Artificial Eye

Hunger for Novelty

According to recent studies completed at the Faculty of Arts and Science at Harvard University "Apparently our hunger for novelty begins with the eye itself, as the retina adapts to seek the unexpected, and ignore the commonplace". Japanese researchers have discovered that data can be written into a human fingernail by irradiating it with femtosecond laser pulses. Capacities are said to be up to 5 mega bits and the stored data lasts for 6 months - the length of time it takes a fingernail to be completely replaced. Pretty soon u just wont know who around you is a cyborg, no matter how artificial your eyes are :) Music to this post is appropriately titled "pull" by soplerfo from The Ep For Dogs

IM Peaches, Bushes for free!

Is there any doubt any longer about what needs to be done? Don't u all find it A BIT ABSURD that we are supposed to be criminals now for(inducing) filesharing, ripping, mixing, burning (CD's), and some people can just get away with ripping (off) mixing (up) burning (whole cities and countries) and murder without any consequences? I cant be the only one. Music by the Presidents of The United States of America. Excuse me this forage into the protected domain...just this once, i promise :)

IM Peaches, Bushes for free!

Is there any doubt any longer about what needs to be done? Don't u all find it A BIT ABSURD that we are supposed to be criminals now for(inducing) filesharing, ripping, mixing, burning (CD's), and some people can just get away with ripping (off) mixing (up) burning (whole cities and countries) and murder without any consequences? I cant be the only one. Music by the Presidents of The United States of America. Excuse me this forage into the protected domain...just this once, i promise :)

The Surfer Behind the Exile

Hmnn...lets see, videoblogs have peeople in them dont they? Figured it was about time to come out of the closet and give u all a hint of what the exiledsurfer looks like when producing his content for the artificialeye...a self portrait, so to speak, closer to what most videoblogs are about... no speaking though, just a hot track from mashuptown, Devoutcast. Draw your own conclusions.

I Build Mesh Networks

boingboing/craphound cyberpunk Cory Doctorow has a new book out, titled "Someone comes to town, Someone leaves town" which is a small departure and a great leap forward in style and subject matter from his previous outings in the SF genre, but which remains true to his contemporary areas of interest. Lets just say that i can't agree with him more in his framing of the freedom of access debate in a zeitgeist fairy tale of good vs evil remniscent of the science fiction trilogy by C.S. Lewis. For sound i award him the musical accompaniement of "silverocelli" by the Order of The Silver Cosmonauts whose aim is to "create a vortex of attention and sound in galactic propulsion preparation with the resulting momentary sonic gravity lens enabling ontological tweening and planetary preening." Enjoy the clip, download the book, support the creative commons :)

Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously

From wikipedia: Colorless green ideas sleep furiously is a sentence composed by Noam Chomsky in 1957 as an example of a sentence whose grammar is correct but whose meaning is nonsensical. If you havent noticed, fALk's favorite colour is green, that of this blog and its elements... home of where "Newly formed bland ideas are unexpressible in an infuriating way." And this time without music :)

Four O Four For Money

So the truth has to come out...falk has been so busy NOT posting to the blog that i sort of put an unofficial boycott on myself since my content was filling up the site (and this is supposed to be a group project!)... but since its been soooo long, i figured, well, better get SOMETHING up... so if u could just imagine for a second that i havent been posting to the site because i suffered a Distributed Denial of Service Attack, well, u might understand why we have been so b0rk3d around here this last month. How's that for a good excuse? Music is an unreleased IDM (intelligent dance music) track from a barista named Bayrak who makes my daily fredocino in the gourmet coffeeshop i frequent in istanbul, which now has WIFI. What a great combination.

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.

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.

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

Dots for a future city

exiledsurfer fresh from our discussion of the convergence of the vj community with videoblogging, Avit, birmingham... a walk around the city and u cant avoid passing the city landmark, "the bullring". no bullfighting, just a mall...with big dots. i also couldnt miss the conversation with oldskool guru Peter Rubin and the face of willow...simple impressions from a spring day. The audio track is a creative commons track of dark, mellow electronica built around distorted synths, dreamy choir sounds and machine noises called "Music for a future city" from mirror shades Nothing beyond simple pleasures :)

Retro Petrol Surf Vibes

Michaels lovely 60s surf "short before AVIT" post:

