April 2009
4 posts
RAFOLIO NOW LIVE
I’m now starting to get ridiculously frustrated with my partial disability and can’t wait to get back into the swing of things. I can’t believe a bit of glass has virtually put my life on hold for the last 2 weeks! Anyway I’ve been trying to put my fit hand to good use by copying and pasting all of my blog entries over from here to my own site - RAfolio.
The site is...
OUT OF ACTION :-[
Well I had a run in with a pint glass last week and came off a fair bit worse. My wrist more specifically - I’ve cut thru a tendon that makes my fingers work. It’ unfortunately my good arm as well, so I can just about type, but otherwise its unlikely there’s going to be much work from me for at least the next month…
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UNI [SITE + MOTION] - FLASH ANIMATION v6 IMAGE 7
This is the 7th image, and one of the “Glimpses of the Spectacular”. The idea here is that the user has managed to discover this glimpse by finding a small gap in the window. Once discovered, the user strains to take in the spectacular view, peering through the thin crack in the filthy glass.
Look with your mouse…
Here is the full sized version
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UNI [SITE + MOTION] - FLASH ANIMATION v6 IMAGE 3
Ok so this is the third image animation which again has taken me a ridiculously long time! I started by duplicating the original image and turning it into a night-time shot in Photoshop. Then I created a button from the top fluorescent light which triggers a fade transition between day and night.
This was all pretty simple stuff and I introduced a flicker into the up state of the button to...
March 2009
33 posts
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UNI [SITE + MOTION] - FLASH ANIMATION v6 IMAGE 4...
I noticed that in the previous version of this animation, the snow was sliding beyond the boundary of the image when viewed at full size. To correct this I added a mask over the whole animation, with the same dimensions as the stage.
Click here to see the full size masked version
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UNI [SITE + MOTION] - ANIMATION WORKFLOW
Ive had GridIron Flow running in the background now for a few weeks, picking up on all the little links that make up my workflow. I checked a couple of these workflows from Flash files created for the Site + Motion module. As you can see the results are pretty complex, its amazing how quickly you can build up a workflow consisting of so many files.
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UNI [SITE + MOTION] - ANIMATION v6 IMAGE 4
This is the 4th image of the main 5 in the animation. The idea was to experiment with the drag state in Flash and I wanted to allow the snow on the roof-lights to be slid up and down with the cursor like blinds. I thought this would be fairly easy, but it seems I was wrong, and it took me all bloody day to discover that unless ActionScript and Algebra are your first and second languages, its...
UNI [SITE + MOTION] - ANIMATION SCHEMATIC
I’ve been planning out what I think will be a more concise and finalized version of my animation. Each image has its own unique animation, but all will be linked with a standardized navigational system. See the Flickr set for more detail and read the image descriptions to see what I’m planning for each image.
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UNI [THESIS PROJECT] ISVSH
Some more attractive and useful video glitching work from ISVSH. This clip is particular relevant as it is somewhat similar in appearance to what I envisage my installation projection to look like towards its latter stages. A collection of images change so quickly that we only get the very slightest impression of what they are, the odd face or figure is apparent but the overall effect is very...
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UNI [THESIS PROJECT] FUBA_RECORDER
I came across the fuba_recorder on Flickr, which claims to be a “robot for generating abstract-images of Japanese TV programs”, requested by its followers. There seems to be some sort of automation process in action which blends together a series of images to create these beautiful montages. The graphical qualities of the pieces are delightful, and I love the use of Japanese script.
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UNI [SITE + MOTION] - DEITCH
Deitch is a gallery with a great home page. The illustration features the original gallery building and depictions of the artists who exhibit there. There are few buttons or triggered animation, but some nice timeline animation, and the music works well with the graphics, emulating retro computer games. I also love the simplicity of the colour scheme.
http://www.deitch.com/
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UNI [SITE + MOTION] - THEY RULE
This flash site allows users to explore the links between the 500 largest US companies through their directors, who often sit on the board of up to 7 of these organizations. The user can easily generate maps which explain these links, and can be dragged and manipulated to suit.
“They Rule allows you to create maps of the interlocking directories of the top companies in the US in...
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UNI [THESIS PROJECT] Camera Decay
We had a nice day trip to Oxford on Friday, and on the train my mate Digital Dave was complaining about his camera playing up. I asked to see it and unbelievably, it was doing this to his photos!
A fault in the camera was resulting in images from the memory being mashed together, so every time a new shot was taken, there were traces of previous images found in it.
Here you can see a chunk of...
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UNI [THESIS PROJECT] Laser Cutter Glitch
I thought it might be interesting to glitch the laser cutter, but realised I’d probably struggle to get permission to mess around with a few grand’s worth of hardware. So I tried glitching this video of the laser cutter instead.
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UNI [THESIS PROJECT] Digital Decay on the...
