Under Stolen Streetlights

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2010-04-24T21:12:00.001-07:00

PD/GEM sketch :: Josh 137

2010-03-02T11:22:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: This site has moved to http://bitsynthesis.com

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Here's my first Gem project in about 6 months. The music is by Josh Harding.

Open Letter to Victoria Espinel: A call to reason

2010-03-02T11:03:00.001-08:00

Dear Victoria Espinel,

As an American citizen and digital media artist, copyright issues are a part of my everyday life and it is important that they be treated seriously. It is also important that they be treated rationally.

I agree with some of the sentiments in your recent statement (http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/02/23/intellectual-property-and-risks-public) regarding counterfeit goods, particularly those that pose a public safety risk. However, it seems to me that
these sorts of violations are already covered as well as can be expected under the current laws. The issue of counterfeit toothpaste is not primarily a copyright issue, it is an FDA or customs concern. Stolen logos may have been employed to achieve the deception, but this in itself is not what makes this example so serious. It is the negative effect on human life due to the cheap, cost-cutting manufacture of such goods. The same goes for the counterfeit car parts you mention. The types of people that are in the business of putting dangerous chemicals in counterfeit toothpaste to increase profits are not going to be deterred by stronger copyright laws. Instead, the ramifications will be felt by individual users, consumers and small artists.

It appears that in your statement you have used examples such as the counterfeit toothpaste and car parts in an attempt to instill fear in the public, to make them think that stronger copyright laws with
harsher penalties will do something to stop these sorts of crimes from happening in the future. The reality is that harsher copyright penalties will for the most part be employed on a smaller scale
against less serious violations. They will not, in the vast majority of cases, be used to ensure the public's safety. Harsher copyright penalties will be used primarily against individuals, not companies or organized crime rings, who are involved in simple intellectual property theft (pirated software, music, movies, etc.). I am not suggesting that such theft is harmless. However, it is more akin to low level shoplifting than grand larceny and terrorism (which is the image I get from your description of the toothpaste counterfeiters).

What I ask is that you please be reasonable in your approach to copyright enforcement. The American public that I know does not support massive multi-million dollar fines for middle class mothers and teenagers who have hopped on the filesharing bandwagon. People who share files without benefiting monetarily should not be treated the same as a counterfeiting ring producing pirated DVDs for commercial sale and profit. In keeping with a free and open internet, ISPs should not be responsible for the data that passes through their networks as long as they are responsive to properly filed takedown notices. This is good for the American economy, and the continued spread of American culture and ideals. Americans are great innovators, and there is no better place for innovation than the internet.

Finally, say it like it is. Do not lump pirated music in with deadly counterfeit toothpaste. Do not make it seem like the majority of copyright enforcement deals with protecting the health and safety of the American public, it does not. Copyright enforcement is (and always will be) primarily about economics, and while this is certainly important, the nature of the crime must always be taken into account. Please, be reasonable, do not create harsher penalties for regular copyright violations. Do not continue using a blanket approach to violations, this will only increase the occurrence of injustices like
the Jammie Thomas case.

Stand up to the massive corporate lobbying effort that I know is underway. Stand up for reason.

Takeshi Murata live in Chicago

2010-02-24T13:55:00.001-08:00

[This page has been moved to http://bitsynthesis.com/2010/02/takeshi-murata-live-in-chicago/. Please update links to the new address.]

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One of my favorite video artists is coming to Chicago on March 4th. Takeshi Murata is screening some of his videos and performing live with musician Robert Beatty as part of the Gene Siskel Film Center's Conversations at the Edge lecture series (which is fantastic). Here's the writeup from the Gene Siskel website:

Takeshi Murata & Robert Beatty
2003-10, Takeshi Murata and Robert Beatty, USA, ca. 90 min.

