Life as an Artificial Lifeform

I have found over the years that the best events are those that are born out of chaos. Coming from that conclusion I think that this years Visual Berlin Festival (formerly known as AViT2010) will be phenomenal. After a chaotic first phase of delays and planning it is now shaping up to be the VJ top event of the year. All put together by love without a budget the girls and guys over at Visual Berlin have outdone themselves to invite and promote and organize and plan a festival par excellence. From almost total breakup just two weeks ago when a big partner parted ways there is now a festival that makes sense and it got me and many others very excited.
Personally I am particularely excited about the location where it will all happen - the famous Tresor club - that is in its new home since some years but will open its full potential for the first time with a room for installations that has to be seen to be believed (and I think this is the most stunning location this town has ever seen - forget the berghain even the old ewerk). But I am getting sidetracked. Today was the day when the Night Time Schedule was finalized and made public. Since the prototypen are organizing the Basement Vault Tresor Floor for the "Breaking the Vault" party I am naturally very excited about this progress. (it took some sweat to get there let me tell you). Have a look at the fantastic audio visual lineup not only on that floor but throughout the event - its going to be very very whicked - if you are a visuals lover, a party goer, a dubstep fanatic, hanging onto 8bit tunes - there is something for everyone and its gonna be fun and massive.
I will post more things when they become available - for now have a look at the nighttime schedule:

http://festival.visualberlin.org/night-program/

Posted by fALk at 17:48 | Permalink | LiveVideoArtScene | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jam Session with Jeremy and some musician friends to figure out if video can lead audio and how both can feed of each other. While it wasn´t perfect for the whole jam there were parts that were extremely tight and working beautifully - very nice.

Now some uncommented impressions from the valley, lake and drive to Nelson BC. The valley is btw the biggest source for a certain forbidden green crop. It makes the area very rich. Most people have this "second income". Some of the houses are just totally stunning.

Nelson BC - a very nice town again with a very very hippy vibe to it. I don´t know why I took so little pictures there - sometimes you just don´t feel it I guess. Here is a side alleyway.

The best (vegetarian organic) burrito ever. You put it together yourself. Choice of 6 organic selfmade sauces - that was ridiculously yummy.

Brian on Nelson Mainstreet.

Nelson Mainstreet - the photo doesn´t do the town justice - just for documentary purposes here.

On the way back in the middle of nowhere on a fallen down barn building on the side of the road this pretty stunning streetart - certain forbidden plants is all I am saying.

To call New Denver a town would be an insult to other towns - but they had great aspirations in former times, just silver price falling of a cliff some 80 years ago didn´t help the expansion much.

A(nother) walk along the lake shore third try to find some old mines (I like holes in the ground). Still totally stunning this lake. Mesmerizing. If you ever need a place to find total inner peace this is the most likely one.

Spring coming - things come alive. How they will survive there between the rocks is another matter I guess.

Balance.

I did mention that the water is as clear as it can get - for a lake this size unbelievable clear.

Ah there it is - a mine. We found many. and they are just that - holes in the ground. I would have loved to climb in but we didn´t have any rope or light with us - damn. One of the mines went in extremely deep. They are just left there open with a very old very rusty fence on top to stop people from intruding.

Forest.

On the walk back we came by an electrical switching station. This is the warning sign :)

Still have no idea what a Block Parents Community is, but the design could be from east germany.

New Denver has a bicycle hospital with emergency vehicle and all - just in case your bike ever gets sick.

uhm somebody forgot his toy - then went on to take the bigger toy apart.

Oh I would have so liked to ride with the cool bus - who wouldn´t.

Just a nice garden in New Denver. All gardens where nice in New Denver - people have a lot of time around these parts to tend their gardens.

just because its a nice framing.

I have a bathtub for growing in the garden as well - it makes a really good flower/vegi pot. I am missing out on the hanging bear :)

Thats right this way pointer was there at our final destination the top one says "Berlin 10280 km" yes thats how far I was a away from home.

New Denver Mainstreet - movie set.

Back at the house the forest just beaming with light -pretty pretty.

Posted by fALk at 20:45 | Permalink | Travel | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. Bit of city life got into the way and fatigue of selecting and post processing photos and I want to have fun doing it so I hope you still there looking cause there are is some crazy stuff coming up :) Three more entries to go hopefully in less then a week it should finish it all up.

So just to recap we just left Revelstoke and went on the ferry to that island towards New Denver/Silverton where we arrived at our final destination - a house from a guy called bryce that I haven´t meet yet but the house is totally beautiful inside out here is one view of it :)

Brian introduced me to Jeremy a phenomenal artist - audio and paintings - we had a jam session with him and went on some walks and stuff. On the first walk on the shore of the lake on an old railroad track we tried to find the old mines that are scattered everywhere around this region. Didn´t quite make it to the mines but lots of stuff in the forest telling stories of the past when this area was alive and buzzing with people digging up silver. Like this steelpress thing - no way to move that from where it is ever ;)

Chains.

Not so pleasant but realtiy - clear cuts. Why can´t humans leave the bit of untouched nature alone.

Jeremy and his daughter on the lake. Truly amazing alive nice people.

The forest up.

Green getting greener by the day :) Lush dreamy forest.

Forest. Yes lots of trees everywhere.

Panoramic lake. This lake is just stunning meditative clear nice relaxing - you gonna see more of it here sorry.

Then we went to a place called Sandon. Sandon is a ghost town. Formerly housing 15.000 people now there are maybe 30 people living there. Look at this video to see Sandon in its former glory. The silver mine that made that place big is back up and working. The town used to have a walkway on top of the creek. One day a flood came and destroyed half the town who depended on that walkway the rest burned down in two successive fires. Not much left now but you can see a bit of its former glory. Still spooky place - we didn´t see any people while we were there.

Trying to finally see a mine we made a small walk but the amount of snow made us turn back soon. It did snow the night before you can see the snowfall line in the trees.

Back in Sandon there was a steam locomotive - there is no traintrack going into this town and that adds to the mystery why that vehicle is there.

p

The few houses (10 maybe max) that are there are great looking.

Oh and I didn´t see a sidewalk but don´t spit on it alright!

No this is not a mistake. Explaination further down.

The only shop in town - but there were two museums (closed for the season).

You seen the detail above. There are about 25 electric busses in town coming from winnipeg. Like with the steam locomotive its a bit of a mystery why they are there (nice too look at but strange in that place). The story goes that there is a guy in town who has two woman and acts like he is the mayor of the town (but not official) and he brings in these old vehicles. Why and what he is going to do with them and stuff nobody knows.

The reopened Silver mine - run by one guy. It produces silver and goes almost 40km into the mountain :O

Going back to New Denver you come across these lodge houses - adorable.

New Denver mainstreet - buzzing with life.

The lake again - no ripples totally smooth.

And back to the house.

Posted by fALk at 20:08 | Permalink | Travel | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Revelstoke by far the nicest of the skitowns we have visited and the ski resort just plainly rocks - while still pretty young there is so much backcountry to ski down ones you are up with the lift its crazy. Next time a bit more fresh powder and its heaven on snowboard earth. Anyway let me take you on a early evening stroll through the town.

Lovely houses again. The photos don´t do them full justice but you get the idea.

And powerlines :)

The highschool building - straight out of a western movie. Massive entrance.

A lot of attention to detail everywhere - the beautiful streetsigns.

Masterfull signage everywhere.

that chinese restaurant and its signage had some intense magic to it.

Mainstreet (not very long). Lots of organic bakeries and foodplaces - all in very lovely western styles - again movie set like but totally real.

The presentation center - former bankbuilding? Greek Columns FTW! ;)

Well…

Lower mainstreet.

A driving tired brian that was worn out on the mountain in Golden earlier in the day.

uhm. Pinging home.

Not high noon yet…

For my home possy a little inside joke.

An epic long train came along these lamps made beautiful sounds and we have this video of this girl on a really cool bicycle waiting to pass.

This was back at the Motel - I was told that these are very famous chairs that where every Motel back in the 70s - stylish.

Next morning sunrise. We are leaving to our final destination.

The trashcans all had funny shapes across the nation so I finally asked Brian if there is anything behind it - short answer: "Its against bears" - so they don´t like the shape? Anyway bears are a real problem in communities as they dig through trash destroy the trashcans in the process - yes there are lots of bears around - no sadly I have not seen one - they are coming out more in autumn.

Before reaching our destination one more obstacle to pass. A ferry would get us onto a peninsula behind one of the deepest lake in northern america. The lake was chrystal clear and it never freezes - the ferry is part of the road system and massive and free of charge. So we off into just after sunset - dreamlike landscape and just a hint of how nice it would become.

Off into the darkness for another 45 minutes and we will have reached Silverton, BC where the house we would stay is - the middle of a very dense very dark forest. up a very icy road behind a couple of bends - but thats for another entry :)

Posted by fALk at 16:02 | Permalink | Travel | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Leaving Wildwood the next day first next town we encountered was Edson. Unremarkable town in itself but a few things stuck out. First they seemed to have hired a very capable Corporate Identity Designer who made a logo for the town that actually stuck with me (one can debate if its nice or not - not too bad at least). The logo was put onto every lamppost - if you want to promote your town and your town is mostly a drive through town this is very very effective (if done nicely).

And Edson had a skatepark too - covered in snow still but quite massive. They have a mayor that understands a few things it seems.

The graffiti is not the most sophisticated in the world but humorous and playing on wild west themes and I like the stencil of the flower in the middle ;)

Just a tad out of Edson something appeared on the horizon that I was soooo looking forward too. The Rockies in all their glory and as with any other mountain range they changed my mood they made me a little kid wanting to play in the dirt and climb them board them hug them - just the mountain goat that I am accused of being coming through.

