In investigating ways to get high res images for some of my materials that we offer for repositionable wallcoverings, I’m looking into what might be the best, most convenient and affordable photo technology to use.
It’s pretty amazing that with the newest iPhone, you can get a good high res image that might even be better than earlier DSLR cameras — or at least better than my son’s, as he informs me. I think it’s a ploy to get the latest iPhone Actually, he wants a better camera.
In the meantime, I ran across this to explore. In just a couple of months, the technology may have even further improved.
We’ve already found a way to rig a tripod for the iPhone using a coat hanger, but ended up using a Luminex camera to shoot this latest footage. We edited with professional film editing software to be able to compare with the television footage and create our own educational video. This has been very helpful to show that not all repositionable wallpaper is the same.
If you are looking to turn your own photos into high res artwork, here’s a helpful “How To Make [Photo] Murals from Phone Photos” from PhotoJoJo on Apartment therapy. Click the link to read the steps. Not too difficult but you may just want to upload them to Casart coverings, where we can turn them into a large scale wallcovering that can be repositioned, removed and reused. No frame or hanging needed.
I finally made it to see and hear Song 1 displayed on the outside of the Hirshhorn Museum before it closed on May 20th. In fact that was my mother’s day present. What a great idea to use the outside of buildings as movie screens. This one, however, was not flat and that’s where the technological wizardry came in. Here’s my previous post regarding the optics.
It was a beautiful clear night with a slight breeze. All ages, all kinds of people were out, hand-in-hand, in groups, with families and individually, enjoying the same experience with perhaps different meanings for each. It was one of those moments in time where you felt the community stopping the hectic pace around them and coming together to enjoy the beauty of the moment. Here are some video clips that I have spliced. Of course you had to be there to get the full sense but one takeaway is I can’t seem to get the hauntingly, hip, “I Only Have Eyes for You” song out of my head. You can hear and see the street activity with buses whizzing by and eerie vocals of Tilda Swinton…..I tried but couldn’t not get my videos to reduce in size to be able to post so here’s the best I could find to give you and idea. This is the official one and much better than I could do anyway:
This isn’t only happening in America. Look at this clip on the outside of the Sydney Opera House.
Reminds me a little of Invasion of the Super Humans — I mean Virgens. The description of the Live Festival is pretty hysterical:
When the festival director of Vivid Live, Fergus Linehan, first told people he had to audition 30 Virgens, he got some pretty strange looks. Until he explained they were the all-girl rock choir in the Australian premiere of Stop the Virgens, the ”psycho opera” stage show created by Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman Karen O.
”The Virgens must be supplied locally – it’s on their rider, next to four bottles of high-quality vodka,” Linehan jokes.
I just like saying the word “Favela” but there is a lot to what is going on in this hillside town in Brazil.
I’ve mentioned this public art project before and I show it is referenced in a Speed Painting video but this documentary is so worth watching to understand the creative process and the very methodical measures taken by Haas and Hahn to get results of a fully painted town. They have to take the architecture, the hillside perspective and the turmoil — literally gunfire in the streets — into account. Smart of them to start small and build awareness and commitment with community involvement. This helped to give the town and its residents a sense of ownership of the project and suspend some of the difficulty that initially was there.
All Images via Favela Painting Project via YouTube
This is the second project, Rio Cruzeiro, they did in 2008 before painting the whole town. What a beautiful Japanese inspired scene, complete with bridge (actually staircase) and all.
I was surprised by the timing of receiving a google alert regading Goyte and Kimbra — both of who’s music I had heard but didn’t realize the extent of their reach at the time — and then I saw them perform on Saturday Night Live this past weekend.
How uncanny. I had just discovered this information on New Digital Landscapes, Word and Art by Walter Smith regarding Goyte’s creative process for producing the song Eyes Wide Open. This documentary is well worth watching to see the in depth strategy and time it took to put this piece together. You would never know upon just listening the amount of work involved but the music has some extra layering and sound pitches that make it unique and the background story makes it all the more interesting. For instance, I never knew a “musical fence” existed. If you’re ever Down Under, like these artists are, you may want to go try it out yourself.
