efficiency

so there are ways to set things up and have sweet machine render one after the other, no prodding from me

























for both computers



















means at least one of the three of us is working all the time.

but if i want to blog, it's not really possible, just takes their total concentration. so, until chess is done, figure at least two more weeks flat-out, pictures will be sporadic for sure, typing likely spotty as well. (one computer should be fast but it's not happening that way - anyway roughly four hours per game, one hundred twenty-eight games, do want to give it breaks sometimes, maybe fifteen done at this point.)

but the rendering can be interrupted. yesterday decided spur-of-the-moment to make an animation, not something i've really done at all.

basis is imagery taken from kurt coble's pamband website (i'm messing with it, most of what you see here is taken from the homepage).





















enjoyed some of the views when working on it




















the result - quite enjoy looking at stills



















but the piece, the movement that's there - well, i'm going to spend a little more time on it.

another month of editing?

it's not difficult, but the rendering does require quite a bit of time. there might be ways i can speed things along but as of this morning, it's roughly one hour per game, but then an additional hour if i want negative of each, which i think i do. hope to be able to resolve that tomorrow. in the meantime, there's no doubt about the positives, making steady progress.



























back in the day, i met a painter who said one of his favorite parts was stretching and priming canvasses, so relaxing. sometimes when i hit a spot in a project where it's a lot of work or time, without too much thinking, that sentiment reminds itself to me, and i feel free, somehow. tethered to the work and the piece won't get made otherwise, but it's so much less pressure than figuring out what i want to do, or deciding if i think something "looks right" or not, or how it could be changed. this is just making it happen, no hesitation, no fear.

closer

even if you set out with a definite idea of what you think you want to do, it's going to change (hopefully) and by the end you'll find something you do want to do. or you'll be led on to the next thing, maybe.

anyway, no visual yet, but just before falling asleep last night, realized that the shadow (negative) chess bits should be shown on the black squares, and the entire piece should have foreghosts or afterghosts, transparencies maybe a third of a second different from the "now" moment.

only real question remaining is how many games at once to show. one might be plenty.

unless, of course, i can't figure out how to do it, or it doesn't make sense when you look at it, in which case there will be several real questions remaining.

by sunday, believe will be resolved.

mid-final pre-editing...

inverting

one of the things i want to try, all the games in negative (in addition to positive), and see how that looks as a pure digital piece, also project positive onto white squares, and negative onto black squares, and try the reverse of that as well

show the shadow world

so, first step is convert some footage to negative

everything worked

bar people were super-nice, good crowd turned out and was appreciative, was relatively painless to install and ran smoothly, no glitches, here's a still:
























not just a crowd, one of my heroes showed up, that was huge, many other vips in my life as well.

this is still a work in progress and i realized, there are a couple of things i want to try differently. very happy with how everything has gone, but not quite done exploring.

and thank you for the "are you ok?"s following the midtown gas pipe explosion today. missed it by twenty minutes, am fine. had trouble staying awake all through perspective drawing class (lecture night) totally unaware.

e32 tonight

if you can make it to lotus lounge, 8pm, clinton and stanton on the lower east side, welcome. the physical looks ready to go (not quite done in this image)























and the digital looks stable as well


























if it doesn't work, catastrophe or bar people freaking out or power cord keeps falling out of wall, not through lack of trying. excited.

pinwheel vs. me

the pinwheel is that whirring light-demon which (depending on what sort of computer you use) tells you to sit tight. and sit tight. and wait. and hang on. not like the lovely bar which says thirty-two percent complete, forty-eight minutes remaining, no. the pinwheel is secretive and arrogant. no warning it just comes, and when it's gone (and it does usually eventually go away), it's just no longer there, and you hope that was that.

my wonderful computer which i love very much, the computer which works very hard for me and makes so many things possible, has been showing me the pinwheel an awful lot as i try to get a working prototype of chess ready to show tomorrow night. haven't invited anyone to e32, really, because, it's just not there yet. i could show a large version of square of cones, i could show footage of past work, i could just talk about chess and show clips of the process, but i want to have a pre-version ready, and i want to be able to say that.

in the meantime, though, there's time pressure, and learning (yes discovered some wonderful things today on the programming side) and frequent bouts of will-testing, when the pinwheel gives me the evil spin.

precision work

the balance between the desired result and the desired doing, constantly face it. something you can imagine, you might think you want to see it, but do you want to make it? are you willing to take the steps required to bring it into reality? the chess project has a lot of irregularities built into it, by choice. there are ways to be very precise but i almost always prefer quick-and-dirty. paint is fast, video isn't always but i don't care as much about quality as just creating something and moving on. but i've hit a part of chess which i knew was coming, bracing myself for some time, still difficult. i want the "board" (surface to project on) to be square, and each square to be square. it's not happening. there are ways to do it, but by tuesday, with the materials and methods i've chosen, there will be obvious misalignments. that's ok, it will look more like my work. spent some time today measuring and really aiming to be exact, was glad to have those tools but wonder if this is really me.

plastic in my home

spent a couple hours on canal street and nearby, trying to find something translucent, in a light (white) tone and dark (black) tone - hard to find something black, not opaque, not transparent. all sorts of frosted clear frosted white translucent white translucent clear options - anyway, tomorrow will experiment. may end up just using inkjet on vellum again (worked for square of cones).

preview

before e32, she shows clips friday and saturday nights, here's a view from inside























and out























uplifting studio visit with linda griggs























and was given two bits of either a current project or a future project or future projects (unclear) - that's a screen, and a single-slide projector in a case