I don’t know how realistic my video ideas are, or what.. my feeling at this particular moment is.. probably the most important thing is simply to commit to them.. in a long term sorta way.

Ok, here’s the basic deal.. Video is like.. big these days on the internet.. you may have noticed? I’m basically looking at video as packaging for my music.. or as an extension of the experience of my music.. as a part of the art object. I’m really approaching video from a unique sorta aesthetic perspective… 99.9% of all video production today is produced inside of a certain set of conventions that don’t really get pushed all that much. Sure, there’s great video and film work made this way.. This isn’t a giant value judgement about that.. but its also not what I’m seeking to do.. What I’m seeking to do is approach video from a very ART perspective.

At the moment this means.. screwing around.. It’s a combination of exploring certain ideas as they come to you, and trying to learn the tools… At the moment the tool I’m working with is Apple’s Motion… which is a part of Final Cut Studio.. as an aside, its breaking news that a new version has just come out.. but we shant speak about that.

The project started on a sorta doodling branding adventure a few months back.. I was working in Photoshop and Illustrator.. trying to craft out a logo.. based on some sketches I had done.. This also included messing around with photography.. what follows is a part of that project.. as it looked at one moment in time…

 Motion is a motion graphics / animation program.. and one of the things you can do is import photoshop files.. complete with there individual layers.. I did some funky things.. and placed the different layers at different places in space.. to basically turn something like the above image into a 3D image that I could fly the camera around.. and play with various.. well.. ideas.

I’ve been working steadily on this for the last 3 or 4 days; creating these various little psychedelic video clips. The resulting clips seems to be about some kind of exploration of identity and personal branding… or at least that’s what they made me think of.

The idea originally was to simply put out a sorta complicated screen cast of my DAW.. put it on Youtube.. so that I could sorta share what I do in a certain way..  and I figured if I did that.. I’d at least need some sorta titling / motion graphic sequences.. to sorta.. make it look serious.. I may still do this.. I don’t know.. but now I’m thinking of it more like music video elements.. to be sorta remixed together latter on.

There’s a whole sorta visual language.. set of icons.. symbols.. whatever.. that make up the visual identity I plan on making for myself. [editors note: Matt has been working on this language since at least college] It’s something you are much more inclined to read as Fine Art then.. well communications / graphic design.. Though as I elluded to earlier.. I am thinking about this from something of a design perspective.

My kinda goal is to try and produce something that looks like a million bucks.. something that makes you go “wow, that’s fucking cool.” Make something that would seem to have the sorta production values you could expect from the music video of a major label artist.. way back when they had big budgets…. But something totally different.

The hard fact of the matter is I’m early in on learning to do this stuff.. and a great distance from where my ambition is aiming.. and it is not totally clear that I’ll be able to realize these goals I’ve set for myself…

Well.. whatever.. I actually don’t think those kinds of production values are all that important.. I mean they are for my vision.. but I also think if you just do good story telling.. and put together a number of good pieces… I think you really can have something.. so that’s really kinda what its about.. but.. why not aim high?

Oh my God I hurt.. I hurt if I do nothing more then change the way my weight is sorta dispersed.. Why do I hurt so? Well.. there’s two factors to be considered.

Factor #1

I’ve spent the last week.. mostly in bed, sick. I have ventured out of bed a few times.. and one time even made it to the local chicken bone.. A bar I go just about every Wednesday.. there’s a band that plays mostly covers, where folks get up and sing with the band.. and I drink a few beers.. and this is like.. well more and more it’s turning into the only time I get out of the house.. and after half a week of not leaving the bed.. I figured I’d give it a try at least… and if it was too much, I’d go home.

I got there late.. it took me about an hour to find my car keys.. trying to find those keys.. going up and down several flights of stairs… several time.. whiped me out to the point where I didn’t know if I’d make it.  When I finally got to the bone.. well.. it actually turned out to not be too bad for me.. which seemed surreal, accept for that one rock out part.. that felt a little much…

As a part of.. I don’t know, I guess being sick.. I’ve had trouble sleeping.. and um.. I think that’s played a toll as well.

Today I slept late.. and then went on over to Factor #2

Factor #2: Pig Roast at Greg’s

My friend Greg.. he has a lot of these little parties on weekend days… and this was such a party…  Beer.. really good meat… sitting around talking.. and then… the activities.. as they spontaneously emerged.

