I am feeling very lazy, so I am sitting around playing with some of my old toys. And an all time favorite is the one which creates these 3D shapes, which are apparently called “strange attractors”: Chaoscope!

This is freeware, has a very bare bones interface and is totally vexatious because it doesn’t allow you to save your gradients and other settings. So every time you change a value you lose the previous one forever. But! Vexatious or not - it is wonderful! Totally! So, if you are running a PC, go get one – like pretty much now, I would say!

…

In another life-time, before I went into Second Life, I used to love tinkering around with After Effects. When Xia made me do that huge computer environment cleanup last Fall, I discovered all my old video files and had quite a chuckle. But also sometimes I was impressed. I have had no education in cinema or video, can’t even shoot a decent photograph – let alone a moving image – but somehow, on rare occasions I seem to have done OK.

When I found out that they had extended their deadline, I took that as an omen and decided to submit “body parts” to Ars Electronica this year. Not that I stand a snowball’s chance in hell, given how unbelievably selective they are but what the heck, I’m going to do so anyway! So, part of the application requires a video, it is in fact compulsory. And that made me go into SL and shoot a machinima of “body parts”. First effort ever and I had a very hard time doing it.

But then once I had the whole shebang in After Effects I started really enjoying myself. Of course, my skills have grown somewhat rusty and After Effects has certainly progressed from back when I last accessed it, but nonetheless, I think that I will be doing more of this. One incentive is also vimeo and that HD thingy which they have going on over there. It does require a pro account but I can probably swing to that. Just want to get a few more under my belt before I go the extra mile, but I am sure that eventually I will do so.
…

Another thing I loved to do, before my SL days left me virtually no time for anything but going in-world and the obligatory photoshop stuff, was making music. I had this wonderful visual score writer called Easy Beat, which is sadly Mac only (yup, had a Mac until about 4 years ago, then ditched it. I was only using it for that one app, the last 3 or 4 years it was around). But I also had quite a few nice PC music softwares and again, sometimes I would surprise myself with the outcome. And not just mashed up sound (which I also loved doing btw) but I even “wrote” scored pieces. Don’t ask me how, I just somehow did. I would “paint” the scores/chords onto this interface and then move them up and down and listen and then tweak some more. Spent days and weeks with this – almost missed a plane once! And I have decided that I will be doing some more of that as well. Bandwidth gives me the impulse to do so. In the olden days no one but me got to see or hear any of this.

So here it is folks: My very first SL machinima:

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/3685002]

…

Note: For lack of a “significant other” who would have made “body parts” really meaningful Grapho and I are the ones in this video. So, it is weird… Me and me. And no, I am not really all that narcissistic. I really had no choice: Like I said, the video had to be made for the submission. I was certainly not going to get on the pose balls with all and sundry: It has to be someone special – not necessarily a lover but definitely someone close. So, I had no option but to do it by myself.

Me, myselfe and I…
;-)
…

http://issuu.com/alpha.tribe/docs/ctrl_xyzv

I stumbled onto this Issuu thing last week before I went and got the flu. You can make flipbooks and everything – just beyond coolio! Really, the wonderful things that people put out there for you play with. I just uploaded this to see how it worked – and also because I have never really been able to show this presentation online.

I had been invited to participate in the Access Grid panel at Siggraph in 2005. So, I prepared this presentation on a journey between Plymouth and LA, in 4 days. I actually had another one all ready to go but then I was challenged into taking a free fall…

I have followed the recommendation of a colleague and bought Filter Forge. And so, here I am wondering about quite a few little things:

I have been sitting in front of this for the whole weekend now and I am still finding it hard to tear myself away. Not that I don’t know my photoshop plugins backwards and forwards but this one is really something else. What differentiates it from others is that these people have created a procedural interface through which you can create your own filters, which has generated a community of filter developers who upload their output onto an online library. Obviously I am nowhere near figuring out how this procedural thingy works yet, so I am containing my enthusiasm to creating new presets based upon the existing filters which I have been downloading from the site.

The computer is creating its own particular kind of craftsmanship. So, what are the new criteria? How do we assess competency for God’s sakes? Sorry, scrap that thought – how do we even assess ownership?

I decided that I would save some of these as jpegs and keep them handy to look at later, since I tend to forget what something looks like in action just by its name or that little thumbnail – and there are literally hundreds and hundreds of these things over there, and it would be really easy to become confused… So, here I used a modest little photo which Xia took for her famous photosphere tutorial. Just applied filters from the “Creative” category of the library. With some I did create presets of my own by sliding back and forth some sliders and tweaking a color here and there. However, some I really didn’t even bother modifiying – the original is so drop dead gorgeous to begin with – “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”, being as good a motto as any, if you ask me. There are a few here, but there are others on Flickr as well, if you want to take look there.

The original image

Plastikono by Dragan Stiglic

Generate Grunge by ronviers

Dirty Coal by Domingo Aquino

Crumpled by Carl

Acid Flux by Sphinxmorpher

So, if I were to apply these to some silly assed photograph or other, got me some nice large sized printouts from that and sold them as my “artwork” – what kind of a jerk would I end up being? Would that not be plagiarism par excellence? But then again, one could say that I was the one who decided on the photo here (the filters tend to work better on things with big empty areas I found) and I was also the one who decided which filter to apply? But really… Is that enough to make me the creative agent here?

Other important question: What kind of a generous human being is it that “creates” one of these beauties and then just puts it there for all and sundry to plunder?

I am just totally totally gobsmacked! Totally…

(Oh and, this is just the creative category, mind you. There are all these textures that people put in there – simply to die for!)