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Tom ~
Laurence would like to know if we can open the testsite on Friday, June 18... and so the installation dates would be June 13-18. We could probably have you arrive earlier for the installation. These are the dates that work best for him.
Kristin
Tom ~ I'm still thinking!
Good to know... Laurence has invited me to house sit the third weekend in April so I'm going to start making some art there and photographing the objects in his house for the baggage scanner. Liz and I are going on a materials spree soon, probably Friday so that i can begin the backyard animation.
Also important. I suggested that we push back the installation to the last week in May. If that works for Laurence, would it work for you? Otherwise it looks like the week before with an opening on Thursday night. (Laurence is flying out of town on Friday).
I have struggled to upload a video test that i made with the veejay software. my server is down tonight.
Tom ~ I am meeting with Laurence tomorrow and I'll pass on these new ideas. I'm still thinking a lot about the dining room, and the living room. To tell the truth, after my Arthouse talk on Thursday, I've been doing only fun things.
I downloaded software for veejaying. I'm testing to see if it will work for my cult movie. I think I might collaborate with an area artist/musician on the sound for that projection because it's easier to build the work that way. I'm going to have my mixer sent down too.
I looked up vegetarian empty capsules and they are really easy to find. I also found vegetable powders, such as beet, spinach, kale, something more yellow (i bookmarked the link)... and that led me to consider things like chocolate pudding (powder form) and premixed lemonade crystals. Where do we draw a line? It could turn into Noah's Arc for essential foods. I'm not 100% on following through with this particular idea yet. I'll get more time to think about it on my day off, Wednesday.
Can you remind me which computer you need and which OS? I'll also confirm the dates. They would like to book your flight soon. My other question is whether a week later would work for you? Say third week of May if that's even an option for them. I just figure the more time I have outside of school, the better, but if it is a conflict I'll make it happen - been there before! And we can discuss this more later, but you can stay at Laurence's a full week if you like. That's what the last writer did.
Hey thanks for re-posting the drumkit piece on our page. It is among my favorite works that you have informed me about since I began following your weblog. I haven't experienced it in person yet I am completely attached to it. Life altering art.
Following are a few ideas that I'm working through [ideas induced during decaffeine high]...
I propose that we play more with testsite as a central theme in our installation. And considering that you and I share a fascination with sci-fi (film and literature), we might introduce a fictional science base that our audience activates. I'll depart now into loose ideas.
Backyard: hang a screen or painted panel of plywood off the deck toward the grass slope. (fyi: the deck is raised above ground a bit). Lay out several blankets on the grass. The screen or panel could be illuminated with an animation of a faux scrambled/pixelated signal that ultimately reveals no significant message - more to the point it is repetitive and brainwashing, somewhat cultish. I bought $20 veejay shareware that I'm going to experiment with for building this type of animation. Perhaps you or I could mix some sound for this projection.
Dining Room: we could transform this room into a laboratory station for assembling food rations. We could have available rubber gloves, lab coats, goggles, lo-tech swivel magnifying glasses, clear edible capsules and colorful vegetable powders, such as kale, beet, carrot,... and bowls or containers for the finished capsules. Also a special looking box for iradiating the capsules. It has a button on the side that triggers a laser beam to turn on. It turns off when the button is no longer pressed.
Doorways: I could hang loose mostly transparent fabric or lt. weight plastic curtains (resembling the kind of curtain found as you enter a walk-in cooler, those made with vertical strips). The curtain/s would be projected on with a periodic animation of a blue horizontal scan (as if it has a function to sanitize or read information).
Baggage: could be scanned as people enter the apartment. There could be a slide or video projection on a cardboard video monitor or sloppily directly onto the cardboard scan box that reveals pre-recorded images of things from Laurence's house. A person, perhaps myself or one of my students could perform the scanning station. When a bag is place, a slide is advance. The slide carousel could be set up to have a blank slot in between so that when there is no bag it advances to darkness.
Living Room: This is where the computers are. I haven't gathered any more ideas yet. Thought I'd throw some of my initial ideas your way first. Just keeping in mind, testsite. To me, testsite has a laboratory feel and also references excursion, satellite, surveyed area... lots of other associations.
I thought we could pick a few associations and see what ideas we generate from there. Then we could see how some of the ideas overlap into other areas and find what if anything emerges out of that. Maybe we find our way back to the lounge. For example, the living room could be the lounge of a base or station. I'm also keen on making some impromptu videos while we are installing which can reside on the web or be projected.
All things we do can be brought to an inexpensive production level with some brainstorming once we resolve more our mutual interests in the collaboration. We won't need to rent a computer for me to use. Do you think there should be two stations, one for you to work on even while we are there and one for audience? Then there would be the potential for live exchange (wouldn't have to be a constant - you could break away and come back any time).
