Mark

Mark is a guy from Michigan who lives in Switzerland. He's a photographer, occasional writer and trained research engineer. His free time is sometimes monopolized by mountain touring or travels. On occasion he attends and presents at BarCamps and blogging events.

I May Have Asperger’s

I may have Asperger’s syndrome – or at least that’s the rumor I’ve heard, well it was suggested at one one time. I figured it probably wasn’t totally outside the realm of fiction, so I decided to check it out. A time for self-exploration and reflection. I did some online video research and checked out videos of folks with Asperger’s and the like and a Wikipedia entry on the subject.

With Asperger’s people are considered to be smart, getting all focused and researching something to death like memorizing all the planes the British and Germans flew during World War II or rock formation history, or some other topic than a number of other people in the world probably don’t care about at all. I can identify with such freakishness, it makes perfect sense to me.

A person with Asperger’s is supposedly not interested in social communication, or doesn’t know they’re supposed to be, or just don’t find an essential value in it. The social skills need to be learned, like they’re not programmed in from the start in your brain (and why should they be? Are they essential in the hunter gatherer sense of the world?). So, you then have to take more time to learn the fine details of social interaction if you have the syndrome. Again, I fit into this characterization in many ways.

But Why?

I like learning about stuff, in particular about stuff that’s useful for something – or maybe not. Maybe it will be useful but I just want to know just because. Like, say we take indy movie making for example. I watched Vincent LaForet on CreativeLive talk about film tools and movie making. I get intrigued so I go out, research different camera systems, lighting methods with LED, cost-effective steady cam systems, sliders, follow-focus devices, camera rigs, I acquire a sort of deep body of knowledge on a subject. And then what? Maybe I do nothing, but maybe I go and shoot something. Why? Because I feel compelled to tell a story, to say something. Plus I know that video-based story telling is how we’ll be communicating in the post-Facebook world, so why not get a head start? I have the need to communicate and to express ideas to people outside of my head, in the real world. I think that if I had Asperger’s, I would just learn all about every camera sensor in every camera, and that would be it. I like learning about random things because I want to have the background and use this knowledge later on. There’s a deep difference between acquiring and utilizing knowledge and technology. I like to acquire so I can use, not acquire so that I know. So, maybe I don’t have Asperger’s.

Why Not?

I did the same thing with still photography. I learned a lot on the internet from reading Strobist and watching Photoshop and shooting tutorials by Joey Lawrence, but then I used that info to bring up the production value of my photo shoots and post-processing art. So now I create portraits that are more like paintings. Since still photography isn’t enough, I’m adding film to the mix (because once I thought it would be good to learn about).

Another example, I’m learning about HTML5 and augmented reality right now. There are people who think that code is poetry and they can read Python like any other language, and that it’s one of the most beautiful things in the world. That’s fine, but while a I appreciate and respect that view, I don’t share it on an intimate level. I naturally prefer poetry in words, not hash tags. I love learning about web coding, but not because I find it intuitively beautiful (well, no, I do on some level), but rather because I can use it to create cross-platform applications for iPhone and Android devices, using APIs to call in data and use it all in a mobile application that communicates an idea (like photography or film or painting).

Probably Not

I just like to acquire tools to do interesting things. The technology barrier to entry has been brought down so low in subjects like music, physics, motion tracking, game design, film, writing, data analysis, etc. that everyone with a crappy computer (or a decent tablet) and a camera or whatever can do an insane amount of creating in life for very low financial investments. We’re just limited by time and attention spans. In the end I’m just interested in too many things, how can you not be? Today is filled with an unimaginable assortment of possibilities, I find it abnormal when people don’t have the drive to explore life and experiment with all the amazing technologies we have to play with on our computer screens, iPhones, cameras, 3D printers, cheap paints, Arduinos, sensor networks, big data sets, and composite snowboards (to name a very, very, few).

So, do I have Asperger’s? I’m leaning towards no, but I guess I have a bit of the necessary ingredients. Now clearly, self-diagnosis doesn’t work for everyone (except for Freud), and an impartial review might be in order. However, I dated a psychiatrist for half a year once, and I now that I think about she probably would have diagnosed me if I was. If you think I have Asperger’s, feel free to drop me a line.

