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Sunday, December 21, 2008

Dot * Dot



Improve the world. Little by little through smart design, forward thinking, and inovation. Always glad someone is fighting the good fight.

Ecofont

Cut the ink you use every time you print by 20%

Monday, December 15, 2008

When things fall wayside and the bottom is cold



Things are becoming more icy, more cold, and whatever word is four times harsher than brisk. I fear the end of the biking season, while I have not officially hung up the tires yet, I may have to admit that December 14th was the last day I ventured out.

Personal projects and business development is on the fore front of the mind. I'm hoping to find the website (klaserfilms.com) up and running with reels and magic sometime soon in the new year. Hopefully this will also help facilitate the final creation and production of MinotaurTV (MTV if you will...)

We'll be uploading the Sky Factory music video, the Artisan Time Lapse, Personal Reels, Science Dog, an unfinished Icarus2.0 trailer and Charles Shaw's lecture all quite soon. In the mean time its back to the editing bay.

---

Always remember that there is more behind the mud in your head. The reality of everyday repetition clouds the under current of your more primal thoughts. While these areas of your mind may seem "sinister" or "savage" it can be assured that this is nothing more than the fears and sexual taboos of your far gone ancestors.
If one, such as yourself, finds it easy to dwell upon these thoughts, it is highly encouraged. In times antique you would have been considered to be a spiritual and connected individual, whereupon in this digital and precise age, you are seen as dysfunctional, odd, and stubborn.
Please use your dreams as road maps to the future. Make sure to channel
appropriately. And remember no man is an island-- yet we are all islands popping up singularly, from the ocean which makes the collective sleepy tide of human thought.

Monday, December 1, 2008

Boring Machines Disturbs Sleep


"Art documentation is by definition not art; it merely refers to art, and in precisely this way it makes it clear that art in this case is no longer present and immediately visible but rather absent and hidden."
-
Boris Groys

(stolen from> [nonsource)

Things buzz and it is cold. This winter will take sometime to get through- but I like time that takes time. Because so much of it goes so fast these days. Watching my family grow up is truly strange, as it must be for them to watch me grow up.

More freelance work is needed. And Soon. If you know of any/have any please send it my way.

A day later, I continue writing another post that I am not sure if I will actually publish. I save these and then work on them, and then they are deleted. Quite un-worthwhile.

When we were slightly younger
There were trees that grew up into the heavens, and our fathers
had built tunnels down into the earth.
And we became greedy. Wanting more
So we chopped down the trees, and we moved the earth
which shifted the mantle and collapsed the tunnels
like veins being choked off by old fat binges and white goo.
And then when the sky fell we had no where to run
but its what we deserved and so I was thankful
what is comfortable is not always what we should be
but in todays world- Im not sure if anyone agrees

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

This is labour of love

Icarus 2.0




So. I've (mostly) finished shooting Spenser's Image Design film. The camera jammed twice! Once during the city shots, and once during the wing shots....which is really to bad. We probably didn't get it on 16mm....but c'est la vie.
It was all intended to be done on 16mm but I also was able to capture some video of the burns, as well as both 35mm and digital stills.

So what to do with what I have?
The film was supposed to be a hybrid film between the stories of Prometheus and Icarus. A story about gaining fire (industry, technology, energy) and about what happens when it gets to hot and burns out of control. It looks like the Prometheus section (Kits Film) may not even get done now...

So what to do, what to do...

I've been playing with the Icarus myth for awhile now. And I would like to continue. This project may not have come into fruition this time. But now I have some building blocks. I want to play with the Icarus story more! And it will build, maybe into a completely different project that I had previously though.
Anyone out there want to collaborate?

Well anyways. Here are some photos of process and shoot.

Starting to build the city


Miniature DPW city planning


Getting ready for the shoot with Spens and Mike.

The city with detail on the water


The City Burning


Gears


Wing Test w/ Andreas drooping seed in the foreground.

Mike as Icarus


His hand is supposed to be on fire....and then it fell off.

Im lighting the wings on fire on the back of Mike here.

Mike looking horrified.

Icarus running with his wings on fire.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

35mm #2:



So I spent some time in New York & Boston.
Seeing some friends, writing a good deal, and wandering...

