This project was completed January-May 2008 in Montreal.

NOTE (10/2008) concerning downloads: some of the downloads will not render video correctly unless played in browser. Solution: open up the .fla source file included in download and publish a Windows Projector (.exe) or a Macintosh Projector. These files should work fine.

Feel free to contact me at jhave AT glia.ca

Thanks for visiting. Enjoy.

I no longer have any idea what any of this writing is really about anymore. It’s like raising an adolescent: I just let it run and occasionally try to tame or constrain its weirder impulses. Incomprehensible as it may seem, some subtle structure is emerging, maybe not actualized. But…when the spring runoff creates arbitrary streams all over the city, and the small hill (that we call a mountain here in Montreal) sheds its snows, then beneath the anarchic rivulets, crouched amongst the anemic flattened grass, bubbles cling to stalks, holding to the ephemeral life given to them.

And in this is echo, a lesion.

membrane gui. moist net. moisture nest.

click on image to VIEW thaw (Running time: approx. 2 minutes)

Navigation note: None. Click-anywhere to goto next phrase. As always, for full viewing pleasure: use right-mouse (or CTRL+right-mouse on Mac) button to go ‘FULL screen’ .

Dissect it (nothing new here except the video and sounds): SOURCE CODE + videos + sound ( heavy alert: 72 mb .) or just the Flash MX SOURCE CODE

~~~

Soundtrack: constructed from sounds found cycling slowly up the back alleys of Outremont (on the way back from Mont Royal) where the apartments congeal and children play soccer. And again some keyboard wrangling.

~~~

Dedication: To transitions.

I made this last week, but have let it sit. Gestating. It’s fairly melancholy so if you are looking for a party, best to move on.

Hard language, gentle sounds, effulgent light. A lament on the political state of the world. Filmed on a windowsill.

It begins with a shit of blandness. Propaganda and mental debris blowing everywhere. Then the hierarchies sprout.

click on image to VIEW shelfStorm (Running time: approx. 2 minutes)

Navigation note: None. Click-anywhere to goto next phrase. As always, for full viewing pleasure: use right-mouse (or CTRL+right-mouse on Mac) button to go ‘FULL screen’ .

Dissect it (nothing new here): SOURCE CODE + videos + sound (44 mb .) or just the Flash MX SOURCE CODE ( Cruft commentary: Nothing has changed. Old code accumulates like dust.)

~~~

Soundtrack: Once again thanks again to Jericho and Pasc for letting me use their keyboard.

~~~

Dedication: For Francis Foster whose windowsill contains such radiant worlds.

The days have passed swiftly. The sketches migrate out of the bathroom. More meditative, maybe boring; whatever, it’s spring-time. The writing is always done in an array form now. And its leading toward a truncation of meaning, a condensation of intent; morpheme bubble clusters isolated almost alienated, communicating yet intent on their private purpose.

(no)des. corrugated cerebral insidious clots. instantiated instincts.

click on image to VIEW today (Running time: approx. 2 minutes)

Navigation note: None. Click-anywhere to goto next phrase. As always, for full viewing pleasure: use right-mouse (or CTRL+right-mouse on Mac) button to go ‘FULL screen’ .

Dissect it (nothing new here): SOURCE CODE + videos + sound (40 mb .) or just the Flash MX SOURCE CODE ( Cruft commentary: Nothing has changed. Old code accumulates like dust.)

~~~

Soundtrack water from a walk in the cemetery. Thanks again to Jericho and Pasc for again letting me use their keyboard.

~~~

Location: The set was an aquarium at TML. The bubbles are under the water surface.

A homage to nostalgia and mortality, this brief wistful study has been hovering in my archives since last week.

in this world of melting dreams>gentle tongues make harvest>hands console hearts

click on image to VIEW memoryCandle (Running time: approx. 2 minutes)

Navigation note: None. Click-anywhere to goto next phrase. As always, for full viewing pleasure: use right-mouse (or CTRL+right-mouse on Mac) button to go ‘FULL screen’ .

Dissect it (nothing much new here): SOURCE CODE + videos + sound (14.2 mb .) or just the Flash MX SOURCE CODE ( Cruft commentary: Nothing has changed. Old code accumulates like dust.)

~~~

Soundtrack thanks to Jericho and Pasc for letting me use their keyboard.

