Artificial Eye

Yeah man, following in the footsteps of FireAnt, now u can subscribe to the ArtificialEye via itunes 4.9!! Thats right, not only does the latest version of itunes support podcasts, it supports videoblogs too! Just go to the menu choice "advanced" and select "subscribe to podcast" and enter the rss feed url... and voila, u can see the artificial eye in all its glory in your itunes window...And if that is just too oldskool for you, you can download our custom made ArtificialEye Video RSS Widget for OSX 10.4 Tiger. Our widget was designed and animated in Maya, and combines for the first time Javascript for Quicktime with Javascript, CSS, RSS, and a custom hacked XMLHTTP request patch into one widget, gives you the latest five feeds from the ArtificialEye in its own player on your desktop! I guess that makes it the world's first VJ Widgetcast!

The worst possible scenario for me always was "what if the state has all my biometric data and can do with it whatever it wants". That is about to happen and even more as all german passport starting November 1st 2005 (in less then 4 weeks) will have an RFID chip implanted with all the data concerning your face and very soon - less then six month - it will also have fingerprints as an addition. All that stored on a remotely readable (read by anyone with a capable reader) RFID (remote frequency identification) chip. Now you might think that is not bad in itself as things on borders would speed up - until someone reads out your fingerprint and leaves behind a false trace on his murderous route, or you are protesting against the political system in 5 years time - the examples of missuse are numerous and generally the state shouldn´t know everything about a person - it was a concept called freedom some aeons ago. Read also the press release from the Chaos Computer Club concerning the problem. OUR ONLY WAY TO PROTEST IS TO GET A PASSPORT NOW BEFORE ITS TOO LATE - and as a benificial you get an old passport for less then half the price of the new one (around 25 euro compared to around 60 euro). The loop contains images from my personal old passport happily usable until 2013 - hopefully mankind has awaken then and I will get a passport without all that crap (one can hope). Please redistribute this and spread the message. Lovely music is from subatomicglue called aeonblue. Enjoy...

Little test that I don´t think needs much explanation. Its the news I read today in headlines and pictures. Little jerky due to beta versions of little nice vj application not behaving as well as expected. I will do more of those if time allows trying different approaches to readability and look in the near future. News are: - Comet impact gave 'powder plume' - Bloggers learn price of loose talk - Survivors mark Srebrenica massacre - Londoners Dealing With Bombing Aftermath - Reid plays down Iraq troop withdrawal report - Moscow to boost ties with Iran - Iraq’s main oil refinery set on fire - MP Ramon: Jerusalem wall to ensure Jewish majority - http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-07-11-voa22.cfm - Oil falls after US hurricane passes - Legendäres Hacker-Magazin "Phrack" wird eingestellt - Datenschutzbeauftragter warnt vor übereilten Gesetzen - Bush said he 'preciates folks dyin' for the cause. - Longhorn following Unix on security? - Iris Recognition To Take Off - NASA to Research Antimatter Rocket The wonderful music is a song called people to the power from vavrek.com.....

A entry that is ages old and never got finished trying out newly betas of GridPro I decided to give it a whirl. Not the best and end of all but at least a normal loop entry from me again. The footage underneath shows a robot that is feed body parts and then builds a replica of itself that again is able to build another replica. Far away from anything dangerous it still needs the feeding and its sole purpose on earth is to replicate itself but the AI research is another little step further. Music is from Meatsock with the song called mcnothing.

According to recent studies completed at the Faculty of Arts and Science at Harvard University "Apparently our hunger for novelty begins with the eye itself, as the retina adapts to seek the unexpected, and ignore the commonplace". Japanese researchers have discovered that data can be written into a human fingernail by irradiating it with femtosecond laser pulses. Capacities are said to be up to 5 mega bits and the stored data lasts for 6 months - the length of time it takes a fingernail to be completely replaced. Pretty soon u just wont know who around you is a cyborg, no matter how artificial your eyes are :) Music to this post is appropriately titled "pull" by soplerfo from The Ep For Dogs

As a new format on the blog we introduce mixes from time to time. Mixes are longer then the loops and mostly live mixes one of the blog members did on some occasion. They are meant to demonstrate that you can tell stories and transmit meaning inside the vj context. The first one of these is "Invokation des Lichtes" my second "fictional narrative" dealing with the TV as our main influence of spirituality and the confusion of ones believes and its soul/body split that can result out of it. Little personal feeling and observation. Technical details is one night shooting with two DV cameras, 2.5 day postproduction with Aftereffects, 5 minute live mixing with VDMX4.2beta2 and VDMX3 on two powerbooks in my living room as test - no postproduction work on the recording (so all live). Music is part of a mix done by Kraddy. WARNING: The file is 6 Minutes long and 50 MB in size. To view it you have to have a MPG4 H.264 standard conform player like Quicktime 7 - Normal MPG4 was not an option as the filesize would have ballooned to over 90Mb to still have accapable quality. I hope you can still enjoy this.

