Shot on a Panasonic GH2 with hacked firmware and a Canon FD 50mm f/1.4, no color correction. The trains are an annual holiday display at the Roberson Museum in Binghamton, NY. Music graciously provided by the wonderful band The Octopus Project.

Watch on Vimeo or download from the Internet Archive.

Kalorama by Dan Winckler on Vimeo.

I shot and edited this video as exercise. I was spurred to do it, to do it expeditiously, and to finish it when someone tweeted about the Cult of Done Manifesto, which I hadn’t read in a while. All in all, it was very satisfying and I hope people like it.

Mysteries revealed

The two first guesses about the nature of the footage that I received (from Benton-C Bainbridge and Chris Jordan) were pretty much dead-on. It’s sunlight reflecting off a plastic (mylar?) book cover, which I crinkled and tugged at slightly while recording. Benton guessed it right first so he gets the cookies. If I’m getting my optics right, these kinds of reflections are known as caustics, and I have always found them very, very beautiful. All of the effects were done in post and I tried to keep them subtle. I’m pleased that I succeeded to some measure since CJ guessed that the chromatic aberrations were done with a polarizer.

Also, Roger Ho is an enigma. What’s your story, Roger? Drop me a line.

Sketch time. Less keyboard, more hands.

This is a brief sketch I put together to bounce off a new collaborator — just a little something that popped into my mind while out the other day, a manifestation of an homage to Ed Ruscha that I’ve been meaning to do for years. Here’s the 720p Quicktime version, which looks much better than the one above. The black line is an unintentional rendering glitch; however, as my collab said, “The black line is a nice touch; as the Persian rugmakers said, perfection is an offense to God.”

Peter Gabriel » Tom Waits from The Voice Project on Vimeo.

“In The Neighborhood”

“Home” in Gulu from The Voice Project on Vimeo.

a thank you for the new farm from the ladies in Gulu, started with money raised at the Edward Sharpe record release party
voiceproject.org

This Saturday I’ll be playing at 8static, the monthly show for the friendly, enthusiastic chiptunes/chipvisuals scene in Philadelphia. Before the show, I’ll do a brief show ‘n’ tell workshop about Open Emu the open source emulator-bending tools we released this year. Animalstyle (local Philly favorite and cat rescuer), Glomag (local NYC favorite and This Spartan Life producer/director), and Trash 80 (if I knew where Trash 80 lives and something interesting about him, I would tell you) will be playing their excellent musics, and I will be sharing the pixels with Enso (local Philly favorite and pixel artist). It’s a cheap, fun show and just a few doors down from a very tasty Ethiopian restaurant. Let your friends in Philly know about it.

Tuesday, I’ll be playing at {R}ake with the improvisational bleeps ‘n’ bloops of Color Is Luxury, a duo consisting of Charles Cohen and hair_loss, which will be a refreshing return to pure improvisation for me after being quite focused on tight A/V pairing this year. It’s audio/visual dinner theater in the back room of Monkeytown, the Williamsburg venue that feels like a 70s sci-fi film: soft, white couches lining a cubic room with projections on each wall. Good food, well worth experiencing. All details below.

8static
Saturday, November 14, 7pm
West Philly
http://8static.com/about/ $5 with a flier

{R}ake
Tuesday, Nov 17th, 8pm
Monkeytown
58 North 3rd Street (bet. Kent & Wythe)
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
$7 Admission; $10 Food/Drink Minimum (I recommend the cheese plate)

Update

The {R}ake show went great — Charles and hair_loss are master improvisers and it was a pleasure to play with them. Here’s the video. I bumped up the brightness and contrast so you could see Charles (right) and hair_loss (left), hence the grain. The sound quality from the on-camera mic is less than could be desired, but still listenable.

Open Video Conference

Although I missed most of the conference, what I did experience at OVC on Saturday and Sunday was great: met many interesting people, ingested tasty ideas and saw some great demos. More on this soon.

Here’s a rough demo video of Open Emu I whipped up for the conference despite intense sleep deprivation.

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Open Emu demo from Dan Winckler on Vimeo.