Cranford Rose Garden Time-lapse at Brooklyn Botanic Garden from Brooklyn Botanic Garden on Vimeo.

Whether at the scale of a frame, a tiny sample, or a period of days, digital is all about the manipulation of time. So it’s fitting that our friend Chris Jordan focuses in his work on the expressive potential of timelapse, and that he runs New York’s T-Minus, a festival devoted to timelapse. You’ve got some time to get in your submissions for this year’s T-Minus – the call for works follows – but I wanted to press Chris a bit on why manipulations of time are important to him, and what works he finds inspiring.

Among his picks, above from just over the river at the wonderful Brooklyn Botanic Garden (and yes, there are idyllic places like this within the five boroughs):

This time-lapse shows three days in the life of the Cranford Rose Garden at Brooklyn Botanic Garden as thousands of roses bloom in early June.
To create the unique perspective, each still frame of the video was treated with a tilt-shift lens effect in Photoshop.
For more information on the Cranford Rose Garden, visit bbg.org/roses
The music is by Jon Solo. His website is myspace.com/jonsolomusic.

Chris explains how he became a video Time Lord – and how even raindrops can take on new meaning when time is compressed. I got him thinking out loud in email:

It’s a jumble of things that draw me to time manipulated work, some personal, some societal, all technological.

One theme that inspires T-Minus is how boring the majority of documentation video is, yet the market sells more and more video cameras, and the entire industry around video is thriving. For what? Think how many times you’ve sat and watched a documented event.  I think of the massive amount of energy and resources that go into consumer video. Wedding videos are a great example. Sure there may be something compelling to you if you’re the one at the alter. But we’re recording too much, saving it, calling it precious, and never actually seeing it again. Instead, if people captured timelapse, they would have the best of both worlds, and save petabytes of data.

The primary creative theme in time-based artwork that inspires me is the idea of the unexplored relationships surrounding us, just waiting to be unearthed. Video editors and VJ’s know some of the excitement around these relationships. But there’s generally in those contexts the studio mindset that comes into play, instilling classic ideas of composition, color, line, movement. I use the analogy of baking a cake to the capturing of time. You put the ingredients together,  put it in the oven, and see what you get. The result always brings out a pattern you wouldn’t have seen or thought existed. I put a camera six feet out off my fire escape on East Broadway once, pointing up the street. When I compiled the footage, I was perplexed to see the frame shift significantly, yet very slowly, over the course of 12 hours. What I realized was when it rained during the recording, the water accumulation and then drying caused the board to warp and twist, shifting the camera’s view. Or how city lights appear through drying raindrops in front of the lens. Or how the shadow of a church slides across the buildings during certain times of the year out my studio window. All these things are incredibly intriguing to me.

I used to be resistant to the idea of coding. It wasn’t just fear that I couldn’t do it, though that was part of it; it was also the sense that I wouldn’t be able to get to the actual art and music making if I got too involved in programming. And, actually, that bit can be true. But a group of pioneers, working on projects like Processing, OpenFrameworks, and other intelligent development frameworks, has been working really hard to make code an elegant an expressive tool rather than a hindrance. Processing has reached widespread popularity because it does this really, really well — even if you’ve never programmed before.

I’ll be teaching a three-part class on Processing at Harvestworks in New York next month. If you’re in the area, there should still be openings if you’d like to sign up (and if you’re enrolled, feel free to holler hi here — if I hear from you in advance, I can help tailor the course to your needs).

For intermediate digital artists, even those who have never coded before, we will introduce techniques in Processing. Processing is an elegant, high-level, Java-based tool designed to make coding friendly to artists. We will learn how to create generative art in just a few lines of code, building interactive works in minutes. We’ll also look at some of the deeper possibilities for manipulating data, video, images, sound, and MIDI and other I/O. The emphasis will be on basic sketches that help introduce fundamental coding skills.

Wednesdays, March 5, 12 and 19, 6:30 – 9:30pm
$325/$385

Class page / signup @ Harvestworks

The class will specifically focus on how to make video, 3D visuals, MIDI, and sound work for performance. Making Processing a performance tool definitely involves some particular skills. But I’ll also use this as an opportunity to teach very basic coding techniques so that unfamiliar programming topics can immediately generate something on the screen or some sound, since that’s part of the appeal of the whole tool.

