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The local HipHop Band Klartext will be on air tonight. The Radio Show is called RadioFunFactory and is airing at Offenener Kanal Berlin 9 pm. I will be talking about the VJ side of things concerning performing live with a HipHop Band.
Today seems the NAB update day. I have rarely seen so many Motion Graphic professionals announcements on one day. Alias is announcing Maya 6.0 - something I am very eager for as I dived into the program lately and found it lacking some very crucial function while other where overwhelming great. So I have not found a notice if they finally move Maya up to the same status on the Mac platform as it is on others: Maya Unlimited. With mac sales around 25% of all sales they hopefully do not neglect the faithfull Macusers again. Speed should not be the issue anymore with the G5 and top end Graphic cards inside the AItowers. I need the ocean shader. And the Maya:Fur is surely lovely now judging from the demo samples....
UPDATE: NO. Still no unlimited for the Mac... what a shame....
Apple today announced that it will be shipping a new professional application called Motion. This application will be aimed soley at After Effects and Combustion Users and will likely have the same impact as Final Cut Express had on Adobe Premiere likely Adobe will stop making an After Effects for the Mac which is Adobes stepchild of the moment anyway (regarding speed and similar things). Especially when Apple markets the Motion app with a $299 price tag compared to a $1000 or $1500 for After Effects Pro. Normally I would welcome a move by Apple that makes things cheaper but this time I have some caution. After Effects has emerged as THE all around tool for compositing in middle and high end Studios as well as THE tool for motion graphics. So one could argue that the interface is clumsy, its not. The keyframe manipulation possibilities inside a timeline have not been duplicated elsewhere, its just lovely but even more important are the plugins (3rd party). There must be 3000 plugins or more for AfterEffects from at least 200 or 300 vendors some of them are NOT available anywhere else achieving looks that are impossible or extremely hard to make with other application. With After Effects gone on the Mac platform there would be zillions of Motion Graphic Designers leaving the platform I can assure, even I would look getting a PC for running After Effects, I just hope Apple did carefully calculate that and made the PlugIn Api for Motion VERY robust and VERY easy to use and port AE plugins over there. And I surely hope this is not another Apple 1.0 version release ridden with bugs and interface failures that almost ALL other 1.0 releases from apple suffer.
On related note Apple is also introducing FinalCutHD (why? didn´t FinalCut already support HD?), DVD StudioPro3 (hmmm a X. release for some feature additions?) and XSAN which is the ONLY real cool announcement that I will not critique. Its a a clustering filesystem to join the filesystems of multiple Xserves (and other macs?).
UPDATE: Adobe has announced After Effects 6.5 priced lower at $699 for standard and $999 for professional. The adressed number one concern: Speed. So getting it all through my head all morning I have to say that apple needs a hell of a job to catch up to the After Effects camp. I hope they do before Adobe axes After Effects. So one other thing of note the After Effects development team is still very much the same as the day before Adobe bought After Effects and very pro mac. So as long as it makes sense for Adobe to produce After Effects I think they will support it for the Mac platform, but still Apple has to be carefull, as nice as an all Apple Hardware/Software platform might be, the graphic user WANTS choice to create their own style otherwise stuff would look the same everywhere pretty soon and After Effects is one of the nicer choices out there.
The discussion does not stop. This time its a girl who writes why OpenSource (Free Software in general) is not adopted by the masses and reading through the discussion on Slashdot it is again all about the interfaces. Indeed the people seem more calm this time and there are even some interface designer on Slashdot (who would have thought). But why is it not working out? Slashdot faithfull plover has THE reason:
I think she missed the biggest reason of all here: Designing a good GUI is very hard. Wait -- let me further clarify that: it's very, very hard.
Yes and because of that there has to be an open interface inititative. There is nothing that says that what works for programmers (distributed programming) won´t work for interface designer (distributed interface design). The interesting part is, that for the beginning it would help to draft an digitial interface design manual for open source out of which you generate you own interface easily. As said before the status quo is erasable, completely! So what apple has done with its develpper tools, is provide an easy framework to make your own Interfaces and they all look (or should) look equal. So I do say that Apple has gone wrong with brushed metal and all this a similar thing for ALL open source could be a great boon. Not only would the resulting programs be easier to comprehend but also give OpenSource a corporate identity (for that you have to remember that the interface is THE thing people look at so the number ONE branding algorithm in software industry). Imagine a world where the "open source look and feel" is something that can be compared to Apple.
