Artificial Eye

Disney Creativity for all

There's a cultural war going on that IMHO is far more determinative for our future than the superficial one being waged by the christian right against islam - a battle for our ability to communicate with one another creatively and interactively with the products of our shared culture. Todays vlogpost is a remix of the cover image from Lawrence Lessig's book, Free Culture some creative commons images, and Lost in the plot from The Dears, who took the SXSW festival this year by storm.

Lessig talks, in the opening paragraphs of this phenomenal book about "Disney creativity,"--a form of expression and genius that builds upon the culture around us and makes it something different. Disney (or Disney, Inc.) ripped creativity from the culture around him, mixed that creativity with his own extraordinary talent, and then burned that mix into the soul of his culture. Rip, mix, and burn. Most of the content from the nineteenth century was free for Disney to use and build upon in 1928. It was free for anyone--whether connected or not, whether rich or not, whether approved or not--to use and build upon, without permission. Yet today, the public domain is presumptive only for content from before the Great Depression.

Lessig has been instrumental in the Orphan Works project as well, and is probably the most important contemporary legal activists fighting to maintain a common culture, and therefore our ability to collectively communicate with each other via the powerful tools that have been put on our desktop.

As noted by Tom Sherman in 1996, "We are willing participants in the creation of a second nature. While the biological world is collapsing, we are busy constructing an elaborate media environment."

Lets hope this environment wont collapse as well.

Forget RFID, lets have a TV Riot

Forget RFID...forget TV... now you have another reason to subscribe to ant feeds

"If you're inside a building, a GPS receiver cannot find you. But a $40 radio chip from Rosum Corporation will do it, with the help of TV signals," notes Roland Piquepaille.

The CIA-backed start-up says TV signals are 10,000 times stronger than the ones from GPS. Rosum founder James Spilker, one of the original architects of the GPS satellite... realized a synchronization feature in digital and analog television signals could be used for other purposes than to lock the vertical hold for older TVs.The engineers created a radio receiver chip that could zero in on the TV signal and get the synchronization information. Using precision timing, they figure out how far a TV signal travels before it is picked up by a device equipped with Rosum chips. Next, they compare the measurements against other data that they collect with their own listening stations and then finally calculate the device's position. Rosum's vice president of engineering, Greg Flammel, says tests of the technology show it can track someone in the basement floor of the San Francisco Public Library. It also found a person in the heart of San Francisco's financial district...

So i thought i would send possum rosum corp looking for me across multiple contintents backed by "TV Riot" from The Adored from los angles, my town of exile. This whole issue is so 5 days ago, i know, but it took me till now to get myself together and make this post.

8 Bit Revolverlution for dogs

A few things came together today to enable me to continue with my 8 bit theme. Following a link to the Petesthe website from a link at Red Ferret with this text:

"A beautiful variety of infinite colors and brightness can be generated by blending the pet’s original hair color with new colors, making the pet’s image more impressive and harmonious with your desires! Enjoy the color design system that satisfies your pet-loving sensitivity!"

Once there i found some pictures of poodles dyed in my favorite 8 bit colors, which couldnt do anything better to illustrate the depth of decadence to which we have sunken as a race of beings while the planet falls apart around our ears. Check the link and u will see that i havent touched the dog's colors in today's post, which is backed by the first 30 seconds of the future remix sermon/manifesto, "Revolverlution" from the awesome mashup kings, The Kleptones. Go download the album (hell, get all of their stuff, they kick some serious ass!) to hear the rest of their view of the future state of media...one which many of us will not escape.

8 Bits for Everyone!

8 bit color, 8 bit sound - I used to be (like many others of my generation) fascinated by Hasbro's Lightbrite... about a year ago i found this nice little mac OSX java app called ARRAY which allows u to make frame by frame animations and export them as flash movies. Just a nice little jumping off point to add some color scorch and vertical stretch fx and a track called "Uber Code" from Royal Space Force whose objective is to:"Salvage the remains of the 8-bit video game music by systematic audio manipulation of source materials and augmentation through live instrumentation and orchestration."
Not quite as memorable to the masses as "Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits" but hey, that was my father's generation -- 2 bits has a bit of a different byte these days.

RFID for Everyone

Finally starting to come down from a mind-blowing week at AVIT UK in Birmingham. After meeting Toby Harris last summer at AVIT in San Francisco, I decided to get myself over to the UK to see what other VJs in Eupore were doing and hopefully meet some interesting folks. The trip exceeded my wildest expectations. Everyone at the conference was amazingly friendly and open. The sense of community was tremendous. The AVIT organizers put on the most fantastic event I have attended.