~~~

Dedication: This one is for Uncle Ken, a good man, who died last week.

A couple weeks I shaved, or to be more precise, I trimmed. Using my somewhat glitchy electric trimmer which occasionally yanks my whiskers, I leaned over a laundry sink full of water, bleary eyed and indulgent, surrounded by a trio of photo lights, filming with one hand underwater as the flecked rejects from my body slapped onto the glistening viscid water surface. Eventually, I dropped a toilet roll in and hacked away at it with scissors. All this done with the somewhat nebulous aim of rejuvenating the synthesis of poetry and image.

Things are things.Discontinuous continuities pervade.

click on image to VIEW soulToilet (Running time: approx. 2-3 minutes)

Navigation note: The text will follow mouse exactly yet never leave frame. When mouse is over video its hidden. Click-anywhere to goto next phrase. Dead simple. As always, for full viewing pleasure: use right-mouse (or CTRL+right-mouse on Mac) button to go ‘FULL screen’ .

Dissect it (nothing much new here): SOURCE CODE + videos + sound (24.9 mb .) or just the Flash MX SOURCE CODE ( Coft commentary: Psychologically each of us learns to live with our selves: evolution’s residue, so too this grows cozy perched on a heap of obsolescence.)

~~~

Soundtrack is the result of a synesthetic episode with Ableton’s Operator where I actually got very concerned with how the note clusters looked. It’s a doodle rendered into sound.

~~~

My original assessment of this piece was negative: “Clouds and bruises is once again a tangent, a weak echo, a repetition, a variation. Skip it unless you are a fanatic for completeness.” But times change. I’ve been reading about Robber Irwin who found that “I’d raise that line by the thickness of a sheet of paper, and from across the room this seven foot by seven foot field was no longer the same.” (p.72). My process is still remarkably more slack than that. But I did implement a few changes (most of the changes were recommended by Sophie whose bruises from the rat-poison injections are developing nicely on her stomach); replaced the original music; and implemented an auto-play switch between single-double and kaleidoscope mode that is triggered on a timer. And I kinda like its rhythm now.

By making time opaque and quantified, casual parallel chaotic rhizomes of experience fertilize infertility.

from one moment to the next>everything seems fine>(w)hole complete

click on image to VIEW cloudsAndBruises (Running time: approx. 2-3 minutes)

Navigation note:As always, for full viewing pleasure: use right-mouse (or CTRL+right-mouse on Mac) button to go ‘FULL screen’. The ‘AutoPlay Text” (its on when page loads) feature can be turned on and off: when it’s on, the text changes by itself .

Dissect it (i haven’t uploaded the newest version yet but…): SOURCE CODE + videos + sound (23.3 mb .) or just the Flash MX SOURCE CODE ( Code note: Nothing new here. Just a hand-tweaked double mask over the code-flipped bitmaped video.)

~~~

Soundtrack is conversations recorded over last couple days converted and transposed through an assiduous accretion of fxs.

~~~

Merci to the rat-poison queen pour les bleues.

~~~

Well I have finally followed the counsel of two of my wisest guides: one, an acrobat of the intellect; the other, an athlete of intuition. Both told me to slow it down. Thank you Chris and Sophie. I changed the twitch ration of the text change from 5000 to 7000 milliseconds: the text changes slower now. A slider is probly on its way. Parameter easing. Watched both versions first: found the quicker change just at the limit of the human cognitive range: ocular saccades from video to text almost tiring, like being forced to fast trot over sand-dunes. The 7 second reading gap for approx. 3-12 syllables, the goldilock’s appropriate data flow for this particular poem.

Trances emerge at this rate for me.

The triplet codon no.gap.here. form that persists thru the poem is a flexible quasi-constraint, An itch of a game of a toy. Inspired by seeing Nick Montfort and Nt2 read REAM/RAME at the launch of bleuOrange while I was partially asleep.

The video is from a rivulet in a ditch at the botanical gardens of Rio. The arm’s are yours. This is a normative future book model. Contemplative.between.algorithmic.

click on image to VIEW dustFlow (Running time: approx. 4 minutes)

Navigation note:As always, for full viewing pleasure: use right-mouse (or CTRL+right-mouse on Mac) button to go ‘FULL screen’. The ‘AutoPlay Text” (its on when page loads) feature can be turned on and off: when it’s on, the text changes by itself . Something always changes when you click. Next step will be to integrate a sagging mesh of behavior invisible behind the interface. Have the page respond when it is poked. Pattern read tempo and proximity of user. Think about it, easy. Do it, difficult.

Dissect it : SOURCE CODE + videos + sound (wee bit large: 90.3 mb it’s uploading as i write this…) or just the Flash MX SOURCE CODE ( Code note: Nothing new here. Just a hand-tweaked double mask over the code-flipped bitmaped video.)