Ah yes, the day approaches when falk and i depart for the AVIT VJ conference, so time for a bit of last minute creativity before packing the bags, checking the equipment list and going throught the airport hassle on tuesday morning. Traveling with a laptop, hard drives, monitors, and cameras is NEVER fun. It means 3 security checks between istanbul and london for me...after awhile u learn how to pack all your gadgets so its easiest to unpack them even after they have been bombarded with electrons...all those layers of cables, motherboards, and power adapters makes airport screeners reeeeeel nervous these days...and u cant help but having short nerves yourself. I'll make sure that i am travelling with less than two books. Just because you are paranoid doesnt mean you aren't. under continual global surveillance. Its about OIL WArUM SONST. So i thought i would brighten my (and your) day with a bit of retro sun and surf action..hula girls in the 60's in hawaii with ray-banned surf hodads mixed with a nice bit of flash animation from a chrysler car add made in canada. Retropetrol sunshine wishes from exiledsurfer... i've spent all week getting the my new website up and running... check it out here , getting stickers printed for the aritficialeye and a nice big white vinyl banner for the vidvox boys david and ray who will be jetting across the ocean... so catch u from Birmingham with hopefully some spontaneous collaborations from me and falk sometime this week....At least he's scheduled to help drop some beatz not bombs on friday nite at the Custard Factory!

Searching for Zod

Last week we had to take a small break from vjblogging as real life interfered a small bit. A little later now an answer to our little copyleft discussion from Michael:

Although at my live gigs i repurpose, mix and match mostly found content, i do also create original material. This was created for a gig i had last week in istanbul. The source material is a 8 bit version of the DOOM gaming engine which a friend of mine named Dara coded just for fun. The material was filmed from the screen as he played (and i LOVE the field scan lines, adds to the feel of the material) and then colored. The audio track is some unnamed loops i also created for the gig last week. And who is ZOD?

Losing Who We Are

from michael again:
One of the most important cases being heard before the supreme court at the moment is MGM vs Grokster. Twenty-eight of the world's largest entertainment companies brought the lawsuit against the makers of the Morpheus, Grokster, and KaZaA software products, aiming to set a precedent to use against other technology companies (P2P and otherwise). In honor thereof, i took animated some text in VDMX from an article on Salon.com by Andrew Leonard:

The deeper we get into the digital age, the more we will be defined not by our relationships with physical objects but with the data that we have accumulated in our journeys through life. If we lose the right to own that data and do what we want with it, if the power of the computer, and the Net, is taken from us, we're at risk of losing a lot more than a few files -- we stand at risk of losing the evidence that tells us who we are.

The track is "Run The Crowd" by The Shapeshifters taken from the SXSW music festival performing artist bittorrent.

re:vlogging#1 .|. a homage to Annie

michael writes:
Annie says on the sidebar of her videoblog, "I'm 19, and live in a suburb of Los Angeles. I love my Mac and I'm incredibly geeky/dorky." As a true testament to her dorkiness and what she claims is her "lack of coordination" she graced the world with a post of her dancing in her new jeans. Unfortunately for her, i dont think she's a dork, i think shes damn hot (love those glasses). Alas, she's a continent away from me, so the only way i can flirt with her is with a re-vlog mix of her original post with some nice ice cream pastel color and streak fx with a bit of rgb delay -- to spice up the stark whiteness of what appears to be her living room -- all added with real time sound synch to her original track using GRIDPRO. Any other videobloggers you think should be re-vlogged here at artificial eye? drop me a mail at exiledsurfer@onemail.at

Guest Entry#1: Copyleft.|.Copyright

Today is only 4 Minutes old but it starts very lovely with the first entry from a guest VJ. I got a mail from Michael yesterday and thought he is very intelligent and in the know. It turnes out after chatting a little that he is dead funny as well. His loops will feel home here our thoughts are somehow close yet far away. So here it goes and expect an answer from me soon...

Falk and i subscribe to different schools of thought as far as content origin are concerned, and i consider myself a copyleftist and believe that once things are released into the public domain, that they are there for us to reinterpret as artists... and essentially that is what enables public dialog. So what better way to set us two apart here on the blog than to remix the copyleft logo with some of my other favorite footage, including a classic demoreel animation clip from niels jansson that he put up on the web in 2000. This is a live mix created in GRIDPRO from vidvox, using the sequencer, with all added color, motion fx and transitions created by synchronizing the modules to the audiotrack in the built in audioplayer. The track is called "copy copy", including the great line "super terror, copy, NOW", from a japanese band way too far ahead of their time, The Plastics which was released as a single on Rough Trade in 1979.

any musicians out there who want to contribute tracks for a mix to be posted on this site can mail me at exiledsurfer at onemail dot at

cheers, exiledsurfer.