For the last six years, artist Takeshi Murata and musician Robert Beatty (Hair Police, Three Legged Race) have collaborated on a series of visceral, glitch-based animations, setting Murata’s psychedelic imagery to Beatty’s hypnotic compositions. Murata’s videos range from hand-drawn animations of fluidly morphing shapes to painterly abstractions of meticulously hijacked digital code. Beatty employs hacked electronics and thrift-store cast-offs to craft otherworldly sonic narratives. Together, the duo’s electronic alchemy transforms the detritus of consumer culture into dazzling tapestries of sound and color. This evening, CATE teams up with experimental music and intermedia series Lampo to bring you Murata and Beatty in a special screening and performance. The two will present their work in three sets: a solo performance by Beatty, a screening of videos by Murata, and a new audio-visual performance, created especially for this show, by both. Co-presented by Lampo. Visit www.lampo.org. Multiple formats. (Amy Beste)

Tell U.S. what you think of copyright laws

2010-02-23T13:09:00.000-08:00

Victoria Espinel, Barack Obama's newly appointed Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, has put out a call for public input on the subject of intellectual property enforcement: "My office is asking the public to give us information about the costs and the risks – and then give us suggestions for what we could be doing better as a government." The full statement, and a pdf detailing specific requests, can be found here.

Please tell Victoria how you feel the U.S. government should approach copyright violations. Let her know that this is not what the public wants. Send comments and suggestions to: intellectualproperty@omb.eop.gov

Interview with Nadav Assor on Vague Terrain

2010-01-19T09:49:00.000-08:00

My first piece of writing for Vague Terrain has been posted. It's an interview with video artist Nadav Assor.

http://vagueterrain.net/content/2010/01/nadav-assor-interview

100 Hours of Solitude

2009-11-19T08:53:00.000-08:00

This is probably the longest video on Vimeo.

I think the appropriate way to view this is to project on a full white wall in an otherwise empty room. A couch, cot, or bare mattress are acceptable, along with bare necessities like a few gallons of water and a box of saltines.

Go ahead and watch it straight through, I dare you.

100 Hours of Bliss from Benjamin Baker-Smith on Vimeo.

Our Country

2009-11-18T21:21:00.001-08:00

At long last, I present to you Our Country. Enjoy.

Our Country from Benjamin Baker-Smith on Vimeo.

First Final Cut Project EVER

2009-07-21T11:17:00.001-07:00

I just found this online, on Seth Samuel's YouTube channel to be exact. This is the very first video editing I ever did, done on Final Cut Pro in the fall of 2005.

It is titled Green Dreams, and by far the best part is Seth's score.

OhMyGl!tch

2009-07-14T16:31:00.000-07:00

OhMyGl!tch from Benjamin Baker-Smith on Vimeo.

New Chopped and Screwed JPEGs

2009-06-25T19:39:00.000-07:00

Here are some new glitch images i've been working on. You can find more on my flickr page here.

below the clouds

the most dangerous glitch

L@ND$C@P3_2

L4ND$C4P3

Glitch Fish

2009-06-15T07:29:00.000-07:00

Check out the latest results of my new datamoshing process. I've moved on to using scripts written for FFMPEG and AVIDEMUX rather than painstakingly mosh it all by hand and struggle with the semi-frequent software crashes that result.

Also, I've made the switch to VIMEO.

Glitch Fish from Benjamin Baker-Smith on Vimeo.

My "Lonely Porter" homebrew wins silver!

2009-05-30T15:38:00.001-07:00

My most recent homebrew, a chocolate porter brewed back in the fall of last year, just won second place out of 7 competing homebrews on the Oberlin College Campus. Here's the review as it appeared in the May 23, 2009 issue of The Grape:

"2nd Place: Oberlin alum Ben Baker-Smith brings the black-sheep Dark Chocolate Stout to the table, securing a silver medal with a bold, bitter mocha flavor. The beer pours oily black in the glass with an enormous, thick beige head. One would be troubled to blindly distinguish the scent of this brew against a bar of fine chocolate. On the tongue, the beer was ascerbic in the best way possible, producing the same mouth watering pucker of a fine espresso. As the intense smokey finish subsides after many moments, the imbiber is left with the delicate aftertaste of unsweetened cocoa." (written by Liam Gordon)

I just got ingredients for a hefeweizen and an american wheat ale, and can't wait to start brewing again.

Slavic Village Revisited - Generation JPEG

2009-05-29T13:05:00.000-07:00

[This page has been moved to http://bitsynthesis.com/2009/05/slavic-village-revisited-generation-jpeg/. Please update links to the new address.]