The first activity was whiffle ball.. well it was Greg pitching to me. When was the last time I played whiffle ball? Like um.. Idk, 10 or so years ago maybe? I figured just swinging a bat couldn’t hurt too much.. and anyway the first order of business was to see how long it would take me to get some kind of excuse for coordination back.

Oddly, the coordination came back fast.. as did trying to work out my swing.. which I quickly discovered.. involved more physical excursion then I expected… I never really felt like I had it all together.. but it was enough to impress a few of the party goers.. and I think Greg was a little surprised that I had an athletic side.. mind you I haven’t really used that side in 15 or so years but.. sure, it exists..

Anyway.. so my last shot made the ball go behind the Greg family shed.. to ether side of said shed… are nothing but pricker bushes… so, we decided we didn’t need to go for the ball..

But oh man.. was it at this point I was starting to feeling it? My trunk muscles… to the extent that if I stood the wrong way I’d want to fall down? I don’t even know…

Latter.. it was time to play another game.. that Adam Zand and I were going to try and start up.. to which I proclaimed an interest in going on a mission to get the whiffle ball…

Quest for a Whiffle Ball

Just beyond the prickers was a wire fence, followed by more prickers..

Next day sometime:

Shit, much of this post was lost!!!

I had on shorts.. so the whole wade through the briar patch style thing… was not seeming super awesome to me.. however, perhaps I could climb up on the shed and make it to the whiffle ball that way? Adam was in a good enabler sorta mood.. and helped me sorta get some of the wood that was lying around the side of the shed set up so I might use it to scale the thing..

Ok.. so dig this right? When I was a kid.. I was a super duper bad ass tree climber kid.. ask anyone who knew me then, they’d tell you. But.. with age has come both changes in my center of gravity and.. well I couldn’t do a chin up to save my life.. not any more..

A couple days latter, still hurting bad:

So I’m standing on these boards.. at the edge of the shed.. With my arms stretched out above me.. I’m able to get my fingers on the shingles.. if I could just kinda pull myself up I could do it… but I don’t have the arm muscles for that.. I need to get some momentum if I’m going to get myself over.. and I have to be careful about balance cause if I loose it.. I’m going to fall backwards on assorted boards and who knows what damage could befall me..

Eventually I back down and with Adam’s help.. move the board pile more towards the back of the shed, where the roof is much lower.. but also.. I’m not totally sure about the structural integrity of this part of the shed’s roof.. if I make it on, will the roof come crashing down below me? Clearly there’s a thin line between balls and stupidity.. and I’ve already sold my soul to the stupidity.. I’m going for it!

Somehow I manage to pull myself up on the lower roof part.. and.. though it sags, it doesn’t seem like its going to crash beneath me.. though my confidence is still not that high in its dependability.. and so I proceed with a light foot.. though not without first looking back from where I’ve come, to realize I might not be able to get down that way….

I make it over to the mid portion of the roof.. which is roughly where I assume the ball is… and kinda look over. The drop is short.. not 5 feet.. but the area is covered in brush of the sort that you have to be careful how you fall.. so.. I get myself seated on the roof side, with my legs dangling over, and rock forward.. falling to the ground below.. feet first.. which, is always advisable…

;

My feet hit earth, but a problem emerges.. the earth is slanted in such a way that I start falling back.. as if into a ditch behind me.. head first.. filled with more boards… against which my head crashes.

“OUCH! Matt, are you ok?” I hear from around the corner of the shed.. It’s Adam..  Though my head is full of a dull throbbing pain.. now puffed up.. with a little blood flowing a gash.. I assure Adam that I’m ok. I really am ok.. it hurt.. but it could have hurt much more.. and what the hell, the whiffle ball is right by my feet.. and I throw it back over.

Once I’ve sorta straightened myself out.. standing upright again.. It’s time to work out how the hell I’m going to make it back. The roof overhang is a little above upper chest hight.. so theoretically it shouldn’t be too hard to make it back up.. with a little help from the boards I had cracked my head on.. but there’s one problem..

Greg’s shed is experiencing what we call in the 8th grad science biz “roof to forest succession,” which means the edges of the roof.. are less strong then the rest of it.. will I once again crash into those boards, this time as the roof collapses under the weight of my assent?.. Well risk adversion didn’t get me this far in this adventure so.. precariously I use the boards to try and get back up and….  I make it.. and quickly travel to that part of the roof where I had gotten up in the first place.