~~~

Soundtrack is over-filterd guitar harmonics 3-trak sweltering genr-shifting voyage from abstract electro-funk, scrawny doodles, melting utopias and other warped virtualities with a heavy dose of art-rock history. Nothing amazing here: i am still learning, often out of control. And its in those out-of-control moments that the technology occasionally teases the audio into an organic living entity, perspiring and griefing and purring all by itself. This happens around minute 5 of 300 seconds into the trak. Worth waiting for. Must install some usability features. To do audio:scrubbing.

~~~

Merci to the rat-poison queen pour son bras.

~~~

My girlfriend is on crutches. We spent the day at the hospital. While she was undergoing tests, I was perched in a plastic chair with my laptop. It is from such contingent circumstances that artistic advances sometimes emerge. Opportunities constructed from suffering hop out of hiding.

This piece continues to explore the emotional impact of a still-image color-transform.. That is to say, by shifting the saturation and hue of circumstantial perception, cognition arrives at diverse interpretations of the same data.

Be aware, synthetic crumbs float beneath the surface of every ability. Beauty lingers beneath every skin.

click on image to VIEW crutch (Running time: approx. 4 minutes)

Navigation note: As usual there is nothing interactive here. Yet activity is sacrosanct; even in the paralyzed coma there is a great careening of metabolic processes. Thus, enjoy this respite from apparent activity to concentrate upon the teeming hordes of thoughts which accompany all perception. And as always, for full viewing pleasure: use right-mouse (or CTRL+right-mouse on Mac) button to go ‘FULL screen‘

Dissect it : SOURCE CODE + videos + sound (15.72 mb) or just the Flash 9 SOURCE CODE ( Code note: Clean as hospitals are, they are still massive conduits for viruses and extraneous biological activity. There is no danger of cleanliness in this code, thus by a feint of false logic, I can claim it is quite safe; there is absolutely no chance of catching a cold from downloading this code. )

~~~

Soundtrack is two more tracks (breath wren rosenator and new ooze) from my wonky (but lovely) ambient Music for Bathtubs which oscillate over each in loops. The music designed to act as modular units overlaps serially in shifting waves.

~~~

Merci à Sophie encore, for her grace under stress and willingness to let her affliction take this peculiar form.

~~~

This piece attempts to reconstruct volumetric transitions from rational to passionate states of being using hue and saturation controlled by code. That is to say, I look inside myself and see incessant change. This is truly just a sketch. I intend to reshoot the background image as a series, monochrome, from head height. Two figures: a male and female alone/together, always immobile, as if dead on a trolley in a freight elevator.

The elevator is just in front of our door. Within 50m of the bathroom, so it is (by slick perhaps trick logic) a permissible shooting location. I have begun to understand elevators and stairs as pipes and conduits in the plumbing of the city. Thus the entire city is a bathroom and fits within the rules of this art constraint game.

Here’s a synopsis of what I was thinking when I made it: The damage or death of what is closest to us is what terrifies many people. Everyone wants to feel safe. It’ a shock to see what is us, beloved family or lover, delivered as an object, inert and dead. War does this. Domestic violence, accidents, and illness. Life itself, relentless and assiduous, pursues us all to the grave. I’ve been reading Susan Sontag’s ‘Regarding the Pain of Others’, a remarkable litany and analysis of our complex relation to images of pain: “Who believes today that war can be abolished? No one, not even pacifists. We hope only (so far in vain) to stop genocide and to bring to justice those who commit gross violations of the laws of war (for there are laws of war, to which combatants should be held), and to be able to stop specific wars by imposing negotiated alternatives to armed conflict.”

click on image to VIEW inkTake

Navigation note: In an era of seemingly-infinite techno-choices and gui-empowerment, death is still omnipotent, thus I opt for the interface with no buttons, no change, no effect that the viewer can have. Impotence echo interface… But as always, one civil liberty remains: use right-mouse (or CTRL+right-mouse on Mac) button to go ‘FULL screen’.

Dissect it : SOURCE CODE + videos + sound (19 mb) or just the Flash 9 SOURCE CODE ( Code note: There is more cruft in this code than there is bureaucracy in juntas. The cruft hovers over the same old functions, many obsolete, commented, abandoned, decompiled. This file is basically a simple video mask, and a very simple colorTransform on the background that uses Tweener. There is also the life function: abandoned, unused, still called. Visit all the monuments. Cluck dissipation. )