I’ve been listening to Someone I Used to Know and really liking it but honestly, I didn’t pay attention to who it was by. I certainly didn’t know that Kimbra had collaborated with Goyte on this song and video until they performed together on SNL. Maybe you’ll like the painted “camouflage” mural effect as much as I do (reminding me of Liu Bolin) and the parody that SNL does. On a side note, Goyte reminds me of a young Sting — something about his face and mouth. Enjoy:
And then there is Kimbra, the New Zealand Katy Perry of sorts but with more unusuality to her work, an equally talented singer and performer. I really like her Good Intent song and video. You can Kick Start the Weekend early with this one:
Very cool websites for both but Kimbra’s had me really looking — especially when her eyes moved. Creepy yet clever.
I’ve been wanting to report on the newest Hirshhorn Museum installation and now that it has started, I finally can. It’s a continuous movie called SONG 1 by Doug Aitken who uses “liquid architecture” to project continuously around the outside of the round structure that is the architecture of Hirshhorn museum.
Here’s what it looks like now that it’s actually rolling, every night from sundown until midnight until May 13th. The movie has about 30 – 40 different covers by Beck, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, among other musicians of the 1934 song, I Only Have eyes for You. It is a series of moving pictures with the collaboration of music — not unlike a music video playing in an outdoor movie ampitheatre. Remember drive-ins? They’re baaaaack! Actually, I like the days of drive-in movies. They remind me of less complicated times. Several years ago, we were looking for ways to project movies for community gatherinsg for our civic group but the idea faded when we couldn’t find the best outdoor place to gather with an available projection screen/surface. One difference with Song 1 is that you have to move to see the entire “movie” so you have to interact and engage to get the full effect.
Song 1 was achieved with 11 different projectors strategically placed around the perimeter so that trees and sculptures would not interfere with the projections. You have to walk around to see the entire movie you you’ll never see the same thing twice in doing so, so it is a different experience each time when it is viewed.
The song thus emphasizes the basic dualities of the whole work, the play of surface and depth, the flow of time or the fixation of looking. But it also suggests a kind of narcissism, being so lost in one’s own desires that one doesn’t notice the rest of the universe….By contrast, “Song 1” feels spectacular but disconnected, abstract, cold and a bit remote. Aitken is a major artist. And by design, his “Song 1” isn’t meant to be seen or digested all at once.
I look forward to taking it all in soon. With spring like weather here, this could be a delightful night concert to see & hear. See more photos here.
Doug Aitken Song1 via Washington Post. Photo by Matt McClain
You may have seen this Pipe Dream video before, but I keep coming back to it. At first I thought it was animated — and guess what, I was right. Nonetheless, it is a fantastic combination of animated engineering and artistic, nusical efforts.
Who would even think up something like this??? Read this first, then watch.
This incredible machine was built as a collaborative effort between the Robert M. Trammell Music Conservatory and the Sharon Wick School of Engineering at the University of Iowa. Amazingly, 97% of the machines components came from John Deere Industries and Irrigation Equipment of Bancroft, Iowa. Yes, farm equipment. It took the team a combined 13,029 hours of set-up, alignment, calibration, and tuning before filming this video but as you can see, it was well worth the effort. It is now on display in the Matthew Gerhard Alumni Hall at the University and is already slated to be donated to the Smithsonian.
Just so you are a little prepared, balls (hundreds if not thousands) during the performance come out of a tube, hit an object (remember – tractor parts) and sometimes multiple objects before going back into another tube. Of the all the balls you will see, NOT ONE hits the floor!!
It takes a minute for it to load — but well worth the wait + you’ll like the jazzy music too!