But what if you’re not in New York?

We’ll soon have CDM Labs up, which will include examples from the team at CDM, plus other stuff from around the Web, not only in Processing but related tools, as well. I’ll use this as a playground for the course, so what I share with them, I can share with you. And, honestly, we hope this will help discipline us here to keep coding and keep documenting. More on that soon.

I’m also hoping to refine this course into something that can be offered elsewhere; if you’re interested, get in touch.

More on Processing:

Random sketchbook of mine, the kind of stuff you can put together in minutes

Flickr Processing pool

Processing videos on Vimeo

Processing tag on Create Digital Motion

Official Processing exhibition page

New York City, having already banned dancing (don’t ask), now wants to ban videography in the streets without a permit and $1 million in liability insurance. Some I talked to suspected anti-terrorism paranoia. I suspect the lucrative deals the city feasts on for big-budget, commercial projects — and an utter disregard for everyone else.

That is, if any rational explanation can explain these criteria:

• Two people + one camera + 30 minutes.
• Five people + one tripod + 10 minutes.

According to the proposed legislation, those would add up to one required permit and liability insurance.

Obviously, this is absurd. Fortunately, if you are in New York, it hasn’t happened yet — meaning it’s time to hit the phones, locals. For everyone else, you can just marvel at how annoying our city government can be. (Is yours worse? Let us know in comments. Do you live in a paradise for independent videographers? Tell us about that, too, and we’ll start checking airfares.)

For more:
City Proposes Limits on Public Photography, Filming

Dedicated site, with a call to action + petition (sign the petition, then take the time to make personal contact with city legislators for maximum effectiveness)
Picture New York Without Pictures of New York

Videographers should be very scared. But if the Flickr community gets mobilized, NYC government should be scareder. (Heck, outsider tourists, maybe you should write in, too!)

A commissioned installed will transform the Museum of Modern Art in New York into a walk-in/walk-by movie theater. Artist Doug Aitken will be creating his first large-scale installation in the United States. And there’s no question it’s large-scale: the new MOMA has vast, hulking rectangular spaces on its exterior, a nod to the museum’s High Modernist past. It’s almost as though this museum were build for projection. Now the question is, just like the irreverant podcast “tours” of MOMA, I wonder if anyone is brave enough to photonbomb the installation with a counter-projection.

The work will feature footage shot around New York leading up to the installation, and is presented by MOMA in conjunction with Creative Time. Aitken’s past work seems a perfect fit: he uses stark, human-focused urban imagery in installations that somehow manage to make the ubiquitous rectangle of projection art cool. The installation pictured below is an interior from his Kunsthaus Bregenz installation.

Creative Time, the presenting organization, is known for its New York installation work, including the Tribute in Light that memorialized the World Trade Center as two brilliant beams of light. The new MOMA installation will incorporate drool-worthy digital projectors provided by Christie Digital Systems, Inc., a global provider of industry-class projection (and high on our “green with envy” list here at CDMotion). Check back in January ‘07 when we get to see this in the flesh (or in the photons, anyway).

Project Description [Creative Time]

3rd Ward, the workspace/studio/gallery in Brooklyn where I’ll be giving a class on interactive Mac design later this month, is offering a discount code for Create Digital Motion readers, if you happen to be here in the New York area:

Enter code PK0806 to receive a 10% discount on a 3-month trial membership or 1 free workshop at 3rd Ward.

3rd Ward is a 20,000 sq. ft. workspace and studio facility for artists & creative professionals, located in East Williamsburg.

Our facility was formed based on the needs of contemporary artists and creatives whose work is often multidisciplinary. 3rd Ward is an über-studio environment that is cost-effective and provides open-source access to space, facilities, and equipment while still addressing personal and private work needs.

Not sure what an über-studio is, but the space is really lovely; I wish I had a membership there! (See facilities info) You’ll also get access to their digital lab for free (with a membership, or without a membership for free while you’re enrolled in the class).

I’ll be teaching a new course, based on Mac interactive tech and featuring Apple’s free developer tool Quartz Composer, at the new 3rd Ward space in Brooklyn (East Williamsburg aka Bushwick). 3rd Ward is an enormous “workspace and studio facility for artists & creative professionals”: think the artist equivalent of a gym membership plus enormous studio and fabrication space of a scale we rarely see in New York.

