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NeoForum Thursday

This Thursday a high definition Electric Sheep installation will be on display at R.U. Sirius's NeoForum in Mill Valley:

WHAT: Rant & Rave: Dance Culture Past, Present & Future
WHERE: Mill Valley Community Center, 180 Camino Alto, Mill Valley
WHEN: 7:30 PM, September 22
PRICE: $10 at the door

I just got this working last week and very few people have seen it yet. When I showed a prototype to R.U. after our interview last week he said "wow that's beautiful". By Friday last week it was up on a big plasma screen at SAP Labs for the Accelerating Change conference where it was frying brains at fifteen feet.

So this Thursday is your chance to see it. The panel consisting of Lux D'Coda AKA Earth Girl, Mark Ameba, Dax, and Michael Gosney (Goz) promises to be entertaining to all crusty jaded ravers and wanna-bees ;)

Interviewed by R.U. Sirius

I spent last Sunday afternoon 9/11/2005 chatting with R.U. Sirius, editor of Mondo 2000, for podcast on his show.

When I was a geeky young adult R.U. defined "out there" as the place to be. I idolized him and the whole Cyber California life from far away Pittsburgh and Providence. The past couple months I have been working very hard on hidef sheep. I finally had a demo working and I was excited to show it to R.U. and make my teacher proud. And I hoped to catch on the air his gasp of pleasure on seeing it :)

Well, the mp3 came out on the MondoGlobo Network, and there's a forum there where you can comment on it. I'll do my best to respond and I'll also try to fill in some of what I've realized too late I should have said. Yea, I was nervous. I was so nervous I forgot to show the demo. But the conversation was lively... And after the recording when I finally remembered to show the hidef sheep to R.U. and he said "wow that's beautiful", the microphones were long gone, but I won't forget it.

I had such a good time I've decided to come back for more: I'll be at the next NeoFiles Panel "Rant & Rave: Dance Culture -- Past, Present & Future" Sept 22nd in Mill Valley. And yes I'll have the hidef sheep with me and in full flock.

Final note: tonight the hidef sheep will be at Accelerating Change conference in Palo Alto (this is not a public event, you must register for the conference to attend).

And Saturday night: Sunrise set in the Taj Dome at Earthdance.

Dorkbot & the Loft

First the good news: Dorkbot is tomorrow at the Rx and I'll be showing the latest sheep development: hidef! The Make Magazine guys and Jon Phillips of Open Clips Art are also presenting.

time: 7:30pm Wednesday 14 September 2005

place: rxGallery 132 Eddy San Francisco, CA

FREE ADMISSION

The bad news is that we were going to have it in our loft, but the heat came through and we are shut down for the forseeable future. It Infinite Kaos was hit harder than us, here's the last report from them:

Hey Kidz-

I wanted to keep everyone abreast of the current situation at the head quarters.

This past thursday we were visited by inspectors from the police, fire, health departments along with a building inspector and the city attorney. Apparently they have been investigating us, whatever that means, which includes monitoring our tribe and our emails somehow. It would seem we are a tremendous public nuscence and perhaps even a threat!

The immediate impact- no more gatherings or we will be arrested. That means no spin jams, no nuthin, including the movie we had planned to show this evening.

At this point we don't know exactly what is going to be the fallout. Until we know what we need to do, we can't know whether it is realistic for us to weather the storm.

So i'm letting you know what we're facing and to be ready, when the time comes, to lend support if you can. Whether we stay or go, there will be a load of work involved.

In the meantime, we're searching for alternate spaces to host spin jam. If you have leads of good locations, please reply to this address. We're also searching for a new living/work situation like this one for the various artists in the house, so please pass along any info for that as well.

thanks everyone for your support, its much appreciated. IK will live on.

Peace-
Andres

Liberation upon Seeing

Coppercat, one of the top sheep genetic designers, sent this to me and said:

i believe [electric sheep] has similar auspice.