Here’s the “real” version and video comparison, Industrial Concert Control by Intel. The original design, however, can be credited to the animated video by Animusic, however. This conceptual video was the inspiration to build the actual robotic controlled machine. The real balls are projecting so fast that you cannot see them except for the light display where they hit:
A musical feat indeed, regardless of how the egg hatched and if it came before the chicken or not. I investigated Animusic a little further and they bring a whole new meaning to ELO (Electric Light Orchestra), with their Beyond the Walls video:
They have quite a lot of videos uploaded but I’ll include this one, Cathedral Music, for my father-in-law.
I like the Acoustic Curve for it’s harpsichord-like sound.
Where does one find love this Valentine’s Day or any day for that matter, in the heart of Panama. Evidently, the producers of show The Bachelor think so too.
My husband and I celebrated his milestone birthday recently by going back to “his glorious roots,” Panama City, Panama, where he was born. He was only a newborn when his father was stationed in the Panama Canal zone so he doesn’t have memories from this time but we had fun visiting where he and his family had connections and created some new reflections on a modernized Panama.
We started our trip in the heart of the Gamboa Rainforest at the Gamboa Resort – pretty nice and really the only place to stay on the Chagres River right at the point where it cuts into the Panama Canal. From our observatory perch from the jungle tram, we were able to see many cruise liners, tankers and various other sea-faring vessels pass through the Panama Canal. We learned what a major engineering feat it was to build and how thousands of lives were lost in the process. Panama is currently widening the canal to further increase traffic and commerce.
We passed Noriega’s new home on the way there. He was our neighbor, just down the road from where we were staying.
We had to go over the railway which had been converted into a one-way bridge by covering the tracks with tar. Gamboa is a birder haven and they were everywhere, including in the jeep in front of us, going very slowly, scouting for rare birds.
Then there are the leaf cutting, worker ants that we came upon while walking on a forbidden trail — without a guide, “because it can be peligroso – dangerous.” Well, oops…good thing we didn’t venture too far on another path at night. We actually got scared to go further on that one after we saw bats and thought we hear growling. There are jaguars in the jungle here.
We did however, wander upon a two-toed sloth which was very close to us near the ground. He saw us and then he started slowly but faster than you think a sloth could go right back up the to the top of the tree. We later found out that two-toed sloths can be very dangerous and they only come down from the tree about once a week to do their business….Poor guy. I’m sure we left him in a bad fix.
Tarzan goes jungle vine climbing
I could go on and on about this trip but I just want to give you a few more highlights with pictures and suggest that the secrets that we discovered in Panama may no longer be secrets now that The Bachelor was filmed right where we were for last week’s episode. They stayed at the Trump tower (see the last couple of posts). It was uncanny seeing on TV the same indigenous Embera tribal village that we visited in the jungle and even the same Las Clementinas restaurant that I thought would be lovely to return to, for it reminds me of New Orleans and is also a B&B. We had the best food of our trip there and the most friendly service. Our waiter even knew Peter’s godfather in Panama. Here’s the nutshell of our remaining Panama trip (without even cracking the full nut) in pictures.
Embarking on a trip to Embera Village
Swimming hole on the way to the Embera Village
Being served lunch at the Embera village - baked fish in home-made hibiscus/ leaf cups
Getting Tattoos -- not only an art form but the dye helps to keep the mosquitoes away.
Las Clementinas Restaurant in Panama. They had their own custom wallpaper of family and historical portraits. Very cool!
On our tour back in the city we got to see where Peter was baptized as well as a day in the life of living in the San Felipe or Casco Viejo, old city of Panama.
St. Luke's Episcopal Church
Path to San Felipe - the Old City in Panama
A parrot fish is a proud catch at the fish market in Panama, where we had the best ceviche.
Panamanian Indian with beaded socks
Colorful building in the area where Operation Just Cause took place
Just one of the many lovely homes we saw in San Felipe, with a water view
It was hot while we were there — about 87 – 90+ degrees and humid in the rainforest. We were forced to cool off — many times and Balboa was our refreshment of choice.