~~~

Soundtrack is two tracks from my wonky (but lovely) ambient Music for Bathtubs which oscillate over each in loops. The music is designed to act as modular units capable of overlapping or knitting together to form musical community.

Merci à Hélène Bruderlein (pour l’incre idée) et Sophie (for her patience).

~~~

The Rio de Janeiro tangent that took me away from my bathroom last week continues to bear strange tangential fruit. Here’s a micro-ode to protectionism at its most personal level; a simple poem about the reflexes of basic security invoked by a social system of enormous disparity that encloses, defines, constrains, and ultimately delineates the experience of any organisms embedded within it.

after entering my password twice, logging on,
and transferring thru secure https some
funds, I lock the computer down, and
set the motion alarm which trills 3 times

click on image to VIEW hardLeisure

Navigation note: I went to Rio for FILE thanks to a travel grant from CALQ. This poem is one result.

Dissect it : SOURCE CODE + videos + sound (23.4 mb) or just the Flash 9 SOURCE CODE ( Code note: Exactly same code as Rio Encounter. )

~~~

Soundtrack is guitar harmonics: filtered thru resonators and ping-pong delay, the source code for the Ableton file is included in the downloads.

~~~

A tangent took me away from my bathroom last week.

Beyond the curved horn of the long beach cove,

an approaching storm had curled high above the sea,

coiling back upon itself where its force met a mountainous green shore

and the city clustered at its feet.

click on image to VIEW rioEncounter

Navigation note: I went to Rio for FILE thanks to a travel grant from CALQ. This prose piece is the result.

Dissect it : SOURCE CODE + videos + sound (14 mgb) or just the Flash 9 SOURCE CODE ( Code note: Not much here, just loading video and moving from frame to frame.)

~~~

Soundtrack is the manipulated acousmatic of a recuperative bath I took upon returning to Canada.

~~~

Incessant. Regurgitated desire. Copyright packaging .
Luminous debris. Mercilessly scurrying.
Fertile oblivion. Succulence.

Bastion .:. Fertile Oblivion .:. 24 videos of an arcane hidden universe. Phrases looped on an interval that is out of synch with video loading. Serialist universe…. Running time: approx: 20 seconds to 4 minutes dependent of course on yr capacity for wonder, yr empathy with grime, and yr spare time.

click on image to VIEW Bastion

Navigation note: There is no interactivity. My advice: Take time off as a viewer from that problematic arduous stance of interactivity. Recede into passivity; initiate an active reverie. As always, use right-mouse button to go ‘FULL screen’.

Dissect it : SOURCE CODE + videos + sound (55 mgb) or just the Flash 9 SOURCE CODE ( Code note: Not much has changed. Crufty and soft. Lots of loose ends. Utterly extraneous but functional.)