Web Mobile Monday #2 Zurich 2012

I headed to Web Monday Zurich 2012 #2, which also happened to be Mobile Monday, it was a shared event at the HP building in Dubendorf, and the topic was Native vs. Hybrid vs. Web apps. As I’m now involved with developing Lost In Reality, a mobile storytelling app, I’m very into this topic of choosing native vs. web/hybrid, so this gathering came at the perfect time for me. The following is a recap from my iPad notes, I’m intermixing what the speakers said with what I thought in my head, so hold on as this recollection could get hairy. There were three excellent speakers:

  • Markus Leutwyler, HP: General overview on Web vs. Mobile vs. Native Apps
  • Colin Frei, Liip: A case study on web / hybrid apps
  • Vikram Kriplaney, local.ch: A case study on native apps

Markus Leutwyler from HP (@twtomcat)

History:

Now everyone is an expert and can make a web page, mobile started two three years ago, now the app is on the rise, we go to apps, not webpages. So now where are we today? Can everyone make a web app now? The web has a low entry barrier and it’s everywhere, browsers are everywhere, and now it is also an application platform. So what are native, hybrid, and web apps?

Native:

iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, you use a variety of languages based on the app market you want to target. Why native? Go native for performance, offline mode, find ability, device integration, monitization, user experience. You can make money with app stores. But what exactly is the native advantage? For example, now with WebGL we can do 3D in HTML.

Web App/Hybrid:

Html5, JavaScript, canvas, OpenGL, web sockets, css3, phone gap, ability to code one and export to different places (like with build.phonegap.com) Code reuse, common technologies, low entry barrier, cross-platform, familiar tools and techniques. While this doesn’t work for all applications just look at the trends, JavaScript performance is improving, hardware acceleration is coming, rapid browser evolution (short release cycles for Firefox), new tools frameworks coming out all the time.

Web vs Web Apps

Basically a web app is installed and able add to home screen. Then you have ChromOS, boot2gecko, where it simulates the native experience.

Collin from Liip (@colinfrei)

Why do an app instead of a web page? To access device functionality, camera, etc. discover ability via app store, reach different audiences than via a Google search, selling your app, ability for in-app subscriptions, easy for people to tap and spend money. Barriers? NIWEA is an answer, wrap your content in an app container, hence you can use Cocoon, Phonegap, etc.

  • Phonegap: it is a container, gives access to device functionality via API using JavaScript. What are the advantages?
  • Knowledge: many web developers know JavaScript, lower barrier to entry, portability, can reuse the code for different devices.
  • Portability: Means you can view the sites on your browser, if you write the code well you can port the stuff anywhere and reuse it. All these things affect costs, so hybrid allows you to use advantages of native.

Phonegap is good with APIs that are wide ranging, and then use plugins to offer specific functionality, but it isn’t universal. In the end you still have to write some unique code for different devices and their unique app needs. Concerning app performance, native is always better by definition, and it depends on your use case, like games that are device intensive for hardware optimization, but you can try game closure and cocoon.js, it all depends on what your goal is.

TV App for Tages-Anzeiger:

The purpose of the app is that they just show you the good TV shows, based on their recommendations. You can stream output to your tv and devices, it’s free to try and then is subscription based. It’s an iPad app, but lots of it was Html5 and JavaScript. Video is done via Html5, Phonegap was used to wrap it for the app store. In-app plugin purchases was used for monitization. Did not do much with portability to other devices because everyone is using the iPad anyways. Development done in the browser and tested, then ported to iPad. In total, everything was good with using phonegap.

The Future

Hybrid is expected to be the future. Using the same code base is such an advantage in development. The hybrid aspect becomes much smaller, browsers will be able to implement device features, like camera tag in html5, that is now possible. Check mozilla API , see what sensors you will be able to access.

@kripsVikram Kriplaney local.ch mobile architect

(@krips)

At local.ch they look at the breakdown of numbers for devices, iOS, android, etc. Why native? Well when they started developing for mobile it was 2008, they had expertise in iPhone, they had a mobile website, it was logical to first get a launcher from the phone and then just use the mobile optimized webpage.