Hello again. After some absence due to real life interference I will start posting to the vjblog again... As Michael did an introduction to himself I thought to make such an entry as well - not really my thing really to see me on screen as I like to be behind the camera not in front - but what can you do. You will now see me posting until next tuesday then Michael is taking over again. Hopefully one day there will be the time again where all of us are posting at the same time not distracted by the outside world. Oh and I almost forgot the song is from Semebasta and is called jajalied

Three things grabbed my attention today: 1. the fact that the second paragraph of Declaration of Independence includes the lines, "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends (Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, sic), it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it"2. Some enterprising flash programmers have put up an animation of the location and number of american casualties overlayed onto a map of iraq which is updated daily, and 3. That the iraqi resitance has a website with daily updates of their activitiesfALk has also noted on his normal blog that the americans have killed more iraqi's than Saddam... so it just makes me wonder, how long before the american public awakes from its slumber, and brings the troops home from this ill planned, cynical neo-conservative nightmare? This mix is a re:vlog of the above elements, along with musical accompaniement from a US marine hendrixing the Star Spangled Banner from atop one of Saddams Palaces, taken from gunner palace.

Is there any doubt any longer about what needs to be done? Don't u all find it A BIT ABSURD that we are supposed to be criminals now for(inducing) filesharing, ripping, mixing, burning (CD's), and some people can just get away with ripping (off) mixing (up) burning (whole cities and countries) and murder without any consequences? I cant be the only one. Music by the Presidents of The United States of America. Excuse me this forage into the protected domain...just this once, i promise :)

Hmnn...lets see, videoblogs have peeople in them dont they? Figured it was about time to come out of the closet and give u all a hint of what the exiledsurfer looks like when producing his content for the artificialeye...a self portrait, so to speak, closer to what most videoblogs are about... no speaking though, just a hot track from mashuptown, Devoutcast. Draw your own conclusions.

boingboing/craphound cyberpunk Cory Doctorow has a new book out, titled "Someone comes to town, Someone leaves town" which is a small departure and a great leap forward in style and subject matter from his previous outings in the SF genre, but which remains true to his contemporary areas of interest. Lets just say that i can't agree with him more in his framing of the freedom of access debate in a zeitgeist fairy tale of good vs evil remniscent of the science fiction trilogy by C.S. Lewis. For sound i award him the musical accompaniement of "silverocelli" by the Order of The Silver Cosmonauts whose aim is to "create a vortex of attention and sound in galactic propulsion preparation with the resulting momentary sonic gravity lens enabling ontological tweening and planetary preening." Enjoy the clip, download the book, support the creative commons :)

From wikipedia: Colorless green ideas sleep furiously is a sentence composed by Noam Chomsky in 1957 as an example of a sentence whose grammar is correct but whose meaning is nonsensical. If you havent noticed, fALk's favorite colour is green, that of this blog and its elements... home of where "Newly formed bland ideas are unexpressible in an infuriating way." And this time without music :)

So the truth has to come out...falk has been so busy NOT posting to the blog that i sort of put an unofficial boycott on myself since my content was filling up the site (and this is supposed to be a group project!)... but since its been soooo long, i figured, well, better get SOMETHING up... so if u could just imagine for a second that i havent been posting to the site because i suffered a Distributed Denial of Service Attack, well, u might understand why we have been so b0rk3d around here this last month. How's that for a good excuse? Music is an unreleased IDM (intelligent dance music) track from a barista named Bayrak who makes my daily fredocino in the gourmet coffeeshop i frequent in istanbul, which now has WIFI. What a great combination.

Seems everyone has been too busy with other things to get anything posted. A couple of things caught my eye this week. AgentCell, a joint University of Chicago and Department of Energy project has developed software to simulate the intracellular processes and behavior of individual cells. The software, which includes a 3D environment for the cells to move about in, is being released under a BSD license. The Patriot Act was quietly extended to grant the FBI the power to conduct searches without having to obtain Judicial order. Music: Morganistic's In The Shadow mixed with the argument from the U.S. Supreme Court hearing of Kent v. Dulles.

