I was invited by the Brooklyn Museum to update some Utagawa prints with some interactive speech bubbles. I set up my new urban projection cart in the lobby of the museum and projected the prints with an interactive make over during the Museum’s First Saturday event. Ben Roth helped work the install.
Special thanks to Brklyn Muse Crew: Traslin Ong, Erin Silverstein, Shelley Bernstein, and Bobby Nardi.
video and music by Bobby Nardi…
Went out projecting with the crew from Mike Judge’s The Animation Show. We started off with an interactive american flag on the University of Texas’ campus. The piece was going well when a few fellows wrote the ‘n’ word along with some asian slurs. The UT police proceeded to shut the event down, I don’t blame them. When given the chance to write something spontaneous and anonymous, you are going to write the ‘n’ word? I’m not surprised, since I see a lot of ’silliness,’ but I wonder what’s going through someone’s mind to decide to write that. On the other side, given today’s politics, seeing the ‘n’ word being said by the american flag is somewhat appropriate and telling. But I don’t think the fellas that sent in the hate were trying to comment on societal belief’s. We then biked down to The Alamo theater and put up some more speech bubbles. Special thanks to Robert and Rebecca from the animation show and Sheldon and Bridget along for the ride.
Hey, so I’m throwing a couple photos that I took using the camera on my cell phone. Besides the text messaging projects, I’ve been doing a lot cell phone photography and video. I’m finally getting around to sorting through some of them to post on the site. I fell in love with the color and grainy results when you open them to a larger size.
The First Casualty of War is Truth.
Think about how many ‘moments’ are being captured in such a low resolution. The “poor” quality of the images compared to the hi quality of where camera technology is, represents a desire to accept anything as the truth. Why is it that the ‘truth’ can be sold these days with such little effort? It’s similar to the shrinking language enabled by communication technology (ie. text messaging, instant messaging, tv, etc.) to deliver what’s going on in the world. The cell photo is a dotted on representation of a photo. The challenge is to figure out what the quickest way to convey or say ’something’? And these grainy pixellated beauties will represent a style treatment for the early years of the 2000’s.
Anyway, I also think they are pretty to look at and these are not manipulated after being taken from the camera.
Invited by my friends at the Esterni in Milan Italy, we went out projecting a few nights before the big party for the opening of Design Week. A drunked rowdy crowd was out and about. There was a lot political emotion in the air, what with Berlusconi’s come back.
Full motion video captured during a cab ride from 26th st. in Manhattan back to where I live in Brooklyn. Tracey was kind enough to let me videotape her on a ride through the city. After bringing the video through after effects to give it some texture, I through an interactive thought bubble over her head. What do you think about as you watch it all go by? This piece was will be showing in Milan for Design Week.
Projected in the Rialto Santambrogio in Rome. The Rialto had just done a renovation and the vaulted ceiling in the main room was restored to it’s previous height. I had just visited the Sistine Chapel and was blown away by Michelangelo’s work. When Fabio Compagna, curator and friend, showed me the space I couldn’t help but do a new twist in the ‘The Creation of Adam’ from the Sistine. So as you see, you send a text message to the number displayed and it appears in Adam’s speech bubble. It’s all automatic and unfiltered.
It was Halloween and time for TXT of the Living Dead to hit the streets of the US, why not start in Brooklyn. It works by sending the next line of dialogue in the form of a text message and it trips the movie to play forward dropping you message into the next speech frame.
After giving a talk at the Kelly Writer’s House at the University of Pennsylvania I went out and put up a projection on the Penn Campus. Land of the Free, Home of the Brave. Special thanks to Jessica Lowenthal and Steve McLaughlin.
All photos from the Penn sessions below by Steve McLaughlin
Hitting Paris while finishing up a run of projecting in France with the support of Le Ferme Du Buisson and invited to France by Régine Debatty . Thanks!
This was the first public showing of the interactive movie. Send the next line of dialogue in the form of a text message and it trips the movie to play forward dropping you message into the next speech frame.
Looking for help translating… go here.
SO now if you have translated or already know french you may be curious to know why some of the dialog is about jaccuzi’s, it’s because everyone was sitting in these giant wood fired hot tubs. Now that’s a nice way to do things.
