June 30, 2004
Eye Candy and Contemplation
The Electric Sheep Best of 2002 track from SPOTWORKS was selected for the curatorial project "Eye Candy and Contemplation" at the Art Institute of California, Orange County. It wil be screened on two 42" plasma screens on the 2nd floor gallery space for two weeks sometime in the next six months.pre-order SPOTWORKS from Chaos Unlimited
SPOTWORKS is available for pre-order from Chaos Unlimited my European distributer. There's a thumbnail on their front page.June 27, 2004
events this week
This Thursday I have two events:First, the opening of Recombinant Flux at the Rx Gallery 6-9pm at 132 Eddy Street. I'll have a live installation of Electric Sheep, the SPOTWORKS DVD on a big plasma display, and five digital prints. Also in the show are the works of Marie-Jose Durquet, Josh Feldman, Alice Kelley, Christina McPhee, Loren Means, Aaron Ross, Shirley Shor and Daniel Shulman-Means.
At 9pm the art stays up but Multiverse takes over the Rx for an evening of experimental electronic music including performances by Lx Rudis of the Drum Machine Museum and my dear friend Zoe Keating of Rasputina.
Then it's on to the Sublounge at 20th @ 3rd for Triple Power where guests Brian of Routes Music and Chris McGarry of Sol System join resident Shanti. I'll be on live visuals and Bekka will perform spoken word.
After that it's a 3-day camp-out with Vibrant up in Willits...
June 23, 2004
get the wire
The FDA just approved the Cyberonics VNS Pulse
to treat severe depression. Periodic high-voltage neural stimulation to the Vagus nerve. How long before the pleasure centers of the brain are easily targeted?
June 21, 2004
Tokyo Plastic
Flash site Tokyo Plastic has stunning sound design and creative animation. Play this one where you can feel the bass. v2 was released just a week ago
and is much improved.
June 18, 2004
speaking tonight
At 7pm Friday June 18th I'll be speaking on Electric Sheep at the FutureSalon at SAP Labs at
3410 Hillview Ave, Palo Alto. Also on the playbill is Michael Korns
speaking about String Theory and Theories of Everything. Thanks Mark
for organizing.
June 17, 2004
creative liquids performance
Volkard Stuerzbecher does things like reaction-diffusion and BZ
reactions in dishes of chemicals and does live shows. Some
tantalizing images are on the site and one video. In
german. Here's a bit of his intro:
In 19. Century chemistry professor Friedlieb Ferdinand (1794-1867) discovered pictures which painted themselves. Its painting consisted of the fact that it dripped chemical solutions on absorbent paper. Thus automatically form and color processes with fascinating boundary surface dynamics developed. From this discovery the procedure of the chromatography developed later. ... With my investigations for the Morphogenese and structure formation I develop new procedures of the picture production. This kind to work presupposes a new self understanding of the artist. It is not any more the exclusive creator of its work of art, but self-dynamics and creativity of the subject play a crucial role during the organization process.
June 14, 2004
Terry Riley
Last night I had the honor of seeing Terry Riley,
the founder of the Minimalist movement, in an intimate solo performance at the SS Vallejo. Just as
I walked in I was pleasantly surprised to see my visuals projected over
the keyboard... and then to my astonishment they played spotworks
throughout his set. The Arabesques track in particular
worked well with the music. The repeating figures of his
music corresponded to the polygons of the abstract star-shaped designs
as they spiraled past the eye.
June 09, 2004
NewFangle & LRV@AVIT
Two big events this Friday June 11th:First, the biggest Electric Sheep installation ever with 4x19" LCDs and wall-sized video projection will premier from 6:30 to 10:00pm at the Herbst International Exhibition Hall in Fort Mason in the Presidio. It's the preview/benefit/opening of GenArt's NewFangle, billed as
A sneak preview of the provocative 5th annual New-Media exhibition celebrating work by emerging Bay Area artists. A spectacular union of art, culture and technology fantastically brought to life through video, audio, web and three-dimensional installations and state-of-the-art printing techniques.
Then the SF Weekly's pick for Friday night: Light Rhythm Visuals release party for our second DVD LightRhythm:R2
at Cellspace. This runs 8pm-2am and my set should be about midnight. The event is part of the AVIT conference and is billed as
A San Francisco style fusion of art gallery, performance and thumpin' party...
June 02, 2004
In the New Yorker
My presentation at Dorkbot got covered by The New Yorker magazine. Here's the whole thing and below is the paragraph about me:The first presenter was a tall man named Spot Draves, whose presentation concerned his Web site, Electric Sheep, on which abstract images constantly change form, in response to information coming from other people’s computers via the Internet. Draves is tall and bald and diffident. “I’m not a big public speaker,” he said. “So I did the program at home, alone, in the dark, which is how I’m most comfortable, and I’m going to play that.” Swirling colors appeared on the wall, and Draves was heard saying mildly, “The project started in ’99. It was based on an algorithm developed in 1992. The title is based on the novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,’ by Philip K. Dick.” Draves also said that it represented “the collective dream of sleeping computers all over the Internet.” Now and then he would place his hands at his sides and gather his pant legs, which made his cuffs rise, as if he were preparing to cross a stream. At the end of his talk, he held up a disk and said, “Please buy my DVD. I quit my day job to do this.”
June 01, 2004
Sheep at Planetwork this Saturday
This Saturday I'll be at the plaNetwork
conference at the Golden Gate Club in the Presidio. In the evening ~9-11pm Jim Fournier has invited me to show the latest
Electric Sheep on a 5000 lumen
projector on a large screen. Drool!
Speaking on Sheep at Apple HQ
On Thursday June 3rd I'll be speaking about electric sheep at the silicon valley chapter of siggraph
on the Apple campus in Cupertino. I'm going to do a demo of the latest version
as well as show the documentary and answer questions. Time permitting I'll get
into the rest of the content of the spotworks DVD.
Deets: 7:30pm, Snacks, Networking, Socializing
8:00pm, DVD presentation - "SIGGRAPH preview DVD"
8:15pm, Presentation - "Electric Sheep: animating and evolving artificial life-forms"
Location: Apple Campus, Deanza 3 auditorium, Mariani Drive, Cupertino