So again I would put proclaim that the time has come for an Open Source Interface Initiative.
I don´t know if I am addicted or afraid or over sensible but the situation in Iraq could spark something that I never understood that it has not happened yet. PanIslam Revolution against Kapitalism and the West at large. Sunnis fight together with Shias and holding signs of killed Hamas leader while trying to enter Falluja with help goods. Hezbollah, Syria and Iran supposed to be backing the current uprising. And that on a weekend where reportedly three million pilgrims enter Iraq mostly unchecked. A barrel of oil to the spreading fire and the Americans could face a Islam mass stampede against them in Iraq Afghanistan and Israel. Its the holy weekend of most religious groups in the world Jews, Christians and Islamist are celebrating all their own holy feast. It might be the weekend where all things go different. And I seem in good company with my fears.
Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan and wrote a book about the Shiites in Iraq writes the following in his recommendable blog
The relief convoy was a joint Sunni-Shiite operation, and protesters carried posters of assassinated Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Muqtada al-Sadr. It seems to me from reading between the lines in the press reporting that some US troops let some of the food and supplies into the city as an act of insubordination toward Donald Rumsfeld, refusing to fire on unarmed civilians to stop them from entering the city with food. Pan-Islam and Sunni-Shiite unity in the face of encroaching Western powers have been a political dream since the time of Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani in the 19th century, but have usually proven futile. Donald Rumsfeld has finally made al-Afghani's dream come true.
Reading the blogs from inside Iraq gives more shudders. River from Baghdad Burning gives insights to the current feel if you are a Iraqi inside Iraq (and River is usually really calm if I may add):
Where are the useless Governing Council? Why isn't anyone condemning the killings in the south and in Falloojeh?! Why aren't they sitting down that fool Bremer and telling him that this is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong??? If one of them were half a man or even half a human, they would threaten to resign their posts if there isn't an immediate ceasefire… the people are enraged. This latest situation proves that they aren't Iraqi- they aren't here for the welfare of the Iraqi people.
The American and European news stations don't show the dying Iraqis… they don't show the women and children bandaged and bleeding- the mother looking for some sign of her son in the middle of a puddle of blood and dismembered arms and legs… they don't show you the hospitals overflowing with the dead and dying because they don't want to hurt American feelings… but people *should* see it. You should see the price of your war and occupation- it's unfair that the Americans are fighting a war thousands of kilometers from home. They get their dead in neat, tidy caskets draped with a flag and we have to gather and scrape our dead off of the floors and hope the American shrapnel and bullets left enough to make a definite identification…
One year later, and Bush has achieved what he wanted- this day will go down in history and in the memory of all Iraqis as one of the bloodiest days ever...
Its boiling down there a little bit more heat and it just might explode into a PanArabicPanIslamist uprising. The consequences are unforeseeable and the worst of all this, after the weekend it might be to late to stop it.
I don´t know if that is believable yet, but if it turns out to be true I am in the right kind of bussiness. VJ HoloFX is presenting a new way to display HUGE holographic pictures in the middle of air. How he does it he does not want to say just yet but he is sooo cool in making the following statement.
Through the parties and collaborations I am making the technology available and accessiable to the VJ community first as my contribution to what i believe is a powerful new art form. In addition i like the community spirit i have seen with vj's...
So the VJ will be the first to play around with true 3dimensional holography? Like the only forward moving artform at present is getting THE most advanced presentation technic first? To say that this would give a huge boost to the VJ scene is a little understatement, this in fact could give us what we always needed - visual immersion, people standing inside visuals as they stand inside sound and right away you have the visuals taking the same place as the music, but having even more possibilities to create emotions then the music. Not only gives us this kind of technology- if properly implemented - a more prominent place inside the club but also could - if the CONTENT is good - a good shot at the traditional movie industry. The other upshot I see is that you have to make the content for it as there is virtually NO content available through TV or the sort that could be displayed easily in 3D. Since 3D content is hard to produce (either the synthetic and the natural) this will result in a shake out of the "we only copy stuff" and those who put a LOT of efford into production of the CONTENT.