There's a cultural war going on that IMHO is far more determinative for our future than the superficial one being waged by the christian right against islam - a battle for our ability to communicate with one another creatively and interactively with the products of our shared culture. Todays vlogpost is a remix of the cover image from Lawrence Lessig's book, Free Culture some creative commons images, and Lost in the plot from The Dears, who took the SXSW festival this year by storm.Lessig talks, in the opening paragraphs of this phenomenal book about "Disney creativity,"--a form of expression and genius that builds upon the culture around us and makes it something different. Disney (or Disney, Inc.) ripped creativity from the culture around him, mixed that creativity with his own extraordinary talent, and then burned that mix into the soul of his culture. Rip, mix, and burn. Most of the content from the nineteenth century was free for Disney to use and build upon in 1928. It was free for anyone--whether connected or not, whether rich or not, whether approved or not--to use and build upon, without permission. Yet today, the public domain is presumptive only for content from before the Great Depression. Lessig has been instrumental in the Orphan Works project as well, and is probably the most important contemporary legal activists fighting to maintain a common culture, and therefore our ability to collectively communicate with each other via the powerful tools that have been put on our desktop.As noted by Tom Sherman in 1996, "We are willing participants in the creation of a second nature. While the biological world is collapsing, we are busy constructing an elaborate media environment."Lets hope this environment wont collapse as well.

Forget RFID...forget TV... now you have another reason to subscribe to ant feeds"If you're inside a building, a GPS receiver cannot find you. But a $40 radio chip from Rosum Corporation will do it, with the help of TV signals," notes Roland Piquepaille. The CIA-backed start-up says TV signals are 10,000 times stronger than the ones from GPS. Rosum founder James Spilker, one of the original architects of the GPS satellite... realized a synchronization feature in digital and analog television signals could be used for other purposes than to lock the vertical hold for older TVs.The engineers created a radio receiver chip that could zero in on the TV signal and get the synchronization information. Using precision timing, they figure out how far a TV signal travels before it is picked up by a device equipped with Rosum chips. Next, they compare the measurements against other data that they collect with their own listening stations and then finally calculate the device's position. Rosum's vice president of engineering, Greg Flammel, says tests of the technology show it can track someone in the basement floor of the San Francisco Public Library. It also found a person in the heart of San Francisco's financial district... So i thought i would send possum rosum corp looking for me across multiple contintents backed by "TV Riot" from The Adored from los angles, my town of exile. This whole issue is so 5 days ago, i know, but it took me till now to get myself together and make this post.

A few things came together today to enable me to continue with my 8 bit theme. Following a link to the Petesthe website from a link at Red Ferret with this text: "A beautiful variety of infinite colors and brightness can be generated by blending the pet’s original hair color with new colors, making the pet’s image more impressive and harmonious with your desires! Enjoy the color design system that satisfies your pet-loving sensitivity!" Once there i found some pictures of poodles dyed in my favorite 8 bit colors, which couldnt do anything better to illustrate the depth of decadence to which we have sunken as a race of beings while the planet falls apart around our ears. Check the link and u will see that i havent touched the dog's colors in today's post, which is backed by the first 30 seconds of the future remix sermon/manifesto, "Revolverlution" from the awesome mashup kings, The Kleptones. Go download the album (hell, get all of their stuff, they kick some serious ass!) to hear the rest of their view of the future state of media...one which many of us will not escape.

8 bit color, 8 bit sound - I used to be (like many others of my generation) fascinated by Hasbro's Lightbrite... about a year ago i found this nice little mac OSX java app called ARRAY which allows u to make frame by frame animations and export them as flash movies. Just a nice little jumping off point to add some color scorch and vertical stretch fx and a track called "Uber Code" from Royal Space Force whose objective is to:"Salvage the remains of the 8-bit video game music by systematic audio manipulation of source materials and augmentation through live instrumentation and orchestration."Not quite as memorable to the masses as "Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits" but hey, that was my father's generation -- 2 bits has a bit of a different byte these days.

Finally starting to come down from a mind-blowing week at AVIT UK in Birmingham. After meeting Toby Harris last summer at AVIT in San Francisco, I decided to get myself over to the UK to see what other VJs in Eupore were doing and hopefully meet some interesting folks. The trip exceeded my wildest expectations. Everyone at the conference was amazingly friendly and open. The sense of community was tremendous. The AVIT organizers put on the most fantastic event I have attended. Highlights included getting sponsored by vidvox, makers of the awesome GridPro application, scoring a midnight to 1 a.m. VJ spot to play along with the amazing Kraddy at the Drop Beats Not Bombs party which I shared with Michael, winning the grand prize of an Edirol V4 mixer in the raffle as well as two pieces of software. Really got a thorough going over by the inspectors at Heathrow and Dulles airports on my way back home to Los Angeles. Both sets of screeners were particularly intrigued with the folding tripod I was carrying. The imigration official at Dulles hassled me about not looking anything like my passport photo. Guess most folks have more of a stable look and their identification has longer relevance. The new breed of RFID enabled identification on the cusp of being legislated in the US has potential to help with this, but I doubt it would be made useful in such a manner. A big thank you to fALk and Michael for welcoming me onboard. Music: Dilemma's "sawtooth" Chip Tune.

