Recently I had the opportunity to speak at the Berlin TouchDesigner Summit, hosted by Derivative, makers of TouchDesigner.

I gave a talk on using TouchDesigner and GLSL to make a fluid simulation using the Navier-Stokes noncompressible fluid advection formulae, and I lead a workshop on drawing in python for plotters like the AxiDraw. Both those videos are online now.

The workshop is a bit long and didn't move as fast as I'd liked - it was billed as an intermediate workshop but the crowd was of a mixed skill level so we paused a lot for bug hunts ... in retrospect I should have made the step by step instructions a little more clear.

In contrast, the GLSL talk moves at 100mph the whole time, so you don't need to watch in fast-forward.

Enjoy!

Nothing is Boring episode 4! [subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or Google Play]

Jake Rosenthal's job is institutional fun. As (former) co-owner of the beloved (and former) Glasslands Gallery (RIP) and current co-owner of PopGun Presents and Elsewhere, Jake and his partners run NYC's most established independent music booking company and Brooklyn's largest independent venue.

PopGun, and, by extension, Glasslands, are known for booking acts just at the cusp of international popularity. Just by way of eg, as the list is long, Glasslands, a room with ~300 capacity, hosted MGMT, Yeasayer, Lana Del Ray, Disclosure, Icona Pop, Deerhunter, Tame Impala, Haim, and Jay Reatard, most of them for their first NYC shows. 

Jake and I met several years ago when Glasslands was notified that their iconic, cloudy upstage sculpture would no longer be overlooked by the fire marshal. It was beautiful but dangerous, as all beautiful things are. A mutual friend introduced us and suggested we work together to replace the clouds with something new — that project ended up being a bunch of tubes. You can read about it here if you like.

Jake and his parter Rami bought Glasslands from the former owners, ran it for several years, were chased out by Vice Media (a devious backstab you can read about nearly anywhere), and continued to run PopGun, the booking and promotions arm of their operation, while they planned and constructed their recently-opened Bushwick venue Elsewhere (with new partner Dhruv), a significantly larger space more or less purpose-built as a 3-room venue with a roof space to come.

I talked to Jake on Sept 12, 2017, about 1.5 months before Elsewhere first opened to the public on Halloween. Despite that the venue's opening has been an undeniable success, even this close to the opening date, Jake was very much in the weeds and pretty pooped. You can hear it.

In this interview, we talk about third party security, building "as legal as possible", inspectors, service to a community, working with emerging artists, growing while staying independent, being a purist in an art business, the commercial support infrastructure for touring artists, running a music venue bar vs a normal bar, being music venue history nerds, and getting that tot money.

As mentioned in the intro, Mayor Bill Deblasio (left) at Elsewhere signing the repeal of the historic cabaret law (1926-2017) with Dhruv, Jake, and Rami (left to right). 

CBGB’s bathroom comes up in this interview so here you go. Image courtesy of Flickr user thenails — click for source.

Nothing is Boring episode 3! [subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or Google Play]

Today's guest is Szeki Chan, designer, and owner of 7115 by Szeki, a low-volume vertically-integrated clothing company.
 

7115 has a manufacturing facility in Guangzhou with a full-time staff of technicians and craftspeople producing their clothing and housewares year-round, as well as two retail locations here in NYC, and yet produces pieces in small runs at relatively low cost to the customer.

As owner and designer for the brand, Szeki is responsible for forecasting, designing, manufacturing supervision, retail merchandising, customer support, and everything in between.

This conversation ended up being a mix of technical details around materials and construction with quite a bit about the flow of information — up and down the chain, from retail customers to production and back, and how the company iterates on its design and manufacturing process to take that feedback into account.

All images courtesy of 7115 by Szeki.

Nothing is Boring episode 2! [subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or Google Play]

Thank you so hard to everyone who tuned in for episode one - all of you who subscribed, rated the show, sent in feedback, and told friends - double thank you. Big time. Bigly.

This episode was a hoot to record. Herein I talk to my old friend Adam Bailey, makeup artist for stage, film, and TV, and out-and-out Southern gentleman. 

Adam has done a prosthetic nose for Samuel L Jackson, worked on music videos for John Legend and MGMT, and realized sculptural work for fine artists. He's been working in makeup for 20 years and it shows. Not in his face. In his experience.

In this episode we get into it about all kinds of latex, foam rubber, release agent, blood effects, vinyl, Dick Smith, John Landis, the HD/UHD transition, working with the post FX departments, contact lenses, teeth, gore, pyro, and a lot more. Adam is a fun guy who makes makeup sound like play.

After we recorded this episode, I visited Adam's studio and he made a cast of my face. It was an experience. Please enjoy the pictures below.

Please enjoy, rate us on iTunes, subscribe, tell friends, spread the word. Thanks for listening!

Adam’s work on Martin Short for The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

Bald caps are a big part of the biz

This is the first episode of Nothing is Boring [subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or Google Play], and we start it here with the guy who provided the inspiration for the show.

I first met Cody at a wedding, and the brief conversation we had blew my mind. So much so that several years later I thought if I could get enough of that lightning in a bottle, I'd have a podcast.