We drove into the mountains and came to Jasper - a touristy town with almost no native people to be found. Most people in the town where from the philipines. We stayed at the Atha-B - cheap but very nice hotel in town - boarded a bit next day under prestince conditions (and no photos from on the mountains - its my off time from pixels don´t want cameras around ;) slept another night in Jasper and then rocked on north to south inside the Rockies. Beautiful drive here some impressions.

Totem poles at last after I heard that they actually tell a story and I have never seen one in person I wanted to see one so badly. Really cool story telling tool they had if you ask me. So its a bit hard to see the story but let your imagination run wild and there are lots of stories in them.

Oh I forgot - in Jasper we left the camera in the hotelroom for a evening stroll - what a stupid mistake - we missed a picture of a lifetime with a caribou standing on the railway line while a lokomotive heading straight toward it making loud noise and all but the caribou (a huge deer like animal) wasn´t moving at all - just shortly before impact it very calmly and slowly marched off the track. The caribou had balls. Could still hate myself for not having the cam with me. The caribous we saw next day chilling out in middle of town - they are just not afraid of anything it seems. This is the closest I can give you for a picture of a caribou - a sign warning us that they are in the area - yes they are.

The "famous" icefields - a formerly huge glacier that the road went through and just as in the alps - the glacier is gone - receded so far that you had to guess where it is - just the gravel left behind gave you a glimpse of its former glory - but yeah global warming is surely a myth.

Avalanches are a bigger danger here then in the alps I would say - no matter where we looked a avalanche had come down - they are smaller then in the alps but surely not less deadly.

I call this mountain alien Mt Rushmore - I hope you can see why ;)

The frozen waterfalls where everywhere. A feature I have not seen like this in the alps either.

Yes thats champaign powder up there. :)

The deers are elegant around here.

Somewhere here we arrived in Banff - contrary to Jasper it was filled with australien people - and was bigger and even more touristy - didn´t like it at all - but the Banff University is quite a nice place. We stayed two nights boarded at Sunshine and drove to Golden and then onto Revelstoke - mostly boarding and little concentration for nice pictures.

Our Motel in Revelstoke and that was actually a real town - a town to like with a really nice spirit to it. So there are lots a pictures from this cute place in the next entry.

Posted by fALk at 16:29 | Permalink | Travel | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So after a long long drive from Flin Flon through Edmonton we were tired enough not to push our way to the mountains but instead eyeing the best next motel. Just that there where none. One on the other side of the road we kinda missed because there was not an easy turnaround and generally turning around wasn´t really our style anyway so we drove and drove and then a town sign for "Wildwood" came up with the tiny icon representing an opportunity to sleep with a roof over our head - we took the exit and found ourselfs in front of this place - well it was weirdly inviting and as it was our only option anyway we went for it. What came up was probably the most surreal night we had on the whole trip - in a very good way. The Silver Spur Hotel and Salloon was like a cross mix between a classic oldschool western bar with a bit of studio 54 a modern disco and a casino mixed in. Really a film could not have build a more fun crazy set then this. There where only three people in the bar. The barkeeper whos name we forgot (and we appologize here), Chrystal the waitress and Justin the woodsplitter. I get ahead of myself.

The bar had this still live with two real stuffed bears and a stuffed owl in one corner.

The really dry and funny barkeeper.

Chrystal the waitress.

Justin the woodsplitter.

Who ordered us a B52 which the barkeeper mixed to perfection (after fact checking the recipe in a book ;) - with a loose tongue we came to a very interesting and open talk that blew me away. Forget stereotypes fALk really they don´t exist. The young chaps were happy where they lived. They don´t like cities - they like to have no concrete under their feet, they want to get energy independent, they grow their own food. They totally know that they are percieved as rednecks (that word was brought up by them) and to a degree
like that monicker as it gives them an identity but they are not the Sarah Palin kind of rednecks they just like to have fun in their own unique ways - like sitting on an old car hood thats tied to a car and running down a frozen river at 100km/h :) Chrystal is planning on getting solar panels they manage some forest etc etc. all that while they have oil pumps on their fields. And yes they all have internet - I think the main reason for their awareness.
(If any of you three are reading this - you rock! There is hope in the world :)

Me trying to hide as per usual especially after the B52 ;)

The Sivler Spur Saloon event schedule. Its usually more busy but there was a brithday party in the next town so most people went there.

Crazy idea worth having for the club - towel material in pink wrapped tablecloth. It would only work in pink and it needs to be washed after every night but it surely had style.

The hotel room was a timecapsule.

This is the Silver Spur Hotel and Saloon from the outside. There was also a chinese restaurant inside - contrast people is where its at :D

And two more (not so minor) inhabitants of this small village. Again - it was an experience of its own. The village is bleeding inhabitants as the main highway was moved about 300 meter away from the village so people do not stop anymore here. I don´t think this will be bad for them in the long run with such lovely people and a working community.

If you are ever near make sure you stop by there and have a drink its really an experience to be had.

Posted by fALk at 16:06 | Permalink | Travel | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So fluently we went from Saskatchewan to Alberta - no fancy sign or anything alerting us of the change but something strange happened on the fields all of the sudden.

Upon closer inspection it became clear what was happening - oil and gasfield exploration in the midst of agriculture. land cattle and fossil fuels would be the slogan for Alberta province.

Still straight roads it gets a bit more hilly billy.

#

And modern oilpumps come in different flavors but all of them are painted in bright colors. To make them more friendly looking?

The classic oil pump.

And yeah just fields I like fields.

more fields with more gastanks they have serious natural gas reserves in Alberta. Makes it a wealthy province - even so - as we later found out - the famers get only a tiny compensation for having something like this on their fields - if they refuse then the companies go to the neighbor farmer and just drill vertically to access the same gas/oil bubble. Not nice practice if you ask me - leaving the farmers poor and the oilcompanies rich.

Huge all over the place along our journey sticking out like monuments of human technological feats - so we could not figure out what they actually transmitted because it was neither cellphone nor radio most of the time.

More jumpin moose.

Don´t ask. I don´t know.

And we found the road that leads to heaven - if you believe in such things - I don´t so it just too us further west instead of into the sky.

Two of my favorite field pictures of the whole trip :)

Me the Sunset Sucker. I mentioned already that this was the longest sunset I ever witnessed because we where driving right into it without any interruption for hours and therefore we think that must have made it longer.

With the sun just set we arrive in Edmonton. The oil refinery glittering in the distance like a scene out of star wars. It didn´t make us feel like we wanted to stay so we went on looking for a better place - that was a a real good decision - see it in part 3 of day 5.

Posted by fALk at 15:01 | Permalink | Travel | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So from Flin Flon we set out into the sunrise and into Sasketchewan province. Like Manitoba a mostly prairie province except for the road we took it seems - because that presented us with more forest tunnels for almost six hours. Not much to take pictures you would think but some things need documenting.

For example this monster of a snowmobile - small tank might be a better description. I surely would want to try to ride that one day just to see how it feels.

The most shocking thing was the amount of dead trees on the way. You had these patches running for miles with just dead trees on them. Brian was insisting it was logging but it didn´t made sense as the trees stumps where still there. Looking at the warning signs that made you aware not to transport firewood around the country it was clear the pine beetle has struck this part of canada extremely heavily.

Yes it seems we are on the right route.

Brian recreating in the wind on a frozen lake on a little detour we took to have a break from the tree tunnels.

There was a truck on a deserted parking lot and it had these charming number plates.

Yes told you more dead trees - the only distraction on the forest tunnels - a sad sad sight - its quite hard to see the scope of the destruction on the photos - its massive and everywhere.

The main northern highway turns into a dirt road at one point. The dirt road is better then a lot of paved road in this world - I have no idea how they make it but its smooth as butter.

And this is how a clear cut looks like.

Ah the trusty professor (the car) and brian. Yes this car took us on the 10.000km journey with only one small hickup (alternator carbon sticks worn down). Very comfortable to sit in for all these long hours.

Then we came out of the tree tunnels all of the sudden and back into the prairies.

The roads get straighter and straighter and longer.

And also the territory more untrusting - pre pay for your gas or you aint get none - not that you have any chance to escape here - they could see you for miles down the road if you try.

also dead trees in the prairies.

and funky golf course signs.

Town of Willness - Land and Cattle - thats the best description for what lays ahead.

And the Moose are flying in Sasketchewan.

Now this picture might seem unpostworthy but but - the next 3 towns all looked exactly the same with the exact same towers in the middle - you will see.

Dusty roads and land and cattle.

And yes still the Moose are flying around here. Fun fact of the day moose charge cars. So instead of like deer who just stare at bright lights and stand still the mighty moose come after you. Nobody could tell me how to actually react when one does. Seeing one on the way back in the night I think I really don´t want to find out - they are freaking massive animals.

Land. Pretty Land.

Glaslyn - town two look alike (town three will be in the next entry as that was already in Alberta province).

Long Roads that seemed to never end.

Deserted houses left and right.

Very very very long roads.

Dusty long roads and the start of the longest sunset I have seen in my life.

Rythmic pretty clouds.

Town three in the row - its not really good visible but these structures were the most prominent buildings and there are just a dozen or so houses scattered around them so that made three towns in a row look so much of the same that it was like a déjà vu.

And an eye forming in the sky - I am sorry to bore you with this but please understand we just had been through five hours of tree tunnels so everything seemed to be enormously exiting.

Posted by fALk at 3:14 | Permalink | Travel | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On Day 4 we took off from The Pas (and yes I liked that town) and went to Flin Flon - not very far away. First stop was the trainyard in The Pas - you have to understand the trains here are long - really really really really really long. Mostly just dragged by two of these super locomotives - how they do this is a mystery to me. Anyway the trainyards are unsupervised and unfenced - so anybody wants to "have fun" with a 3 km long train may go to The Pas.