It’s probably just that I’m noticing more but its getting a little strange how often things are seeming to malfunction, glitch or decay in the digital realm of my life. Spotted this at Paddington station on Friday.
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UNI [THESIS PROJECT] Printer Decay
I’ve had a few funny looks recently as I’ve been collecting this printer spool which finds itself spread around uni. There’s an ancient printer in particular up on the 5th floor, which is rather temperamental. Every so often it will pump out a sheet of this code. I presume its the HEX or ASCII of the image it was supposed to print, but it produces some really nice looking...
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UNI [THESIS PROJECT] Structural Decay installation...
Structural Decay from Chris Coleman on Vimeo.
Another project I’ve just stumbled upon which offers a striking resemblance to my ideas for an installation. Chris Coleman is an Assistant Professor in Digital Media Studies at the University of Denver and has some fantastic work, a lot of which explores very similar areas to those I’m interested in for this thesis project. On this...
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UNI [THESIS PROJECT] BRITISH MODE by GOOSE
I came across this great video by Belgian Electro-rock band Goose which utilizes some of the ‘Streak Photography’ techniques I mentioned previously, as well as one of those annoyingly confusing spinning optical illusions. Pretty good song too.
GOOSE “British Mode” from Tokib on Vimeo.
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UNI [THESIS PROJECT] Toshio Iwai
Another Time, Another Space (1993, 1999) is an interactive digital artwork by Japanese media artist Toshio Iwai which uses slit-scanning techniques to beautifully warp and distort the fabric of space-time, displaying the results of a series of large screens.
from The Leonardo Gallery: “Another Time, Another Space (1993, 1999) consists of four video cameras capturing live video images...
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UNI [THESIS PROJECT] Slit-Scanning with Processing
Looking into how I can ‘digitally decay’ video, I came across some Processing scripts which produce this ‘slit-scanning’ effect.
The scripts work on both a real-time feed from a webcam and on a pre-recorded Quicktime movie. Below are some stills from my webcam, going to look into running this script on a movie file tho…
[click for the full Flickr set]
There...
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UNI [SITE + MOTION] - FLASH ANIMATION v5
I made some adjustments to the sky animation in the second image. I’ve also altered the button animations on the window panes to create a much more subtle gathering of storm clouds. The idea of ‘Glimpses of the Spectacular’ is very important in my idea, and I would like these glimpses of the more interesting images to be triggered by subtle interaction with the main 5...
UNI [SITE + MOTION] - FLASH ANIMATION v4 + FTP...
A quick test to preview this amended sky animation results are more subtle and meant to give just a hint at something happening beyond the glass. Or is it behind the viewer, reflected in the glass?
Also testing to see if my FTP system is working properly. Might need a pre-loader on this…
UNI [SITE + MOTION] - FLASH ANIMATION v4 TESTING
[move your cursor in the white space above]
I’ve been giving some further consideration to how a user will interact with the buttons in my Flash animation. Previously I had the window panes simply fade to black on mouse roll-over but feel something more subtle and atmospheric is probably more in keeping with my project. Here Ive been experimenting with some cursor tracking scripts in...
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UNI [THESIS PROJECT] SUPER MARIO GLITCH VIDEO →
Make sure you watch the video at the very bottom.
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UNI [THESIS PROJECT] ANDREW OHLMANN
Check out the work of Andrew Ohlmann, who does some great hacking/glitching of videos and games, amongst other things. This post of his on Space Collective really inspired me and tempted me into the world of digital decay early on in this project.
Ohlmann has experimented with editing the code of Super Mario Bros in much the same way as I have been experimenting with images.
“The resulting...
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UNI [THESIS PROJECT] DIGTAL DECAY ON...
My tutor Filip Visnjic asked me to write a guest post on Digital Decay for one of his sites CreativeApplications.Net. Read the full post here.
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UNI [APPLIED ANIMATION] MOTION CAPTURE DEVICE
This project is to build a physical device with which to interface with Maya in order to create an animation. We are using infra red proximity sensors which give an analogue output reading between the values of 4cm and 30cm.
A short video demonstrating the sensor values being successfuly read in Maya. A simple curve is defined by 3 cluster points, and the X-translation of each cluster point is...
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BRICK ICICLES
Quite possibly one of the coolest things Ive ever seen in my live, this abandoned Russian fortress was used by the Soviet army for testing alternatives to Napalm. The unbelievable temperatures actually MELTED the bricks. From the amazing English Russia.
Although this would be the perfect place to make my digital decay installation, for some reason I can’t see the Russian government...
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UNI [SITE + MOTION] - FLASH ANIMATION v3
html upload test, work in progress…
(this is a SWF so please interact and let me know what you think)
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UNI [SITE + MOTION] - PHOTO, SURFACE, INTERFACE...