Staring towards the ground.. It’s somewhat clear that.. if I were to dangle my legs over the edge, with my stomach facing the shingles..

1. My feet would not reach there foot holds until such time that I was so far over the edge that I would not be able to stop my decent until my feet got there hold.. of my body hit the ground.. perhaps in a disastrous crash.
2. I would not see the feet holds.. they were small after all.. and my head would be facing in the other direction.. only way I’d find them is by touch.. and if I missed.. I would no doubt damage myself on the fall.

So I assess jumping. Where I’m at is a little over head hight.. which I believe… if memory served me right.. was a jumpable distance.. when I was a kid and given to this kind of foolishness.. and when I was in better shape for both withstanding the impact of falls and recovering from the repercussions of miss judgements..

I make the jump..  and.. drum roll please.. no big deal.. I was fine!

;

Now mind you all of this happens at a time when the effort to go up and down a couple flight of stairs a few times might make me feel like I was pushing it a little too much!

Aww, but the adventures were not yet over! Now that we had a whiffle ball.. it was time to play a game of Greg’s invention..

Greg’s Game ( in alpha )

You have this circle.. in this case delineated by a garden hose.. at the center of which stands a PVC pipe.. hammered into the ground, on top of which stands.. fragile-e, a whiffle ball. Players take turns rolling, throwing, or whatever-ing, bocce styles balls, towards the PVC pipe.. from outside the circle.. the object is to get as close as possible the PVC pipe.. as you can, without knocking the whiffle ball off the pipe..

The closest wins some points, the one who knocks the whiffle ball off looses some.. sometimes touching the PVC without knocking the whiffle ball of earns b0nus points..

Well.. the game’s in alpha and we are always trying different rules.. and on this particular game event.. the rules eventually decent into relative anarchy…. as we get around to deciding there will be no turns.. a large group of us will all throw the ball at once.. with the winner of the last throw deciding how me must throw the next round.. which could including spinning around 5 times.. hopping on one leg.. naming a president.. and God knows what else.. while throwing the ball…

Greg has posted a picture (in which you can see the shed to) of the game being played here.

It was a good time.. but perhaps not good for a sick person?

Sometime after this.. the party dispersed.. and eventually a couple of us made our way over to, drum roll please..

The Chicken Bone

I don’t know how late it was by this point.. it was good to have another beer.. as the Blues band played ( see some of Greg’s picks of said blues band here )

Anyway.. I’ll cut this story short here.. we spent a few hours there.. and I eventually made my way home.. to collapse.. now, 3 days latter… My body is still in really bad pain.. and I’m still feeling sick.. though not as bad as before.. and how sick I feel comes and goes.

It’s about 7 in the morning.. I haven’t slept yet.. and yeah.. still feeling sick. I can’t find the nyquil, which would help me sleep… Hours earlier I went to a bar, the Chicken Bone.. and perhaps smoked too much.. the drinking seemed fine.. err.. I lost my keys on the way out to the bar.. and must have spent about an hour looking for them.. this task onto its self would have seemed to have whipped me out.. but chilling at the Bone didn’t seem to effect me that way.. if it had I would have called it an early night. Anyway, it was just good to get out.

I have a habit of falling asleep to various DVD commentaries… If I’m watching a DVD and get too tired to follow I switch over.. sometimes I won’t even watch a film if it doesn’t have a commentary… if I know I’ll be dozing off or something.. Anyway.. tonight it was Rain Man… which, as it turns out.. has a hell of a lot of commentaries on it… I got through listening to the directors commentary, and now I’m onto the writers….  but in all this I can’t seem to get to sleep.

Mean while I’m full of phlegm… and I’m in the middle of an eczema break out.

12 30 PM

I’m just waking up.. I don’t think this qualifies as quite enough sleep.. and I don’t know how much time there was between turning away from writing this and getting actual sleep.. It is probably best to just lay here and rest.

My head still feels like a mess, I’m definitely tired..

2:12

I’m still up but still in bed….  I could use some tissues, but don’t know where such things might be lurking.