About half way to Flin Flon we came to a place where I don´t quite remember the name but it came to existence because it was a portage - the Cannery Portage to be precise (the town probably was named similar). A portage is where there is a watershed - meaning there are two rives/creeks flowing in different direction not far away from each other - so you take your canoe and carry it from one river to the next so you can enjoy more free riding down the water. When first entering the town we where almost ready to swap the volvo to the bombardier snowmobile sitting around. Brian took a test drive but since snow levels where not high enough we stayed with the volvo for the time being.

Just wanting a bit lunch at the lake we met this photofriendly husky who barked at us very loudly but stopped and posed ones the camera was directed to him. So he gets his wish of a published photo I guess.

Oh and people living in this house sure ain´t getting wet feet anymore.

This is the memorial for the Cranberry Portage - a very important point - you can go to the Hudson Bay from here all down river and very far inland on the other side. Was used by the First Nations and then later by the hunters and settlers.

Leaving this place Flin Flon was (finally) coming up. This is kinda the first impression.

The mine and its smokestack rules the city everywhere

Yes real people living here who also seem to wear clothes.

As every city out west the obligatory watertower and 9000V on the multitude of powerlines

And they have culture too!

But the industrial side of town rules the impression

With a huge open pit mine in the middle.

Cute houses.

Old empty houses.

More cute houses.

Oh and did you know that in Flin Flon you can find the home of Rock'n'Roll? Well I didn´t either but it went bankrupt and was empty - seems that Rock'n'Roll is dead (or homeless).

The youth in Flin Flon (and The Pas) uses the rocks that line the streets for their graffitty playground - not sophisticated and strictly forbidden but to be seen everywhere.

The decorating commitee (oh yes that became a running joke with all these oversized statures in all these small towns) likes santa claus.

Tourism is apparently a bit slow in Flin Flon. The guy looking over the sign is actually Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin. The guy who gave the name to the town - purely fictional character - I direct you to the wikipedia entry for more information about this - its a funny.

Smokestack peaks out everywhere I mentioned that already.

The media and the church caters to the big industrial complex.

We were blessed with another super nice sunset - like pretty much every day on our journey so far. Here is the main red mine building.

Some textures we liked.

There is something about raised structures that I find appealing.

Powerline yeah :D

Flin Flon looked like the moon - there was only forest all around it but the city itself is enormously bare rocky. The trees must have been logged for the mining business.

This smokestack was captivating sorry to bore you with more.

And ähm more powerlines :)

A memorial I just liked the light on it don´t ask me what the brave men and woman of Flin Flon actually did.

Typical typical street in nice light.

I am a romantic sunset sucker.

And old buildings with lots of texture.

But yeah more sunset.

Just the perfect CD cover for some death metal or too hard to listen to dubstep :P

We went to see the Flin Flon Bombers ice-hockey match. They won handely in some league that I can´t remember. Was my first live ice-hockey match I have seen - couldn´t have lost my ice hockey virginity at a more authentic place. And yes the guys are rough.

The queen reigns them all.

Flin Flon wasn´t the best stop on our trip sadly - we didn´t find many locals and couldn´t figure out where the afterparty to the icehockey match was so we went on the next day. Still a surreal town for sure.

Posted by fALk at 20:05 | Permalink | Travel | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am currently writing a book on Live Cinema fusing all that I have learned by VJing over the last 11 years enhancing my three year old theory and trying to actually define a new media and art form. I am looking specifically to theories of storytelling, engaging audiences, keeping them interested all the while enhancing the general atmosphere and not loosing the spontaneity that VJing brings with it and tell a message.

At this point it is a very personal look at how I think Live Cinema would work. In an efford to make it easy to grasp and make the appeal broader I want to get a sense of what is actually needed to understand the medium. If enough questions that have not been answered in the main part of the book arrive I will add a Q&A section to specifically answer them.

Questions can range from the mundane to the specific - it can come from a musicians perspective or a vjs perspective or the audience perspective or an actors perspective - whatever your background please don´t hesitate to ask - the more questions the better.

You can either leave a comment here or send a mail to falk(at)prototypen.com

So if you have any kind of thoughts about the artform in your head that have not yet been answered please fire away - I would be very happy to incorporate and answer them.

Posted by fALk at 18:39 | Permalink | LiveVideoArtScene | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Sorry for the long pause. It was all a bit too eventful to keep up with the blog - the landscape just too stunning to stare at the computer, snowboarding in between and all, but we try to catch up a bit. So here is Day 3 the day we entered Manitoba. Driving from Kenoa to Winnipeg then up road 6 through the interlake all the way to The Pas. We thought it would be a beautiful drive along lakes but as you can see there was road and woods - straight roads through woods not much going on other then road and woods for hours and hours.

We enter Manitoba in the late morning.

This is how Manitoba presented itself 20 minutes drive in.

The great plains. Agriculture. More Agriculture.

And electricity crisscrossing.

Yes everything in this country looks like a movie set or a pretty postcard.

More electricity poles - why the obsession? well first of all they give depth second of all they have a visual rythm and after all we are on an educational trip and rhythm is a big part of it.

Yes thats how the street looked like for at least 5 hours and all of next day and the day after as we where to find out.

Deer crossing. I found out too late that the signs for animals change drastically from region to region - so this is the start of a series on signs - the charging moose will be photographed on the way back

I called it Barcode Road.

The only part of the lakes we got to see midway through the upper part of what is called the interlake (a dried up lake between two big lakes as we later found out) a little resting place and the start of the sunset. Since 4 hours we saw nothing but trees and road with maybe 5 cars/trucks in total. So I craved some detail.

The small lake we where allowed to see. The big lakes all behind thick tree lines.

Endless straight wide big huge I tell ya.

Long sunset on a straight road with trees by its side. Yes same road - we came through 1 town and passed two crossing otherwise road and trees but now at least some action in the sky.

No not shopped and no - no idea where he came from or walked to next intersection was 30 minutes drive away last intersection 3 hours and no you can not walk through the forst either - a mystery.

Finally the end of the 6 - that was a very very very very very long straight stretch of road - it wouldn´t be the last.

The 60 led us straight out west right into the sunshine

Yes thats exactly where the sun is - no sign really needed - but before you overlook eh. I mean there are so many trees its easy to miss the sun.

And there ends the day with a glorious sky.

Shortly later we ended up in The Pas where we stayed the night. had a nice chatter with the bar girl of "The Good Thymes" - that bar reminded me so much of the Affenclub at home in a way - very spooky. The whole vibe and people where so similar in a way. Very friendly folks out there living their own life - sweet. Sadly no camera and no audio recording here - we had to warm up to that.

Posted by fALk at 3:08 | Permalink | Travel | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 10th-12th 2010

Licht An!

Berlin’s original Videokunst Club, VisualBerlin reflects the richness of the city itself. With members from nine countries we are a diverse family bound together by a shared commitment to the progression of audiovisual art forms, performance and technology. Our artists have rocked festivals and parties across the globe and in 2010 it’s our turn to return the favor. From June 10-12 we will host the VisualBerlin Festival, a community driven event focusing on live performance, VJing and experimental media. The festival is an excellent opportunity to connect with an engaged audience of public and peers. Share with us your passion, your creativity, your experiments and your fun. Wir freuen uns!

Background

Founded in 2005, VisualBerlin is a non-profit community platform, providing support and a social structure for participating artists. Our interests and expertise covers everything from underground party visuals to hardware-hacking, programmatic arts, experimental performance and media philosophy. Community is at the forefront of everything we do. Since 2003 members of our group have hosted events in collaboration with AViT, the international support network for VJ arts and practitioners. In 2006 the newly-formed VisualBerlin celebrated it’s first official AViT network event and in 2010 we are pleased to continue the tradition of AViT in Berlin with the VisualBerlin Festival. The common ideals of VisualBerlin and AViT ensures that the participating artists and surrounding community is the most important aspect of each of our events.

Location

In 2010 the Festival once again takes place in conjunction with Berlin’s international design festival DMY. Over three days, guest VJs, performers and developers will have the opportunity to present their work in Berlin’s most unique locations. These headquarters will act as a hub and meeting point for all artists with free wifi, event information, technical support and a daily breakfast club for participants.
The night program takes place in external clubs, transformed by the VisualBerlin team to offer you the best setting for your performance.

Program

The festival will be a mix of curated programming and open-exchange. Innovative projects and developments will be presented daily across a schedule of workshops, performances and discussions. Additional jam sessions will take place in the lounge area giving you the opportunity to test out new collaborations, experiment and exchange ideas on the big screen.

The night program is split into three events:

• Night 1, Dubstep party
• Night 2, Chiptunes + AudioVisual Performances
• Night 3, Classic VJ/ Closing Party.

How To Participate

We will be collecting submissions for the following:

• Workshops/Seminars
• VJ sets
• AudioVisual Performances

The application form is available at http://visualberlin.org/festival

Please take care with your application and make sure you have supplied us with all the requested information. The application deadline is April the 30th, 2010.

Posted by fALk at 0:02 | Permalink | LiveVideoArtScene | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We made it to Flin Flon yesterday. Watched the local Ice Hockey Team win. Interesting surreal mining town. But I still have to catch up with the "old" photos so here goes a rather uneventfull day two that ended in Kenora.

Sunrise on Lake Superior

Ice Crysals

Icy Shore Sunrise

Still Lake Superior (yes its a freaking huge lake).

Long empty roads - a reoccuring theme pretty much through all our journey to this point

Empty roads becoming more straight as we get closer to the great plains.

Not much going on would be nice if these radio towers would transmit internet but they are just for radio it seems - not even basic cellphone coverage most of this part of the journey. Still they are somehow pretty.

