I left the house just after 7 o'clock knowing full well that I didn't have to be at precursor until 8:30. I brought my camera with me and biked down to a park I used to frequent when I was young. The park is by the Red River behind the Banana boat ice-cream parlour. I found a small path that lead me away from the manicured park grass down to the edge of the river. Sitting on the banks of the Red, soaking in the view, I spent some time thinking about how easy it is to distance yourself from the positive nature and beauty of familiar surroundings. When was the last time I enjoyed a view like this while in my own City? Do I have a tainted view of my own backyard, built on familiarity? I thought about my upcoming trip to Vancouver and the feelings of giddy anticipation leading up to the exploration of a new cityscape and countryside. That's when I made the decision to continue my evening adventure with the eyes of a traveler.
With my new found rose coloured travel glasses in place, I stood up and readied myself for the steep bike ride back to the park. Before I could even mount my bicycle, I found myself frozen in place, held captive by the site of the foliage around me. The river bank was alive with a diverse collection of unfamiliar plants. These were not your average suburban trees or bushes; I didn't recognize any of this vegetation.
And so began last Thursday's evening adventure. I had originally planned on recounting my exploration of St. Boniface (the francophone quarter of town) and my visit to Precursor Productions. Instead I will simple ask you to find your own adventure, in your own town, with your own rose coloured travel glasses. The details of my adventure set in words will pale in comparison to what you can discover yourself. I also recommend that if you live in Winnipeg and are interested in the production of electronic music you should contact the guys at Precursor Productions and take a tour of their wonderful studio. Precursor is Canada�s only school of digital music and multimedia sound design. I took their 'Introduction to Electronic Dance Music Production' course just over a year ago. I highly recommend it.
This past weekend's project was the construction of a DJ booth / record shelving unit. Four solid hours on Saturday morning produced this little gem. It could use a nice coat of paint but I'm pretty happy with the results. Roughly based off the Sefour X30 which cost somewhere in the range of 800 dollars, the total cost for my design was just over 70 bucks. I'll flesh out the design documents and post them here in a few weeks time.
That said, I won't be updating this page until mid August due to my soon to be realized vacation in Vancouver.
I'll leave you with some links:
Peace.
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Wow. The song of the weak is: Kleenex Girl Wonder - Why I Write Such Good Songs! (offline. Sorry folks.)
Raised on a steady diet of A. A. Milne from young, I find myself drawn lately to the works of Henry D. Thoreau. There must be a connection!
Play this awe-inspiring game.
Beatboxing is phat.
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I discovered dublog today, much to my work ethic's chagrin. Dublog is a visual arts and culture weblog; many of todays links were culled from it's posts.
While perusing the contents of Virtual Dali the following excerpt from his biography intrigued me:
"To bring up images from his subconscious mind, Dal� began to induce hallucinatory states in himself by a process he described as 'paranoiac critical.' Once Dal� hit on this method, his painting style matured with extraordinary rapidity, and from 1929 to 1937 he produced the paintings that made him the world's best-known Surrealist artist."
Have you ever "found" images hidden in the clouds? Seen faces and flames in the veins of a marble fireplace? Are you able to see past what something "is" in order to discover what it "could be" in relation to it's form, colour and visual complexity? If so, then you too are harnessing the paranoiac critical method. Dali described it as a form of self-induced psychosis, a method through which the user can harvest their own subconscious for artistic fodder.
A perfect example of this can be seen in his piece, Slave Market with the Apparition of the Invisible Bust of Voltaire. Inspiration for this painting is said to have come from the pair of Catholic nuns "seen" by Dali, hidden within Jean-Antoine Houdon's Bust of Voltaire. Nuns hidden in the folds of an atheist's bust!
Dali later incorporated what he called the Oniric-Critical method into his inspiration repertoire. This method was based off the idea that the artist could freeze the images and ideas from their dreams through art for later analysis. While both of these methods may seem somewhat trivial, it should be noted that surrealist artists relied mainly on automatism before Dali revolutionized the genre.
As a printmaker himself, my father would appreciate this page of printmaking techniques. Not only does this site provide a detailed description of each technique, but high-res examples are also provided. Each example image is an image map that can be clicked anywhere for a zoomed in view. Now the only question left to ask is which technique Istv�n Orosz used to create this gem.
