Or: I have quit my day-job to pursue my own personal carrier. Both as an artist as a freelance developer for artists, theater as a teacher. So now I am officially unemployed and seeking for assignments.
But to kill the time I have decided to fix up the explanation of the printing from Max/MSP on Mac OSX and try to make a general patch how to do it. I recently have had a lot of people asking me how to do it, but the instructions I posterd earlier, don't seem to cut it. So time for an update. That post will follow soon.
Furthermore I have finally found the time to start digging into OpenFrameworks, and I must say the results look promising. A bit more memory and pointer management, but all is well that ends well.
Just saw this old video of mine on youtube again. More than a year ago and still haven't found the time to finish it. But still pretty cool. It is based on the concept of a 'video cube' through which you rotate (with the metal knob i am holding in this case) your viewport. The video is live btw, only the music is added.
Anyone know any good exhibition spaces, once it is finished?
After pushing update after update the last month the Processing team has no officially launched Processing 1.0. Some nice aesthetic changes are that the external libarries are now saved outside the progarm folder and that the OS X version is now a single .app instead of a bunch of files and folder. And the new dock icon is also a lot smoother if you ask me. But why ask me, if you have the press release.
Since last week in the dutch stores: Bright #24 Including 'the creative class of 2008' featuring, among others, me and my graduation project i am always here The short article is actually pretty nice. Get it in your local store for only e2.99
Also the digital tv-channel Nederland-e will broadcast a special about 'Science on Terrorism', including an item and an interview about i am always here. For those without digital television, it will be available on http://www.nederland-e.nl soon. I haven't seen it myself yet, so feel free to laugh.
Yesterday was the 'kick-off' symposium for the Stifo@Sanderg workshop at the Public Library of Amsterdam. A day full of lectures about the current and future state of affairs in the movie industry (although not all lectures were that closely related to film)
Among the speakers was Bruce Sterling (USA) who talked about the possible futures of film (which he pointed out in the end are all already there) and which (if any) will dominate the future. And as a sidenote he would like to see one of his science fiction novels made into a bollywood movie.
Ton Roosendaal (NL) gave some insights into the great open source software Blender, what it does, how it s developed and how they are able to survive without selling the software. He also showed some clips from the latest open source / open content movie Big Buck Bunny and the upcoming game Yo Frankie.
The most impessive speaker of the day was Floris Kaayk (NL) who has already created some very very impressive semi-animated films (The order electrus and Metalosis Maligna). He talked about his process of writing, experimenting and post-production. Very impressive to see such a young person who is able to realize his own dreams. He also gave a short sneak peak of his coming animation, his first one with a budget.
Jan-Bart van Beek (NL) gave a really slick presentation about Killzone 2 and how the develop this and about the filmic qualities of modern games, even comparing (or is that implementing) camera work and angles from real movies.
Anne Helmond (NL) gave a nice presentation about the whole blogging phenomenon. Old stuff for me, but the biggest part of the audience being filmmakers and alike a nice and clear lacture anyways.
Geert Lovink (NL) closed with the presentation of the Video Vortex book. Or so I think, everybody was distracted by the best of YouTube video he played during his presentation. Hard to focus. (hmmm he promised to put up the site, but i can't seem to find it right now)
In het kader van de nationale wetenschapsweek organiseert Science Café Leiden, samen met Scheltema, festifal Key of Life, en de faculteit Sociale Wetenschappen (UL) een middag vol informatie, workshops, installaties, fotografie en discussie over terrorisme, beveiliging en privacy. Met o.a. Bob de Graaff, hoogleraar (contra)terrorisme, Chris van 't Hof, RFID specialist Rathenau instituut, Jeanette Groenendaal, regisseur Cocaïne Fabriek, en debatleider Mieke Spaans, Ikon radio.
Hoe ver moet je gaan in terrorismewetgeving? Moeten we onze privacy rechten opgeven voor een gevoel van veiligheid? Blijft beveiligingstechnologie te kraken? Het bestrijden van ongewenste acties lijkt soms haaks te staan op onze behoefte aan bescherming van persoonsgegevens. Hoe we daarmee omgaan is een zaak van iedereen. We hebben er immers allemaal mee te maken.
The last couple of days a have been playing with the OSCemote, a very simple yet nice application for sending OSC data to applications like Max/MSP.
Currently it has three main features (the free version has only 1): Buttons, Sliders and Multi-Touch. [The slider screen also features buttons and tabs, but i am guessing it is called sliders because these take up most of the screen.]
Anyhow, the multitouch feature is very nice, although it only goes up to 4 fingers (but who needs more) and i had some ghost fingers in there every once in a while. The sliders seem a bit unresponsive still but i am guessing that will be fixed in a next update. But it has never crashed on me so far (which some apps tend to do a lot) and the data seems to arrive almost instant in my patches.
So i can definitly say i will be experimenting with this App alot and might even feature it in the upcoming max/msp course. But most of all: it takes the wind out of my sails for wanting to create an app exactly like this one (but i am still missing some features, so who knows)
Yesterday I finally did my graduation-presentation after working late every night the last couple of weeks. The installation was still running smoothly and the last part to graduating was the final presentation.
I had 45 minutes to do my talk and answer questions from the committee of critics and the audience. I was a bit nervous at first, but a few minutes into my presentation I really got into it. I got a lot of compliments, the biggest one being non-mediatech people coming up to me and telling me that they never looked at CCTV the way I did.
To celebrate we drank beers in the exhibition space where I answered some more questions. Just before leaving for dinner, my supervisor Taco Stolk congratulated me with the positive result, although he still had to discuss the final grade with the rest of the staff.
About an hour later he called to congratulate me with my 8! Now that is a nice dessert to dinner! (more…)
Yesterday Saskia and me went to Roterdam to attach the i am always here installation to the wall in the hallway of the former Fotomuseum in Rotterdam. After some initial problems we were able to leave without worrying about it falling down halfway the night.
Today I finished testing it on location and calibrating both the camera and software. As far as I can see it works like a charm. The first reactions were very positive.
Since last week in the dutch stores: 