Granit rock everywhere in all shapes and colors.

Small Lake giving us a pretty sunset.

Posted by fALk at 13:47 | Permalink | Travel | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Little Update - we are in The Pas (spoken The Paw and thanks to Rachel for the heads up tricky town name) we are now on the way to Flin Flon - to not completetly loose track of the photos here is the next batch - still from Day 1 - I never gonna catch up again at this rate ;)

Left Restaurant in some small town

We are on the lookout for movement - the windmill was the first (and last) movement for a very long time

Empty old houses - haunting

But with modern ornamentals

and a Brian in front

who is still happy driving - super triple mirror inside

And scrap yards full of gorgeous old cars and other mobiles

Canadian Shield has granite mountains

Driving along Lake Superior - the last of the Big Lakes - People are Ice Fishing - even so the ice started melting

The little stone man figures are everywhere we go like little ghosts watching over us

Lake Superior is really big and it has nice nice nice sandy beaches that except for the pine trees (and the ice) they could also be in the Caribbean

And always the devestation to nature comes into view - mountain top mining.

Posted by fALk at 15:29 | Permalink | Travel | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Originally planned as a snowboarding trip with a study element the weather on the ground and general things that needed to get done morphed this idea into a fully blown road round trip from Toronto to the Rockies and back - probably close to 9000km in total. While planning the trip roughly we have decided on just a very few waypoints to leave us enough room for decision making. One of those targets is Flin Flon the town where the most northern road that goes west starts. Oh and we have power and 1 Gigabyte of 23Mbit internet on board while the coverage won´t be available everywhere a lot of our route is covered so I try to keep up to date as much as possible.

Driving out of Toronto just before sunrise we have now entered the venerable canadian shield - territory of the Mohawk tibe. Harsch rock formations and beautiful meditative lakes lining the street. Our destination for the day will be Wawa on Lake Superior said to be the most beautiful road in Ontario - so we try to make it til sunset and then also get the other half on sunrise.

Internet has been extremely rare - had no cellphone coverage for 1200km so I am running behind with report and photos. We slept last night in a Motel 200km after Wawa. Today we drove along the last bit of Lake Suprerior - stunning road. Then went west direction Winnipeg to stay over in Kenory - the last town in Ontario. We are offered a stay at Brian Cousin, computer geek with fast network so I am able to finish at least the photoset of the first half of the first day. More on next internet connection.

gasstation - half price of germany at least.

Last time to see so many cars on one place our start in Toronto

Canadas Wonderland just outside of Toronto

Brian having fun driving

Sunrises in the snowbelt. Breathtaking start of the trip.

The canadian shield - still with us after 2000km - hard granit holding beautiful meditative lakes. At this time of the year all lakes should have icecovers - its much too warm everywhere. Coldsnap and snow expected next week - perfect timing for snowboarding if it happens.

The land of the First Nation of the Mohawk 2.5 hours north of Toronto

First Nation of the Wikwemikong

Lots of not so pleasant views, the blue sky was brown over the smokestack

Prime property on southside view

A horsefarm on the road

We are going west - far west

Posted by fALk at 13:33 | Permalink | Travel | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Brian T. Moore created this installation piece from footage he shot in Toronto mixed over audio that was composed by my dub hero Saetchmo from sound snippets recorded also in Toronto all with a little bit of help from me. Enjoy. Official home for the video here.

Posted by fALk at 19:03 | Permalink | LiveVideoArtScene | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From tomorrow until sunday I have the honor to do a guestblogging session at the great german language blog Das Kraftfuttermischwerk. There will be something very cool happening which I am not very inclined to disclose just yet - only that it will be visual so even the english speaking crowd can head over. I will update this post with links to the articles. Thanks ronny for the opertunity.

The fellow guest bloggers crew on Twitter:
murdelta
bjoerngrau
misterhonk
mururoar
withoutfield

and yours truly

the twitter hashtag for whole guestblogging session will be: #kfmwnv

Here are the links - its on ongoing list so check here until sunday:

Die DDR Keller-Sammel-Serie: Intro
Die DDR Keller-Sammel-Serie: Möbel Informationsblätter
Die DDR Keller-Sammel-Serie: Heimat – Das GRW
Die DDR Keller-Sammel-Serie: Die Fernsehturm Brochure
Die DDR Keller-Sammel-Serie: Final Destination MOW

Posted by fALk at 20:03 | Permalink | Personal | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There is a raging discussion out there on the web about the upcoming HTML5 standard and the inclusion of the video tag. Not about the tag itself but about the codec used by videos played inside that tag.
There is a firestorm by free software advocates that want the only codec to be used inside this tag to be the -largely- patent free open source Theora Codec - the other side wants the ubiquitously used high quality H264 video codec. I think I can weigh into that debate. If you don´t want to or know already about codecs, containers and its history jump below to "my take on the codec war".

I am a content producer have been following video on the web since the very very beginning, have advised firms how to handle video on the web, have struggled countless of hours trying to find the best solution to put video on the web and have so far refused to use flash to display video on the web. I always believed that the web should be fundamentally free of technology that is owned by one company that then can take the whole web hostage to their world domination plans. I have hoped that the video tag would be introduced much earlier in the game and have looked with horror to youtube & co. how they made adobe - a company who has basically stopped innovating 10 years ago - a ruler of the web when it comes to moving pixels.
Now this is finally about to change - or at least that is the intention by google, apple, mozilla and others who are pretty fed up with flash for very obvious reasons (its slow, development sucks, its proprietary, the source code of the creations is always closed, its slow, its slow as fuck, it eats energy from the processors like nothing else). It never really made any sense to put a container inside a container inside a container to display a video - the second most powerhungry thing you as a consumer can do on your computer (the first would be 3d/gaming).
Yet a video is not a video. A video to fit through the net needs to be compressed - heavely. Compression technology is nothing new but it evolves over years and years. Its always a tradeoff between size, quality and processing power. The "Video" codec by apple - probably the first "commercial" codec available to a wider audience looks rubbish but is insanely fast (it utilizes almost no processor on a modern machine) and the file size is pretty alright. It was capable to run video on an 8 Mhz processor mind you.
Over the years lots and lots of codecs have sprung up - some geared toward postproduction and some towards media delivery - there is a fine line - for the postproduction codecs you need full quality and try to save a bit of storage. Its videos that still need work and you want to work with a mostly uncompressed or losslessly compressed video. Processing power for decrompression is an issue because you need to scrub through the video - also compression porcessing power (to make the video) you don´t want to take ages because you like to work in realtime and not wait for your computer to re-encode a video just because you clicked on a pixel.

The other codecs are the "end of line" codecs - delivery codecs - made to compress the crap out of the video while "visually" loosing the least amount of quality and having the smallest possible file sizes. Here it doesn´t matter how long the compression side takes as long as the decompression is fast enough to work on low end computers to reach the largest available audience.

While production codecs are fairly fluid - people change as soon as a better becomes available - takes less then 5 month to have a new codec established (recently apple released the ProRes4444 codec - most postproduction companies are already using it (those that don´t use single pictures - but that a whole different story) - the delivery codecs are here to stay for a very very long time because in the time of the web people just don´t reencode their stuff and reupload it - if its there its there.

Now before I go into the format war and my take on it there is one more concept I need to explain shortly - containers. Flash is a container for a video with a certain codec displayed in it. So is quicktime, so is windows media so is Real Media. It gets confusing because MP4 can be a container and a codec at the same time. A container just hold the video and adds some metadata to the video itself - but the raw video could be ripped out of the container and put into another without re-encoding. This is what apple is doing with youtube on the iPhone. Adobes last "great" innovation (or best market move ever) was to enable the Flash container to play h264 (a codec) encoded videos. Since Apple (among everybody else who isn´t a flashy designer) thinks that flash sucks they pull out the video from inside the flash container and put it into the (now equally bad) quicktime container and so you can enjoy flash free youtube on your iPhone.
Now with the technicalities out of the way whats all the fuss about?
HTML5 promises - ones it becomes a standard - to advance the web into a media rich one without bolted on add ons and plugins that differ from platform to platform and browser to browser - its a pretty awesome development or most people ever developing anything on the web. Part of the process to make this the new standard is to involve everybody who has something to say and is a shaker and mover on the web to give the direction this standard is going. Its a tough rough ride - everybody and their mother wants to put in their tech their knowledge their thinking - I really would not want to be the decision maker in this process if you gave me a trillion.
The biggest and most awesome change in HTML5 - and the one the most abvious to the end user - will be the inclusion of media content without a freaking container that needs a plugin to display that content that only half or less of the internet population have. To make this happen at least all the big browser makers need to approve what can be played inside the new tags (video & audio).
This is where the debate heats up. I really don´t understand why audio doesn´t spurn the same debate publicly as does video - but its probably because google is involved with the video debate and can change the direction completely on their merit with whatever they choose to support on youtube.
The two competing codecs are Ogg Theora and H264. Now I am less familiar with the Ogg codec (but have tried it) but first a small history of H264. Back around 2000-2001 a company called Sorenson developed the first video codec that was actually usable on the web - there where different ones before but they all sucked balls in one of the departments for a great delivery codec. Sorenson made a lot of video people who wanted to present their work on the web very happy. Apple bought in and shipped quicktime with the Sorenson codec and the ability to encode (make) the video with this codec - albeit with a catch. To really get the full quality of Sorenson you had to buy a pro version - which costs a lot of money - the version that Apple included could play Sorenson (pro or non pro) just fine but the encoder was crippled to one pass encoding only. The real beauty and innovation was with two pass encoding - basically the computer looks at the video first and decides where it can get away with more compression and where with less.
Apple and the users where not really happy with this situation at all. So for a long time (in web terms) there was no real alternative to that codec. The situation was even worse because to play Sorenson you had to have Quicktime installed - before the advent of the iPod a loosing prospect - I think they had 15% installed user base on the web. It was the days of the video format wars - Microsoft hit with Winows Media (which sucked balls quality wise but had a huge installed user base) and on top Real Media (which was the only real viable solution for streaming video back then).
In the meantime another phenomenom happened on the audio side - mp3 became the defacto standard - a high quality one at that (back then) in the audio field. We the video people looked over with envy. When producing audio you could just encode it in mp3 pretty much for free on shareware apps and upload it to the web and everybody could listen to it. There was nothing even close happening on the video side. The irony is of course that its MPG1 layer3 (mp3) - part of a video codec - but the video codec side of MPG1 sucked really really really really bad. Quality shit, Size not really small only processor use was alrightish but not great.

