Gearing up

I actually took a day off at Christmas, and even the following day due to a food hangover. By yesterday, I was back to work. I prepped for my Jazz 2 class by posting my syllabus, topical outline and supporting material. All twenty-one students are in my roll book and aside from running through the combination for the first day, I'm ready to go! Still working on my Modern 1 class, but I hope to have that wrapped up by Friday at the latest. It makes me feel so much better when the ground work is done.

I also started laying down some designs in Dreamweaver for the re-design of rashanaworks.com. Surprisingly, I'm happy to be back at it. Designing merrygogo.com was enjoyable too, and I learned A LOT, but it takes so much time that I was kind of putting off my own website till I could get past the idea of how much brain space it takes. I'm also happy to be working with Erik Abbott-Main. We started talking a re-design two years ago and now I'm able to start working with his illustrations. Our focus with the new rashanaworks is to strike a balance between nature and technology, rural-ness and urban-ness, and revealing process as important as product. To the left is one of Erik's designs.

Class and Rehearsal for Hand-cranked Projector

This is the first draft of the montage from a class and rehearsal with Real Women Dancing (RWD), a group of women in east Texas featuring Juanita Finkenberg, Linda Choate, Vicki Baggett, Kerry Lemon and Sarah McMullan. When I watched the hours of footage I have of RWD, I became even more aware of time. RWD's concentration during ballet barre exercises requires patience, patience that women of their age gracefully embody. I am reminded of an interview with Maya Deren regarding the temporality of women. Here is a link to a youtube video that includes the interview as well as still shots of Deren's work.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhEOOpbJKEc

This silent video short (which by the way, will also be projected through a hand-cranked projector), will later have an accompanying commentary on my website.  The commentary will be taken from my interview of Juanita Finkenberg, founder of Real Women Dancing. Right now though, I'm going to publish this post, put up some laundry and then walk the dog around the block before getting ready for bed.  It's Christmas Eve and soon to be a day that I promised David that I'll refrain from working.

Suite 155 for Hand-cranked Projector

This is the first draft of Suite 155 featuring Benita Bedell and Marianne Gryder from the Bellingham group. Like Monkeys, Suite 155 will project through one of the hand-cranked projectors. This is the only footage I have where the subjects are so concerned with the camera. Benita reminds me a bit of myself as a teenager when I would be in public with my grandfather.  I would be slightly embarrassed, but entertained at the same time. This documentary-style short is somewhat reminiscent of the Lumiére Brothers's Baby's Lunch.  The movement is obviously different from Monkeys (see previous post) - no dancing, but plenty of gestural material.  I love Benita's direct look to the camera at 18 seconds into the short as if to imply, "Are you getting this?"  I'll post the video with sound for the behind-the-scenes commentary that will go on the website.

Lumiére Brothers - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEllo1o1J8g 

(I find these early documentary-style black and whites interesting, but I hate the soundtracks.  I mute them or find something of my own to play.)

Monkeys for Hand-cranked Projector

This is the first draft of Monkeys featuring Meredith Hurst and Joanna Reed from the Costa Rica group. Monkeys will project through one of the hand-cranked projectors. I chose this particular duet because of its movement qualities and the clarity of the movement with the thought that it would be ideal for audience interaction. I'm still questioning whether I really want it to be black and white with soft edges because it seems too obvious to pair up with an antique projector. Still, I really love black and white because it's a bit dreamy and maybe even a little more accessible because of it. Below are links to influences for the treatment of Monkeys:

Lumiere Brothers - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nj0vEO4Q6s

Here's an interesting study on black and white film for modern movies:
http://flavorwire.com/181969/10-modern-movies-that-are-better-in-black-and-white

And for some reason, I could help but think of rare footage of modern dance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESN6INXE0_E&feature=related

Posting Student Work and Grooming Pai

The past couple of days have been spent logging and posting student work for their own personal review from Vickie Blaine's composition class.  I'm always amazed at how long that takes me.  It's a frustratingly tedious task - one that keeps me from working on my own videos.  But it's done now - at last!

The other pretty time consuming chore involves a big hairy dog. One third done - two thirds to go.  You'd think she'd be bald from the looks of this picture - but no - still as furry as ever.

More Helmet Cam Footage

And here's scrimmage footage from the helmet cam:



I can't wait to turn some of this footage into the video that will run through one of the hand-cranked projectors!

Cannibalizing a Scrolling Mouse

So, I'm taking this scrolling mouse (see that red round button - it's important)

and its USB connection and connect it to a laptop running MaxMSPJitter.  A digital Pico projector will also be connected to the laptop.

I took the board out of the mouse and now will need to decide how to connect it to or conceal it in one of the antique hand-crank projectors.

The red scroll button normally connects to the potentiometer on the board. My next task is to create a connection between the crank mechanism of the hand-crank projectors to the potentiometer.  The potentiometer signal will deliver the speed and direction of the cranking to a Jitter patch. The Jitter patch will spit out the rate and direction of the video according to the cranking. The video will play through the digital projector that will eventually be placed somewhere inside the hand-crank projector. This is some fun stuff!!!!

Snippet of Helmet Cam Footage

A little example of the footage from the helmet cam.  It's not edited yet; it's just raw footage:

Antique Projectors - Digital Projectors

I'm turning these antique projectors into interactive digital projectors. First thing to do - find some mice and take them apart to see what I can do with them. More to come!