So at best I might have had 5 hours sleep last night… but in all likely hood it was probably an hour or two less.. When I’m feeling healthy I need a good 8 hours…

I’ve been reading.. BorderSac, and participating in the comments.. It’s written by Alex Lindsay.. who’s pretty well known for the pixelcorps.. The this week in media podcast, this week in photography.. on that various TWIT podcasts with Leo Laporte.

It’s hard for me to generally think of these guys as truly social media.. I suppose it’s that these guys are in the kinda stratus sphere were social media currently doesn’t scale well.. so they seem a lot more of the one to many then the many to many sorta thing.. and generally I don’t find things going on where they have open comments… so this is sorta fun.

Alex is very smart about 3D graphics and special effects.. a film maker friend of mine told me a story of moderating a panel that Alex was on..  and how hard it was to shut Alex up.. to give other panelists a word in edge wise…

Politically Alex seems interesting… I don’t know that you could really call him a conservative… he surely is independent minded.. but he often seems to have a little libertarian flavor to him.. where ever he stands. All this is notable as I am from a land with a conservative shortage.. generally you take a left-ish position and you get a lot of heads nodding.. which isn’t something I’m particularly against.. only that I fear that the foundations of that head nod might not involve too much critical thought.. more a herd instinct sorta thing..

Ok, its almost 3 PM and I feel that I have a choice to make.. Choice 1, get out of bed.. even if you feel like you’ve had enough rest.. and go about some modicum of a daily routine.. most notably setting about getting something to eat.. and from there onto addressing the issues of the day. Choice 2.. stop playing with the computer, roll over, and try and get some more rest.

A few latter:

While I’m leading towards choice 2, I am still at the computer, aren’t I? Well I need to publish this bad boy sometime.

I had this thought.. or series of thoughts.. and I thought I should try and edge my way through them.

One of the things I’m wrestling with is blogging.. how should I blog, what sorta tone should I take.. just a lot of content related sorta questions. I often find myself thinking two things.. even if I don’t always go with them.

1. You should create content that serves a community.
2. What if you were an artist and your community were folks that were into your art.. only trouble is that none of those folks exist yet?

Err…  So the serve the community shtick… to some extent I think I do that when I write about.. I don’t know.. any number of things.. but I don’t know that I totally 100% think of it in terms of the value it would give that community. I don’t think in terms of “lets go write a magazine article esk thing.”

There’s a big part of me that feels like.. well lets just have a conversation.. like perhaps I should just jabber on.. and on and on and on.. about God knows what.. just jabber.. and perhaps try and turn the jabbering into an art form.

I’m reminded of an experience I have in tweet ups.. or really any kind of social situation.. that’s like.. involving meeting new people or whatever. There’s this sorta surface film.. which is like the bullshit everyone is saying. If the social situation was a meet market and you were trying to hit on women.. it would probably amount to saying something like “you’re hot.”

WTF is the value of saying “you’re hot?” Well sure, it is not totally vacuous..  but if that’s the sum total of whatever.. well how’s that working for you? No.. what you need to do is find someway of expressing something.. what that something is is.. dependent on any number of things. What’s the message you want to send?

If you are feeling a certain amount of anxiety.. you might be reacting to that anxiety in your messaging.. You could start behaving like an idiot.. I mean if you feel uncool you might go out of your way to try and act cool.. which often doesn’t really work out.. in part cause no one really thought you were that uncool in the first place.. so your just overcompensating which is saying “this fellow is feeling awkward.” Which.. is perhaps not terrible into its self, but..

Well back to the meat market analogy.. My thinking would probably be something along the lines of.. ok.. I’m sorta like a particular brand of meat.. I ether appeal to you or I don’t.. in any event… the values of my kinda meat.. that’s something to perhaps express.. another words.. what is great about me.. that if you’re someone to appreciate this sorta thing.. you’ll totally go for. Out side of that its like “above all else we are here to have a good time, hopefully I can help you have a good time in the process.”

This latter idea speaks to this crazy set of theories I have on psycho social dynamics… which is to say in any group situation there are certain core things that have brought us together.. to the extent to which you can provide value on those core things.. well.. you rise in the pecking order. So… one presumes that women in a meat market want to have fun.. Taking an attitude of “all I want to do is score tonight” might be enough to make you miss out on having fun.. Not to mention that meeting someone worth talking to might not be bad ether…

1:36 AM

Never actually got to sleep.. but eventually found the nyquil.. a short while ago.. its starting to kick in.  I’ve spent about 90% of the day in bed.. with a short excursion made to pick up a subway sand witch.. which.. is perhaps better then my usual diet.