After last week’s review, it’s clear I’ve got a lot more thinking to do on this Flash animation. Re-reading the brief, I remind myself of the 4 key factors to consider:
Navigation (a cognitive approach, association and reoccurring objects)
Type of animation (controlled, interactive, triggered)
Life spans (of individual objects as well as the animation as a whole)
Hierarchy...
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UNI [THESIS PROJECT] Benjamin Gaulon aka... →
Corrupt™ - data corruption software
Corrupt™ was first built with Proce55ing. The corruption process start by reading the binary of an image file [JPG or GIF], then some bytes are swaps [the number of replacement is a random value from 1 to 20]. The file is then “saved as” a new document. Depending on the number replacement and of the original compression, the image will have a...
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UNI [THESIS PROJECT] °°the fleetingness of... →
A nice little website by Melaine Wein in 2000 as part of her thesis project which questions the enormous quantities of digital information we store, and randomly lose each year, and weather the storage formats we are using to transfer our culture onto future generations are indeed adequate for doing so.
“Within the context of a webpage which naturally is also made up of bits and bytes a poetic...
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Le Corbusier @ The Barbican →
If you haven’t been yet, make sure you go! I for one didn’t realize just how much of an artist he was. I think I’m really starting to ‘get him’ now. Even today his proposals on a new way of living, and the home being the ‘machine’ which lets us do so are relevant and make a lot of sense.
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WatchUNI [SITE + MOTION] - FLASH ANIMATION
A first attempt at animating my images with Flash. This was an excercise in getting to grips with the software as much as anything, but the piece trys to convey the almost oppressive atmosphere that the studio rooflights enforce upon people, as well as the sensation of isolation from the outside world and its weather.
Results are (supposed to be) subtle, so...
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UNI [THESIS PROJECT] SONY ERICSSON MESSED-UP SUPER...
Well I’d love to say that I’d managed to do this intentionally, my Thesis being all about Digital Decay and what have you, but the truth is that I didn’t. I simply pulled my phone out of my pocket to find that it had went berserk…. Anyway, since I LOVE digital decay, I wasnt even bothered about the prospect of my phone being knackered, so borrowed The Cat’s (not so...
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UNI [THESIS PROJECT] AUTOMATED IMAGE GLITCHING
After struggling initially to find a way of automating the process of glitching images, I found a couple of web-based methods which proved useful. The first is an add-on script for Firefox browser called GlitchMonkey. When activated, this script randomly scrambles the images of a web page. I experimented with some popular sites…
The second system is called Glitch Browser. This is a...
February 2009
8 posts
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UNI [THESIS PROJECT] INSTALLATION IDEA
An abandoned, dilapidated warehouse with a camera and projector inside. The projector plays what the camera records in a live loop, and people are encouraged to visit the installation. On the first day, visitors simply see themselves in real time in this warehouse, but on the second day, visitors catch glipses, memories of the happenings of the first day as they watch themselves. On the third...
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WatchAnother video here, this one is Kanye West’s ‘Welcome to Heartbreak’. Its obviously a hard life being as wealthy as Kanye.
Sounds better when your speakers are turned off…
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Evident Utensil by Chairlift →
This ‘Data Moshing’ and ‘Glitching’ stuff is becoming more and more common by the day, this is a new video for the band Chairlift by Ray Tintori. Very effective, and a good song too…
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UNI [THESIS PROJECT] IMAGE GLITCHING
Attempts to introduce a form of ‘digital decay’ into a series of images by directly, destructively manipulating the ASCII/HEX code in TextEdit and HexEdit. Got some lovely effects. Of course I saved a copy of them all first….
Click to see the full Flickr set
Initial effects achieved by editing a JPEG in a simple text editor. Results are initially subtle but the horizontal...
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UNI [THESIS PROJECT] LONDON DECAY
I took a little trip around the east end to document some of the decaying, dilapidated buildings. The back streets off Brick Lane were particularly fruitful, especially Princelet Street, a terrace of Georgian properties, of which Number 4 is still in its 18th Century condition and available to hire as a location for photography, filming and private functions.
Click to see the full Flickr set
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UNI [THESIS PROJECT] DIGITAL DECAY
I’ve decided to look into the concept of ‘Digital Decay’ as my thesis project. We are all aware of physical decay as it effects every aspect of of lives - our cars break down, our shoes get holes, the paint on our walls flakes. But living in the post-digital revolution as we now are, we must consider decay in the digital sense. What will eventually happen to all this data we...
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UNI [Site + Motion] Photographic Project
So this was a short project with the excellent Mr. Dirk Lellau which looked at space through the medium of weather, and was restricted to our Uni campus on Marylebone Road.
I focused on the materiality of the windows and was interested in their control over the atmosphere of a volume, rather than what is beyond them. Of particular interest was the contrast in my experiences of the weather.
In my...