The idea of the course is to offer artists a solid grounding in interactive design and responsive visuals and projection, even for those who have no previous experience. My belief is that artists from traditional media often get denied the opportunity to experiment with new technologies, leaving them instead for the “digital people.” So, I’ve also chosen to teach free tools, which make for an easier investment, and also don’t require you to make a commitment early on to a single tool that might not be best for you. You can also expect lots of hands-on experimentation with visuals, video, projectors, sensors, and sound inputs, because that’s the kinda person I am and 3rd Ward actually has space!

If you or anyone you know in the New York area is thinking of registering, feel free to get in touch. But don’t fret if not: I want to give something back to the awesome Quartz Composer and Mac community, so I’ll be posting examples and class notes here on Create Digital Motion to share with everyone and get feedback.

Elements of Interactive Art: A Creative, Mac-Based Introduction
Instructor: Peter Kirn
Location: Digital Media Lab
Tuesdays and Thursdays - August 24 through September 12
Time: 7p-9p
$390 members/$485 non-members
Register / more information via the Digital Media classes page at 3rd Ward

Updated: In cooperation with 3rd Ward, I’m able to offer a discount: Workshop and Studio Discount in Brooklyn for Create Digital Motion Readers

How many people’s resumes include both a gig with the Phillip Glass Ensemble and posing nude for Marie Claire? An evening with new music virtuoso Kathleen Supové is not what most people expect from a solo piano recital. Her show this week finds her flanked by laptops, plus three projectors running childhood slides, live digital video, and the manic pianist from the Lawrence Welk Show, as she crawls in wearing a pink leopard-skin bodysuit narrating on a wireless.

If anyone can turn the grand piano into a digital instrument, it’s Supové. She was so enthralled by the capabilities of Yamaha’s MIDI-enabled player piano, the DC7, that she’s commissioning a body of work for the instrument. Collaborations with electronic composers, often involving microphones in the piano, blend the acoustic sound into an unpredictable, thunderous wonderland of colliding sounds. “Multimedia experience,” though, isn’t just about technology — rather than the usual parade of pieces, her concerts tend to absorb performance art rants into the mic and other “theatricals.” Her obsessive-compulsive commisioning of composers has brought pieces for her by everyone from Xenakis to Zorn to Bubblyfish (best known as a Game Boy player) and, well, me.

I’ve got one more evening with Kathleen at The Flea; I’ll certainly miss it. She certainly suggest a broad range of possibilities of what playing can be about — I hope emerging, younger players take note.

Sorry for the light news day, but I’ll be back next week with lots more coverage, shifting from game systems to how to use game hardware in your own music, more on interactive musical clothing, and other goodies! In the meantime, here’s my next project: -PK

How does a musician go from classical pianist to Game Boy musician? Ask composer / sound designer / sound engineer Haeyoung Kim, who makes 8-bit music under the name bubblyfish. Check out Haeyoung’s site for lots of articles on her and Game Boy music-making in general, as reported by everyone from MTV to MSNBC.

Here in New York, Haeyoung and I, among other composers, will be reimagining pianistic possibilities at a concert by downtown pianist Kathleen Supove, Tuesday through Thursday at 7pm at The Flea in TriBeCa. Piano duet with Game Boy? Check. Electronics generated live from the piano? Check. Video projections on the surface of the piano and live VJing? Check. Even Schroeder would be proud.

For those of you in NY, drop me a line if you’re going to stop by; for everyone else, I’ll be back with some tips learned from the tech in this show.

A couple of weeks ago, I was able to attend the 2005 IMC Expo at NYC’s Chelsea Art Museum, a showcase of new interactive sound/visual installation works. The show featured everything from “volumetric” LCD light cubes to sci-fi-style interactive displays to installation toys. For an overview of the new works:

[wpg2]archived/imc/[/wpg2]

Catalog of Works: Studio IMC has its own gallery with work descriptions for additional background.

Many of the works were best described in early-prototype phase, but it was nonetheless lots of fun playing with motion tracking, cameras, and of course the toy piano video organ! Don’t miss last week’s report on Cybersonica for more interactive creations from the other side of the pond.