In the end, user experience is biggest reason to go native. The user has expectations for that device, and they should respect that experience designed for that device. Performance is a big reason as well. Trust that the device maker has done all the optimization needed to give good UX via tight integration with hardware. Integration with other apps also good – more fine grain control. Now there are more frameworks than platforms for development, some are cross platform, some more on web side.

Leaky abstractions: any nontrivial abstraction will leak, you want to forget the details, but you end up for developing for each platform anyways. So why not go fully native from the start? Naturally for this you need a team with a wide range of competence, which local.ch has. The more audience they have on any platform, the more effort they put into developing for that platform as the platform evolves, launcher the web, hybrid, native. They do do hybrid, do it when it makes sense.

End Questions/Comments

  • Is local storage a problem? In principle, offline functionality is not a problem.
  • For testing, you can do automated builds and do UI testing with test flight.
  • Backbone, spine as single page applications, for more responsive website.
  • Yes mobile is going to take over.

Video Poetry Berlin-Zurich Rough Cut

 The first rough cut from my video poetry collaboration with DJ Cue is up. The music was composed by DJ Cue (Bobby Cuevas) while I provided the visuals and recorded ambient audio. This was made possible thanks to Talenthouse.com and their Creative Invite collaboration platform. This is a rough cut, so it doesn’t include the poetry dialogue that I will eventually add (actually, I’m looking for a woman with a nice classic German accent to do some voice recording), but it’s a nice visual representation of what I’m trying to create. Video imagery includes the abandoned Bärenquell Brauerei in East Berlin, Barbara running through Zurich Bahnhofstrasse (shoot organized with Ethan Oelman), and also a quick look from a underground club night in Berlin, part of an Alternative Berlin night tour I did in the city. Thanks to everyone involved, now that I’ve setup my computers in my new apartment I can get back to shooting and creating on a more normal basis. Enjoy…

The World Is Sick – We Are the Doctors – Iron Sky

The world is sick, but we are the doctors. The basic plot is that the Nazi government has been hiding on the dark side of the moon for the past 70 years and is now ready to take over the world. It’s been described as Sin City meets Inglorious Basterds plus, I don’t know, some measure of insanity and a healthy dose of sci-fi Philip K. Dick extravagance, and I can’t wait for Iron Sky to be released in the Zurich area.

Viewing the teaser material triggers in my mind the pioneering work of Metropolis, a silent masterpiece that blends well with techno remixes and stands the test of time. I get that awesome visual feeling of a black and white silent masterpiece, but beautifully interpreted for the current century. Personally I’m looking forward to this new emergence, resurgence of the European-Germanic cinema, and hope some of the abandoned factories around Berlin get converted to studios instead of posh apartments (Fuck Media Spree).

Iron Sky isn’t a German film, but it sort of invokes the analogy in my mind, that Germanic cinema has had an interesting history, pioneering film production and then withdrawing into a troubled post-world war purgatory where it wasn’t possible to make movies because of politics, resources, money, or probably everything in between. Getting quality movies made in Europe seems to be generally difficult (near impossible to get funding in Switzerland), and what I love is that the funding model of Iron Sky is showing how movies should be made. This film couldn’t be produced in a Hollywood studio, it just wouldn’t have been given a greenlight. It’s not from one studio or country, it’s a total collaboration with funding also coming from crowdsourcing and individual support.  The film is a collaboration-production including Blind Spot Pictures & Energia Productions from Finland, 27 Films from Germany and New Holland Pictures from Australia, with filming in Germany and Australia.

I get a sense that the humor here is a sort of part of an evolution, it reminds me of TRaumschiff Surprise, an excellent mockery of Star Wars meets Star Trek meets the German form of the Love Boat (Traumschiff)…and the teaser for Iron Sky reminds me of that type of humor, but mixed with visuals beyond Aliens and violence beyond Inglorious Basterds. No doubt, countless youtube remixes of Der Untergang and Iron Sky will hit the internet when Iron Sky is released on DVD (actually they’ve already started).