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These images are from Foreclosure, an old project of mine featuring foreclosed homes in Cleveland's Slavic Village, one of the neighborhoods hit hardest by the housing crisis. Aproximately 2,000 of the 8,000 homes in Slavic Village lie vacant.

One of the disturbing things about these homes was their new-ness. Though they were abandoned, they were almost all structurally sound, and many of them weren't in any sort of outward disrepair. In revisiting these images I wanted to express a sense of age and wear that was felt in person, but may not have come through in the original 35mm photographs.

These are 400th generation JPEGs.

100th Generation Obama

2009-05-29T12:57:00.000-07:00

This is a 100th generation JPEG, but an artifact removal filter was applied after each recompression, resulting in the smeared effect.

I like to think of this as an analogy for the larger effect of Obama's PR people vs. his critics: who he is and what he is trying to do will be lost beneath the airbrushing and the shit. For better or for worse.

Tutorial: Datamoshing - The Beauty of Glitch

2009-04-28T09:24:00.001-07:00

[This page has been moved to http://bitsynthesis.com/2009/04/tutorial-datamoshing-the-beauty-of-glitch/. Please update links to the new address.]

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Datamoshing, as it has been coined by the Providence, RI artist collective Paper Rad (warning, site may induce seizures), refers to a technique of exploiting video compression to create intentional artifacting and distortion. If you've ever skipped ahead in a poorly compressed DVD rip and seen the moving outlines of actors ghosted behind the pixels of the scene you were just watching then you know what I'm talking about.

The effect has been in use by digital media artists since at least 2005, though exactly when it was first produced intentionally is a matter of some debate. It seems likely that someone was doing this before 2005, after all, there were poorly compressed DVD rips to inspire them. Regardless, it recently hit the mainstream in the form of music videos for Chairlift and Kanye West, so there has been a lot of digital press on the subject.

To understand datamoshing, you need to know about I- and P-frames. Digital video files are made up of sequences of different types of frames. I-frames (also referred to as keyframes) are full representations of a single frame of the video. Effectively, they are still images containing all the color and luminance information of that frame. P-frames, on the other hand, are reference files that inform the video player of changes in the image since the previous frame. Thus, only areas of motion or changing luminance values are described in a P-frame, making them more like a set of instructions than an image.


I-frame	P-frame

Naturally, P-frames contain less data than I-frames, so they take up less memory. This is their attraction for video compression codecs: the higher the P-frame to I-frame ratio the smaller the file size.

(note: There are also B-frames, these are similar to P-frames but a B-frame references both the frame before AND after itself. These can be used to create datamoshing effects also, but the effects are less predictable so I'll leave that up to you to experiment with.)

Following are some examples of normal frame structures.

Examples:
(clip A) I - P - P - P - P - P - (clip B) I - P - P - P - P - P - P
(clip A) I - P - B - P - B - P - (clip B) I - P - B - P - B - P - B

So, how do we use our knowledge of I- and P-frames to datamosh? Basically, the technique is to insert P-frames from Clip B after an I-frame, or a series of I- and P-frames, from Clip A (to put it another way: remove all the I-frames from Clip B). The result is that the movement from Clip B, as described in its P-frames, is translated to the image from Clip A. Clip B's P-frames act on the pixels in Clip A according to their original instructions.

Example:
(clip A) I - P - P - P - P - P - P - (clip B) P - P - P - P - P - P - P

When you skip ahead in a poor quality DVD rip, you may jump into the middle of a bunch of P-frames. Until the video hits an I-frame you will unintentionally be datamoshing the frame you skipped FROM with the movement of the frames you skipped TO. This is a result of setting the compression codec to produce fewer I-frames (thus, more P-frames) in order to save on file size for distribution over the internet or on CDs.

Another way to get some crazy effects is to copy the same P-frame over and over again in sequence. This results in color drifts and smears as the same pixel moves and manipulations are repeated over and over on top of themselves.

Example:
I - P1 - P2 - P3 - P3 - P3 - P3 - P3 - P3 - P3 - P3 - P3 - P3 - P3 - P3

If you want to clear the mess of datamoshed nonsense partway through your clip, just insert a new I-frame. Since I-frames are effectively still images, this will snap the image back to whatever is described in that I-frame.

