Media, Events, Experiments
Experimental
Music Synchrotron
Jul 12th
I joined a band last year as the visual designer.
The band, Drugzndreamz was interested in creating an audiovisual experience beyond just being a band that made music. Located in Vancouver, Canada, the band was formed in 2008 within the burgeoning Canadian bass-driven ‘beat’ scene that also produced Bassnectar, ThunderHeist, Crystal Castles, DeadMau5 and MSTRKRFT.
We played a few shows and I adapted some pre-existing content in my VJ repertoire to fit the stage show. It wowed the crowd, but we kept discussing the ‘next level’.
I had the opportunity at VFS’ digital design program to create a design and branding package for the band.
We started with the story of the album, the stories of each song, and constructed thematic graphics to match.
In addition to the audiovisual aspects of this project, I reworked the wordmark, created a logo, composed a style guide and assembled a library of static work for future use in motion graphic loops.
I was given specific instrument samples and time samples from each of the tracks on the album, and made visual loops which reacted to their audio, which were then linked in Modul8, the vj software, to Ableton via MIDI. This means that when a segment of music gets triggered to play, the visual media is also triggered.
Some other non-linked visual loops were also created to be reactive to the audio, and were layered under and on top of the MIDI reactive layers.
We rented a photo studio to test it all out. Here are the results.
Not being satisfied with stagnation, we’re currently working on taking this whole set of linked content on to a next level.
Yaletown Illuminate
May 8th
Illuminate Yaletown is a light and projection artists’ event held each February in Vancouver, brightening the winter nights in the downtown neighbourhood.
Stuart’s Yaletown Project Mapping Test #2 installation uses the emerging art form of “mapping” to transform a building into a screen, making it a light-driven moving sculpture.
Recent technologies have broken the rectangular barriers of media presentation formats. The limitations of 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios are becoming a thing of the past. The same goes for 2D screens. What if, in addition to making the content 3D, the screen was also 3D? Why even have traditional screens?
Contemporary media pioneers are exploring the possibilities of video projection on alternative surfaces — primarily architecture — but also on sculpture, vehicles, and other physical objects. This, itself, is not a new art form, but the creation of visual media to harmonize with the physical shapes of a projected surface has been a recent development, originating in Europe in the past 10 years. The advances of computer processing power, as well as video projection systems, have made this art form, called “mapping”, possible.
The presentation surface can now play a role in the artistic narrative of a media piece. In most cases, this means that the architectural narrative of form and space can be considered during the creative process. What ‘fits’ the aesthetic, the shape, and the story?
The content being presented is not in a traditional start-to-finish linear narrative. Rather, individual pieces have been made to match the building’s shapes, and graphical imagery has been broken into themes. Using a real-time media playback system, different parts of the building’s projected imagery can be changed, creating a non-linear and manipulable narrative.
I was fortunate enough to collaborate with music producers James Teej, and Marc Nyiti to create a soundtrack for the installation. The sounds are translated by video filters, in real-time, to adjust the video output, creating a synesthetic effect.
But what does it all mean?
I’ve got a large presentation surface for use as an artist with no corporate limitations. In addition to the visual delights and intrigues that most people come to see, is there a message I want to convey as an artist? Absolutely. Globally, we can see the problems that result when we fail to communicate or fail to listen, but we can also see evidence of the unbounded possibilities resulting from understanding and mutual respect. I want to send this message, but only if the audience wants to see it.
My intention isn’t to hijack the show, but instead to have the audience embrace the experience, thereby ‘adjusting their vision’ and seeing the graphic imagery of possibility, hope, fear, truth, and freedom.
I asked Digital Design Senior Instructor Casey Yee, who is an accomplished interface developer, if he was interested in building an interactive aspect to this piece. He agreed, and went on to develop an audience-controlled adjustable tuner. It can unlock some emotionally charged and inspirational content when used by an interactive viewer.
Illuminate Yaletown is still in its infancy, but is in good standing to become one of Canada’s premier light installation expos. That’s why it’s so incredibly thrilling to have been able to be a part of this event. I would like to thank James Teej, Marc Nyiti, Casey Yee, Josef Chung, Mac Station, and the Yaletown Business Improvement Association for all their help and efforts.
There were some great projections onto buildings throughout Yaletown, and it’s clear that there are some talented artists in Vancouver working in the field.
Let’s hope we get to see a lot more projection mapping in Vancouver.
Kill Your Television
May 8th
A social commentary piece about big media, social control and consumerism. Watch it fullscreen to read the smaller text, please.
This piece was originally presented on two screens as a one day installation. The lower screen was a television, and the upper imagery was projected onto the wall behind, much like is conveyed in the video. The original installation was never recorded.
