I was invited over to Brussels by the wonderful folks at Square to celebrate the year before opening their meeting center with some interactive projecting. The nights before the scheduled party I brought my bicycle cart and went out on the town. With help from local Joris De Beer, we set up a projection in front of the EU parliament. Pictures from parliament projecting and the party below.
This is text message enabled freestyle rap. The story telling ability of freestyle rap fed with user generated content via text messaging allows those that are not so rhyme inclined to hand over their ideas to those that are more lyrically enabled. The live release was at BLVD in Manhattan. An audience text messages in the content that they want the MC’s to freestyle from. The messages are fed to the MC’s via a monitor on the stage, the messages are also projected large behind the rhymers fo rthe audience to see. This ain’t easy people, the MC’s have no idea what’s coming next. MC’s involved: NYC aka Never Yet Contested, Jah-C, Folk Lore, and The 1SHANTI. DJ - KUNAL MERCHANT.
We are guns for hire….
Putting up speech bubbles in Calgary. Had a great time working with Truck, Ideal, and the New Gallery. Check out the new fast attack bike cart that I developed with Aaron Wieler. It unfolds to create a mobile projection platform, and then packs in on itself for check in at the airport. Perfect for that jet setting lifestyle.
TXTual Healing July 19, 2008.
… BRAND NEW !!! SMS enabled freestyle rap! Sneak Preview from my studio!
Working with The 1shanti, we gathered together some of New Yorks finest MC’s to take your input live on the fly and kick it out in their voice. MC’s are fed a text message then they freestyle, then they are fed another message and so on, eventually handing off the mic to another MC keeping the flow fresh. Think about it, how much would McCain love to deliver his speeches with Obama’s charisma and voice. Well come see your message dropped on the crowd in the voice of some of NYC’s bravest MC’s.
This is just the beginning! Come check out the FIRST LIVE event at BLVD on Friday July 25th, 10 pm.
I was invited to London by Channel 4 to get people texting about street crime in support for their series Disarming Britain. Besides the interactive projections I brought in film maker Shola Amoo to help capture some of the conversations happening in the streets about crime. Check out Shola’s piece on knife crime. It all went down June 25-26 2008. Special thanks to Profero for putting this together.
View larger format video here.
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.