The technique is really quite fun to play with, certainly one of the most organic and unpredictable approaches to manipulating video I've happened upon yet (that and video feedback loops).

A great tutorial of the process and the most accessible tools to do it with can be found in this 3-part tutorial (the link is to part 1): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYytVzbPky8

You can find Paper Rad's pre-packaged "One Stop Datamosh Kit" here: http://www.court13.com/datamoshkit.zip

(note: If you run into problems with avidemux crashing all the time, be patient, don't move too fast, and I've found it helps to have another clip already placed after the one you're currently editing... I don't know why that is, but when copying and pasting lots of P-frames it is less likely to crash if it has that buffer)

Finally, for some inspiration, check out this clip by Takeshi Murata. I know it's been posted alongside other datamosh articles and tutorials, but that's because it's just that awesome. I mean really, even if you've already seen it, stop complaining and watch it again. You'll be happy you did.

Finally, you can find my own first experiment with datamoshing here:
http://understolenstreetlights.blogspot.com/2009/04/supermosh.html

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Originally posted on Backstar.com.

Generation JPEG

2009-04-24T17:27:00.000-07:00

These are JPEGs that have been compressed many hundreds of times. This brings out the "natural" artifacts that appear from generation to generation. (you should really click to open the larger images to get a feel for the effect)

275th Generation Tree:

400th Generation Clouds:

425th Generation Ho Chi Minh City:

May Glitch Bless America

2009-04-23T15:00:00.001-07:00

The aM3r1cAN F!aG, looking better than ever. The dollar bill is next.

Happy Earth Day!!!

2009-04-22T09:09:00.000-07:00

JPEG chopped and screwed 2

2009-04-21T07:13:00.000-07:00

Here's the latest (disclaimer: some photoshop used as well).

I'm starting to learn how to make educated guesses about what part of the image will be effected.

The following bullets refer to the text file which results when opening up a JPEG in TextEdit or another basic text editor.

The top section should be left untouched, this seems to contain the code that identifies the file as a JPEG (even slight changes to this code may render your image file unreadable)

The next few lines after the above section often relate to color. These are fun to play with, and only require very small changes. Try removing single characters, or small groups of characters for big results.

The remainder of the text document describes the structure of the image. It also contains color information

Changes are less drastic than in other parts of the document (sometimes very large sections of text can be deleted without much change to the image)

Deleting too much information will result in grey bars, or the removal of whole lines of the image

Copying, pasting, and writing new text seems to have the best effects in this area (though I have been using the delete key almost exclusively)

Generally, the image is described from the top down. Ex: changes made to the bottom of the document are likely to affect the bottom of the image.

JPEGs created in Photoshop are structured a bit differently than those found on the Web, and are harder (in my experience) to work with in this way

Oh, also... I have found that saving the files as "Western (Mac OS Roman)" works best for me. I originally tried "Unicode (UTF-8)" but it seems that this doesn't have a large enough alphabet to accommodate all the strange characters created by the JPEG.

JPEG chopped and screwed

2009-04-20T16:59:00.000-07:00

Here are some more hacked JPEGs. Check em out.

original:

hacked:

JPEG Hacking

2009-04-20T11:21:00.000-07:00

I spent my lunch hour today experimenting with hacking JPEG files. I opened the original file with a text editor and went to town cutting, copying, pasting, and typing. Small changes to the text result in sometimes drastic glitches, so I saved and checked my progress after every change. Often I had to backtrack, having wiped away too much of the image for it to be recognizable. Worth playing around with, though entirely unpredictable.

original:

hacked:

SuperMosh!

2009-04-08T10:45:00.000-07:00

[This page has been moved to http://bitsynthesis.com/2009/04/supermosh/. Please update links to the new address.]

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This is the result of my first experiments with datamoshing, or videotripping, or compression exploitation, or glitchtastic video artifacting - whatever you want to call the effect.

Youtube cuts the vid off a little early, probably a result of the glitchiness... anyway, just an experiment, crazy stuff this is.

All the clips are from the trailer of Superman IV the movie.