~~~

And as usual the soundtrack was recorded live during the filming and then distorted through Ableton’s Resonator fxs…which is a bit like being a part of Monolake (Robert Henke)’s brain: these patches generate beauty from nothingness. I send a node of utter reverence and grace to him.

~~~

This is a one-off variant on the same model as (the superior) Pulpy sketch (Note: If you don’t have time to waste, don’t bother watching this one, I just put it up here because I am documenting experimentation. Watch Pulpy instead).

I have no idea why its named Prushour (an amlagamation of Pressure and Rush-Hour) but maybe its due to the soundtrak which is a bit agitated and frenzied; maybe its dues to cascading chain of deadlines and demands that psuedo-civilized life entails. The words are as usual coming from an array of strings (written in a quick non-linear glaze) that are fired to change as the video changes. If you get impatient simply clik anywhere and the phrase will change, and when buffering succeeds video will cross-fade.

Prushour … (17 brief videos of bubbles adhering to hair. 16 phrases… Running time: approx: 2-5 minutes depending on yr impatience level.)

click on image to VIEW DEMO

Navigation note: Limited interactivity. New verse/lines are triggered by mouse cliks anywhere, but are also triggered as the video finishes loading into buffer. Not an optimum solution (since phrases recently changed by mouse cliking may be swapped out), so the next design twitch will include a gate to verify if the phrase has been stable for long enough to ensure readability. Trying not to piss off the tiny readership! As always, use right-mouse button to go ‘FULL screen’.

Dissect it : SOURCE CODE + videos + sound (63 mgb) or just the Flash 9 SOURCE CODE ( Code note: The cruft alert is same as always somewhere between severe and moderate.)

~~~

And as usual the soundtrack was cooked up through Ableton’s Operator. Drawing the beat variations into the midi panel live is quite fun, and digital quantization compensates for my flaws as a drummer; while knob twiddling the oscillators and moving the ping-pong delay feedback within a delicate little terrain allows the rhythm to encompass polyrhythmic structures while migrating from string to solid percussive instrument.

~~~

When things are just too beautiful, it’s appropriate to make sure they get just a little scuffed. Consider it an egalitarian instinct. This is residual footage from last week that I had no idea what to do with. It resembles the body. It was made by making large deep slices laterally in my thigh and inserting a fibroptic camera directly into an artery. Filming stopped when blood-loss led to lack of consciousness.

Flesh … (8 brief videos of flesh like interiorities. One knob-tech soundtrack. Running time: approx: 8 minutes.)

Lick on image to VIEW DEMO

Navigation note: It has no interactivity. New title is shuffled into place every second. As always, use right-mouse button to go ‘FULL screen’.

Dissect it : SOURCE CODE + videos + sound (67mgb) or just the Flash 9 SOURCE CODE ( Code note: The cruft alert is mild today. I amputated one morsel of vestigal code.)

~~~

The soundtrack was cooked up through Ableton’s Operator while I was doing the tutorials, before I had bought the software, so save functionality was not enabled, and it was recorded from headphones onto my recorder. That explains the mild white hiss and the totally crass punk way it ends with a button click. The antithesis of smooth.

~~~

Well, the other evening I just got an impulse to fill the big sink with transparent jello, a box of agar-agar, and a few packets of gelatin. Stirred it up and let it sit for a few hours until its surface responded to caresses with tiny palpitations. When asked (by Sophie) what I was going to film, I responded irritably and honestly: “No idea.”

The artistic process for me is similar to being led blind by an inexorable and impulsive guide through a vast darkness. The guide occasionally gives me matches to illuminate my localized region, but often disappears, leaving me in absolute darkness. During the guide’s absence, I stand there mute and impotent, helpless to move, paralyzed by my lack of perception. Eventually, the guide in the guise of inspiration reappears inside my body and suggests something. The suggestions often seem vaguely ludicrous (Example: “Fill thy sink with jello and wait“), are offered with no rationalization, insufficiently contextualized, can appear sorta insane and have no theoretical foundation. Yet, the suggestions all occur with a very recognizable autonomic effect: my skin tingles mildly, the idea has a strange resonant signature that is both calm and clear. I guess that similar things must happen to mystics or schizophrenics.

And thus Pulpy was born … (18 brief videos of disintegrating doodles done on scrap paper misprints… Running time: approx: 11 minutes.)

click on image to VIEW DEMO

Navigation note: It has no interactivity. New verse/lines are triggered as the video finishes loading into buffer. As always, use right-mouse button to go ‘FULL screen’.

Dissect it : SOURCE CODE + videos + sound (94mgb) or just the Flash 9 SOURCE CODE ( Code note: The cruft alert continues to be quite strong. I noted today that even my php code (for listing the video file names) throws an off-by-one warning error. It works but it squawks and I don’t feel like fixing it; in fact it inspires affection. I am in love with things that work but throw warnings. Thats the sort of code that corresponds for me to a real vivid true picture of our contingent and flawed world, thats the sort of code that approximates the human condition.)

