottest place in the United States, taken by Landsat 7 on June 11, 2000.

The Mergui Archipelago in the Andaman Sea captured by Landsat 5 on Dec. 14, 2004.

 These photos have fantastic color composition and balance, I just find it amazing that these images exist (somewhat) naturally.

Game of Thrones Fan Recreates City as 3D Model

“The biggest challenge was finding a ‘true’ town map,” he says. “The title sequence is only a few seconds, and shows the town whilst it builds up. There is a ground map at A Wiki of Fire & Ice and you can also find various artwork that was done by fans. Interpolating between these different sources and filling in the blank was surely the challenging and fun part.”

The model was crated using a 3D printer and modeled in CAD.

Source:  http://www.wired.com/design/2013/02/3d-printed-mini-winterfell/