PD Red Video Feedback

2009-04-06T05:51:00.000-07:00

Here's another example of my latest PD work. Another kaleidoscopic video feedback patch using Pure Data's GEM library.

If anyone's interested in a copy of the patch, I will happily provide it for them (of course, it's a bit of a mess right now so good luck sorting it out).

The audio is another track by Josh Harding.

PD Video Feedback Patch (sketch)

2009-04-03T07:33:00.000-07:00

[This page has been moved to http://bitsynthesis.com/2009/04/pd-video-feedback-patch-sketch/. Please update links to the new address.]

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Here's a short demo of a patch I'm working on using Pure Data and Gem. It responds to audio, so I plugged in this track by Josh Harding and let it run.

I hope to upload more examples of my PD work soon. I've got a trial version of a screen capture software, so I've got a month to do as much capturing as possible.

35mm Pinhole Photographs

2009-02-10T14:04:00.000-08:00

As promised, here are some shots from my latest venture into the realm of pinhole photography. This time they were taken on a new creation of mine, a 35mm pinhole camera made from a plastic (toy) imitation SLR that I found in a thrift store here in Chicago. I think it was $4. Anyway, it allows me to shoot rolls of 35mm film using a pinhole.

I got the negatives put on a CD at Walgreens this time, probably not gonna do that again though as there's a line across one set of negatives that definitely was from the Walgreens machine, and I get enough artifacts using the pinhole as it is without adding unwanted digital noise.

Regardless, that line isn't on the pictures displayed below, so enjoy. More to come.

Here's the camera that took them.

Demo Reel

2009-02-04T09:02:00.000-08:00

Finally, I present to you a demo reel of my film and video work.

It features clips from Mettle in the Storm, Hat Tricks, Balls!, The Warehouse, The Box, The Switch, The Walk, The Exchange, Climbing Up The Walls, The Grass Is Greener, Scream, Chips, and performances by The David Bowie Cover Band, Mattwell Murder (Rancid Cover Band), The Funny Guys, Alex Christie, and Lionface.

Comments are, as always, welcome.

Headshot

2009-02-02T11:23:00.000-08:00

Here's a headshot I did recently for Rafael Martinez, a local theater actor applying to grad school. If you need headshots and you're in the Chicago area, drop me a line.

Frozen River

2009-01-31T18:57:00.000-08:00

Here's some shots of the ice on the Chicago River.

Portrait Photography - Sarah Swanger

2009-01-30T06:54:00.000-08:00

Here are some portraits of Sarah Swanger, circa fall 2006.

House Jams

2009-01-29T08:05:00.000-08:00

Here's some photographs from a few months ago, back when musicians used to congregate in my house daily.

Digital Pinhole Photography

2009-01-28T19:56:00.000-08:00

Here's the results of my first dive into digital pinhole photography. More to come, you can count on it.

Looking for a car?

2009-01-19T19:55:00.000-08:00

Check this one out, somewhere on N. Racine St, Chicago. It's probably cheap...

Hello Chicago!

2009-01-18T15:03:00.000-08:00

I've been in Chicago about 9 days now. It's been as cold as -9 degrees, -13 with wind chill. Besides that, it's been great. Here's the view out our cigarette smoking window.

Night Landscapes (long exposures)

2008-12-23T15:08:00.000-08:00

Here are some 40 minute exposures of the winter Ohio landscape, between the hours of midnight and 5:00am.

Dinosaurs Versus Aliens - in stencils

2008-12-23T14:20:00.000-08:00

These are some of the stencils decorating the walls of my (former) house. They were designed and cut by me, just for fun.

Slavic Village

2008-12-23T13:39:00.000-08:00

Cleveland is one of the cities that was hit hardest in the country by the recent mortgage crisis, with more people fleeing Cuyahoga County in the last few years than any other county besides Orleans County (Katrina, ya know?). One of the neighborhoods in Cleveland most affected is Slavic Village. Right now an estimated 2,000 properties stand vacant out of a total of around 8,000. Most of these are residential, and while some have been leveled by the city, hundreds of homes stand boarded up and abandoned. I took some time this fall to get to know the area, and photographed over a hundred of the vacant homes and vacant lots that pepper the area. Here are some of those photographs.