Here are a few of the pictures: 35mm - 200asa


Lower East Side, NY


Igor Jazz in Subway


Miriam being assaulted by a subway violinist


The cieling of the Boston Bus Station


Downtown Boston


Jordan Ganz

Monday, November 17, 2008

quick mention....and then more a bit later



First of all: KEO
And for those of you who are more into: Wiki

The Keo Project is a piece of Space Art, (wait? Thats a genre!) conceived in 1994 by Jean-Marc Philippe. KEO is a satellite that will hopefully be launched into space and then fall back to earth in 50,000 years. It will hold personal messages from anyone who writes in. Messages from people all over the world- those who are unable to write (elderly, children, hard-to-reach places) are especially encouraged to write in- which I'm digging. Apparently there is enough digital room in the plans to hold a 4 page letter written by everyone on earth. (So you should write in!) The satellite will also hold a drop of human blood, chosen randomly, and a few other artifacts like a digital modern day "library of Alexandria".
Which when you think about it.....50,000 years? Thats like taking a time machine back to when our ancestors invented fire!
How much will our species accomplish by then? Will we even be the same species? We maybe wiped out, we maybe so differently evolved....
Reading the letters of 50,000 years past is an amazing glimpse of the past for the future! Imagine...we may seem like beautiful, dreaming, and hopeful creatures! Or we may look like fearful, paranoid, unsure creatures....it depends what WE write.

Cool idea. Cool concept.
Here is a picture of the satellite:

Saturday, November 1, 2008

2008 Chicago Halloween Parade (Rats Rats Rats)


Welcome to Rat City!

My good friend, Tom Laporte, has been running the Chicago Halsted Street Parade for the past 6 years. This year, he gave away some of his responsibilities to Ben Fain. A graduate student from SAIC. He transformed the parade into a very loose, fruedian, analogy of our subconsciousness. It was complete with a float with spinning pizza, a scared old man, and some 30-40 rats!
We got some great reactions from the crowd. Scared some kids, scared some adults!, and got a bunch of "ooohs" and "ahhhhs".
I'm never quite sure how we get away with these things....Thank you Tom Laporte & Ben Fain.



The Rat Float


I'm dressed as a Rat with a Flame Thrower!






I, looking quite tired and sweaty, along with Downtown Dave on his cellphone.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Third Coast Culture Cooperative (TC3)



So I need more excuses to do more things. Wreck more havoc. Create more Chaos. Cultivate more community, energy and love.

I'd like to throw a fund raiser concert/art show for the West Memphis 3.
One of the most embarrassing things, in my opinion, that the American court system continues to keep alive. 3 teenagers arrested and convicted in Arkansas, for the killing of three young boys. Damien Echols was given the death sentence while Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin were sentenced to life imprisonment. They didn't do it though. They were convicted on fears of 'witchcraft', a false testimony, and a scared jury. The evidence overwhelmingly shows that the boys didn't do it.
Damien hasn't been killed yet. But they've been in jail for 15 years! They're not young teenagers anymore, they're grown men, and they've lost so much of their lives. They need to be freed. Damien is on is last appeal with habeas corpus.

I think it would be groovy to run a fund raiser for their legal fund.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Classical Gas



109 birthed the Catholic Church.
1609 held the worlds worst witch-hunt, the Basque witch trials.
1809 saw Napoleon causing hell in Europe.
1909 was when Theodore Roosevelt left the white house.
1939 marked the outbreak of World War II.
1989 marked the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union and the Cold War.
2009 is rapidly coming.

A hundred years isn't that long. We can consciously guide the future of ourselves as a community, as a nation, as world, as a species.
Gear our selves, change ourselves, evolve ourselves. Everything we think is normal will be foolish in the future.

Friday, October 17, 2008

There is something up ahead.



We are planning the next inevitable step in things to come. Our machine is running out of steam. and the gears need more oil, but the ground has gone dry. The crazy men, who've been tinkering in their attics are ready to come out now. They've made a few new gadgets that run on wind and sun. If you look around the gold watch-band they give you- it's covered in astro-physical symbols like those of Dr. Zeitgeist. They tell you things about your soul, but only after you've already discovered them.
The big guy is practicing air brakes. So that we can all run away in a bus when the world starts tumbling down. I'm hoping we dont have to use the shotguns, but we're not taking any chances.
Maybe we can run away from all of this and make our own microcosm. Ordered after the stars in the sky on the night we first set free. We look inside ourselves and we find the mysteries of the universe. Our hands melt through trees like they are water. It was only a matter of time until all the atoms met up right. We are mostly empty space.
Forgive us for being quiet for so long. Forgive us for when we become over-zealous to late. We all knew it was coming. some of us prepared for nothing and some of us watched dumbly. The ones who had been practicing using their minds like jedi, they were the only ones with any real upper-hand. But it was all in their heads, and yet it was in ours too.
Take-Note:
- You are more powerful than you imagine.
- They are speaking to you even now.
- Aliens are among us. And all of us just laugh.


-GSYBE knew it all along. and RAW is writing this as I type-

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

this was a failed experiment from the begining



Why am I listening to Loveless on digital, when I have it on vinyl?

