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I have moved to bitsynthesis.com

PD/GEM sketch :: Josh 137

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

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

[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

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

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

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

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

Our Country from Benjamin Baker-Smith on Vimeo.

First Final Cut Project EVER

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

OhMyGl!tch from Benjamin Baker-Smith on Vimeo.

New Chopped and Screwed JPEGs

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

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!

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

[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

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

[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.

Generation JPEG

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

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

Happy Earth Day!!!

JPEG chopped and screwed 2

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.