Special thanks to Jim Rokakis, the treasurer of Cuyahoga County, Anthony Zajac, a member of the Slavic Village Development Corporation, and William Rybak for making this possible.

Mattwell Murder (Rancid cover band)

2008-12-18T17:16:00.000-08:00

This is Mattwell Murder, a Rancid cover band, performing at Keep Co-op on the Oberlin College campus.

Part 1

Part 2

Bowie Band - Young Americans

2008-12-18T16:58:00.003-08:00

The David Bowie Cover Band performing Young Americans at the 'Sco 12.05.08.

WOBC party - Matt Presto and Matt Friberg

2008-12-18T16:55:00.000-08:00

This is a performance by Matt Presto and Matt Friberg at the Fall 2008 WOBC party at Oberlin College.

Class Picture

2008-12-18T16:02:00.000-08:00

Here's the male half of my final photography class at Oberlin College out on a shoot at an abandoned amusement park. When you've gotta go, you've gotta go.

Live Video for Lionface

2008-12-14T23:23:00.000-08:00

This is a short clip of Lionface performing at The 'Sco at Oberlin College on 12.07.08. The live video projection and manipulation going on behind them is my own work using Pure Data / GEM, a laptop, video camera, and projector. This was my first live show as a VJ and I had a blast, played another show last weekend (no documentation unfortunately) and can't wait to do more.

Scream- a one-take super8 film

2008-12-14T22:59:00.001-08:00

This is my own entry for the One Take Super8 event mentioned in the post below. The soundtrack during the show was white noise generated by a portable radio and amplified by the house PA.

Chips-a super8 film by Jon Comeau

2008-12-14T22:53:00.000-08:00

I did the lighting and camera work for this one-take super8 film. Chips was first screened at the One Take Super8 event in Oberlin, OH this spring. All participants submitted super8 cartridges that they had shot and edited in-camera, the event organizers developed the film and presented it at the screening. Thus the screening was the first time both filmmakers and audience got to see the finished works. Some were accompanied by a live soundtrack, in this case it was Jon eating chips into a mic.

Long Exposure Reshoot

2008-12-11T01:33:00.000-08:00

Here's a first look at the reshoot I did last night to replace the exposed roll (see below). Another 40min shot.

ruined negatives are the WORST

2008-12-11T01:05:00.000-08:00

Check out these 40min exposure that were exposed when the tank was accidentally opened just prior to developing.

Orange Army Man

2008-12-05T11:14:00.000-08:00

Another from my Army Man series. This one in particular looks much nicer in the non-digital print. In person it has a really vibrant flame-orange in the background.

Purple Army Man

2008-12-05T10:58:00.000-08:00

Here's another from my Army Man series.

Blue Army Man

2008-11-26T11:55:00.000-08:00

Here's the latest image from the Army Man project I've been working on. Sorry I didn't clean all the dust off the negative before scanning.
It was shot on Fuji 160S color film using a Mamiya 645 with a 45mm lens and an auto extender ring for the macro effect.

Night Photography from spring '08

2008-11-14T08:52:00.000-08:00

This past spring I shot night photographs exclusively. They are my preference for b&w photography because b&w is closer to the way that we see things in low light, monochromatically that is. Anyway, the first two are from the U.S. Steel Lorain Pipe Mills, a steel works located in Lorain, OH, and the last three three are from around the Oberlin College campus.

Mettle in the Storm

2008-11-12T19:23:00.000-08:00

My first finished video ever. Check it out, this is classic material. Dates back to the fall of '05.

More Designs From the Archives

2008-11-12T16:55:00.000-08:00

Big Lebowski Stencil

2008-11-12T16:50:00.000-08:00

Intended to be a stencil of Jeff Bridges from The Big Lebowski. Never got around to stenciling it, but I like the design. Maybe I'll get on that, my walls are looking pretty bare.

Planetary Wallpapers From the Archives

2008-11-12T16:41:00.000-08:00

Some designs intended as desktop wallpapers. They are 1024x768. I was making a lot of planet designs around the time that these were made. Not my best work, but I just rediscovered them on my hard drive so I thought I'd throw them up.