Jumping forward a couple of years (and jumping over the creation of MPG2 - the codec used for media delivery on DVDs - totally unsuitable for web delivery) the Motion Picture Expert Group - a consortium of industry Companies and experts that developed (and bought in) MPEG1 and MPEG2 decided to do something for cross platform standard video delivery and created the MPEG4 standard (overjumping MPEG3 for various reasons - mostly because of the confusion with MP3 (MPEG1 layer 3). MPEG4 is a container format - mostly - but it had a possibility for reference codecs and the first one of these was H263 - this already was quality wise on par with Sorenson yet in a container that was playable by Quicktime and Windows Media - the two last standing titans of media playback (by this time Real Media mostly had already lost any format war). Great you think - well not quite - Microsoft wasn´t enourmously happy and created its own standard (as they do) based on MPG4 H263 called VC1 (I am not really familiar with this side of the story so I leave you to wikipedia to look that up yourself if you are so inclined). Web-video delivery was still not cross platform sadly and the format war became a codec war but there was now a standard underlying all of this and the quality - oh my the quality was getting good. Then the MPEGroup enhanced the h263 codec and called it h264 and oh my this codec with a pure godsend in the media delivery world - it was great looking scaled up to huge resolution could be used online, streaming and on HighDefDVDs and in the beginning it all was pretty much for free.
It looked like an Apple comeback in the webvideo delivery because Quicktime was for a while the only container that could play H264 without problems. Around that time flash started to include a function in its webplugin to play video - interestingly enough they choosed to include sorenson video as the only supported codec - word on the street was that Sorenson was very unhappy with Apples decision to ditch them as codec of choice and instead pushed H263/H264. Now the story could have ended with Apple winning the format war right there and all computers would have quicktime installed by default but it didn´t because out of nowhere Youtube emerged and Youtube used flash and Youtube scaled big time and made it - for the first time ever - really easy for Joe the Plumber and anybody else to upload a video to the web and share it with the rest of the world family. It changed the landscape in less then 6 month (I watched it it was crazy). Now you had a really good codec finally as a content producer to upload video in very good quality but the world choosed the worse quality inside a player that sucked up 90% processing power with the codec of choise needing another 90% and all that came out was shit looking video that everybody was happy to be over - but the user experience of hitting an upload button and have everybody watch your video was just unbeatable. Eventually just when people realised how bad these videos looked compared to some Hollywood trailers that still used quicktime and H264 Adobe included H264 into flash and prolonged their death by doing so again (without innovating at all it must be said).
Now fast forward to now - again a group of clever people, big companies and such have sat down to bring us HTML5 and the video tag. That tag as said is going to rid us from any plugins and containers and instead just plays pure video as fast as possible right inside the browser that supports HTML5. Now the problem is that people can not agree on the codec to be used. Why you ask if H264 is so great? Because H264 was developed by a for profit group of people and they want to make money and they have freaking patents on it - not that this has hampered web video to this day in any way - but for the future standard it seems lots of people have taking offense to that. There is in fact a whole ecosystem of alternative codecs (audio and video) in the open source world and the most prominent is Ogg and its video incarnation Theora. They are mostly patent free because the company who originally developed these codecs gave the patents to the open source community (yet its still not clear if that covers the whole codec). Now what happens when patents enter the WorldWideWeb could be seen with GIFs. The GIF graphics (moving or non moving) where once a cornerstone of the web - a more popular choice for graphics then anything else (small could be read by anything blahblah) then a company found out that they had the patents on that (luckily just shortly before they run out) and sued a lot of big websites for patent infringement and wanted to have royalties of $5000 from every website that used GIFs - they would have killed the web with that move (and they where in the right - law wise) if the big companies they sued first would have dragged out the court case until the patents run out - now the GIF file format is in public domain.
Now its understandable that this lesson should be learned BUT and here is

my take on the codec war:

Flash is a MUCH bigger threat then patents on the codecs used. Because not only does it use the patent infringed codec inside its container but the container is totally owned by one company and a company that has shown often (PDF) that it will do everything to take control of anybody using their technology - even if it is the whole world.
Now 95% of all web videos are delivered by flash these days and to change that a lot of things need to happen. First google needs to drop it on youtube - they just announced a beta which does just that - but even with googles might its just not enough - content producers need to hop on board as well. And here is where the chain breaks for the "free and open codecs of OGG". See from the history above H264 has been the industry standard on a wide range of devices including the web for years now. The whole backend has settled on this and there are really good workflows to create H264 video. With the video tag - Youtube is less relevant then it was at its beginning because all of the sudden its easy to incorporate video into your webpage. Now if google where to say "we use Theora only" high quality content producers would just say "fuck you" and post their videos on their own sites in a much better quality without the hassle to find any workflow to produce theora videos (for the non terminal using people there just isn´t an easy way to do that still that can be used in a professional non frickly environment - we like to create not code for a delivery sorry).
But thats not enough - almost ALL consumer cameras released over the last 2 years including the hot shit DSLRs with video functionality produce H264 that can be "just" uploaded to the web without reencoding - thats saves Youtube and vimeo a lot of processing capabilities - and with their lossy revenues they sure don´t want to add another server farm just to reencode every and all video they have to a codec that has worse quality. You know 90% of all videos on the web are already encoded in H264 as of now (and Theora maybe has 0.2% of the other 10% that are left over). Its uneconomical and not sensible to re-encode all of that any way you look at it - especially since the quality is not surpassed by any other codec out there - patent free or not.
I would say go H264 now and have a new consortioum of browser developers and other companies develop a new codec (or build upon theora) from scratch that is patent free AND high quality AND has a good workflow (means is supported by hardware vendors and OS vendors across the board). That can then take over H264 (just like PNG took over GIF in less then 2 years following the patent threat). Leave the codec question open for now and let the web sort it out for itself (for the moment) - like in the img tag - doesn´t matter if you put PNGs, GIFs or JPGs in it (or any of the other plethora of IMG formats) as long as the browsers support it its watchable and so far has shaken out a good road to take (see the switch to PNG with transparencies that also helped a lot to bring down IE5 in my opinion which didn´t fully support that - so the market sorted it out quickly (as in 5 years quickly)).
BTW the only browser that just does not want to go down that route (and rather wants to cripple itself with Flash in the meantime) is the oh so open minded Firefox. Sorry I fail to see your point dear Mozilla developers - you are not gonna make a lot of friends that way outside of the very very small open source community (and even here your approach is not liked universally by those who can not install a flash plugin for example because flash is not supported on their platform (ppc linux f.e.).

Get rid of Flash first then get rid of H264 later when you have something equally good on all accounts. Going backward with technology is just never the way forward - open source or not.

Posted by fALk at 12:26 | Permalink | WebTek | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Something amazing came through my ticker today something that is a game changer and together with another technology will change the way I work and make much more enjoyable.

First some basics to understand what I am talking about for those that have no clue about it all. There are basically the following six steps to get to a final 3d picture.

1. Modelling: Multiple Approaches get you to a mesh model that consists of - in the end mostly - polygons. You can scan you can push little points in 3d space you can use mathematical formulas to create substract or add simple forms or other formulas to make edges round revolve lines or extrude other lines. The end product is mostly always a polygon mesh with x amount of polygons - the more the higher the resolution of the model the closer you can look at it. About ten years ago a really nice way to model high resolution meshes came into existence called SubDivision Surfaces which lets you model a corse resolution model which is much easier to understand and alter and then generate a highres model out of it - that was the first real game changer in the 3d industry and the reason why character modelling became so "easy" and so many people doing so many great models.

2. UV Preperation: Now a model out of triangels looks less then realistic of course so you need to tell the programm what kind of material is on the model - here a lot of option are available - but especially for film work and characters you want something that is realistic and you do that by getting something realistic - like a photo - and alter it in such a way that it fits on your model - or you paint from scratch - now that such a picture can be put onto the model you need to flatten out the model into a two dimensional surface. You can imagine this like taking a dead animal and skinning it then make the skin of the animal flat. Like so:

(there is actually a programm that stretches the "hides" pretty similar to this very analog process). Its a very dull process to do this on a complex model - mostly you have to take your nice model apart and do all kinds of voodoo to get it artifact free. No fun and certainly not really creative.

3. Texturing: Ones you have your nice model with a more or less nice UV map you start to apply your texture - photo or programatic or a mixture of that. Here is a lot of "fun" to be had as you add little bumps, tell the software how shiny the model will be how reflective how refractive and lots of other things I don´t really want to go into - but its a nice step in general. +

4. Light & Camera: Without light there wouldn´t be anything visible. So you set up some virtual lights which act and react just like different kind of light sources you find in reality + some more other tricks that aren´t in reality but can add to a realistic picture. You also set up a camera or your virtual eye - which again acts just like a photographic camera in real life (almost). Both a creative and fun process.