Iron Sky is a cult success before the release, the trailer teaser stands on it’s own as the most unique and absurd plot I’ve ever heard of, and come next Halloween I foresee an pleathura of politically compromising Nazi space-trooper costumes heading to Berlin dance parties and filling in the dark shadows of the Cathedral (my favorite Goth club). The visuals of Iron Sky are almost more amazing than the plot. The released images of Nazi space ships, giant space Zeppelins rival the work seen in Aliens and in my mind near surpasses the cinematic visuals of HR Giger. If you’d like to learn more, buy war bonds or invest in the film, check out the main website, http://www.ironsky.net/.

Dancing with Water & Urban Affairs – Ethan Oelman Zurich Show

Dancing with Water & Urban Affairs, a show by Zurich photographer Ethan Oelman at *Galerie 16b. I’m planning to visit the Vernissage. I’ve assisted Ethan on one of his water shoots and made a companion video with the material called Birth-Kraft (http://vimeo.com/18276591) and also an interview where Ethan explains the background of his Dancing with Water project (http://vimeo.com/20802817), so I’m looking forward to seeing the images in a gallery setting.

It’s raining in Zurich today, so it should be a perfect environment to attend the Vernissage, today Friday January 20th from 17.00 – 21.00. Water will be pouring over the streets, and then I’ll experience the water and urban photography. The show is at *Galerie 16b and runs till the Finnisage on January 27th.

*Galerie 16b
Ausstellungsstrasse 16
8005 Zürich

Arrrrrr, I Joined the Pirates

Be brave, be crazy, be a Pirate! How can a person logically say no to that? Startup Pirates is an organization coming out of Portugal, a movement to change the world. I’m easily impressionable and have been looking for a startup event to be a part of, and I met one of the organizers at Ignite Zurich. So, when they advertised the next plundering campaign in Lisbon in February, I figured I would be crazy not to apply to be a part of it. Here’s the description for the pirate website, http://www.startuppirates.org/

More than a company, a project or a non-profit, Startup Pirates is a Movement.

We want to spread an entrepreneurship culture around the world and show that it’s possible to build a company right after college or even during a college degree. For us, age, genre, location or professional status aren’t obstacles but opportunities to create companies and change the World. There are many ways to change the world and we at Startup Pirates picked entrepreneurship as the way to do it. ?Our goal is to create one-week startup schools around the world. By making the perfect match between the academic world and the entrepreneurship environment, we want to bring together the latest discoveries done in terms of business models, marketing management, Human resources management and the latest achievements in the technological field. We believe this mix is the secret sauce to make startups successful.

So, join us at Startup Pirates, give us feedback, organize your own startup school, with our help or be an attendee at one of the upcoming events. ?

Why Be a Pirate?

Over the last year I’ve been in a sort of erratic learning and thinking stage. I took a class to understand the professional art world (focused on Zurich), launched a video poetry collaboration with DJCue in Atlanta, and have been doing a lot of background reading/learning on mobile user experience, HTML5, augmented reality, 2D/3D game design, and animation, and some topics in big data. A recent mind vacation in Berlin has brought a lot of things into perspective, and I’m ready from a vision and knowledge standpoint to launch something. What is this thing?

Well, I have a number of ideas on technologies and social topics I would like to translate into a startup. I spend my lunches outlining and diagramming mobile app ideas, everything from an AR graffiti program (Defend Kreuzberg) to app/sensor combinations to aid patient recovery post surgery to helping artists understand the context of their place in the world. I firmly believe that events like Startup Pirates Lisboa are the places to get things off the ground. When I went to 1 Day of Art Copenhagen I little idea of what to expect, but put faith in the future and I ended up creating some cool paintings and realizing my artist identity. Heading to Lisbon for a week to a startup bootcamp and building something with the people I meet there is the way to do things. You go with an open mind, work your ass off, and good things will happen.

Want to be a Pirate?

