Great news. All of your final work has been assembled into one cohesive show!
If you want a copy of the quicktime for your own archives, then please log into the Dropbox account and look for a file called ‘SentientShow_36m_20130525.mov’.
See you at the dress rehearsal. Breathe easy, its fantastic work.
To simplify some ongoing issues, please give me the 1024×1024 quicktime video and the stereo wav separately. I will then combine all the shows into one big continuous piece and it will be a smoother experience in the dome.
Therefore it is imperative that you check the final video/sound syncing prior to giving it to me. So please drop the MOV and WAV into Final Cut or Premiere and test the syncing.
Explanation: Several groups are handing off the finalized video to the sound person. Then the video was getting its aspect ratio and fps adjusted since their sound software was re-exporting it with different settings. Of course you should feel free to continue bringing the video into your sound software for editing/playing with sound, but then only export a wav for your final sound piece. The video should come directly from After Effects, Fincal Cut, Premiere, etc. And the audio should come directly from software of choice. If this is confusing, then we can chat in person to smooth it all out.
Some beautiful words below! I think all the groups can find some relation to this. The mystery of consciousness in a strangeloop universe…
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/12/07/henry-miller-on-creative-death/
Strange as it may seem today to say, the aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. In this state of god-like awareness one sings; in this realm the world exists as poem. No why or wherefore, no direction, no goal, no striving, no evolving. Like the enigmatic Chinaman one is rapt by the everchanging spectacle of passing phenomena. This is the sublime, the a-moral state of the artist, he who lives only in the moment, the visionary moment of utter, far-seeing lucidity. Such clear icy sanity that it seems like madness. By the force and power of the artist’s vision the static, synthetic whole which is called the world is destroyed. The artist gives back to us a vital, singing universe, alive in all is parts.
…
And so the most creative type — the individual artist type — which had shot up highest and with the greatest variety of expression, so mush so as to seem ‘divine,’ this creative type of man must now, in order to preserve the very elements of creation in him, convert the doctrine, or the obsession of individuality, into a common collective ideology. This is the real meaning to the Master-Exemplar, of the great religious figures who have dominated human life from the beginning. At their further peak of blossoming they have but emphasized their common humanity, their innate, rooted, inescapable humanness. Their isolation, in the heavens of thought, is what brings about their death.
I just ran across this inexpensive fisheye lens. Its not at all clear from the manufacturer website, but from the blog I can gather that APS-C & APS-H sensors (most digital cameras) would probably work just fine and project the full fisheye circle with no cropping onto the sensor. I know that some newer Nikon and Canon cameras can record video… perhaps this will interest some of you.
http://www.newtonscannon.com/2010/10/18/inexpensive-fisheye-for-small-digital-cameras/
H264 codec
I think that final cut was havign problems exporting into the sorenson3 codec (the issue of blocking & reverse-color-pop for any crossfades).
— So lets just having everyone use the h64 codec. Hopefully this will fix the weird issue.
— Your settings might look different, but here are the basic preferences to guide you.
DomeTester
Don’t forget about this very helpful free tool. It projects your footage into a virtual dome.
— To use it: open the software, load your quicktime, and click/drag to move your perspective.
— Download DomeTester at the bottom of the page. Ignore DomeMod.
http://translate.google.com/translate?%20%20hl=en&sl=de&u=http://incom.org/projekt/1372&ei=RvQNToayKOjViAKwlLndDQ&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resn%20%20um=1&ved=0CBwQ7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://incom.org/projekt/1372%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%20%20%26hs%3DyPh%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26prmd%3Divns
The Creative Process – poster
Here is a poster that has continued to refresh me. You can print it out at Kinkos to be 3 foot tall and only cost about $15 on their large format black and white printer.
http://artsengine.umich.edu/ddo_creative_process.pdf
Here is an excellent resource for all types of fulldome production. http://stardust.ringling.edu/cosmix/fulldome/index.html
The Cosmix initiative is a community building effort on the part of the Ringling College of Art and Design, Bishop Planetarium at the South Florida Museum, and Riverview High School Planetarium to lay groundwork for a number of potential collaborations that would extend the reach of these institutions into relationships with new audiences.
Cosmix 2013 Festival – http://stardust.ringling.edu/cosmix/
I just ran across this and thought you all might find it inspirational.