Homage to Verner Panton
Sep 16th
Verner Panton was a furniture and textiles designer to put it very briefly. His lifetime of great works include the Tulip Chair, the S Chair (A breakthrough in plastics) and Visiona II (a cave-like hybrid between room and furniture). In addition to furniture, Panton produced some stunning textile designs. I investigated some of the circular patterns and came up with the following design:
The original inspiring work is quite stunning: Many of Panton’s designs preceeded the op-art trends of the mid-late 1960s by over a decade.
Panton’s use of colour and form in his textile work is a pinnacle of design in my opinion. Not quite fully psychedelic, just enough ‘op’ art, and containing sufficient visual stimulation to delight the mind.
Underwater Light Leaks
Aug 23rd
Using some underwater content from a previous filming session, I experimented with creating light leaks, film burns and other light based errors common in old, cheap or damaged camera equipment.
Recently, digitally adding camera ‘errors’ has been a popular effect in visual media. Lens flares have appeared in nearly every movie coming out over the past couple years, most notably, the new Star Trek film. The next step in the process was moving beyond flares to chromatic aberration, which is the separation of colours as a result of imperfect (old or cheap) lenses. Cheap point and shoot digital cameras often have purple halos around high contrast areas, as a result of this. Even further than separating and distorting colour is adding virtual light leaks to give the media an antique or old film look.
These light leaks and imperfections in the image are what made Holga cameras so popular before the age of digital photography. They give the image a unique, warm feeling, and add reference of human touch. In this day and age of digital imaging, sterile, accurate pictures are the norm, but not without some resistance. There are numerous iPhone Apps which soften, reverse color correct, vignette and even add grain and leaks. However, these effects are not as easy to come by in video format, and are created with layered stock video or motion graphics (like these) and are overlayed using a video editing or compositing program.
The light leaks and film burns were all created in After Effects, as was the RGB separation effect.
Avenir Typeface Genealogical Study
Aug 17th
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Avenir, designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1988, was created as a more contemporary version of Futura crossed with Univers. This infographic shows the influence ratios the Typeface’s ‘parents’ had on each letter.
Avenir!
A brief and epic history since 1988 – This report is of questionable historical value due to possible and definite inaccuracies.
As Reported by Stuart Ward
Adrian Frutiger was sitting in his soundproof typeface development idea-dome sometime in the mid eighties when he arrived at an interesting conclusion, it was time to make a new typeface for the future.. Although the excesses of the 80s knew no bounds, we cannot be absolutely certain that Frutiger actually owned a typeface development ideadome, or even if the specifications of his idea-dome included soundproofing.
Frutiger and decided that Univers and Helvetica were getting a little long in the teeth after having kicked Clear and Simple Design’s ass for just over three decades, and it was time for a changing of the guard. Apparently some people didn’t get the memo, and continue to mainline Helvetica into their designs like some burnt out modernist minimal junkie.
Before Helvetica and Univers were the only typefaces available in any design studio, 19th century sans-serifs had eclipsed, for several years, the constructivist stylings of Gill Sans and Futura.
Since Frutiger was an Alpenhorn blowing, cheese drilling Switzerlander with a penchant for Late 1920s German typefaces, he logically chose Futura as a source of inspiration for his contemporary masterpiece, and named the creation Avenir, which is French for Future, or je ne sais quoi. Genial! The ‘a’ in Futura was considered to hinder legibility due to it similarity to b, d, p and q, stated Frutiger, so it was replaced with the traditional roman style a.
New evidence has come to light regarding a dark secret to Avenir’s past: A recently discovered phone-tap recording has revealed that Frutiger tried to issue a fatwa against the Futura ‘a‘ because it’s lack of design sense led to a loss of faith. Bau-chika-Bauhaus.
Some interesting points about Avenir:
1. There is no Avenir Italic style, only oblique, created mathematically with precision reaching values close to Godly levels. Using Avenir Oblique fonts instantly upgrades your ability to be contemporary and professionally-fun. (Despite the fact that professionals’ fun in the 80s consisted of lines of cocaine on ladies’ cleavage, rolled up suit sleeves, and crimped hair, Avenir Oblique managed to soar above its 1980s roots; perhaps it’s incubation inside an idea-dome had something to do with it.)
2. After designing Versailles in the early 80s, Frutiger regretted the opulence and excess of the era, just a little, and decided to scrap the serifs for a while, sort of like giving up chocolate covered bacon for lent.
3. The ‘o’ is not a perfect circle.
4. The vertical strokes are thicker than the horizontals. Different strokes for different folks.
5. Avenir looks nothing like handwriting.
6. Avenir comes in varying thicknesses, from 35-95, including 45,55,65 and 85. The meanings of these numbers and what happened to 75 is a mystery.