~~~

The soundtrack was cooked up through Ableton’s Operator. I bought the educational suite of tools and have been addicted to it for the last few days. Twiddling virtual knobs to arrive at gleaming glitch.  call the soundtrack SInewy.

~~~

Insomnia. Hell on earth. Cognitive confinement. Hours of obsessive inane atrocities. What better subject for a sketch!

click on image to VIEW DEMO

Navigation note: It auto-plays at a pace conducive to induce a mild uncomfortable trance. But if reviewing or bored, to trigger new phrases simply click anywhere. As always, use right-mouse button to go ‘FULL screen’.

Dissect it : SOURCE CODE + videos + sound or SOURCE CODE ( Code note: The cruft alert is again extreme. In accessing myself I realize I am an incompetent anachronism: I prefer functional programming and in fact despise classes and strict typing. Strict compiling makes it impossible to refer to imaginary objects (that might have been deleted or simply not even created yet). In my world, I just like to see stuff work, I don’t have any extreme efficiency ambitions. Evolution shows a similar indifference to efficiency: cruft is everywhere in codons. Politically strict-typing corresponds to boundary regulations: fierce, formal, effective yet ultimately ruthless and inflexible. It slows the flow of my feeble creation, so I find myself stitching together badly formatted fragments (tike transposon codons adrift in a nucleic soup or like a lukewarm derivative of Bauhaus dictums: function to make form.)

*************

The cube is a artifact of the tile grout matching; each wall is a floor. The sustained effect is mildly hallucinatory confinement.

*************

In addition to thanking insomnia. Again I offer thanks and homage to my muse and critic sophie who shared her thoughts on the preliminary design and shared her time and body in the making of this film in the bathroom on the same floor as the loft where we live: their beige tiles saturated in alienated banality provided the perfect complement to my mood.

*************

The music is an Ableton Live (LE) mutilated version of Dvorak’s Cello Concerto. Ableton’s use of FM synthesis took me back to look at John Downing Read the rest of this entry »

You look deep into Things even as they itch, burn and bleed their way into You.
Then Things are inside You, looking out, open to comprehend why Is is.
But Things have lost their knowledge of Things, and now Is is lost.
And until Is is aware of itself all Things seem strange.

click on image to VIEW DEMO

Navigation note: As always, use right-mouse button to go ‘FULL screen’.

Dissect it : SOURCE CODE + videos + sound or SOURCE CODE ( Code note: The cruft alert is moderate with hints of absolute bullshit.)

*************

The text interactivity and style is stolen from myself who stole it from others: Raygun and YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES(YHCHI) among others, and any major corporate, political or philosophical school that has wanted to brand themselves .

Basic billboard pronouncement design style: bottom of the image, all caps. The only difference between this and print or the page is that it can change. The words are drawn from a list, the list’s been split into an array of words. The array is randomized by touch, words change; and it stops changing when you click the words or move away. I cut and paste the code from my earlier philosophy class essay.

I’ve never seen a Gary Hill installation. Except for a 30 second clip of “Incidence of Catastrophe” online. But I am reading Gary Hill: Language Willing a book prepared in conjunction with an exhibit that toured Idaho, Arizona, Washington and Utah in 2003-5 .

Hill makes “experiential video”(p49) installations incorporating language. The compositions are formal, precise and visceral, performative and somehow clinically analytic. (Or at least this is what I glean from readings and the tiny clip)

The rental fees for screening are normative (i guess) for an arts archive, but a little bit more than i’d be prepared to pay as a solo citizen. The image below comes from the menu pricelist at Electronic Arts Intermix

So for the plebes (like myself) uninfected by a glimpse of Hill’s work, I offer this week’s sketch, another rough attempt to physicalize the letters: scratch mix wet paper print. I will reshoot this stuff and somehow incorporate it into the final mashup but the sketch offers a rough sense of its potential.

click on image to VIEW DEMO