As such, it's only fitting that Cody is our first interview on the show, and it's a great start. Science, taste, controversy, lab-grown meats, pea protein, GMOs, golden rice, ugly produce, pickup weights, and trace minerals all make an appearance. 

Since we don't do bios on the show, here's the skinny on Cody:

Cody Masters got his start as a nutritionist and cut his teeth in the restaurant kitchens of New York, but his job is more like that of a chemist than either of those trades.

The recipes he makes are produced on industrial scales and sold in national grocery stores and chain restaurants. He calls them 'formulas' (we know, it's 'formulae'), and they're expressed in percentages and incorporated in things called vacuum tumblers.

Cody has a some perspective on how industrial food operations can feed the world with integrity. This talk leaves us with more questions than we came in with.

Since this was a phoner, I don't have any pics of Cody so here's some stock photography of some sciencey shit and a creepy monkey getting down on a banana, which, together, are topical.

Super excited to kick off the series with my friend Adam Bailey, makeup and effects artist. Topics of discussion include rubbers, release agents, gore, Martin Short, Samuel L Jackson, head casting, motion capture, John Landis, and more. 

Some of Adam’s work on Martin Short from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

It's official. Filed a DBA and got a seal on it and everything.
New URL: hardwork.party
New logo: a basic equilateral triangle, soon to be animated a zillion ways

New colors: khaki drab (230/223/213) and warm grey (85/86/87)
New name: Hard Work Party - both easier to spell and more fun ... but all with the same great flavor you've grown to love. Seriously. Same great flavor.

Tell your friends!

Last week I was a guest on the Body Labs podcast, talking about the present and future of virtual and augmented reality with host (and old friend) Eric Rachlin ... we talked about older VR tech, storytelling in VR, and augmented reality UI challenges, including Hololens, Leap Motion, and conversation on many of the topics covered in these two previous posts.

Today I got a chance to check out Microsoft’s HoloLens augmented reality headset at a developer demo a few floors above their flagship NYC store. I received an invite to try the thing out because I have a Microsoft developer account. I have a Microsoft developer account because I’ve done some creative work with the Kinect.

I posted another piece on Medium recently about the problems with AR and have since been giving the topic a lot of thought. I’ve got a few more AR posts in the queue.

Just a bit more preface: this post is as much about that developer demo event as it is about the hardware and the content Microsoft chose to present. I’ll justify as we go along.

There appears to be a segment of the Microsoft hardware dev team that has wizard-like powers. The Kinect 2 is superlatively excellent at what it does, and it does so at a price point (~$150 + a $50 Windows adapter) that betrays its loss-leader position in their Xbox ecosystem and has made it an indispensable tool in the world of interactive art.

As you’ll read below, the HoloLens is a more-than-adequate seminal entry into the world of high-fidelity (in contrast to the low-fi of Google Glass) augmented reality. Some smart decisions were made with the interface elements in the demos presented, and the hardware, as mentioned above, must be the creation of some kind of warlock, or shaman, or kahuna, or witch doctor, truly. Some strong medicine.

With all that said, it seems that Microsoft just can’t get out of their own way. The experience of attending this demo was cripplingly awkward, and I say this as someone who has just come back from CES, arguably the best place to get a sweaty handshake and inconsistent eye contact in the Northern hemisphere. That stuff is going to be a part of this post too, not just because it’s entertaining, but because it sheds some light on MS’s marketing angle with the thing. That’s gonna matter when AR meets the public.

AR has some dorky optics to begin with. You look like an asshole using it—an issue that must be overcome if AR is going to make it in the wild—and if Microsoft is going to lead the second charge to bring it to the public (and they could, with their reach and this amazing untethered device), I’m afraid all of AR will be seen through their dweeby lens.

There are two puns in that paragraph.

Read More

This post is a distillation of thinking and conversations begun with Mark Domino and Jasper Speicher back in 2009. Despite advances in hardware, not much has changed since then.

Below I’ll make the argument that current state of augmented reality is much like that of the early internet, and that the same issues that confronted the early web are standing in the way of AR’s potentially transformative adoption. I’ll also try to address some of the pitfalls in the possible near-term resolutions to these issues.

There are points of inflection in the growth of technologies — ones where no one individual makes an active decision and yet, collectively, we choose a path that fetters new tech with proprietary interests and limits the potential of its life-altering possibilities. I’m looking at you, landline phones, and you, high-speed internet, and you, too, airlines.

This post is based on the assumption that we are headed, regardless of ownership, for a near future with ubiquitous, always-on AR, widely adopted in all the contexts in which internet-connected smartphones now prevail. From a hardware standpoint, that might mean augmented glasses, contacts, windshields on your car, brain implants, suppositories, or what have you.

If you’re not with me on that premise, much of the below isn’t going to work for you. Maybe someday that argument will get its own post here, but to me the conclusion is foregone sufficiently to that we don’t need to argue the case.

That leap of faith aside, and to paraphrase Nick Bostrom: many of the assumptions made in this post are probably wrong. I don’t know which ones.

...

Read the rest of this post on my page at Medium.