One day you wake up and the world has changed. I thought this day to be yesterday. Yes there has been continuous fighting in Iraq going on for month but it all was not bad enough for the "wartime leader" Bush. Then in a matter of hours you see brutal pictures all over the internet of some american "security" personal being burned and hanged from bridges (and this was even shown on american propaganda TV) then the next day you hear of some arrest and some closure of a newspaper. Then it exploded fighting in Bagdad fighting in Falludscha fighting in Basra. 30 Marines dead, 120 Iraqis dead (at least half of them reported children and woman to put the numbers in perspective). And no its not even a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites, as matter of fact it seems that they are working together. For example in Ramadi where the probably Shiites where launching an offensive to distract US Army from the close Falludscha.
What gives? Mr. I am the enlightened president Bush is speaking in front of the puplic and says "We will stay the course in Iraq, we're not going to be intimidated by thugs or assassins. We're not going to cut and run from the people who long for freedom." Ok... So why is there no "Anti Shiite forces, or Anti Sunni forces inside Iraq then? Why are the insurgencies able to hide inside the population? Is it possible that they think that true freedom can only be achieved without the US inside their holy country? Is it possible that the whole Iraqi population just wants an end to the OCCUPATION. Thugs and assassins? 10.000 estimated thugs and assassins with a common cause in the formerly american friendly Shiite population? Another 5000 estimated thugs and assassins in the Sunni population? Those Islamist must all be bad people with the only will to kill? Or do they just want to be left alone without a american led world police making sure they pray to the right god?
With reports of Iranian and Hizbollah military coming into play in the latest uprising(as the debka.com reports) this could spring out of control for the whole region, something thats hidden underneath for many years – the complete uprising of the Islamic world against the west - just to say they have more people - and much more people who are willing to die!
Today my bike was featured at the Stahlwalzwerk Blog. Pretty Cool :)
http://www.prototypen.com/blog/schuppan/archive/000195.html
I am booked again for a Vandit Night April, 3rd 2004. This time the audio guest on the main floor will be Nick Warren of UK fame. Seems I am Vandits vyéj (vj that is) of choice lately - who would have thought... Of course my set is all live and under Creative Common license (if you happen to capture the screen that is ;) And I will not give out lawsuits if you want to take a photograph.
The Chaos Computer Club is calling for an all out boycott of all music that comes from the evil music industry and that is registered by the even more evil GEMA. Attac has also gotten into the offensive for music consumer rights. Private copy and peer2peer come from heart. Destroying it with lawsuits will destroy part of our culture. If the music industry is so concerned with music sales then they shoudl produce higher quality (that is in style not in production technics) music rather then looking for someone else to blame. Turning on the (private)radio stations gives me shudders and I have stopped listening to airwave radio alletogether and switched to specialized online radio. The last CD I bought 4 years ago, I have not stopped buying music because I am sharing, I am not a music file-sharer (have downloaded maybe 5 songs in my lifetime) its because the music is utterly bad. The better music can be had from free internet labels that give you music for free alltogether and those who play live at a concert and make their living with that and use the cd as a promotional material as it should be! Its a flyer advertising what you can do, the rest happens on stage there is where you can earn your living there is where you show that you really work.
Our local Youth House that has some fame in the area is presenting its first puplic installation of Linux directed towards all young kids coming to the facility. Its there "as an alternative to the windows platform" and free for all to use as a learning by doing installation. It comes preloaded with some software for video editing and webpage creation. This is - as far as I know - the first public Linux installation in a Youth House in Brandenburg. Combine that with the running "ask for permission because we have to protect the kids" wavelan in the same house – respect - nice place to hang out if you ever get stranded in Kleinmachnow.
With the title "Stahlwalzwerker - the little different blog" Selecta Schuppan opens up a blog dedicated to all things Kleinmachnow and "kak interejezno" whatever that is you can check it out the impressive 25 entries on the first day. Very funny and in german....
