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Here's my afternoon's work - an image for a cd cover I'm working on. Combined elements from 5 different images. 44 layers in Photoshop. Not finished yet.
I particularly enjoyed working on this one today as I have recently purchased a small Wacom drawing tablet. It makes such a difference! I've only had it a few days and already I can't imagine doing this kind of stuff without it!
]]>Anyway, there's lots to catch up on, so here goes...
1) Currently listening to...
I am geeking out at the moment listening to SOMA fm - my favourite online radio station. I usually listen to their 'dronezone' channel, but they are currently broadcasting 'MissionControl' - a blend of ambient music with a live audio stream from NASA who currently have a shuttle in orbit docked to the International Space Station. It's fascinating listening in to the radio communications between the astronauts and the ground crew. The other day I listened as they approached the station and then went through the whole docking procedure - quite thrilling! There's not much happening currently as the astronauts are all sleeping, but they are scheduled to wake up shortly and begin preparing for the first space walk of the mission. I'm also watching the live video feed from Nasa TV - it's currently just a live view of the shuttle from a camera on the station, lookin past the shuttle to the earth below. You can see the earth turning as they race around it at 17,000 mph. So intense and yet so serene...
Ha! They just woke up to 'Beautiful Day' by U2. :-)
Speaking of intense and serene, I've also recently been enjoying this podcast from sound recordist Chris Watson, who I met late last year while he was in Wellington. He is currently in Antarctica, making a new nature documentary with David Attenborough. There are some amazing images on the podcast page too, as well as some astounding soundscapes.
2) Study
This year is panning out to be an interesting one. I spent some time January doing some planning, but already some of those plans are being turned on their head as new opportunities and challenges present themselves. For instance, I had decided in January that I would do a couple of art and design papers at Massey this year, but after making some enquires I discovered that I was approximately 4 months late in enrolling! Yep - the deadline for 2010 was Oct 09, so that was a bit disappointing. I've looked around at various other options – there are quite a few – but I think I'm going to do some self-directed study instead, at least for the first semester. There are so many things I want to learn, it's hard to know where to begin.
One option is 'Processing':
Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool.
Processing can be used to do things like this...
Solar rework from flight404 on Vimeo.
Co-incidentally, the audio used for this test film is taken from another podcast I really enjoy - RadioLab.
3) Upcoming Gigs - JediNites, The Waitings
I thought the first part of this year would be fairly quiet for gigs, mostly because That 80's Band is out of action for the time being, but I've actually ended up being quite busy with JediNites which is a 3-piece covers band comprising myself, Matt Parlane on bass and Chris Jones on keys/vocals. It's good fun - interesting and diverse repertoire and good players all round. I'm learning this song for tonight's gig at The Occidental. Hilarious! (although the spoken intro on this video is lame compared to the original recording...)
I've also got a rehearsal tomorrow for a gig with The Waitings (Karel Van Helden and friends...). This band comprises some of my most favourite musicians to play with, including Phil Hornblow and Nick Tipping. The gig is on Friday 26th Feb in Nelson.
4) Recording projects
Not much happening on this front at the moment, although I do have some drum sessions coming up soon with Andrew London of the Cattlestops and Hot Club Sandwich, plus a couple of other possible projects on the horizon. Towards the end of last year I played a bunch of drum tracks on Janina Nicoll's upcoming album. It was great fun and I was more satisfied with my drumming contribution than I've ever been on any project before. Not sure of release date yet.
5) Tessellations
Here are a couple of patterns I came up with over summer... The first inspired by a coffee table I was sitting at in Mt Maunganui one day, and the second by some fabric I saw in a second hand clothing shop...
6) Design work
Just finished a new series of 5 titles for UCA, plus there were 2 last year that I never posted - 'Rainforest Baby' and 'Water Baby'.
I've also been doing some more casual work at Wellington City Council - Publication & Design, with more on the horizon. Also, I have a freelance job on at the moment designing the graphics and packaging for a 12 disc cd set for a client which is proving to be an interesting and challenging task.
7) Reaktor
Over the last couple of years I have been delving fairly deeply into Native Instrument's Reaktor. In particular I developed some customised sampler instruments for Stevie Starr's live show. I have had some requests recently to post a some tutorials on basic Reaktor building, so that's something else I'll be working on over the next while. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, the Reaktor User's Forum is a good place to start.
]]>A few weeks ago I did another linocut print. Inspired by a comment (thanks Geoff) I had a go at making a more intentionally Christmassy one. It was also an opportunity to try a couple of other techniques - a reduction print (yellow printed first, then more of the block removed and overprinted with green) and also using a second block (red). It was quite challenging to get all the colours to line up. This one is not perfect, but is one of the better ones... Ah well. Practice makes perfect huh? I was going to print a whole heap and send them out as Christmas cards but I've run out of time, so this cyber version will have to do...
Have a wonderful Christmas day, a relaxing New Year and all the best for 2010.
By the way - if you're looking for something to do on New Year's Eve, That 80's Band will be rockin' the Square in Palmerston North. We did it two years ago and it was insane. :-) Hard to believe I know, but Palmy is a funny town. Full of surprises.
]]>Hopefully I'll have internet access while I'm there. We're going to take a boat to White Island, weather permitting, and I have borrowed an Edirol R-09 portable recorder to record some sounds. Apparently it's a pretty active thermal area, so I'm hoping to get a bunch of hissing steam and boiling mud type stuff...
I've also just downloaded and installed the demo of the latest version of Ableton Live on my laptop, so I can spend some time playing with it and see if it might be useful for me. Fun!
]]>I'm working out of an excellent book called 'Designing Tessellations' by Jinny Beyer. So far I've mostly been photocopying sheets of tiles out of the book, cutting them out and sticking them into an exercise book in various ways that demonstrate different kinds of 2-D symmetry. But today I decided to apply some of what I've learned so far and build something in Illustrator. After a couple of false starts, here's the result. I like the way the gradient fill I've used on the tiles creates a kind of psuedo 3-D effect.
Also, Stevie has recently put together another song 'Auckland Town' which is available on his website for free download.
]]>I really like the mixture of old and new technology, the hand-made/home-made look and the sampled & recycled materials - audio and visual. It is, in many ways, very original and very Kiwi. There's one thing though that spoils it for me, and it seems to be common to most (if not all) NZ rap and hip-hop:
"Th' lyric is reel clevah and the images are pretty, but
why he gotta taawk like he come from noo york city?"
This is "Lost in a moment" by Shrift. This is gorgeous, both visually and musically. Enjoy :-)
lost in a moment from dennis wheatley on Vimeo.
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