The gonzo futurist is a super-empowered hopeful individual. She may have been a ‘graduate with no future’ (Mason, 2011), or the victim of public sector cuts, but has since grieved and moved on. She plays, tests, and play tests; making the best of the tools and technologies at her disposal. Comfortable calling on (and being called on by) her friends, peers, and tribe, her sense-making skills are social and connected. Her thinking may, occasionally, ‘be located inside the brains of other people.’ (Wheeler, 2011)
The gonzo futurist is a ‘deep generalist’ (Cascio, 2011) and ‘analytical polyglot’ (Smith, 2011). She has an ‘almost supernatural awareness of impacts and implications … [is] ready to adapt when necessary, building long-lasting systems when possible.’ (Cascio, 2011) Like Cayce Pollard, she is a ‘woman of affect, not of feeling (…) [an] empress of the amygdala.’ (Berlant)
The gonzo futurist is resilient. She works smart, not hard. She has one eye on the ‘adjacent possible’, switches codes, and contributes to the commons. She may be privileged, but has no time for competition, alpha male dick-waving, or beggar-thy-neighbour. Her success does not come at your expense.
Bombarded by stimuli, the gonzo futurist is an OODA cyborg. Observe, orient, decide, act.
Click to access gonzo-futurist-manifesto.pdf
Also a beautiful definition of metamodernism. Mmmmmm!
Van den Akker and Vermeulen define metamodernism as a continuous oscillation, a constant repositioning between positions and mindsets that are evocative of the modern and of the postmodern but are ultimately suggestive of another sensibility that is neither of them: one that negotiates between a yearning for universal truths on the one hand and an (a)political relativism on the other, between hope and doubt, sincerity and irony, knowingness and naivety, construction and deconstruction. They suggest that the metamodern attitude longs for another future, another metanarrative, whilst acknowledging that future or narrative might not exist, or materialize, or, if it does materialize, is inherently problematic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamodernism
http://philosophynow.org/issues/58/The_Death_of_Postmodernism_And_Beyond
This is a rare but cherished visceral experience for me. Its given me footholds for many of my artworks.
Yūgen is a Japanese word pertaining to a profound awareness of the universe which evokes feelings that are inexplicably deep and too mysterious for words. The word itself is like an extension of awareness, the aesthetic perception which allows us to conceive of the vastness of the universe- but carries it beyond into an inconceivably mysterious realm. The feeling of Awareness is induced by confrontation to the brevity of life, and yugen is initiated from the awareness that even ‘aware’ itself is an ephemeral thing. Zeami Motokiyo’s description portrays a medium through which one may experience the unspeakably deep, stirring, feeling of yugen; “To watch the sun sink behind a flower clad hill. To wander on in a huge forest without thought of return. To stand upon the shore and gaze after a boat that disappears behind distant islands. To contemplate the flight of wild geese seen and lost among the clouds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aesthetics#cite_ref-10
Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre
by Keith Johnstone
This book has affected me in countless ways. Some quotes below.
“Imagination is as effortless as perception, unless we think it might be ‘wrong’, which is what our education encourages us to believe.”
“At school any spontaneous act was likely to get me into trouble. I learned never to act on impulse, and that whatever came into my mind first should be rejected in favour of better ideas. I learned that my imagination wasn’t ‘good’ enough. I learned that the first idea was unsatisfactory because it was (1) psychotic; (2) obscene; (3) unoriginal. The truth is that the best ideas are often psychotic, obscene and unoriginal.”
“Once you learn to accept offers, then accidents can no longer interrupt the action. […] This attitude makes for something really amazing in the theater. The actor who will accept anything that happens seems supernatural; it’s the most marvelous thing about improvisation: you are suddenly in contact with people who are unbounded, whose imagination seems to function without limit.”
“None of us really grow up. All we ever do is learn how to behave in public.”
Keith Johnstone’s involvement with the theatre began when George Devine and Tony Richardson, artistic directors of the Royal Court Theatre, commissioned a play from him. This was in 1956. A few years later he was himself Associate Artistic Director, working as a play-reader and director, in particular helping to run the Writers’ Group. The improvisatory techniques and exercises evolved there to foster spontaneity and narrative skills were developed further in the actors’ studio then in demonstrations to schools and colleges and ultimately in the founding of a company of performers, called The Theatre Machine.
Divided into four sections, ‘Status’, ‘Spontaneity’, ‘Narrative Skills’, and ‘Masks and Trance’, arranged more or less in the order a group might approach them, the book sets out the specific techniques and exercises which Johnstone has himself found most useful and most stimulating. The result is both an ideas book and a fascinating exploration of the nature of spontaneous creativity.
“Metaphysics, or the attempt to conceive the world as a whole by means of thought, has been developed, from the first, by the union and conflict of two very different human impulses, the one urging men towards mysticism, the other urging them towards science. Some men have achieved greatness through one of these impulses alone, others through the other alone: in Hume, for example, the scientific impulse reigns quite unchecked, while in Blake a strong hostility to science co-exists with profound mystic insight. But the greatest men who have been philosophers have felt the need both of science and of mysticism: the attempt to harmonize the two was what made their life, and what always must, for all its arduous uncertainty, make philosophy, to some minds, a greater thing than either science or religion.”
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25447/25447-h/25447-h.htm
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25447
One of my favorite collection of essays.
— Jason Fletcher
massartsci.org 