"Liberation upon Seeing". The image says

Those who see this script will not experience the three lower realms and will be liberated from the fear of falling into the lower realms; will be purified of the five poisons and will be freed from the results of one's karma; will be freed from the fear of remaining in samsara.

I love this idea and am flattered by the comparison. thank you jeremy.

Sheep on CBS's new show "Threshold"

Electric Sheep is being featured on the new CBS TV Show Threshold. The text on their web site on the lower right says:

Fractal Screensaver

Take part in the elaborate creation of a communal computer-generated fractal screensaver. Download it and receive alien visions.

<rant> The show looks cool and the crop-circle logo is intriguing but I have no idea what this show is about. I tried to watch the trailer and failed. I even tried with Internet Explorer on a fucking Windows XP computer with Real Player open and on the desktop. I just got some error. Is this the best corporate American can do in 2005? Hey guys, please just put a mpeg4 file on your website. Mencoder works great and is free. <rant/>

Ok politics aside, I am completely pleased to be on the show. Thank you.

Density Estimation for FLAM3

Erik Reckase has implemented a Density Estimator for the FLAM3 algorithm. This substantially reduces the spackle, dust, and noise too often currently visible. Density Estimation works by making the filter size inversely proportional to the hit density: highly sampled areas need only a small filter, but sparse areas need a large filter. Adaptive Filtering for Progressive Monte Carlo Image Rendering by Frank Suykens and Yves D. Willems has the specifics.

Erik has a number of examples on his DeviantArt account, including this before and after comparison. Plus: this, this, and this.

The code will be released as soon as its cleaned up and the interfaces are finalized.

Sheep Reviewed in French

The Electric Sheep have gotten some good reviews lately in French. I'm gettings lots of hits from Ubuntu-fr and Linternaute. Babelfish translations here and here Neither page seemed to notice that the Mac OSX version has a French translation (I think)...

Here are some quotes:

rated 10/10

the delirious forms created by this program which does not weary to surprise.

Splendid, fairy-esque, captivating. This project is quite simply superb.

c'est du grand art.

Thank you.

"165 Star Oasis" part of Sub-Station in Vancouver

This Friday Night in Vancouver's Cathedral Park, Inter-mission Artists Society will present Mercury Theatre lll: The Sub-Station. The park sits atop a skyscraper-sized underground power-station that provides electricity to the whole core of the city. Inter-mission took submissions on this theme, and I sent in the 165 Star Oasis. The video will be mixed by live VJs. The story in the Vancouver local weekly. Below is their press release:

Presented by Intermission and Video In Studios

Friday, September 9, 2005

9 until midnight
Cathedral Park @ Richards & Dunsmuir
Free admission

Mercury Theatre lll will be an unprecedented outdoor presentation of video and sound art using the downtown location, Cathedral Park, as a setting to contextualize this year’s theme, “The Sub-Station”.

For the 2005 theme, artists will attempt to put the location of Cathedral Park into perspective by considering its placement atop 27 floors of Vancouver’s electrical sub-station. This sub-station not only connects all of Vancouver as the distribution centre of electrical power, it also suggests hidden worlds, the subterranean workings of the city, and of course, life down below.

In 2003, Mercury Theatre looked at Vancouver as a sci-fi landscape. 2004’s program took sci-fi one step further to examine the ‘New Barbarians’ and the barbarian that is in each and every one of us. Now in 2005, Mercury theatre will take sci-fi to a new level. ‘The Sub-station’ will be a surface level hive of electronic art forms being fed by the source and outputting back into the world. It looks like sci-fi but it’s actually real-fi!

This year’s program features a fourteen piece electronic improvised orchestra, four live art performances, and over 25 video submissions from across Canada that will be mixed live for your viewing pleasure.

Accelerating Change

I'll be showing the latest Electric Sheep at the Accelerating Change conference two weeks hence at Stanford. I'll be on at Tech Night on Friday September 16th. No promises because this is very much work in progress, but I have something new and I'm very excited. I just hope it's ready in time...