Jollyrogerjonesy Traipsing

Planned to do some editorial but I kind of also enjoy the pure raw single take nature of it with it’s imperfections. So... here it is. Enjoy.

The new 75% mechanical keyboard and Cintiq setup. Here I’m working on the icons and splash screens for ECM’s upcoming Augmented Reality art app for the Imaginary REAL show at Automata next weekend.

I started working on an AR piece for a group show coming up in Chinatown at Automata. It’s a resurrection of sorts, Crate & Barrel, back from 2007, but now as a physical miniature diorama with their stump speech as an AR layer. I should back up for a second. This piece literally involves a crate and a barrel talking to you about how they’ve been oppressed by first person shooter game designers, are being killed, and are seeking refuge. It goes into the whole thing about crates and barrels being used as shoddy level design, them being used to house ammo, explosives, etc. Basically all those FPS tropes that have continued with that entire genre and how they’ve been mistreated and are now essentially refugees. Originally this was built in Second Life as 2 objects that would automatically begin spamming your chat if you got within x amount of meters for them. Now it’s being upgraded to be here in America and bridge between both the physical space and the AR meta layer that sits on top of reality these days. It’s making use of NFT based tags so you don’t need a dumb QR code or something similar to it to track, hence the CNC work for the backlit wooden tag that offers a backdrop for our tiny crate and barrel. It’s moving along so hopefully more soon and maybe a little easter egg at the show too. Also, obligatory Instax monochrome shot of the preliminary setup, since that’s what I had loaded in my Lomo (into instant film lately if you haven’t noticed).

https://vimeo.com/226397675

I realized I completely forgot to post a few pics of The 1975 at Madison Square Gardens (sold out) show. Flew out to NYC to see the last show with full scale production. Basically a victory lap to see our animation and video design in action one last time before it goes away and we think of something for the next one...

THE LIMBS AND TORSOS ARE GATHERED INSIDE.

WE TRIED FENCES WE TRIED DOGS NOW WE SURRENDER.

Meandering once again on the MS20m.

I’ve had quite a bit of time away again working, but been off and experimenting for a week or two and I think I’ve stumbled on something I want to work on. A text and photo series consisting of vague conspiracy theories and urban and suburban landscapes evoking paranoia and fear. We’ll see how this goes…

A few shots of the sound generation in progress (love my MS20M) and successfully got LTC timecode into the MA2 (MOTU audio routing issue) to begin working on programming the lights.

Working on something new (finally) inspired by late 90's computer chips designed to have speculative abilities at a hardware level. Essentially evaluating the future instruction before the current instructions result is ready for use. Essentially guessing the outcome and evaluating a step ahead. This is just an early test at doing random 0/1 speculations 8 bits deep with eventually running multiple that check against the actual "result".

As I sat in front of my rack of media servers in a particularly idle moment I contemplated the banality of spectacle. The spectacle I am in the process of creating, those I’ve created, and those I will create. Not only in the content and process, but also the repetition of shapes, forms, and construction. My mind drifted to the individual/s who stand in the middle of it and if they have similar thoughts as they motion. I was thus compelled to place a solitary stand in humanoid to be the lone performer, the lonely DJ, looking out on from his rig, aloof, disinterested, contemplating his/her own existence. Hence the Herzog quote accompanying this image. Initially I chuckled at this pairing, but then I realized perhaps this maybe the beginning of a new set of work looking at the invisible infrastructure of live spectacle that I have become intimately acquainted with during these past 3 years. We’ll have to wait and see.