Marseille

I've been to Marseille as part of a project (victims of the modern).
I made it at least one day outside of town to go swimming and the exhibition ended up surprisingly well. So all in all a good work/holiday experience.

Malmousque, where we first stranded - at 3am in the morning.

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This was the group. Daniel, Ben, Trista, Katja (nearly impossible to see), Clivia, Alex, Regise and Franziska.



It looks cloudy and it was, but we managed to always be a step ahead.



That's what typical Marseille streets are like.



Funny that the metro rolls on rubber wheels. Looks a bit strange, doesn't it?



Another little charming oddity I came across.



Lastly, a picture of Longchamp, to prove that I visit something touristic at least.

Finished!

I'm finished! With a very good and pleasing result. Here are some videos of my presentation, that hopefully will give you an idea what I ended up doing.

This video shows that the whole forest is made out of hundreds of little elements.




In this video you can see how I used photographs of me as a matte to destruct and pixelize the trees.




Next videos show how it was set up at the backUp Festival and how people interacted with it.

just a quickie "Those scenic oaks they buried me" *

Alright here is a test render of what I got so far. It still needs to be adjusted and lots of elements are still missing. But I needed to test it when projected. Mhm, after putting on DVD and then projecting it, lots of the details were lost. Guess in the end I don't have to pay that much attention to all this fancy detail work. On the other hand most often you never notice this stuff until it isn't present anymore. We'll see, how it all will go. At the moment I'll have to work on the "hidden elements" so if you have any ideas on what strange, absurd things could happen along a riverbank and in the adjoining wood, please let me know.



* "Out load hey hey" by Bear vs. Shark

*down the river, down the river

Alright folks, I'm on the track again. I haven't posted something in ages, but today I felt like. What have I done the whole time? Well, I've been busy doing the documentation firstly, then took a sidetrack of programming and following an idea of doing a web video. Got told it wouldn't be that great and that I should follow up my last experiment. After a week of despair and overthinking I finally got my ass up again. It's not going that well by now, but at least it's going.
The video underneath is just the result of a bit of testing to see how the appearance of the river could be done. I hope I can show you some more within the next days. I'm looking forward to get the basic animation set up and compositing structure done to get a bit crazy with filling in the rest. Let's hope everything works out fast.



Oh, yes, you'll probably wonder why a river. Well, I needed a first thing to get a grip and thus a starting point. After thinking a lot about what and how and think and think and think. I had the idea of a person sitting pondering, as a representation of the melancholy. Got told it is too obvious and ... however.
In one of E.T.A. Hoffmanns tales, the main character sees his loved golden snakes within the reflection of a river. Fantasy appearing out of reality. A reference to the idea of duality as well as ambivalence as it could be once snake once just the reflection. Also try to remember one of my first ideas; the fairy from the tea pot reflection. This could be well integrated in the river idea.
It also could work nicely as a loop. An never ending ride on the river. The streaming could be fast and wild but also calm and softly from time to time. It's flowing like the blood in our veins, the thoughts in my head that reflect my surrounding reality, constantly altering it into fantasy and ... Stop! I should be careful. It's again lot's of possibilities and I get easily lost. Whoo, this post was meant to be just a quickie and now is already way too long.

* from "Adhesive" by the Stone Temple Pilots

Black thoughts or “This morning when I awoke “*

Guess, it is just the time. Wasn't it always like sticking to an idea for about two weeks seriously then start doubting it seriously.

Funny thing though, I stumbled across something interesting while rechecking a quote. The book deals with fantasy and there is an interesting part from Jürgen Lehmann (2003) thinks of fantasy as an ambivalent concept especially in relation to fantastic literature but applies it to arts in general as well. Alright, to get to the point he refers to a story of Vladimir Odoevskij called the “Piranesi Tale”. It is a bout a guy who meets someone showing him a book with fantastic sketches and design concepts. The guy immediately closes the book saying that he is Piranesi who wrote it and that it is his curse. The other person says this can not be, because Piranesi is dead since a few decades. Piranesi then replies that he can not die as long as his creations don't get realized. Piece and salvation not until the endless, excessive of his designs experiences boundary.

I leave you with this as it left me with myself.

Non si male nunc et olim sic erit

Lehmann, Jürgen (2003): Phantastik als Schwellen- und Ambivalenzphänomen, in: May, Markus (hrsg)(2003): Phantastik – Kult oder Kultur?, Stuttgart, J.B.Metzler Verlag

* Zombies are good for your health by Poison The Well

too tired for a title

This is just a short note. THis time for real. I'm busy writing the thesis (documentation). Unfortunately I still haven't started seriously with the graphics/animations, but I'm positive to be able to show you some stuff at the end of the week.
To give you an impression, her comes a picture. I've found this great book on archive.org and I will surely use the graphics. They are grotesques and so fit in my concept. Also the drawn style is kind of what I was looking for.

The duality in all my life or “He's gonna make it out! He's gotta make it out! “*

Alright, I wanted to speed up my pace and blog more often, so I better do so now, because it's already been 4 days since the last. Another short thing because it distracts a lot of people. The headlines are always followed by an alternative headline starting with “or ...”. These are lines out of songs that represent my mood at the moment. So if you want to figure out, just listen to the song.

Anyway, I also wanted to post something on duality. Well, I found something on duality in beauty as a conceptuality, but that's fairly dry theory and I don't want to bore you that much. Actually, you can find duality in all kinds of things that my project is relating to concept wise. Grotesque represents more or less duality/ambivalence. Especially in its visual appearance. For example you have creatures being half bird, half snake. There's a whole lot to write about, but instead of making this postings text too long again, I will put some pictures underneath so you can get an impression.

The pictures are all out of a book (Chatel, 1997) that I name at the bottom of this post. I will not title/reference every image, and some have no title anyway. One last thing I would like to end this post with, an nice interpretation or describing of the grotesque. I can't quote it literally, but it basically was saying this: The grotesque has given shelter to thousands of little inventions, that not have a story.(Chatel, 1997, p40)

And because my pictures are so blurry her are two more found on wikipedia:

Chastel, André; (1997): Die Groteske : Streifzug durch eine zügellose Malerei, Berlin, Wagenbach Verlag

* “Labyrinth” by Enter Shikari