Ignite Zurich – Art – Rarity and the Web

I gave talk at the 1st Ignite Zurich (Dec. 2nd at The Hub Zurich) centered on art, rarity, and what that means in the context of the internet and web technologies. A big thank you to Inês Santos Silva for organizing, the night was an awesome inspirational event. Here’s a break down of the ideas I put into my talk…

The Value of Art

What is the value of art, why is it traded for money and why is it sometime considered priceless? The value of art is a combination of traditional supply and demand, rarity, and context. you can’t assign value to art without considering the context of it’s creation. the time and place, and how it fits in with the overall context of the art scene at that particular point in time, that will never come again. Yes, it’s possible that your five year old could have painted that, but they didn’t. Art is idea execution. If you were the first person to put your shit in a can and sell it, you would eventually command a price of over 100,000 USD, but if you do it now it’s just considered a strange precousur to insanity and generally socially unacceptable.

What is Art?

Art is a combination of having the new idea and executing it. Art is not an idea, it is the creation of something significant, just as an idea is worthless in a startup company that doesn’t execute it well. Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft all executed their ideas at the right points in time, but they weren’t necessarily the first. It doesn’t matter is someone “stole” your startup idea, it matters if a company was created from that idea. That’s the execution and beauty of it. Now, at this point in time you can launch your own social network, search engine, and software company, but it won’t have the same impact, unless it brings something new and is understood to be genius in the current context of the tech scene. It doesn’t matter if you paint a new Mona Lisa, the idea is done (and overdone and redone in reproductions).

The unique thing about art is that the work gets value at any point in time so long as it fits the context of the history of an art movement, or rather is a disruption. Vincent van Gothe died barely selling a painting. If it’s not discovered and put into context it’s worthless. This is why artists get discovered later on but younger artists are promoted more than older ones when they come onto the art scene. You want the work of the young artists before they become “big” but it’s just a gamble that that will actually happen. So, logically you should create some great work and then kill yourself, because this ensures that you won’t be able to produce any more excellent art. The first person to paint grey instead of blue and red and green would be considered amazing, and all the rest that follow will just be part of the movement. Without the movement, no one cares about the first one, it has no value.

Context vs Content

How can an artist create the context for the work to have value? Or should you just create things and hope that they have some value for other people? The Doktor of Science in me says you get to the heart of the beast and just create or engineer your own context to create value. A piece of art work is a container for an idea, it’s a physical execution of an idea that can be viewed and reinterpreted as needed by society. Nobody cares what the first design of Google looked like, we just want to use it. Maybe the first sketch will sell for a million dollars one day, like the first apple computer, but only because of the context of history. This is because on the internet content is king. People was to use the technologies of the internet, not just be influenced by the ideas.

The UX Perspective

One thing I learned from hanging out with people at the Zurch UX Book club is some of the psychology behind buying things. When things are rare, inside of you is triggered that, “buy it now” mentality. When you see there’s only a few things left in stock, you’re pressured to buy it now. This probably goes back to the natural instinct to collect things and then trade them later on for things you might want from other people, the beginnings of capitalism. So I thought, how can I create a “buy it now” context for my art? In a world of immersion and augmented reality, installations will be the containers. Will we really care if things are real or not? Will it matter if it’s the real Mona Lisa or not? The experience will probably become more and more necessary to have an impact, but we’re not there just yet.

Art Death Concept

The Art Death concept is an auction platform idea I started putting together after taking a professional artist seminar at the F&F Kunst Schule with Olga Stefan. To combine the ideas of art with value related to context and the percieved value of art increasing due to psychological tendencies related to rarity, the best thing is to create an auction where the context of value is engineered into the platform, or rather, the performance.

I can accomplish this by putting up my art for auction on a combined internet and real world platform, having a reserve bid for each piece and a time constraint. If the work doesn’t sell for the reserve price, I have to destroy it personally with various dramatic methods. Like taking a rusty chainsaw or a flame thrower and purifiying the world of my mistakes that don’t sell because they have no value to society. It will take some preparation to do this thing right, and I think some fundraising via Kickstarter is in order.