(you can find a 1280x1024 version of the above image here)

The Warehouse - Alex Christie mix

2008-11-12T16:09:00.000-08:00

The footage featured in this film is from the summer of '06. It was filmed in a granite/marble warehouse in the Boston area (courtesy of Louis W. Mian Inc.). This version features an original score by Alex Christie. Equipment for the shoot was provided by the New York Film Academy.

The Face of Gregg Allen

2008-11-12T15:58:00.000-08:00

This is a kinda wierd one. It is based on Gregg Allen's face, for those of you who know him. It's really not a complete piece, but it's been so long since I've worked on it that I figured I should put it up anyway.

Stop-Motion Films

2008-11-12T10:47:00.000-08:00

These are two films I made by patching together almost 7,000 still images (apx. 3,500 for each). The process was similar to stop-motion animation, but using live actors. Both were shot and edited in the same week, sometime in March of 2007.

Hat Tricks

Balls!

I.D. Logo Design

2008-11-12T09:39:00.000-08:00

I designed this logo for a student run political magazine called International Dialogue (ID). The magazine is currently in its second year of circulation at Oberlin College.

Here's an early version of the design, intended to be used as an element in the layout

Smoke Wallpaper Designs

2008-11-12T09:34:00.000-08:00

These are two abstract designs I made as wallpaper for my desktop. They are 1024x768 jpegs, feel free to download them.

Beer Labels

2008-11-12T09:28:00.000-08:00

Here are two of the beer labels I've made for my homebrews. I've got a 5-gallon batch of chocolate porter waiting to be bottled right now, so it'll soon be time for another design.

For a good selection of recipe kits and homebrew supplies, head over to morebeer.com.

Shoot the Sun

2008-11-12T08:37:00.000-08:00

This is an album cover I made in the summer of '07 for a band called Shoot the Sun. Their career was cut short by infighting, but the album cover lives on.

Here's a link to one of the songs off their first and only demo album. The track is called Menthol and can be found here for streaming or download. Shoot the Sun was a collaboration between Jared Pryor and Nate Ellis, with Derek Rio providing occasional backup on drums.

Army Men - take one

2008-11-03T21:01:00.000-08:00

These are the first images from the Army Man series I'm currently working on.

Drunk X-Files

2008-10-08T10:49:00.000-07:00

Our house rendition of the X-Files theme. Recorded around 4am.

You can download or listen to the file here.

Featured on the track: Derek Tuttle (guitar/vocals) and Yuri Rybak (organ/vocals)

Bowie Band rehearsing Moonage Daydream

2008-10-07T20:43:00.000-07:00

Jackie B in the library

2008-10-05T21:04:00.000-07:00

Lionface Stills

2008-10-03T17:01:00.001-07:00

These are stills from the lionface video posted below (actually, from the higher-res original).

Lionface - "Allen Art Museum" (live 9.27.08)

2008-10-01T22:50:00.000-07:00

This is a live recording of Lionface performing "Allen Art Museum" in Oberlin, OH on 9.27.08. I haven't figured out the best way to post videos online yet (this clearly isn't it) so the quality is real shit, even compared to the pre-compressed file that I uploaded. I'll post a new link when there's a better quality version available.

Lionface is:
Alex Christie
Michael Rosen
Derek Tuttle

The video is by me.

Desolation

2008-09-30T17:52:00.000-07:00

This was my first project of the Fall Semester. The keyword was "desolation" and it features Sarah Swanger and Martha Joseph.

Electric Power

2008-09-26T23:25:00.000-07:00

These are selected, uncorrected, unedited photos from a shoot I did last year and never used. They are of a power transfer station in Oberlin, OH on a particularly grey day, typical of the November weather there.

Self Portraits

2008-09-26T23:10:00.000-07:00

These photographs feature me as I would often have been observed by my dorm mates in college, smoking cigarettes outside at all hours. I tried to dress in the clothing that I favored during the years I lived at each location.

Sorry they aren't higher resolution, they're the best I've got on my harddrive right now.

Exploring My Space

2008-09-24T18:45:00.000-07:00

took these photos around the house today. i find them refreshingly abstract.

i

Welcome

2008-09-24T18:16:00.000-07:00

This site has been created for the purpose of featuring my graphic artwork, primarily photography.