Monday, October 13, 2008

Cloud Factory/Sky Tower



So its a very good week for several reasons. But one of them specifically being that Kristin Ford is back in town. We got together and I got an early copy of her new CD
"Dirty Nasty" and as we'd already planned talking about doing a music video.
Well sometimes talking turns into doing- so because of her short stay we went out and filmed a bunch today. I'm pretty happy with the footage. it maybe a bit dark and/or grainy at times. Lots of people making out, guitars, and white paint!

Check out her myspace:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=60739099

We're making a video for the song Sky Factory. So take a listen and take a look at a few pictures from today:


40ft of cement making madness.


We take a few shots before we go up.




View from half way up.


We started playing with paint after we destroyed a guitar...


Gill & Jake


The group


Kfo & I

Thursday, October 9, 2008

We are creatures of the wind.



I'm quite hard on myself much to much of the time. I dont live up to my own expectations to often. Not because I'm not trying or anything, but because the standards I set for myself are not only hard to reach, but very broad and cover so many different points in my life.
I need to learn to put in even more effort, with less unneeded criticism on my part.

a note:
+ The ironic truth of life, that often, to be true to your own heart, you have to make someone else's feel sorrow. Not a fun game. But a game we all go into willingly, and then come out of yelling "its not fair!".

Post-futurist Manifesto

We the Youth have thrown out their bodies and old ideas into the fire-
To create a new challenge for living men + women.


We write this standing on the edge. The edge looms before we, just un-reachable and yet rapidly moving closer, infinite, we look into the future.

The human race has pushed + sped us to this moment that is: Now. We celebrate the now. Faithfully + indulgently using our 5 senses to register the given fabric of this time + space. Nothing is off-limits. Technology + Nature infused into one gigantic heartbeat. We recognize the importance of nature on the same scale that we recognize the importance of cement, steel, cybernetics and electronics; both are sacred.

We have had frightful visions of the apocalypse that is nigh. We have had ecstatic daydreams of the utopia that is nigh. Both visions are truth, both vanish like smoke. Living in the now does not give us the right to deny the future. Our work creates the future, celebrates the future, envisions the future.

The belief is that all people have an opinion, a vision, a statement- and all of these are valid. Thus we do not deny any idea, creed, any vision except those of ignorant and misdirected hate.
The goal is to explore the highest points + the lowest points of intellectual conversation, radical self-expression, physical titillation, and spiritual journey. We recognize that to have the best, we must also have the worst. Opposites are linked by inseparable bonds of invisible might.

We will not apologize for our visions of the future! Even when we are selves are taken over by the future and proven wrong, ignorant, and pitiful.

War is not the answer. Freedom is our deliverance.

We seek to celebrate both feminism and masculinity. Both ideas are to be celebrated + used as points of dialogue. Society is threatened by both sexes being oppressed, confused and conformed.

Not all things of the past are irrelevant. We do not agree with all those who came before us. Yet, some things are worth preserving. We do not tend to live or be created within a vacuum. Instead we seek to live in + be created in the evolution of Homo Sapiens. What we seek to throw away is that which has become trite and meaningless. To throw out out-dated ideology and ritual and instead seeking to create new ideas and rituals that are meaningful to us, in this now.

When we are aged, throw us into the fire as well. Re-shape the world, the words, the meaning. For when our bodies die, our futures do as well.

We stand at the edge of the world + man’s heroic struggle. Screaming out this mission into the stars- that empty and amassive space.

11/07
Does this still hold true for us?


Environmental Transformer 1968

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

It's official.

We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.

-R. Buckminster Fuller



Looking into the grey matter nebula. Remember that the past has been eaten away by flies, and the future doesn't exist, it was stolen long ago.

We are moving towards something. Is that much inevitable? Evolution never stopped, and man is not exempt. We are moving in a direction that I, nor we, can fathom. So we make guesses, albeit educated guesses.
Singularity, Artificial Intelligence, Space Travel, Cyber Space.

The next evolution of man will not be, nor is it at this moment clean.
All stages of life are messy. Birth, Sex, Eating, Death: All are filled with sucking noises, juices, pain and are messy.
Mankind is fighting for a new place in the world, not as domineers, but as an elevated species. It's just as messy. We are killing, maiming, raping, and destroying ourselves because we fear whats on the other side of the wall.
And the other side of that wall is scary, because only a few people have been there before...and we killed them anyways.
We are gaining energy for a collected Quantum Leap in evolutionary history. Just like our species did when we became Homo Sapien Sapiens.

Maybe I'm just as deluded as everyone else. This is my fantasy.