7. Not content with a typeface which didn’t include condensed fonts, some Japanese guy by the name of Kobayashi worked with Frutiger to create Avenir Next. Since the rise of online type foundries, Typefaces with few fonts in the family are considered low art and campy. Plus, Typefaces with more fonts sell for more money.
8. Because Avenir wasn’t entirely immune to the anything goes lifestyle during it’s conception, the City of Amsterdam has given it a home on its corporate identity. You can take a typeface out of the 80s, but you can take the 80s out of the typeface.
Final Word
What was old is new again, with the surgical expertise of a man who has been ‘shaping our words’ for more than half a century. Avenir, truly towards a brighter future.
TL;DR
Avenir’s font design was inspired by Futura and Univers.
An animated version of the typeface investigation has also been created…
The video shows the primary historical sources of Avenir: Futura and Univers. Each letter in upper and lower case was determined to be on a range somewhere between the inspiring typefaces, and this was indicated with point position as well as colour gradient. The middle section of the animation shows the mix of the Univers ‘Q’ and the Futura ‘Q’ to make an Avenir ‘Q’, which is a clear hybrid of the two when visually represented with its parents.
Glitch video experiment: datamoshing + poledance.
Jul 10th
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I used some footage from my friend Lu’s poledance show last year in Tokyo to experiment with datamoshing. I did it the hard way, by encoding each segment with only a first i-frame (keyframe), and then proceeded to remove them too with a different piece of software. I learned about some technicalities of encoding with h264 and avi file formats, which may end up being useful some time in the future.
The way video is compressed for some web formats, there can be graphical errors when skipping through the timeline, due to the infrequency of key frames, or video frames which consist of complete graphical image information. The subsequent (inbetween) frames contain information related to the movements and changes of graphical information. To put it as simply as possible, there is a picture followed by information about how to move specific part of the picture, another picture, and then more movement information. When the graphic image frames are discarded, the inbetween frames continue to move and change inaccurate information, leading to an interesting result.
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All the software for osx can be found (for free too) at: http://www.court13.com/datamoshkit.zip
Thanks to the datamosher tutorial vids: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYytVzbPky8 Apparently there’s an easy way, an now that I ‘understand the principle, I’ll try it in AfterEffects.
Creative Circuit Board Etching
Jul 2nd
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Revisiting a project created in 2003…
Etching circuit boards as a form of creative expression? I made a series of images by combining 19th century botanical illustrations scanned from antique hardcovers with circuit-like shapes created in digitally. The images were used as light resists in the creation of a photoresist, which was in turn used as an etching resist. The first part of the process is similar to traditional photography, performed in a dark room with developer and stop bath chemicals.
The series, titled ‘Circuitree’ was displayed at the Nickle Gallery in Calgary, Canada.
The relationships between the dualities of nature and technology; science and art; creative processes and analytical processes were investigated.
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Digital Drawings etched on circuit board.
Average size 6” x 6”, series of 8
2003
I would like to once again use this technique as a creative process, with a more technological final work in mind. I would like to see the circuits actually able to perform a task beyond a being a decorative and contemplative form.
Underwater Filming
Jun 22nd
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I shot some underwater video for a student project which will be released shortly.
Here are some pointers for filming underwater video more successfully for the unexperienced.
1. Weight your camera so it is neutrally buoyant when filming underwater. If the case makes the camera float, holding a steady shot underwater is much more difficult.
2. Wear swim fins for mobility. I didn’t do this the first time around. I’ll definitely do it next time.
3. Larger goggles are better than smaller goggles for visibility.
4. A weight belt would also be helpful, to keep your own body neutrally buoyant. Just make sure that you can swim well enough.
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Ancient Tranquility
Dec 1st
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In the summer of 2009, I traveled to Yakushima, an island in the southern archipelago of Japan, to watch the total solar eclipse. Unfortunately, due to cloudy weather, I was unable to see or film my first eclipse. However, despite the clouds and rain, I journeyed deep into the ancient forests of the island to see the famous Yaku-sugi, (giant cedar) and the gaze upon the landscape which inspire scenes from Hayao Miyazaki’s film, Mononoke-hime (Princess Mononoke).
The island has no large predators, hunting has been forbidden for several decades, and the visitors to the island come with a deep respect for nature. Thus the animals have little fear of humans and wander through the deep forests with relative comfort and tranquility.
Music composed by Only Music. Davy Bergier “Flooting” . Published by Only Music. © 2008 onlymusic.fr
Filmed in HD with a Canon HF-S10
UPDATE: The video has been re-uploaded with new color correction.
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