Navigation note: As always, use right-mouse button to go ‘FULL screen’. I disabled the kaleidoscope option cause its kitschy but will have a central archive of all videos online soon with that capacity.

Dissect it : SOURCE CODE + videos + sound or SOURCE CODE ( Code note: The cruft alert is still but its threat is approaching marginal.)

*************

Hill, Gary, and Boise Art Museum. 2002. Gary Hill: Language Willing. Barrytown, NY: further/art in association with Boise ArtMuseum.

So I managed to convince a few friends and a neighbor to stick their mouths in the sink and make bubbles. Built a soundtrack from their huffing breath beating against the water. Converted the single mouth video into a massive mouth doubled. And made it into internet drool.

Technically: the video is slowed to half-speed for purely aesthetic reasons; exported at a 30fps compression, its played at 15fps in order to allow the eye to recognize the volatile bubble field. (Thanks again to Sophie for suggesting this design change).

Mouths emerged from perforations in mind. Eating seeing touching and being, all-in-one. I am what you’ve eaten. You are what I’ve eaten. All eaters will be eaten. The voracious universe innoculates us against caring. Our turn will come: to be fed, to be food. We drown in tiny nourishments. Drenched in words and food. Wombs in each mouth. Knowledge in every morsel. Tongues making time. Appetites creating space.

I will probably expand on this experiment in the coming weeks: add a voiceover, compose a real soundtrack, film more mouths, and focalize the rhythm. In other words, it is a seed.

click on image to VIEW DEMO

Navigation note: As always, use right-mouse button to go ‘FULL screen’. I disabled the kaleidoscope option cause its kitschy but will have a central archive of all videos online soon with that capacity.

Dissect it : SOURCE CODE + videos + sound or SOURCE CODE ( Note: Today’s code is even less crufty than previous version’s (so bloated with vestigial fragments): it approaches the mild leanness of a non-chaotic mind.)

Now there’s nothing astounding about today’s test, just a memory to keep in case I ever get drafted into a day job doing transitions on a kid’s show.

Remember: bouncy glow!

Tools: an orange, a chopstick, a bathtub, and a few letters designed to be cufflinks.

click on image to VIEW DEMO

Navigation note: As always, use right-mouse button: context menu to access capacity to display video as ‘SINGLE’, ‘DOUBLE’, or ‘KALEIDOSCOPE’. And it can be used in conjunction with ‘HIDE text’ and ‘FULL screen’. (The active option is disabled. So that if the video is single and text is visible those categories are in grey)

Dissect it : SOURCE CODE + videos ( The code today is again slightly less crufty. But still far below corporate standards of gleaming standardization.)

Every artist should live in proximity to both a garbage heap and a dollar store. Two indispensable resources for the advancement of culture and the evolution of the soul.

I apologize for the crudity of this week’s content. It is not meant to offend.

I just needed a simple phrase with small words in order to do (what I anticipated to be) a mildly labour-intensive test. That constraint led me toward ‘god’ and ‘shit’ and from there the poem grew.

Sometimes its the simple design suggestions that make the most sense and initiate the most change. Last week Chris made the simple yet insightful observation that the computer letters did not blend into the video, so he suggested “physicalize the letters”. This is the first test.

click on image to VIEW DEMO

Navigation note: Right-mouse button: context menu to access capacity to display video as ‘SINGLE’, ‘DOUBLE’, or ‘KALEIDOSCOPE’. And it can be used in conjunction with ‘HIDE text’ and ‘FULL screen’. (The active option is disabled. So that if the video is single and text is visible those categories are in grey)

Dissect it : SOURCE CODE + videos ( The code today is slightly less crufty. I amputated a chunk of vestigial bits. How easily junk accumulates.)

Well its been a long time since I had a bath with dolls. But finding a few filthy antique kid’s toys in a garbage heap inspired me. There are no limits to the fun indignities that the artistic impulse might yield.

click on image to VIEW DEMO

New feature: capacity to display video as ‘SINGLE’, ‘DOUBLE’, or ‘KALEIDOSCOPE’. Right-mouse button: context menu to access this capacity. And it can be used in conjunction with ‘HIDE text’. The active option is disabled. So that if the video is single and text is visible those categories are in grey (as in example screen shot below).