Berlin Notes: Bärenquell Brauerei Urbex

Back from Berlin, recovered from the flu, dreaming and scheming of something new, new, new.The But first, I worked on some images from the Bärenquell Brauerei, an abandoned brewery in former East Berlin. I found out about the place from Abandoned Berlin, a blog devoted to urbex in this fabulous European city. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the place is like an urbex mecca, fabulous graffiti, old but not so old that it has fallen apart. I had a wonderful time there running around with my Cinevate Atlat FLT slider shooting video with my VG10 for the video poetry project with Bobby Cuevas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video Poetry Pre-Production

The video poetry project is in full pre-production chaos, perfect time to give an update on the process. I’ve been pulling ideas from the back reaches of my brain, shooting video, writing poetry, and listening to music from DJCue, all in an effort to build up the video poetry project. Here’s a breakdown of the pre-production journey so far, but first a recap. In July DJCue won the video poetry CreativeInvite contest on Talenthouse, where people submitted music and I picked one to work with. The goal of our collaboration is to create some original short films using his music and my video. How it has come together so far…

The Theme

The theme is as abstract as ever, and I want to pull together the main components together and produce some magic (I know, that sounds like a load of abstract bullshit). This allows me to start from a few different directions. For example, write a poem and try to storyboard a film from it, shoot random film footage and cut it to music and then add poetry, any variation of the two and everything in between. The reason I’m making this seem so chaotic is that I’m still experimenting with the video poetry work flow, and as it is when I stare down a blank canvas, I’m a little freaked out it will all suck in the end. I see video poetry as a format in between the Art Film and the Short Film.

In an art film you try to communicate some abstract concept without dialogue, and the result generally loops on a monitor in a gallery or installation somewhere (that you need to watch looping for two hours before you get a sense that you might perhaps – sort of, will eventually figure out what the fuck it is about). In contrast, the short film communicates a story in a compact timeline, but is more likely to include traditional elements like a script, shot list, planning, etc. What I want to do here is to have a combination of the two, communicate an abstract concept as you might find in my mind and the traditional film workflow (as I learned it from Vincent LaForet on CreativeLive). This is more inline with how I create images in Photoshop or painting, where I begin with a base image or idea and then build around and layer it, the result being something I didn’t necessarily plan for from the beginning. The elements we have to mix and layer are music (from DJCue), poetry, and video.

Music

The beauty of the video project is that DJCue handles the music production and I focus only the on video and poetry. Spinning in his bedroom/studio he mixes up productions for SoundCloud, Restorm and any manner of use in life in between. This adds a certain dynamic to the workflow, I don’t know exactly what he has in mind, he just creates stuff and sends it over, this challenges me to create poetry and video mixes which build on and complement his music. Check out his stuff on SoundCloud, Twitter (@therealdjcue), Talenthouse, and his blog.

Poetry

This is probably the most difficult part (aside from finalizing the final edit of the film). I hear music in my head, remixes of stuff from my past and I get inspiration to put words together, ending up in what you might call poetry or spoken word. But the words sometimes have a tempo of their own, and don’t always mix so well with music when I try to put them together later on. Visual imagery also has it’s own tempo, and if you start by just shooting from a story board, chances are you won’t end up with the right mix between the music and the words, I guess this is the conundrum from whence the profession of film editor arose from. My feeling is that it’s best to start with the visual arrangement in flexible blocks (let’s call them mini scenes) and then add the audio in the studio after adding in the soundtrack.

Tools

For video, we need tools. Tools include, my Sony NEX VG10 camera, audio via a Zoom H4, various lenses, and a Jag35 Field runner rig. Now that I have some ideas in my mind for other shots I realize I need a slider, or linear motion control device (to move the camera on a set of rails). I picked up an Atlas FLT, which will be needed when I head to Berlin.

Location Berlin

I like the concept of the urban landscape, and now that video is part of the equation, it makes sense to put together some footage in one of my favorite cities, Berlin – where I’ve much writing you could call poetry. I haven’t been there since 2010 when I visited the UXcamp. The idea this time is to go back for the Google Developer day and take a few days to shoot around the city with my VG10 and an Atlas FLT slider. Where? There are a number of options. My first goal is heading back to Beelitz, an abandoned hospital complex south of the city. Goal two, the Teufel-berg in the former West sector. Goal three…there’s too many goals to list in a place like Berlin.

