Bryan Newbold and I made a game for the 2010 Global Game Jam, a worldwide, 48-hour game making marathon.

The theme for the 2010 jam was deception. We decided to make a 3D game where the space was constantly changing due to datamoshing.

Read the whole story here.

There was a time period where I had Resolume and Dan Jacobs going on in my room 24/7. I have so much footage like this of people wandering in and watching themselves through layers of Dan’s distortion. This video is footage from what must have been our final session.

Dan you should be a VJ!

Fast forward 1302 days.

I’m at this art show/club environment, and I notice that the VJing grammar is the same as it was 186 weeks ago. The standard filters. Random clips on loop.

Eventually a grammar will evolve for more multi-dimensionality.

The closest I’ve seen to this is Hifana performing live.

Too often VJing has a kind of consistency to the motion that strips it of all engagement. Unmoving moving images. Here the performance had percussive feedback, synchronizing our heartbeats, building and releasing tension. A shape.

Bonus!

Catherine as a redhead! I’m pretty sure this was shot in Jen Chia’s old room, when she had the double to herself. Date on the file is September 2003.

Play my Flash Game! (has sound)

From September of 2005 for an attempted second semester of Joe’s video art class. Was to be one part of a three part installation on interactivity, about a man from the year 10000 traveling back in time to the year 3300.

Last night I started watching Ryan Trecartin’s I-BE AREA (full video) which I think captures really well the vision of the virtual future I was going for in Joe’s class.

My final project for that class from spring 2005 (or fall 2004?):

I started a Vimeo account. I’ll gradually upload all my old videos. Also I promise to make/save new video work in better resolution!

Made for 4.366 in September, 2005 from video clip-art. When presented, this was overdubbed live by Bill McKenna.

Music: Don Costa - Adios

The first 4.366 video. Assignment was to make a video about an object.

This video makes me pretty happy. Bryan and James tire swinging. I think it’s early spring, 2004. Music is The Kinks - Big Sky.

:eno rehtona s’ereH

David Lynch doesn’t usually say interesting things (though I love his movies) and this guy, Mark Cousins, doesn’t normally give good interviews (though I love that they exist). But this one (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) actually worked out really well.

There’s a gem at the very beginning of Part 3 when Lynch tells of how the character of Bob evolved in Fire Walk With Me.

Also, one minute in to Part 4, he describes not only his philosophy of moving the eye in his paintings and films (using textures as rhythms), but also tells his “Eye of the Duck” story. The idea is that a duck makes a good subject for a painting because of its textures and more importantly the relative amounts of the textures and their spatial relationships. The bill and legs, with their thinness, color, and line-ness move “fast” (not sure whether this refers to how the eye physically moves or perhaps the way the neurons fire in response to the visual stimulation but I think I know what he means–he says fire and electricity are the fastest). The feathers on the main body, with their blob shape and amorphous texture move slow. But the key, the “jewel”, is the eye (it is the “fastest” part of the image). And it is perfectly placed on the duck. If it were placed on the bill or feet it would be overwhelmed by their fastness. If it were placed on the body it would get lost. It’s placement with respect to the bill and the S-shaped neck connected to the body is just right.

Lynch claims that he tries to put in an “eye of the duck” scene in each of his movies. This is a scene that isn’t necessarily essential to the plot, but is absolutely essential to the artistic effect of the movie.

If you search through interviews, you can find Lynch mentioning which scene is the eye of the duck scene in his various movies (his answers sometimes conflict). Fans sometimes speculate on which scene they think is the one.

So I will do that here, speculating on the Lynch movies that are relatively fresh in my memory:

Mulholland Drive
The cowboy

Lost Highway
The phone at the party

Blue Velvet
“In Dreams” at Ben’s house

The best instance would be United Colors of Benetton’s sponsoring of a young David O’Reilly who would later become inventor of the iHologram and my favorite animator.

Today I came upon this Louis Vuitton-sponsored short by Takashi Murakami, though Murakami is surely not hurting for patronage.

The sweet house music is Fantastic Plastic Machine, of course.