5. Animation: Then you animate your model - push objects around, apply physics, deform your model. You can either do that by hand or get some animation data from MotionCaputure - like you might have seen these people with a black suit and pingpong balls attaced to them - or faces with dots all over them for example. This step is both fun and frustrating - with hand made or captured data. The human eye is so susceptible to small problems in movement that to get it realistically convincing not even a certain 500 Mio. Dollar production can fully perfect this step.

6. Render: Then comes the process that is mostly free of human intervention but not free of hassles and frustration. The rendering. Can take up to 50 hours per frame in Avatar on a stock normal computer. 24-25 frames per seconds (or in case of 3d double that) and you get an idea how much processing power is needed. And if you do a mistake - render it all over again. Also rendering is a complex mathematical problem and there are bound to be errors in software so prepare for the worst here.

Now why I am telling you all this? Well one step it seems has just been eliminated. Progress in the field of visual effects is very eratic - you have 2-4 years no progress at all and then all of the sudden a floodgate opens and something dramatically changes or multiple things. I would say we had a quit period the last 2-4 years - mostly because the development of the real cool stuff was "inhouse" meaning - that really smart programmer people where hired by the big VFX companies to program them certain things for certain needs and problems - a lot of problems in the above pipeline are already solved I think but have never seen the light of the broader world and instead stayed and sometimes even died within certain companies. Its really frustrating as the software companies struggled with the most basic problems (plagued by slow sales and a bad economy) and then you see Pirates of the Caribbean for example and they completely figure out how to motion capture live actors (record their movement) on set with no real special equipment - that technology is still only available behind the looked doors of Industrial Light & Magic. For me as an artist that is a valuable tool that has been created and I could do cool stuff with it but I can´t get my hands on because of corporate policies.
So its REALLY amazing to see that Disney - the intellectual property hoarding company for whom the copyright law has been rewritten at least ones - is releasing a software/API/Filestandard as open source as of today. Code that no less promises to completely eliminate step two of my list above. In their own words they have already produced one short animation and are in the process of one full feature animation completely without doing any UV mapping. I can only try to explain to you the joy that this brings to me. UV mapping has been my biggest hurdle to date - I never really mastered it - I hated it. Its such a painstaking long tedious process. I normally used every workaround that I could find to avoid doing UV mapping. Its crazy to think they finally have figured out a way to get there without it and I think this will drop like a bomb into every 3d app and supporting 3d app there is on the market within a year (a wishfull thinking here) - at least I can hope it does and I hope that Blender, Autodesk, sideFX are listening very closely.
Combine that with the recent advancement of render technology by using OpenCL (developed and released as part of SnowLeopard by Apple and made an Open Standard with ports for Linux and Windows now available) and render partially on the graphic card (GPU) - which speeds up rendering up to 50 times. That means that a frame from avatar takes only one hour to render instead of 50 - or in a more realistic case - current rendertime for an HD shot takes here 2-5 minutes an average to render - thats cut down to 10sec - 1min and would actually make rendering a fun part of the process.
Now we all know who is behind both companies releasing and opening that up: The mighty Steve Jobs. You could almost say there is an agenda behind it to make 3d a way more pleasurable creative work then it currently is - maybe Mr. Jobs wants us all to model and render amazing virtual worlds to inhabit where he can play god ;)
Good times indeed.

Whats left? Well animation is still not worked out completely but with muscle simulation and easy face and bone setups it has become easier over the past years - still hidousely tidious process to make it look right - don´t know if there ever is a solution for it that is as revolutionary as PTEX. Motion sensors might help a bit in the short future also some techniques that make the models physically acurate so that things can´t get into each other and gravity is automatically apllied. High quality texture maps that hold up to very very close scrunity are still memory hogs and burn down the most powerfull workstations. The rest will get better with faster bigger better computers as always (like all the nice lighting models that are almost unusable in production to date because they render too long). Generally we are so much further with UV mapping and rendering problems out of the picture I might get back into 3d much much more.

ptex.us - the official website
The PTEX white paper
PTEX sample objects and a demo movie

Disclaimer: I have been doing 3d since 1992 when I rendered a 320x240 scene of two lamps on an Amiga 2000 with raytracing - it took 2 days to render. My first animation in 1993 took a month to render. Then I switched to Macintosh (exclusively) in 1995 and did 3d on them for a while. It was so frustrating that I did not make a serious efford to get really good at it ever - now I am still doing it alongside Compositing / VFX Supervision but rather as add on & for previz then main work.

Posted by fALk at 14:14 | Permalink | Technology | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The congress for the crazy ones the wild ones the good ones the ones defending freedom and digital liberties keep the information flowing unhindered without borders the last of their kind - the real dragons. Those who share and know will meet and talk and copy and paste and for so much knowledge brought to a boil the outcome is unknown.

There be Dragons! Dragons Everywhere. I will be one and so should you.

26c3 Official Website

And on the 28th around 23:00 in the smokers lounge the dragons will undertake a special journey through time:
Indian Timetravels - an audiovisual performance by Das Kraftfuttermischwerk & protobeamaz:fALK (hey thats me ;)

Posted by fALk at 14:06 | Permalink | proto.beamaz | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Kleine Mitteilung in eigener Sache:

Heute senden wir unsere erste Live Radio Show aus unserem dreiteiligen Weihnachtsdubstepspezial. Nach längerer Pause die sowohl durch technische Schwierigkeiten als auch durch Zeitmangel bedingt war eröffnen wir damit eine neue Radio Prototypen Saison. Wir sind sehr glücklich das die Jungs und Mädels von Xenim.de ihr verteiltes Streamingnetzwerk zur Verfügung stellen.
Wir haben heute auch einen Studiogast - Saetchmo (myspace) wird uns über die Feinheiten des Dub und Dubstep aufklären und uns dann mit einem Creative Commons Dubset beglücken.

Ihr könnt die RadioShow ab 20 Uhr live hören unter:
http://streams.xenim.de/live/

Der Link wird dort veröffentlicht sobald verfügbar - einfach downloaden und mit eurem lieblingsplayer wie z.B. iTunes uns live anhören.

Die Sendung gibt es natürlich auch wieder als normalen download an einem der kommenden Tage und radio.prototypen.com.

Posted by fALk at 12:42 | Permalink | radioPrototypen | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A long personal journey through the evolution of music

I can barely contain myself - for the first time since 15 years I am excited like a little kid again. The reason is music - music for the clubs but also music for the home - a kind of music that fits strangely into any mood and continues to make me smile almost every day. To give you the right mood first a soundtrack to the journey I am taking you on:

DUBSTEP CALLING:  by  djumb

When I was reading Gibsons Neuromancer some long years back I stumbled over the scene of the space Rastafari listening to dub in the lower cramped confines of a space station. Up to that point I loved the story and was totally immersed - I am having really vivid head films when I read so as long as the story seems believable I am in a different universe actually seeing it all in detail. Yet this scene somehow didn´t stick - it ripped me right out. It just didn´t fully fit into a space station - even so it was a funny idea of the author. It was the dirty analog feeling and the beach images and the old rastafaris making dub. My mind just wouldn´t believe they would roll their spliffs to that lowtech music on a hightech space ship - no matter how run down it would have been.

I have always listened to any kind of music you can imagine and didn´t really develop a taste for music that you can call taste until pretty late in my life. MC Hammer, Depeche Mode, ACDC, Kraftwerk, Genesis (yes Phil Collins - please beat me to death) where my early "favorites". With the fall of the wall things took an unexpected turn.

The reunited Berlin - it was like a new huge playground that waited to be explored and exploited. For me it mainly offered one thing - an absolute uncontrolled club scene that I was attending and getting involved with at a very young age. Of course that influenced my music taste quite a bit - I was going fully electronic for a long while - it didn´t really matter what but of course it being Berlin it was mostly that specific powerful housy style in the beginning that really got me. Some parties where so insanely energetic its hard to describe it in words.

Over the years then I got introduced to drum and bass and really fell in love with the slower more dreamy songs that genre implied. Somehow at that time magically Dub appeared in my life - I thought really hard where it actually came from - I don´t know - probably a song heard somewhere then getting into it more. Lee Perry, Mad Professor, Burning Spear - I bought tons of CDs with about any kind of Dub you can imagine and I loved it - but somehow it was dead music it was at a standstill there wasn´t anything really excitingly new coming out. Eventually I got bored and moved on - still playing it now and then.

11 years ago I started VJing. Playing visuals in clubs puts you in a very unique - if not always comfortable position. Standing there behind your laptop like a geek you have to listen and coldly analyze the music all night long - you listen to the breaks but also for the mood and the energy of the tunes. You also try to sense the energy of the room and either go with it against it amplify it calm it - whatever you think is appropriate. I have played by my last count 270+ gigs. Most of them all nighter - meaning 10+ hours for 270 nights same style of music. The styles changed - lots of electronic house music but also Jazz, Reggie, Rock, HipHop & some Punk - but mostly electronic in any form. After all its what I grew up with learned to love and where I had the most amazing experiences. Yet slowly but surely things started to get boring - I attributed it to me being in the clubs all the time and having to work. Then about three years ago I stopped the weekly gig sessions concentrated on other things and just went out for the fun of it (mostly). It sucked. I know people who came with me disagreed with me back then but really the spirit was out of the rooms. I debated with myself and friends what the reason for this could be. The music hadn´t changed much their where still fresh clubs in warehouses popping up - regardless it just wasn´t the same anymore. Some parties had on the surface a good vibe until you figured out that 100% of the people where totally and utterly wasted. You always had the drugs in the clubs of course but it was only adding to an athmosphere that was already nice and powerful - its totally different if people just take the drugs to get going at all and this is what I witnessed more and more.
After a while I got it - it must have been the music - I was utterly bored of it and subconsciously I think most of the people in the clubs are. Yes "minimal" is still heralded as the end of all music in the cooler clubs of Berlin - but its always the same same same and same in different shades of same. Its predictable boring without surprises and if the suspense in that music would be reenacted in a movie you would fall asleep after only 2 minutes.
Now its not sooo much different then what was on 15 years ago - what has changed then? Times have changed. As I have written in my VJ theory already I can repeat that here too - time has speed up, things have become more complex and to invoke any feelings you have to add a whole 'nother level of energy to it. A simpler example for anybody to see what I mean - look at an average horror movie from 1970, 1990, 1995, 2000 and now. It says all - the gore is multiplying 100 fold over each time period just to invoke any kind of reaction in people. While in 1970 you have maybe 3 cuts per minute you sometimes have 3 edits per second nowadays. Why would it be any different for music?
Bored with the house music I sidetracked myself with going back in time (not to phil collins ;) and generally just opening up to any kind of music again - as wide range as possible.

