FLTR 3.0 <body rock'n version>
[11.12.01]
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{interactive}
1. Yugo Nakamura: interactive statue (with shinzo) + quicktime 0
2. entropy8zuper: wirefire 11/2/01
{3D}
3. csero interactive: plant 1.2
{audio}
4. moby: body rock MixMaker
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1.
Yugo Nakamura: interactive statue (with shinzo) + quicktime 0
http://viewon.net/idea/yoshiki/twist.html
http://yugop.com/ver3/stuff/25/
Yugo Nakamura is always doing cool networked Flash stuff that nobody gets. He
used to be in hell.com, so now you have to deal with him as a net artist and
can't just dismiss him as a designer/technologist. Sorry. These are my two
favorite things he's ever done, finally back online for our viewing pleasure.
The genius of both these pieces is not just in their behaviors and their
scripting (which are basically peerless), but in the way Yugo maps Flash
behaviors to the human body. It's one thing to use action scripting to create
a frictive, gravitational environment. Most people able to create this
environment then proceed to populate it with a bunch of lifeless, wireframe
polygons that look all computer-y. By populating these environments instead
with photographs of human shapes, and by causing the Flash behaviors to control
the human shapes, Yugo has created two pieces that are more than the sum of
their parts.
The Interactive Statue feels like one of those old fashioned kinetoscopes, but
much more reactive. It's the illusion of movement. There are actually just
four static stills of the same person. But what a pleasant illusion. It's
like Robert Longo's "Men in Cities" possessed by the spirit of a slinky. Yep,
that's what it's like.
Quicktime 0 is a wondrous filmic hand machine thing. This is basically the
coolest use of Flash bar none I've ever seen. Again, it's just a horizontal
strip of 40 static images of a hand. Moving your mouse up and down increases
and shrinks the images in size. Moving your mouse to the right and left speeds,
slows, and reverses the procession of these 40 stills across the screen. And
therein lies the wonder. Get them flying by fast enough (40 per second, 80 per
second), and you've got yourself a film animation of a hand opening and
closing.
Nakamura has in essense used Flash as an interactive video projector where the
user is able to control the speed of the film. And the entire Flash file is
only 216K, much thinner than an actual Quicktime file of this same animation
could ever be. Excuse me while I exclaim, "freaking brilliant."
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{advert}
chiaroscura, ephemera, tim burton on mescaline, straigh outa Prince's hometown
-- le bros. de quay:
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2.
entropy8zuper: wirefire 11/2/01
http://www.e8z.org/wirefire/
here are two more hell.com alum. These wirefire performances just keep getting
better and better. I case you don't know, wirefire is a realtime multimedia
broadcast, with michael and aurelia riffing back and forth, using all manner of
audio loops, gorgeous concrete symbols, movements, textures, and bleedings --
multi-layered, pixelated, and unapolagetically threatening to crash your
browser at all times. Once you begin viewing one of these archived
performances, mouseover the upper right hand area of the screen and a link to
the performance archives should appear, eventually.
Since I went last, e8z has added a multi-user fascet to these performances.
Observers are now invited at certain times throughout the performance to enter
text which then appears on the screen. Viewers can even hit keystrokes at
certain points to invoke circle shapes and gong sounds. This ability to join
in the dialogue makes the pieces all the more engaging.
The 11/2/01 performance I would have entitled "Love In the Time of Anthrax."
Amidst silloutees of passenger jets, hellish flames, alarming explosions, and
eerie middle eastern audio loops, the couples' sometimes "light n' fluffy"
personal iconography here assumes a touching profundity. Amidst the chaos and
uncertainty, a + z are still sending out creative love to each other, defying
terror with the usual nipple-massaging, hand-holding, Portishead audio
sampling, and glowing sheep disappearances we've all come to know and love.
In his DVD audio commentary to _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_, Terry Gilliam
offhandedly muses how in the middle ages, people regularly believed in demons
and angels, regularly expected to see demons and angels, and regularly saw
demons and angels. Much more was possible to them, being less bound by the
rigors of linearity, science, and cynicism.
Technology is meant to increase our wonder; to make the mystical trafficable.
So why do we still not get it? Props to e8z for forging a gothic web of their
own intimate personal symbols. There are faces and hands and bodies and
whispers. We are beckoned to touch and be subsumed. The world of wirefire has
less to do with Wired Magazine and more to do with Dante's Divine Comedy.
Props to e8z for continuing to expand their symbolic vocabulary, for continuing
to improve their improvisational timing and their collaborative rhythms.
Personally, I'd rather have months of variations on this same theme than
whatever this weeks' "installation situation blah blah" happens to be. Love
develops over time. can u dig it?
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{advert}
Lots of splash pages I've made:
http://www.lab404.com/dik/
http://www.lab404.com/ss/
http://www.lab404.com/nr/
http://www.playdamage.org/at/
http://www.lab404.com/bksplash/
http://www.lab404.com/ior/
http://www.rhizome.org/splash/playdamage/
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3.
csero interactive: plant 1.2
http://www.csero.com/unit1.htm
Nothing much here. Just a cheezy looking cgi 3D interactive plant. Click on a
button and the leaves fly up. Click on another button and some berries fly
out. Click on another button and the whole thing puffs up into some sort of
passion fruit. Does everything have to be so deep? It's just a cool, cheezy,
3D, animated plant thing. What's not to like?
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{advert}
We're singing our hearts out for all the guys.
We're singing our hearts out for all the girls.
We're singing our hearts out for all the world.
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http://www.newjerusalemmusic.com/danielson/nono.ram
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4.
moby: body rock MixMaker
http://www.shockwave.com/sw/content/bodyrock
One of my favorite interactive audio engines, not so much for the technology,
but for the interface and for the samples themselves. All the loops are locked
in a groove, and you just activate them or deactivate them, so you can't get
asynchronous or mess up or anything. The killer app of the interface is the
left right mixer in the middle of the console. It doesn't pan stereo, per se.
It just mixes your left column and your right column. So you can throw the
mixer all the way to the right, then set up your beats on the left, then throw
the whole thing left when you're ready. It simulates the double turntable
scenario most DJs are used to. So it's possible to get a pretty seamless live
mix (after a few tries). Plus there ain't a bad loop in the bunch.
You can listen to a couple of pre-recorded mixes to get the idea of how it
works (watch the console as you listen). Then when you get a mix you like, you
can play it back for your own admiration and enjoyment. Or better yet, send an
email to a friend, and they can go visit your geniusly produced mix, which is
archived right there on the site. Tease animals! Get fired from your job!
You won't want to put it down!
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FLTR is filtered by Curt Cloninger <curt@lab404.com>.
To keep things from getting all spammy-like, I'll only ever mention my personal
work in the {advert} sections. That way you will be forewarned of the evils of
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others to achieve creative sobriety.
Back issues of FLTR are archived at <http://www.lab404.com/fltr/>.
FLTR -- less sporadic; more emphatic. admonishing posers to get the hell out
and go sell cars since two thousand aught one.
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