I shot for a day in Beelitz in 2010, and fell in love with the place like most people do when they visit. The hospital was established in the late 1800’s and was taken over by the Russians after Berlin was taken in 1945. If you venture through the corridors you’ll still find Russian articles all over the place. It’s probably the most popular urbex location in Germany, on par with the Packard plant in Detroit, Michigan. Unlike the Packard plant, parts of Beelitz are being renovated, meaning parts are no longer accessible. However, the main surgery building was still open in 2010, and I want to get back there and shoot before it’s gone. The inside of the buildings are covered with grafitti, and all manner of creepy writings that will freak you out when the wind slams a door closed as you walk the corridors alone. Rumor has it however, well, not rumor but more fact, that some one died in Beelitz while exploring the ruins around 2010, and now the place is guarded, also to avoid further vandalism from hooligans haunting the forest.

The Teufelsberg translates directly as Devil Mountain. After the war Berlin needed to be rebuilt, and all of the trash, broken buildings and such were piled on top of one another and eventually the Teufelberg was formed. During the Cold War the NSA built a monitoring station there to snoop on the East, and the building with funky octadome radio installation is still standing. It’s unclear how open it will be here, but internet recon suggests it should be accessible, I may however defer to other places if it doesn’t work out.

Location Zurich

It’s always good to team up with other creative folks on projects, and my main collaborator in Zurich is the photographer Ethan Oelman. We do projects together where he focused on photography and I focus on video, and then I mix the two together in a short video, our last finished collaboration was the video Dancing with Water. Lately we met up in downtown Zurich with a Med-student-model he works with. I took footage of her before the sun went down, and then I assisted Ethan as a light man, walking around with a softbox on a boom while he did the shooting.

Animation Experimentation

Many times when I’m shooting still images I have a short movie playing in my head. The Bratz image series in particular is something I always wanted to animate, to have the scene include some elements of interaction. Now that I’m picked up Photoshop CS5 this is a realistic project. How it will fit into the poetry concept I’m still debating in my heads, but the potential is there to create some active elements that work into the shot video of the project. I started out with a simple Toy Wars image with some plastic Army Men and Cleo de Nile from Monster Highschool. Using the Puppet Warp tool in Photoshop I did some masking and warping to create a few animation frames of the American flag waving in the wind. Then I’ll scale that up to animating the sergeant and background elements (still to be imagined).

Bringing it All Together

So, that’s the plan. Shots form Zurich and Berlin, likely mixed up with strange animations of Bratz dolls and and Army Men battling in a new world apocalypse landscape.

1 Day of Art London – (t)here Magazine

The next 1 Day of Art event from (t)here Magazine is going to be in London on Oct. 28th-29th. If you’re an artist around London I highly recommend contacting them to see if you can participate (How to Participate). I was at 1 Day of Art Copenhagen last fall and it was an amazing experience (Thank you talenthouse!). The format is simple. You get together with the magazine crew on Friday night, draw a topic to work on, and then you have 24 hours to produce your work within the city limits. For my part I did three paintings in the bathroom of the Diamonds room at HotelFox, based partially on my experiences walking around Copenhagen late Friday night. Before the 24 hours kicked off we were all interviewed, and the camera crew and editors came around during the day to see how the work was progressing.

The whole thing has the nonlinear feeling of a hackathon or startup weekend, naturally without any coding, laptops and API’s replaced by canvas, paint, cameras, whatever you use to put your vision into the real world. Once the spark goes off you get the materials you need together and then create. The work from the other artists at Copenhagen is going to be revealed with the next issue of the magazine, but the cover is already on the web. Believe in the energy of the night and inspiration of the process and great things will come to those who decide to create. I’m looking forward to see what comes out of London.

VOLUME 13 – COPENHAGEN – COMING SOON…

You Are Not The Malcolm X of Cameras (Canon EOS-1D X)

You are not releasing the Malcolm X of cameras or software, so how about not using “X” on every new product: Canon EOS 1D X, OSX, FCPX, etc. I love technology, I like the positive revolutions technology brings to the world, be they social, economic, how we think, how we work, talk, love, and realize our potential as humans. It’s getting common now to use X to denote new releases like cameras and software packages, to make consumers feel like those new iterations on a product are revolutionary in their design and capabilities. The X could mean the 10th edition, taken from ancient Rome, but in general it’s used because it sounds cool – but the person who made X stand for cutting edge revolution was Malcolm.