Through the local DJ around here (Jóse and mogreens) I was introduced to Brokn Beatz and electronic Jazz. I hated it at first. I still can´t totally say that I ever liked it. The nice thing about this kind of music was that it was not boring. It has always been a total challange to vj to that music - trying to see the breaks coming up and reading the ever changing mood is very hard. For the normal listener who doesn´t want to get deeply involved with the music its very hard to draw energy out of that music - while in the boring department its far beyond any other style listed so far - I just never couldn´t fully get into it and I really tried.
Just recently I found some temporary shelter with some local Punk bands. Why did it drive me to punk? Energy - raw freaking energy - energy that was still powerful enough to move people. God there is something about screaming singers and guitarr riffs that is unbeatable in the energy department.

The story could end here and I would still be looking for my hail mary pass to music heaven. Why? The problem with Punk as with pretty much any handmade music I have ever listened to is that after 10-20 minutes I get bored - it seems the same. Yes the music lovers can tell me there are nuances in there and I just have to listen closely and then it won´t be boring. I am there to get my energy pushed inside a group that gets the same energy pushed. Its the ritual why you go in the first place - a convection of energy in the room can lift your spirit for days on end and give you an evening worth remembering - whats the fun in taking the music apart - so you can be cool and talk about it? Unless you are doing music yourself I don´t see the point. So Punk - nice distraction and I still like to go - but still there must be something advancing coming up please no?

It did - less then a year ago I started to stumble over something that I first took for an advancement of Drum and Bass - it sounded different then drum and bass - but on some level familiar to me. It wasn´t really revolutionary yet here was a whole force of new music called freaking Dubstep. I was skeptical. I had been listening to more dub recently again as there seemed to be some movement in root dub to get electronic but its wasn´t the Dubstep thingy by far. The early Dubstep that I listened too was just so close to some jungle tracks in the early 90s. I almost thought ok thats it with music from now on we are going in circles back to the past and forward again - it seemed all music styles had been mixed with each other and advanced to a point where just the music nerds could figure out that it was new. Its really been about five years since I really could discern a certain radically new style - since then - silencio. Yet here was this really heavy drum n bass coming around the corner that somehow grooved slowly. I listened hundreds of hours of dubstep internet radio channels. It was good - very powerfull - yet stil there was something missing - it was too dark to heavy to monotonous still. While it gave me 2 hour bursts of energy I had to turn it off after a while it just didn´t stick - I was again getting a bit sad about it - as they used dub - my old time favorite in the name and if that didn´t evolve that was probably dubs last chance or so I thought.
Then something happened that changed it all. It got diverse it morphed with the electronic dub we had been playing in our podcasts. There it was dubs soul together with raw energy and speed of drum n bass mastered as if it was an electro song and even inside one song more diverse then a whole night of minimal techno. It wasn´t to be the only song in that direction. More and more I heard here and there and then I had my first Dubstep party with this "new" kind of dubstep - the dub step with more dub in it - in a Punk bar in Potsdam. There is something about "special" parties that is hard to describe - its the vibe the connection with the other people in there. This party - even so extremely small - was like that - no chemicals - but a lofty vibe with smily persons who just can´t stop to groove.

In the last two month since then its exploding - Dubstep has gotten so diverse that its eating up about any and all music styles in its path - dub was always playful with samples but what is happening at the moment is on a whole new level and not only that its rarely really cheesy its mostly really fun and uplifting and powerfull - heck it can even be played live and still invoke all its positive things as I was allowed to witness last weekend. Its music girls enjoy and even people who normally hate ANYthing electronic like it and dance to it. And even after 10 hours constant listening it just doesn´t get boring (good DJ or mix is still essential of course).

There was once long ago a party in the Berlin Pfefferberg where 9teen and gregoa played under the name "chill at will" - it was in retrospect one of the top 10 parties I have ever been too - even so it was the chill out room. The concept of the duo was to mix very chilled music with danceble and energetic music - people freaked out. Dubstep - like I have experienced it lately - is exactly "copying" that concept but its much smoother as its all based on the same rythmic concept and flows together like water. Going slow then ultra fast (think gabba fast) in less then 2 minutes with basses that push your stomach inward and it all feels natural. I am totally obsessed - in my view its a new beginning for music. The boundaries have not been reached - its very exiting. The last time I witnessed something like that was in 1993 - the early days of Techno. And with it goes an early scene without pretentious people just like the early days. People scream again tick out just to then talk to each other on a slower bit of music - raw feelings in the room no hiding no "checking out". Ultra lovely.

So to vindicate Mr Gibson - he was maybe right when he said the Rastafaris of the future listen to dub in the space station - he just forgot to add "step" to it. If I would read the book again that scene would not get me out of my film anymore. Needless to say I am very very happy and feel really lucky that I see this much exciting music development in my lifetime - to all you dubstep producers out there pushing the boundaries - YOU ROCK.

Some links:
dubstep-berlin.de Dubstep Forum for Berlin
Badda Boom Sound Reaggy Ragga Dancehall Dub and Dubstep from Potsdam
soundcloud/dub-zone Wide variety of different dub tracks
braintheft.org Whicked live played dubstep from Berlin
Spoke DJane playing and producing wonderfull dubstep

Posted by fALk at 19:55 | Permalink | PersonalThoughts | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Ever since I heard of augmented reality games and subsequently read William Gibsons "Spook Country" I have been mesmerized by the idea of augmented reality and location based art. I have long come to the conclusion that the natural evolution of the web is to get its foothold into the real world. Since "Spook Country" I have gained quite a clear understanding of how that might come to happen. For those not having read the book - besides the forgettable story of some secret container and a group of random people locating the book talks at length about a network of artists who use mapping data from the world and put virtual artistic pieces into it.
The big problem is that you have to wear some quite sophisticated hardware to see these artwork (some is fictional some is documentary - like a reenactment of a dead famous person laying where he actually died - its gibson and he is "noir" ;) also the location information is quite difficult to generate.
Now in the last 2-3 years things have changed considerably to make this happen faster then I thought ever possible. I guess it all started with the Wii gaming console and its motion sensors and at the same time the ubiquity of GPS receivers arriving in mom & pops cars. Both created a mass market for sensors that are absolutely vital for AR. Each one on its own is already fun and powerfull - the one "sees" where you pointing the other tells you and your machine where you are. Its not a stretch that when you combine both a machine nows where you are and where you point/look put in a compass and you have hardware wise an almost perfect system (there are some quirks with the motion sensors and earths gravity not beeing stable etc pp but its only a matter of time (and how many sensors) to get this ironed out to perfection - WiiMotionPlus anyone?).
Now then came the iPhone - I know - a big yawn. But what the iPhone did was put a motion sensor and gps in one device. That was surpased by some Android phone which also put the compass in (now the iPhone has that too). Now the iPhone had a the problem that the APIs to get to the raw camera data are locked up behind bars so the attention for AR shifted completely to the Android platform (thanks god) for now where there are multiple projects that want to give you a platform to create AR content.
This is where it becomes extraordinarely interesting. What kind of content could that be. If you just think about it for a split second you mind will explode. A good working fluid AR system can give you all the content we have and put it in reality.
Fiction, Documentary, Games, Concerts, Guides are just a few examples. It can be linear (as in a soundwalk) or nonlinear (as in a game). It all happens in reality it can involve one person or 100 of person. Imagine for the sake of it a "Lara Croft" kinda multiplayer game one person in one city pulls an artificial lever and the other person in another city sees in realtime a door opening. Ugh wait - there is something wrong here. Yes the one shortcoming there still is - the interaction is all inside the "virtual" world while that might be overlayed in a cool way to the real world - fictional stories, historic documents etc pp. The thing that would break all dams is if the machines could "see and react" to the interaction in the real world. That would mean a) very good camera tracking b) object recognition c) reason. It will come but until then there is a lot of possibilities to explore. Its very exciting to see this happening - its a new media born and I am actually alive and old enough for once to see it from the very beginning and maybe even take part in it.