Balboa beer is our favorite pick in Panama
You can’t beat the sunsets in Panama, particularly poolside.
Panamanian sunset, pool side at the Intercontenintal Hotel
I’ll leave off where I began with a look at Panama City — our final view before leaving — until we return for it’s a romantic spot to leave your heart in Panama.
Celebrating a new year, this light display shows a new way of thinking — using 3D animation to create quite a spectacular and memorable show. This uses a storefront in Berlin as the backdrop screen. I love all the imagery — particularly the butterflies and the sea life.
And this may be the wave of the future for Ralph Lauren is using it and I’m sure others in the fashion and other industries will soon be using this technology — if they aren’t already. All these were in Europe so may be a little slower to arrive here in the States but look to the nearest storefront near you for the next showing.
This is a mix mash of multiple interests and the start of my Wednesdays-once-a-week posts, so I’m calling it the Charleston Shuffle. It starts in Charleston from previous collected sites re an interesting way to do an art fundraiser + sculpture that I really like, then it moves to museums and music, all reminding me of the Charleston dance and back to where this began.
What a great idea to save the palette for each painting and then offer it up in an auction for a fundraiser. This is what The Charleston Fine Art Dealers Association’s Palette and Palate Stroll accomplished in this summer. $250,000 for visual arts scholarship has been raised in the past and divided between Redux, the Gibbes, and the College of Charleston’s art programs. This event paired 20 artists’ palettes, representing 10 galleries along with 10 restaurants, with the paintings for which they were used. A simple, yet brilliant idea that gives insight into the creative paint process used for each artwork.
Fred Jamar's painting and palette
Karen Ann Meyers' painting and palette
Another artist that Redux Gallery showed was Susan Meyer back in 2008 and her Installations sculpture, Together, which I really enjoy. Looking at her work, I’m pretty fascinated with her ability to have so many textural layers in her work and the color is captivating.
There was an entire section of the Washington Post called Museums: Technology but for the life of me I could not find the same online. It showcases all of the upcoming local/DC museum exhibit listings for the rest of the year and discussed whether apps for iPhone and iPad were worthwhile using while viewing an exhibit. Answer, not really because unless you look at the artwork instead of the screen, you’re not really viewing it as it was meant to be seen. You’ll be once removed like the character Brick in The Middle, who experiences life, even while in Nature, through books and what they tell him he is viewing. Love that show. (Axl, the teenage son character is the epitome of mine.)
Here’s one story from that section that I was able to find, Experiencing Music in Germany’s Meteorite exhibit, where the music surrounds you accoustically and visually as an interactive experience. Todd Machover is the creator and composer using music and technology and his MIT media lab Hyperinstruments/Opera of the Future group. (Honestly, the Post needs to work on their website navigation. Unless you know the title of the article, it is sometimes near impossible to find.) Click this link to go the the Haus der Musik in Austria — architecture below. Keep clicking these links within the Meteorite site to listen to the music within.
Now, here’s another museum post worth reading about a new proposed melting pot, National Museum of the American People and how it might soon exist from concept to creation. Here’s the only link I could find to the museum listings I mentioned previously but unfortunately it’s not the same as in the paper, which allows you to circle the ones you want to attend — so much for technology.
Finally, I’ll end this post with a little music, Gone Wondering and Ball & Chain from Jackie Greene, having recently attended his performance at a gallery showing at Mary Douglas Drysdale’s home. It was an interesting event with gaining a little insight regarding artists, talented musicians and the business of art handlers. We had some Drysdale Signature Color panels for Casart coverings on display as artwork.
Regarding Images used: I do not claim ownership of any of the images posted on this blog (unless stated otherwise). I try my utmost best to give credit from original sources. If you have ownership rights of a photo and wish for me to remove it, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Actually, he wants a better camera.