Here's Michael Sailstorfer's drum kit made out of a German police car that I posted about.
And below is another piece from the same Munich gallery, homeroom, that my friend Courtenay Smith runs: Martin Wöhrl's Cowboy Door. He did a series of several saloon doors copied from various Western movies. Courtenay said the found designs varied a lot more than you would think.
No particular reason for posting this, just wanted you to see it.
Tom ~ after days of not realizing that my webmail account expired - fixing my energy on 'what the heck is wrong with my computer' - i am finally paid up, renewed, and able to post again!
this week i went to the new testsite opening and realized for the first time that the testsite installation stays up and running until the next install. that's cool in so far as otherwise it would feel like a short run for a lot of work, but it also adds a wicked burnout to my production plans. a screeching hault. resulting in the need to come up with an altogether different plan. the lounge thing can still work, but not the animation.
the writing and art collaboration was taken to new and exciting depths. the artists organized a town in the space and the writer wrote the town charter and a list of violations against the town officers (mayor, etc.). audience could write up and submit a complaint. it was pretty cool. maybe there will be pics up soon on the website.
i am going to have to gather new ideas this week. and i'd like to consider pushing the collaboration a bit more. let me do some brainstorming. i'm also meeting with Laurence and Liz this week.
The vacuum cleaner idea sounds good. I like the phrase "more lived vantage point."
Re: equipment. I'm still kind of mulling it over. I'd like to travel as light as possible, so now I'm thinking I might just bring two Disc-men (and/or Rio players, depending on what I find out about that) and CDs/minidiscs.
Most equipment rental places have packages for DJ'ing, where you get a sound mixing board and turntables, an amp and speakers. I could work with any analog mixer, I think; I've never used a CD mixer but I could probably pick it up.
A lot will depend on our budget. We're also talking about needing a Mac and Windows computer. I think Windows XP (which includes Internet Explorer), Winamp 5 and a CD-R drive is all I need to download mp3s and burn them to CD for mixing. The Rio player probably requires a USB port on the computer. Not sure I'm ready for "iPod mixing" but I guess that's the coming thing.
Also a projector and/or screen, and cables from the computer and/or DVD player to the projector.
Tom - could you post about the portable audio system you are considering bring down to Austin? i am sitting in my living room in New York thinking about bringing down my video mixer. i've been planning to for weeks, months, as well as my mini video camera. this stuff is so small yet it's so much to commit to considering that i'm also dragging down a bag full of art materials and catalogues i've collected (this i did not plan! i'm hopeless). i think i'll stick with the plan and bring the mixer.
i've been thinking more about my animation idea. one idea is that i attach a spycam to the vacuum cleaner to get a feel for the living room from a different, more lived vantage point. the straight walk through relates well to the architectural model idea but i'm onto the phase of departure from convention.
Tom - for the sake of documentation, I wanted to write into our weblog my current fake 3-D animation idea - even though we discussed this in person.
I shoot a video walk through of Laurence's home, capture the footage and export a series of stills (8 - 15fps). I then reduce the information to larger blocks of color, shade,...perhaps at 16 or 32 color depth. Using cut paper I'll layout the frames and reshoot them on video. Some frames would be semi-transparent - that way I could layer them on top of one another (similar to an animation program with an onion skin feature). I hope to achieve a virtual model or 3-D environment effect. Actually, the reverse of a virtual architectural model in that the architectural model is generally crafted before a building is erected.
This could get extremely laborious even in the testing stage so I will try a dry run in my own apartment and see what kind of paper I can find in Austin.
March 2004 emails
I'm posting relevant portions of our emails to date, in the interests of documenting the collaboration. These have been edited slightly since they weren't originally written for public consumption (Everything's subject to further editing). These are the March emails; Feb. ones were posted below.
Kristin, 3/4/2004:
I put together an animated gif of some of our work. Let me know what you think. I didn't work too hard on it. I think we could text around the gif or supply them with a url rather than an image. It's late and I've had a rough day so this may be highly unsatisfactory.Tom, 3/4/2004:Tomorrow I teach 12-10pm. i'll be working very hard to catch up with art-related matters over the weekend - getting materials to Laurence and Liz as a priority. I'm in New York for Spring Break March 10-22. Let's definitely get together, maybe a couple of times even to talk more about the collaboration.
I say 'dude' a lot now.
Kristin
Hi, Kristin, I like the .gif you made--it's dynamic and fun and gets across the music/video focus. Do you want to do the honors and send it to Liz, et al? I was planning to send them a link to my blog, FAQ page and online "critic cv"--I'll do that today and mention that you're sending the gif. Let me know if and when you're ready to start a collaboration page. It can start out as a private page and then be "launched" later. Best, Tom
Kristin, 3/4/2004:
cool, i'll send the gif. you can start the private page, although i won't be able to get going until saturday probably.
kristin*i'm so busy this week. guess i put everything business off and it's all built up. i'll survive. actually i would really like to just do my own work right now! teaching is fun but time-consuming.
i'm making my freshman perform today. i'm going to make them play, rewind, ff, stop and record with only thier bodies.