I couldn’t tell you what my meet market rant was all about.. accept that it would lead into some early ideas I had about the nature of social media.. which.. is perhaps an odd topic.. as social media land has seemed to have changed so much in the last few months..

Perhaps I should say something about that? Well I would accept.. well idk.. I guess what I’m really thinking is.. that I want to go more crazy as far as blogging / content development style is concerned.. perhaps following these old ideas about social media.. forgetting about “what the kids are saying these days” and sorta try to cut my own crazed path through the space.

This idea, I think, strangely leads into the subject of theme design for wordpress.. wordpress as that’s the blog engine I’m using these days..  But this is a rather long conversation about the wordpress platform, content management systems, and web design and development.. and frankly the nyquil’s kicking in to hard to really follow that thought thread.. so that will have to wait till my next post.

1:09 PM

Time to post this bad boy

I am sick.. throat muscles ack if neck must be moved.. trying to sleep but am not. It’s the middle of summer and I have a cold shiver…I had this dream.. I must have been hanging out with Moby or something like that.. and he was all like “sure, I like you’re music.” There’s something in my memories’ subtextual frequencies suggesting that Moby was really coming on like he was going to help out.. and as I’m leaving I hear some other guy ask him if he “even has it up?”

The dreams language and dialog leaves you wondering what the hell was being said.. but by having it up.. this would be like if you were mixing something and had it up to be mixed.. like had your DAW on and ready to go / look at.. and the way he said no to this suggested that all his “sure I’ll help you” and whatever.. was just a pose.

Last night or.. well the last time I was sorta waking up.. which was last long nap..  I had this weird dream where I was walking around.. seemed almost like a combination of some strange place in a Disney World hotel.. my high school..  and a cruise ship. I was with my father.. and to test his mental states.. I was like “when did we loose Mom?,” and he was like “yesterday.”

I ran around the place looking for something and eventually found this.. it was almost like Vinyl.. or it was that size and shape.. and it was Sound On Sound.. but like acid-ized.. like some really horrible Reason Combinator re-skin… Err, I know this is super inside baseball but.. Imagine you’re average teenager’s design skills.. as on display on myspace.. Well it was a little better then that…

Further, it should be added that “Sound On Sound” is a music production trade magazine. It tends to be my favorite.. and still.. picking up a new copy can be like the highlight of the month..  which says something about my months.. In any event.. This odd Vinyl like Sound on Sound thing.. What the hell was it? I wasn’t sure.. but you know.. its a bit like being in a souvenir shop..  Where you see strange shit like that.. so I was like “I want one,” and whoever I was with was like “I wouldn’t buy that for that,” but I couldn’t find the price.. and that was about where the dream ended.

Now about this dream it should be added that my parents used to take me to Disney World.. for a few year stretch, almost like every year.. as well as on a cruise… or I was probably on a total of 3 cruises. My mom was super into cruises… and this probably was around high school.. and one year of college..Towards the end of this I started getting pissed.. because I desperately needed a computer.. I didn’t need to go on another one of these adventures… I was starting to get a little bored of it all.. and Jesus.. I could have had a computer!

This leads me into some thoughts I’ve been having.. rolling around in bed.. Wishing I had known my mother a little better. Who the fuck was she really? I try to understand, I try not to blame.. but.. it seems like sooo much damage was inflicted.. and I was treated like it was my fault for complaining about it.. like it was only cause she loved me, right?

Looking back, from time to time.. I can see where I was a pain in the ass.. There are issues I have today which might be just because I was such a pain in the ass then… On the other hand.. given the damage I was sustaining.. maybe that’s forgivable?

I do recognize that my mother and father did not, by any stretch of the imagination, have an easy go of it. I have a sister with severe autism.. and mental retardation.. shit was bad enough that she had to be tied up when it was time to go to bed at night. I mean.. the stress level was insane, lead to my mother’s heart condition that would eventually kill her..

Anyway.. all of this is somehow in the emotional foundations of whatever is going on in my conscious life right now.. a slow shifting of attitude..

Day or two latter:

I think I’ll post, maybe write something new..