Posted by fALk at 10:45 | Permalink | FutureIsNear | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

or "Wo bleibt die Revolution?" was a the best demo poster I have seen at the "Freedom not Fear" demonstration 11 day ago. Later I found out that the poster was made by the "famous" german blogger fefe.
Now we have elections next sunday and I want to take my own little internet space to reflect my thoughts on it in a bit longer way then the 140 letter in twitter permit me doing. If you think this is a nice peacefull reflection I can only guard you out the room nicely now before you get too disappointed, it might get rough.
Let me start with a nonlinear timeline of happenings that actually got us to where we are now.
As in all western countries September 11 2001 marked the day the powerfull elite found an excuse to hammer through a series of laws that would allow them subsequently to gain more control over the ever growing population that got poorer as a whole as the class divide got wider. It seems clear that if you get more and more people that get poorer while you get fewer and fewer people that get unproportionally richer there might be some a time this explodes so it makes only sense to curb that as soon as possible.
So laws got hammered through that allowed the ruling elite to spy on the people (and I think contrary to popular believe not to get one or two or a group of rogue people but to get a general sentiment of the population to actually react at a moment before it all starts boiling over). Now this might have already been sufficient - coupled with some distractions like wars and still enough games and mind-numbing entertainment around to keep the balance of the powers like the last 3000 years .
Only one thing they missed and I think that can be attributed that in that elite those who actually have a say are - well - too old. That in the past 3000 wasn´t a problem in itself but time has speed up considerably in the last 100 years or so. There are nice studies of how our perception of time changed with the advent of trains, airplanes and so forth - but since about 40 years a extremely disruptive technology entered the life of about anybody in this world - the internet. It supercharged our perception of time because now you didn´t have to take a long ride on a horse, a trainride or even an airplane to get to the middle east or china or to the other side of the world - you are there all the time - it only takes milliseconds to talk to somebody somewhere else. Now our poor elites just couldn´t grasp that concept as they have been growing up in a time when airplanes where all the rage so they missed the other disrupting factor in all that - limitless realtime communication. I have been on the internets for quite a while now (1996) and the limitless freedom of the early days was almost scary - nobody cared nobody was watched all was well.
I think the first real eyeopener for the powerfull came with Napster. All of the sudden an industry that is actually vital for distracting the public with meaningless shit lost complete control over their distribution channels - and that happened in less then a year. The pure panic that followed was almost a joy to watch because the net had become so indestructible by then that whenever there was a "fire" put out on one corner 200 more fires where started everywhere. Gosh they freaking build the net to be indestructible in case of a global nuclear holocaust do they think a few puppets of politians can actually make a dent - especially then that it had grown global?
So even with napster politics didn´t grasp the full extend of nets impact and resorted to 20th century scare and distract tactics. Well that worked for a big part of the population that also didn´t grasp the net yet. But there where the few and far between that saw the dangers of the laws that where forced upon all of us. Some of those where very confident in the net. While the mainstream was kept dumb with mindnumbing media 1.0 that is totally controlled - the few that grasped the full extend of what is going on started to act. Groups formed, a communication was happening outside the mainstream media totally uncontrolled. The blogs and forums started to get viewerships in the hundreds then thousands then millions - then they got noticed. Another Napster was happening while the first Napster was getting bigger and bigger. This time the controllers not only lost the venue of distraction they lost the venue of mind control. People got a second opinion and a lot started to find that refreshing - it started to make them think. On top a whole new generation was starting to disconnect from the old ways and what they got was a multitude of opinions that allowed them to form an opinion of their own that was pretty untainted (I am of the believe that if you read much opposing opinions - which the internet is full of - it actually allows us to become smarter and make more rational decisions).
Now besides lossing their distractive advantage the elite started to figure out that they also loose any opinion control - over not so long enough people are informed enough to question the system as a whole. Now it gets a bid muddy.
Because to think they are dumb is the wrong thinking - they are not and they have the tools (money) to get some brightness in their thinking. I am sure I saw an influx of "conservative" bloggers in the US around 2003 where I think that might actually have been an organized (at least in "hey we need to do something" chainletter style) counter move - the funny thing is that it only adds more opinions and makes people smarter by considering more viewpoints and finding the weaknesses.
Yet this trend has accelerated where traditional media - that by definition can only give the opinions of a few - is fast replaced by "democratic" the "anarchic" the uncontrolled - the blogs.
Now thats the point when the politicians really woke up (just eons too late) so here in Germany we all of the sudden get these laws that point to one thing: censorship - a beautifull 20th century concept that has worked when the publication of opinions was actually a hard thing to do. More surveillance extending to the net (at least they want to get a feeling of the cooking pot to see when its boiling over) and some more drastic things because they feel that the control might be lost in a mental "peacefull" way and that the only way to get the control back might be through force - I am getting there in a second.
The censorship law from our family minister (to protect the internet from watching child porn of course - what else can make an impact in this world otherwise anymore then anything that is absolutely shocking to the max) had one problem - it was dumb (stopsign coupled with dns routers) and transparent (we keep "secret lists"). I think the dumbness not necessarily comes from the fact that the people making it are actually dumb - I think they have not much choice otherwise to censor the web in any meaningfull way other then that - and at least - keep the mass of people from forming their own opinion at least a little while longer. What I think was their real dumbness was the fact that they didn´t see that they couldn´t hide the fact that it was about censorship in a big way. What they also still did not seem to have learned is the speedup of time.
That speedup of time got even a little more speedier with the advent of Twitter. I have to get into Twitter(or any other microblogging service) for a paragraph here. There is an inherent beauty in Twitter that makes it possible for our carbon based brains that need a couple of generations to actually adapt to actually process the huge amount of information on the web in near realtime. Basically making the speedup in time I talked about earlier available to us without taking away the chaotic nature of the web where you might click on something that you never intended to click on and that all of the sudden wides your horizons in ways that you never thought possible.
Twitter made it possible to spread the word about the censorship debate around the country in mere minutes. I watched it and it was a-m-a-z-i-n-g how the debate was shaped in less then a week. The petition against the law garnered 120.000 signatures in mere weeks - this all the while the politicians tried to discredit the movement and stuck to their - already weak and disproven - talking points. Needless to say that this backfired.
But this is the netactivism to that point. Where the ruling had been smarter in my opinion is to get things through on a totally different level that escapes the ordinary netizen.
I am still sure the banking collapse of 2008 was fabricated to a certain extend - orchastrated starting 2001. I know until now I have to not gotten into any kind of conspiracy theory in a big way but I think looking at who actually profited from the collapse and drawing the path backward and forward it my line of thought might become a bit more clear. To keep people happy in the years after 2001 there had to be some kind of prosperity - easy credit everywhere (yes also here in germany) was the answer. Then you fabricate a collapse of a big bank and the easy credit dies up - you end up with slaves that loose anything and will be nice little slaves trying to get to status they had been before (big houses + cars + tvs for everybody). This means you have desperate people - desperate people are easily controlled as long as they don´t have the time to think and question the overall concepts of life.
What also happened - especially here in germany - is police control. I don´t know if the number of policemen actually grew massively in the last 4-6 years but sure as hell am I feeling a bit opressed already. The amount of times I personally have been randomly stopped pulled over ask for ID etc is mindboggling if you consider that there was about 10 years of my life where I had zip zero contact with the police (I am only talking about stuff not provoked totally random stuff). And not only that - they are getting more and more aggressive - kind of talk from above hand on gun etc pp. Yes they made me already a tiny bit afraid of them. The culminated in the "Freedom not Fear" demonstration that I was very closely observing (thats what I like to do best ;) - the police was aggressive, demonstrators where fearfull. The whole demonstration had been closed up totally (anybody else noticed that) and then of course the police started beating some protestors. My view is that this was a concerted effort and not a single case of mad policeman. There might have been "nice policeman" on the street that day but there was a HUGE amount of extremely aggressive provoking riot squats around.
Instilling fear - not with bad terrorists but with its own police - making people (financially) weak - its all tactics to control a crowd and I think the powers might be even happy the "active" people are distracted with net rights at the moment - meanwhile they can just employ their 20th century control strategies - the magical tipping point where a considerable mass of people can be reached through the net will not be reached for another 5-10 years (looking at the only 25.000 people at the freedom not fear demonstration). Until then there is plenty of time to disrupt this movement and attack from points where it seems very vulnerable and blind.
Vulnerable because nobody of the up coming generation wants violence - so a violent revolution will not happen in my life time - that might have to do with the peacefull fall of the wall and generally people living in a lot of comfort and are thinking they are too intelligent to actually pick up arms and fight it out.
Blind because they are missing the social aspect of it all - as long as the current system stands as it is there is a lot leverage through money - draw it away and give it only in doses where it makes you dependent has worked for a very very long time - the german Pirate Party being completely void of the social aspect makes that totally apparent that its the big blind spot - what good does it do if you have freedom of speech when you are a slave to the system? Slaves could also speak out openly among themself in their quarters - it has not gotten them anywhere. They still where surpressed by fear, violence and scarcity.
Now I am the last person who wants any violent conflict ever. But the appeasement the protest movement of the netizens with the powers that are is pissing me off. Its an opertunity to do something grand to actually overthrow a powerbalance that has enslaved human kind since close to 3000 years and has quite obviously done the planet nothing good in return bringing it to a point of total collapse - to a point where it might look like mars or venus another 100 years onward.
The Pirate Party - as the visible public formation of that protest movement - is trying everything it can not to upset the powers too much because it could be seen negatively, it pussyfoots around issues of larger impact then a censorship law (the system is broken not a couple of laws) and the only tool it can use to actively protest outside of violence - the words - are "carefully democratically drafted".
I can only respond - nice try - its not how revolutions are made. Change the system or loose the war. If you don´t give the powers a big "FUCK YOU" and actually resist them it will not work. Its sad that the movement is the master of the biggest word spreading tool in history and just fails to use it radically enough to make an impact.
Maybe it has to get a lot less worse before that thinking sets in - my only fear is that the longer it takes the further we get a way to resolve that in a peacefull way. There will be a time the control mechanisms are of the ruling are strong enough to surpress any movement - and this time arrives pretty fast (give it another 4 years of current policies).
In the meantime I think some of the concepts of the Pirate Party are good for after a revolution - like the "zukunft ministerium" and such and its probably not lost work that is done there but for the near future I don´t see any winning strategy in the way this goes.

Posted by fALk at 8:38 | Permalink | Political | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

This is a cutup of small examples of the impact the tron figure made in overall culture. Its really nice almost vj remix like wide diversity of things - and yes homer makes it in there too.

Posted by fALk at 20:58 | Permalink | CoolVideo | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)