Highlights included getting sponsored by vidvox, makers of the awesome GridPro application, scoring a midnight to 1 a.m. VJ spot to play along with the amazing Kraddy at the Drop Beats Not Bombs party which I shared with Michael, winning the grand prize of an Edirol V4 mixer in the raffle as well as two pieces of software.

Really got a thorough going over by the inspectors at Heathrow and Dulles airports on my way back home to Los Angeles. Both sets of screeners were particularly intrigued with the folding tripod I was carrying. The imigration official at Dulles hassled me about not looking anything like my passport photo. Guess most folks have more of a stable look and their identification has longer relevance. The new breed of RFID enabled identification on the cusp of being legislated in the US has potential to help with this, but I doubt it would be made useful in such a manner.

A big thank you to fALk and Michael for welcoming me onboard.

Music: Dilemma's "sawtooth" Chip Tune.

Books Not Bars

Juvenile justice systems across the United States are in a dangerous state of disarray. According to recently published reports, violence within the system is rampant and abuse of the youth inside by staff is routine. Juvenile facilities nationwide hold almost 104,000 youth. Many states have more juveniles held for property crimes, drug offenses, and public disorder than anything else; only A QUARTER of the youth are committed for violent crimes.

We strive not only to be creative here at artificial eye, but also to bring issues deserving attention. Many of the conversations at the recent AVIT vj conference centered around our responsibility as artists not only to deliver eye candy, but a message in our content. Here is something about what is happening in my home state, california.

This post has been excerpted from "System Failure: Violence, Abuse and Neglect in the California Youth Authority," produced by WITNESS and Books Not Bars a program of WITNESS partner The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and offers testimony of the human rights violations "including sexual abuse, beatings, forced medication, and systemic mental health and educational neglect of juveniles" taking place at the California Youth Authority (CYA), one of the largest youth correctional agencies in the country.

Nice Guy Dave Guest Entry #1

We have a new guest blogger: Nice Guy Dave. I have meet him through my very first vj collaboration ever. The aveja mailing list was set up to promote vjs that wanted to collectively play at the glastonbury festival in 2002. One DVD with a short timesnap of VJ history was its only outcome back then but from there the AVIT idea formed and the core of the people active in that group somehow stayed connected throughout the last years. It is very nice to see Dave joining us.

At the Birmingham AVIT UK05 VJ festival I met with some amazing minds, and they showed me new things. Things vibrant with life. So I made a little VJ Blog when I got home. Each building block you see here is from AVIT - my rail ticket to get there, the little local map they gave out, my notes on a great masterclass, and all the graphics that glue them together are techniques I covered in software workshops helping people get more out of Adobe's After Effects package. I've never vlogged before. I've never even blogged before. Fun isn't it?

NiceGuyDave

re:vlogged: Who's Responsible for this?

Today's re:vlog is an amalgamation of visitors to artificialeye who left comments complimenting us on the quality of the content, so i think it's fair to return the favor by re:vlogging them. In order of appearance: jay dedman licking his girlfriend's eyeball (already referenced once by faLk) combined with kristina rapacki's short film "abstract" which was inspired by Darren Aronofsky's "P.I." All effects, transitions lumakeys, and the chosen frames of the two videos were generated and exported in real time based on audio analysis of the audio track "Who is responsible for this?" from AaronGNP's Gabber Nullification Project in vidvox's GridPro. Thanks to the respective artists for putting their content online under a creative commons license for remixing.

Six Miles

Back from the awesome AVIT 05 and doing a midnight live vj set together with todd synesthete for the san francisco glitch-hop artist kraddy, during the UK's largest not for profit political clubbing event, Drop Beats Not Bombs, on the closing night of AVIT, it's time to get back to posting here at artificialeye. According to the web page commondreams, last November, a security consultant told David Corn that a six-mile cab ride from Central Baghdad to Baghdad International Airport cost $6000. Now it's up to $35,000. Read what New York Times Iraq correspondent Dexter Filkins recently told NBC Meet the Press host Tim Russert here about the Road Of Death, the six miles of highway between baghdad and the airport, whose text inspired this post. Music taken from a remix of POTUS singing "Imagine" and "Take a Walk on the Wildside" from WFMU's post about dubya remixes, via the always wonderful boingboing. After u enjoy this post created completely in the latest version of GridPro have some more remixed POTUS fun at DIYmedia