Kristin, 3/7/2004:
Tom, Liz... here is the final animated gif that i made for the image page on fluent~collaborative's site. it's simpler and smaller in bytes. i think it flows better. KristinTom, 3/7/2004:
Hey, Kristin, The GIF you sent me before, which I put up on the provisional blog page was a lot smaller --156 kb, as opposed to this one, which is 364kb. It's sharper, but it really slows down in my browser. I actually like the graininess of the 156kb one. Can I keep using it on the blog page? Tom
Kristin, 3/7/2004:
yeah, sure, use the one on your blog page. it's way fewer frames in teh second one. sharpening really added to the byte size i guess. i wonder if i reimported it now and compressed it further if it would be smaller and still look great.???i haven't been to our page yet because i couldn't get ANYTHING done this weekend with the weather this awesome. i now GET IT... that Austin hangin' out thing.
i'm practically worthless until sundown!
kristin
Kristin, 3/8/2004:
i had to give the designer a still image. i guess they do it in flash and the designer might not be so enthusiastic about putting it together as a shockwave flash. we'll have to do our animations for the weblog.still bannerby the way, if i want to post anims and pics on the weblog do i need to send them to you?
here are a couple images that i sent. i cleaned up the one from your blog with a more clean image of my deejay movie.
Kristin
another still banner:
Tom, 3/9/2004:
Hey, Kristin, The pics look good. I wondered how they'd handle the moving gif. I notice they have a Flash and HTML version of the flue-collab page. I linked to the html version from the blog. Re: uploading pics and video-- Pics and animated gifs you can do now with your login. I can explain it online or over the phone at a time that's convenient. Jim's working on a new file system that will accommodate video files, and he's redoing the music-uploading system we have now. It should be in place in the next month or so. He knows about our collab. Glad to hear you're getting nice weather! Tom
Kristin, 3/10/2004:
this bird has landed in nyc. let's get together. kristin
Kristin, 3/10/2004:
yes, saturday is cool. i'm performing on the willy b bridge in the early afternoon. let's get together after that. want me to call when i wrap it up? it's more of a testing the water perf.Tom, 3/11/2004:tues thru thurs is good to know. maybe we will benefit from a second and third meeting. even if it's officially more of a hangin' out austin style type gathering. kristin
Let me know if you want a testing the water audience and I'll come. Otherwise, sure, please call when you're done. Where should we meet? Would it be better for me to show you how to image-upload etc on an Apple (ie your computer)? This is assuming your logon works and you have the page powers you're supposed to have. Best, Tom
Kristin, 3/13/2004:
hey Tom,Tom, 3/14/2004:
i think i'm performing around 3pm along with one of my students who agreed to participate. we were going to walk dogs while wearing homemade uniforms but now we're playing the parts of both the humans and the dogs. we're going to walk over the williamsburg bridge and back wearing special 'sniff squad' uniforms, caps with stuffed animal dog ears sewn onto them, communicating to one another by walkie talkies and taking notes. we'll ask people if we can sniff their bags and gravitate toward conversation about missing civil liberties. it will be obvious that we are not 'cops' or 'intelligence agents'. i'm trying to find us kid statue of liberty sunglasses and our names will be something like 'Snoopy' and 'Pooch'. i do hope we are not arrested... or we'll have to reschedule our visit!you can swing by if you are curious. i also wanted to do a performance where i selectively scan people's backpacks and bags through a series of cardboard boxes as they come on and off the bridge. i won't be doing this one saturday. i would rather test the water with the sniff squad first.
would love to get together after that. i'll give you a ring. joe says he can show me how to upload images. i'm sorry that i haven't been aggressive about getting started after we meet. i've got a lot of ideas to run by you.
ok. looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.
kristin
Hey, Kristin, It was nice seeing you last night. Turns out the N train goes to WTC after hours, contrary to the map and what I thought. I stood on the Prince St. platform for about an hour, watched another N and 3 Qs go by, and ended up walking downtown to the PATH, and got home at 1:40 am. Ridiculous. At least I had the Octavia Butler book to read. I am posting a Piserchia chapter and will notify you when it's up While you're in NY, can we make sure you can get on the Tree and can use the testsite blog? Here's the URL: http://www.digitalmediatree.com/testsite04.3/ Once you're logged on and your machine(s) have cookies, it's an easy way to communicate. I'd like to try it out and make sure there aren't any bugs.
Best, Tom
PS Thanks for the New Humans link. I'll keep an eye out for them.