Dissect it : SOURCE CODE or SOURCE CODE + videos ( Warning yet again — as always this is severely crufty code, full of vestigial bits, extraneous functions and other bizarre futile bits of confusing uncommented crap. I offer it as is)

Yet another kaleidoscope video thing. Still experimenting with absence of text formatting. Trying to work without fancy tricks, tween, blurs, morphs, synchs, 3d rolls, etc… Just the text and the video (or just the video…) : descend slowly reverently toward the languid pace of poetry past, mildly ponderous, somewhat quiet and vulnerable.

Doesn’t quite work yet. Too simple, no pacing, no surprise. Next step: physicalize the letters (* suggested by Chris Salter ) somehow.

click on image to VIEW DEMO

New feature: capacity to hide/show text. Right-mouse button: context menu ‘HIDE text’

Dissect it : SOURCE CODE withOUT videos or SOURCE CODE + videos(warning — as always this is severely crufty code, if i had any pride as a programmer i wld hide it; but it might help someone somewhere do something sometime. so i offer it as is)

Last week, I filled up an ice cube tray with ice cream, lemon-grass, curry paste, skin lotion, pennies, mayonaisse, dijon mustard, lettuce, and 2 different kinds of exotic jelly. After everything had frozen I had a bath with the cubes. I filmed the dissolution of those temporary universes under the warm bath water. (The results are visible in the first video kaleidoscope post)

Before my bath I took a photo of the ice cube tray filled with diverse and sundry bits of frozen fridge crud. Tonite I converted that documentation image into interface. A metaphor for the soul that transmigrates into contemplation of neurotic repression. Three phrases are attached to each cube. A different phrase revealed each rollover. Our brains reveal and hide information in flows that to our conscious ego resemble frozen cycles. Thus, “Tray: an isolation report” is a study of how trauma manifests as alienating behavior and creates a reinforcement cycle, just as the water in the ice cube tray congeals into slushy crystals that eventually solidify.

Dissect it : SOURCE CODE is here

Another kaleidoscope poem. A concise epistle about the perils, rewards and disappointments of consumerist mysticism.

Using the extraordinary open-source classes of Five3D and the always helpful Tweener to subtly mobilize (with mild randomness and some mouse-sensitivity) individual phrases (launched by clicking anywhere) of a subset of a poem i wrote today over another set of 17 brief videos (cheap sponges, dandruff shampoo, shaving soap, orange juice and aloe vera) all filmed in my toilet with the optio wp30 over last few days.

Sounds are from the 220watt heater in my temporary office space which emits an overtone. 3 manipulated sonic files are slowly loaded and looped asynchronously and intertwined with a phase offset dictated by network conditions. Steve Reich controlled by packets.

Dissect it : SOURCE CODE is here (includes video and sound)

A friend died over the weekend. I didn’t see him much, nor did i know him well. But over the past decade and a half, he and I had shared a table, conversed, laughed and traded tales with a group of friends many times. His death was sudden and unanticipated: brain aneurysm. So I made a mild homage to him.

And ‘Sponge Spitter’ uses a single video (of a sponge spitting bubbles) as backdrop to a few observations made on a walk through the fog:

Dissect it : SOURCE CODE is here (includes video and sound)

A streaming video kaleidoscope study. Flash 8 fullscreen capacity.

With a set of 39 esoteric poetic couplets that automatically play over top.

No interactivity. That was intentional: interactivity is a mixed blessing: it evokes the cratch and sniff reflexes of the audience, it puts passivity into remission, therefore it’s sometimes better to opt out of interactivity. Besides most artists are control freaks, dominatrixes. Creation often overlaps with control. So in this work (since the content is so ambiguous abstract and non-linear) it seems better that no physical activity is needed, just a pristine inertness, a form of glandular slump that will allow viewer to ingest the esoterica with a clear conscience.

See it :DEMO is here

Dissect it :SOURCE CODE is here

Manipulated an inverse-kinematic chainclass ( source: Milan Toth here ) so it animates the titles of a custom mp3 player (populated with a set of the last few weeks audio recordings from around town)

User can construct their own sonic-poetic quartets.

Click on image to see it. Source code is available here.