Elegant Kinetic sculptures.
Functional machines as sculptures.
Algorithmic Art: Software as Genotype.
Beautifully eerie marionettes and the studio where they were born.
The 800x600 Project. 64 pictures. 1 subject.
Detailed psilocybin visions.
What's n3xt?
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Art-o-mat: The Art Vending Machine. I want to submit!
Matador Records has lots of great mp3s online.
Beautiful Polaroid SX-70 manipulation galleries: one, two, three.
We mentioned taking over billboards in the comments a while back. The billboard liberation front has been doing it for over 25 years now.
I love other people sketchbooks.
Movies for every mood.
I've always enjoyed judging a book by it's cover.
Old school Monopoly Cards before the old Rich Uncle showed up.
300 love letters.
The art of Nick Bantock, of Griffin and Sabine fame.
Prints, engravings and woodcuts.
Anna Oguienko has put together a very nice portfolio.
Read The Phantom of the Opera online.
Buddhism and Its Spread Along the Silk Road.
The following blogs provided me with many of today's links: Conscientious, Cup of Chicha, plep, Fluxblog, iconomy, Sugar 'n Spice.
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Thought without action amounts to little more than mental masturbation. We're slowly becoming a society raised on passive entertainment, afraid to even explore life's challenges, when these challenges and overcoming them are what will lead to happiness. No wonder so many people are on antidepressants, which in my experience, amounts to little more than a sedative that allows you to be happy with how little you've actually accomplished. How sad.
Happiness takes work, apathy is easy. People are growing ever more lazy, accepting of the way things are. The worst example of these people are those that continually spout words and thoughts contrary to their apathetic actions. I'm guilty of this at certain times myself, however I'm continually trying to surround myself with people who will inspire me to action, eventually leaving behind those impotent oracles who feel that verbalization, in enough volume, will somehow miraculously translate into action.
For those that know me personally I'll assume that these feelings of mine are well known, as I've tread this ground several times in the past and you're probably sick of hearing my tounge and lungs express it to you. For those anonymous readers, if you end up on stungeye I'm sure you're probably interested in contributing something to the world yourself, so these ideas definitely won't be new and you might ask why I even bother to mention something that is so obvious. This website is our (mostly Wally's, to tell the truth) way of putting something new (or at least interesting) out into the world, the goal of which is to inspire you to make something even better and hopefully let us know about it. It's all about positive feedback.
If all you do is ingest the content and it doesn't give you the drive to create something yourself then we've both failed....as a good friend of mine says "The only way we can both lose is if you don't try."
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So I'm considering starting a new company. For $20,000 I'll take you out into the Nevada desert, give you REAL guns and you can hunt these pathetic fools. Have you ever seen a group of men more afraid of women?
How long can shells continue to kill?
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Fitting, is it? The very idea the once drove me to near insanity is now the catalyst for positive change. Don't think for a moment that the irony is lost on me; I don't often lose the obvious.
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Graffiti Robots! This one can write on sidewalks. This one can write on roads. Hektor can do the wall work. Impressive. No robots here but they are looking for street art submissions. I wish I had discovered this project a little sooner.
Who knew? Volcanoes can blow smoke rings!
The daily photo project. Watch Jonathan Keller age and change until the end.
A Softer World intrigues me.
Photos by Martin: a travel p-blog.
Does language stunt creativity?
Zero 7's Machinima video for In the Waiting Line. Their video for Destiny is quite beautiful too: [Realvideo - Windows Media]
The art of silk-screening: a video.
An interesting look at the roots of electronic music.
Skinny Puppy sample sources. 'Nuff said.
I just finished reading Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. I highly recommend it. Read it online here.
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My net connection is down at home. Be good while I'm away.
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I just uploaded a bunch of new stickers, collages and sketches to the images section. Let me know what you think. Alright?
The 4 day long weekend was nice. It was full of long walks, rollerskating (old school 4 wheel stylee), the zoo, stickering, markets, drinking, dancing, good food, good friends, good times... and a little bit of beat-boxing.
Audiogame is fun to play with. Rolito Land is a strange place to explore. Esao Andrews is creative. (Via metafilter and sublimate)
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