Juvenile justice systems across the United States are in a dangerous state of disarray. According to recently published reports, violence within the system is rampant and abuse of the youth inside by staff is routine. Juvenile facilities nationwide hold almost 104,000 youth. Many states have more juveniles held for property crimes, drug offenses, and public disorder than anything else; only A QUARTER of the youth are committed for violent crimes. We strive not only to be creative here at artificial eye, but also to bring issues deserving attention. Many of the conversations at the recent AVIT vj conference centered around our responsibility as artists not only to deliver eye candy, but a message in our content. Here is something about what is happening in my home state, california. This post has been excerpted from "System Failure: Violence, Abuse and Neglect in the California Youth Authority," produced by WITNESS and Books Not Bars a program of WITNESS partner The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and offers testimony of the human rights violations "including sexual abuse, beatings, forced medication, and systemic mental health and educational neglect of juveniles" taking place at the California Youth Authority (CYA), one of the largest youth correctional agencies in the country.

We have a new guest blogger: Nice Guy Dave. I have meet him through my very first vj collaboration ever. The aveja mailing list was set up to promote vjs that wanted to collectively play at the glastonbury festival in 2002. One DVD with a short timesnap of VJ history was its only outcome back then but from there the AVIT idea formed and the core of the people active in that group somehow stayed connected throughout the last years. It is very nice to see Dave joining us. At the Birmingham AVIT UK05 VJ festival I met with some amazing minds, and they showed me new things. Things vibrant with life. So I made a little VJ Blog when I got home. Each building block you see here is from AVIT - my rail ticket to get there, the little local map they gave out, my notes on a great masterclass, and all the graphics that glue them together are techniques I covered in software workshops helping people get more out of Adobe's After Effects package. I've never vlogged before. I've never even blogged before. Fun isn't it? NiceGuyDave

Today's re:vlog is an amalgamation of visitors to artificialeye who left comments complimenting us on the quality of the content, so i think it's fair to return the favor by re:vlogging them. In order of appearance: jay dedman licking his girlfriend's eyeball (already referenced once by faLk) combined with kristina rapacki's short film "abstract" which was inspired by Darren Aronofsky's "P.I." All effects, transitions lumakeys, and the chosen frames of the two videos were generated and exported in real time based on audio analysis of the audio track "Who is responsible for this?" from AaronGNP's Gabber Nullification Project in vidvox's GridPro. Thanks to the respective artists for putting their content online under a creative commons license for remixing.

Back from the awesome AVIT 05 and doing a midnight live vj set together with todd synasthete for the san francisco glitch-hop artist kraddy, during the UK's largest not for profit political clubbing event, Drop Beats Not Bombs, on the closing night of AVIT, it's time to get back to posting here at artificialeye. According to the web page commondreams, last November, a security consultant told David Corn that a six-mile cab ride from Central Baghdad to Baghdad International Airport cost $6000. Now it's up to $35,000. Read what New York Times Iraq correspondent Dexter Filkins recently told NBC Meet the Press host Tim Russert here about the Road Of Death, the six miles of highway between baghdad and the airport, whose text inspired this post. Music taken from a remix of POTUS singing "Imagine" and "Take a Walk on the Wildside" from WFMU's post about dubya remixes, via the always wonderful boingboing. After u enjoy this post created completely in the latest version of GridPro have some more remixed POTUS fun at DIYmedia

exiledsurfer fresh from our discussion of the convergence of the vj community with videoblogging, Avit, birmingham... a walk around the city and u cant avoid passing the city landmark, "the bullring". no bullfighting, just a mall...with big dots. i also couldnt miss the conversation with oldskool guru Peter Gruber and the face of willow...simple impressions from a spring day. The audio track is a creative commons track of dark, mellow electronica built around distorted synths, dreamy choir sounds and machine noises called "Music for a future city" from mirror shades Nothing beyond simple pleasures :)