I first read the Autobiography of Malcolm X while taking a class at Michigan State University, just a short from where Malcolm Little grew up in Michigan. The X represents the idea that Little was the name of the slave master of his father’s family, and that their heritage had been taken from them, hence he took the last name X to represent that loss of identity.

“The Muslim’s ‘X’ symbolized the true African family name that he never could know. For me, my ‘X’ replaced the white slavemaster name of ‘Little’ which some blue-eyed devil named Little had imposed upon my paternal forebears.” ( Malcolm X, Autobiography, Perry, p. 147)

It probably started with OS X, the 10th edition of the Apple operating system. The idea was that Mac OS version 10 was a redesign of the old system, the new being based on Unix and in large way lead to the turn around of Apple, which now dominates many sectors of desktop and mobile computing systems. When Apple released the new version of Final Cut Pro, borrowing heavily from iMovie they called it FCPX. Now Canon is jumping on the X marketing-wagon, naming their new flagship the EOS 1D-X. I foresee a trend here, like using cleaver Latin names on cars. The marketing taps into the power of the word, but does so to sell a product which doesn’t live up to the potential of humanity.

The Canon 1D X isn’t a revolution in video capable DSLRs. It wasn’t oppressed by Kodak-based slave masters or beaten down by Nikon thugs hiding behind white hoods. It’s a tool to shoot still images and videos with. The X is something which screams revolution, but don’t let the marketing guise dilute the true meaning of the letter. It stands for social change, it stands for people standing up and putting their lives on the line to push for a dramatic modification of the social framework of a city or a Nation.

My Awesome Hedingen Wohnung zu Mieten

Various events in life now make it necessary to find a new renter for my current apartment, my wohnung is now free zu mieten. It’s at Arnistrasse 16, CH-8908 Hedingen in the Zurich countryside. In order to promote the project, I decided to make a website for it. It was a great time to apply my knowledge of SEO, and first I picked up the domain www.hedingen-wohnung.ch and then starting putting together some photography for the site. I needed some proper pictures for the apartment  – well, technically it’s more of a house, anyways, it was the ideal time to start playing with HDR photography. I played with the HDR option in Photoshop (CS3) and it resulted in some amazingly horrible results. So, I decided to get a proper program HDR tone-mapping program. After a little searching I decided on Photomatix Pro, a fine piece of software that makes high dynamic range imaging painless and the results are fantastic.

The apartment is fabulous combination of an old 200 year farm house rebuilt from the inside, but retaining much of the original wood and structure. A steel stair case connects the floors and the whole place is like a warm hug. On the top floor there’s a gallery and I put my photo studio up there. The ceiling is high enough for a small trampoline, but I just have a background setup.

Getting the place ready to shoot also entailed clearing things away to make it all minimalist and show off the design (as opposed to views of my camera equipment cluttering up the floor space). When you get that far you might as well wash the floors too, so I did that and then setup my Sony A900 with a 20mm Minolta lens to shoot my first interior images. I’ve seen amazing house photography before, but was mainly just hoping to produce some nice images. Happily, Photomatix is an excellent software program and you can easily produce natural looking images with minimal time input. I supplemented the natural light in one image with an Elinchrom strobe, but otherwise it was all just natural light. Photomatix gives you different tone mapping options which range from that horrible gaudy-over-saturation look to the very natural, almost like you’re standing there, but with a little pop so it feels just a tad like the image is from Wonderland look.

Arnistrasse 16 is easily the best designed place I’ve ever lived in, and I feel like I’m walking through a magazine some days. It includes such funky amenities as an induction oven and internet connection in every room. It’s a certified Minergie place, which means it uses the minimal energy for heating and cooling. It technically has four floors, with an open gallery on the top level where you can setup a studio, or an office if you like. More information on the wohnung is on the main site, www.hedingen-wohnung.ch and if you’re interested in visiting the place I would be happy to show you around.