As promised a little VJ blog coverage of AVIT through the artificial VJ eye. Yesterdays first real session for me was with Peter Maxavision. The oldest VJ in existence I would say and one with the most thoughtful ideas regarding VJing in general of all of em. He sees the survival of mankind directly connected to subculture and therefore sees the vjs as big part of it. He does not stop to criticize the new upcoming young vjs for their moving wallpaper without thoughts and sheds some bright light on the state of the world. He presented his thought through a 2 and a half hour taped interview with some inbetweens of the past times (great footage of the chromapark and the only vj gig ever in east berlin when it was still east berlin in 1988). I try to get the tape from him and put it online in some way or the other. He commented live on the tape and the discussion round afterwards showed that he is not alone with his thoughts on how to shape the future - not only for the vjs. You can read some of his thoughts in this PDF document called "A look at Video Mix Culture. Update: I got some great music for this entry is a loop remix from MoGreens the original loop is a free sample from Pete Namlook. Also wanted to point out that all Visuals in the Mix are filmed and recorded during Peters session.

Michaels lovely 60s surf "short before AVIT" post: Ah yes, the day approaches when falk and i depart for the AVIT VJ conference, so time for a bit of last minute creativity before packing the bags, checking the equipment list and going throught the airport hassle on tuesday morning. Traveling with a laptop, hard drives, monitors, and cameras is NEVER fun. It means 3 security checks between istanbul and london for me...after awhile u learn how to pack all your gadgets so its easiest to unpack them even after they have been bombarded with electrons...all those layers of cables, motherboards, and power adapters makes airport screeners reeeeeel nervous these days...and u cant help but having short nerves yourself. I'll make sure that i am travelling with less than two books. Just because you are paranoid doesnt mean you aren't. under continual global surveillance. Its about OIL WArUM SONST. So i thought i would brighten my (and your) day with a bit of retro sun and surf action..hula girls in the 60's in hawaii with ray-banned surf hodads mixed with a nice bit of flash animation from a chrysler car add made in canada. Retropetrol sunshine wishes from exiledsurfer... i've spent all week getting the my new website up and running... check it out here , getting stickers printed for the aritficialeye and a nice big white vinyl banner for the vidvox boys david and ray who will be jetting across the ocean... so catch u from Birmingham with hopefully some spontaneous collaborations from me and falk sometime this week....At least he's scheduled to help drop some beatz not bombs on friday nite at the Custard Factory!

That you do not see much new content on here lately has to do with the fact that Michael and me are preparing for the upcoming AVIT VJ Conference in Birmingham /Uk next week. Among other lectures and showcases we have the opportunity to present the full concept behind the VJ Blog, say something about the future of our VJBlogging endeavor and invite others to join VJBlogging. The presentation will take place on Wednesday April 27th 2005 at 8 p.m. in the Old Library 2 at the Custard Factory Birmingham. Michael and I will speak for as long as it takes about any technological, content and delivery issue regarding this VJBlog. If you are interested in taking part in this project or just want to know more about our thoughts you are welcome to join in.

I am coming across so many things that seem to come from the future - at least an early future. Topic of today for me is Mechwarriors and Exoskelotons. So basically we are talking about machine extensions for human physical weakness. The japanese have drawn it in their Mangas for a long time - but now one Mechwarrior gets build and a "driver" sits inside and on top of the world. The Land Walker from Sakakibara Kikai Slashdot Artikel on Exoskeletons Japan Times about Yoshiyuki Sankai Robosapiens from ThinkGeek Music from dilvie.com - song called not tonight

Last week we had to take a small break from vjblogging as real life interfered a small bit. A little later now an answer to our little copyleft discussion from Michael: Although at my live gigs i repurpose, mix and match mostly found content, i do also create original material. This was created for a gig i had last week in istanbul. The source material is a 8 bit version of the DOOM gaming engine which a friend of mine named Dara coded just for fun. The material was filmed from the screen as he played (and i LOVE the field scan lines, adds to the feel of the material) and then colored. The audio track is some unnamed loops i also created for the gig last week. And who is ZOD?

As an answer to Michaels first post yesterday I would like to point out that I only have a 100% non other source philosophy when doing my normal VJ gigs. This is because I think to develop an own style you have to create all things yourself - like a director of a movie. What seems to got out wrong is that I am all for copyrights. Actually I hate the way the copyright system works right now and have always supported creative ways to bring the system to fall. All blogs on prototypen.com inclusive this one are subject to creative common licenses and my code releases are under GNU so I think to make a counter argument I want to pay homage to Creative Commons . Music from the the WIRED CD: Rip. Sample. Mash. Share. performed by Beastie Boys song called now get busy.