Node Box

If you have the time to learn it, and have students who are interested in experimenting with code based art, Node Box is an exceptionally user friendly application that can produce extraordinary images.

NodeBox is a Mac OS X application that lets you create 2D visuals (static, animated or interactive) using Python programming code and export them as a PDF or a QuickTime movie. NodeBox is free and well-documented.
NodeBox allows you to create visual output with programming code. The application targets an audience of designers, with an easy set of state commands that is both intuitive and creative. It is essentially a learning environment and an automation tool.
You can also run scripts that automatically search images from the web and assemble them as stills or animations.

Download the application at http://nodebox.net/code/index.php/Home

Shot in the back of the head

Shot In The Back Of The Head from Moby on Vimeo.

Moby has teamed up with director/producer David Lynch; best known for Elephant Man, Mulholand Drive, Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks etc to produce this very quirky animation.

Road Movie

Looking for an interesting approach to collaborative work for your students?......

Frieze Film 2008: Road Movie is a four-part film created by artists and film-makers that was produced on YouTube. An experiment in film-making, the final result was a film made in an entirely new way: the first multi-authored fractal film assembled by the artists and curator out of the sum of the submitted parts.

Inspired by Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 novel The Road, the project used the road as a leitmotif for a non-linear journey through the post-apocalyptic landscape.

Copyright

A new section has been added to the links bar on the right that provides access to the websites of most of the copyright information providers in Australia. This should be particularly useful for teachers of students preparing bodies of work for the HSC/Visual Arts where students are considering using copyright protected soundtracks to accompany film/video or animation, or where students might consider appropriating segments from copyrighted video or clips from the internet. Whilst copyright issues do not affect HSC Visual Art assessment as such, once a submitted video work reaches preselection, awareness of issues surrounding copyright clearance become important. If a work in that media is selected for exhibition, the Board of Studies require copyright clearance before the work can be placed in the public arena. Know also, that if your student's film/video work is selected for ArtExpress you will need to have a copy of the work printed to mini-dv tape, so source out soon how you/they are; or who is, going to do that. For mac users iMovie HD can print to tape, but iMovie o8 and iMovie 09 do not have the capability. Final Cut Express HD has the capability but it's a hit and miss affair as to whether it works. Final Cut Studio is fine and so is Sony Vegas Pro 8. There are apparently problems with Adobe Premier Pro and OHCI compliant IEEE1349 drivers? Problems have been reported when using proprietry firewire drivers with Premier such as those supplied by Texas Instruments. If you know of any others post a reply.

Nef du Grande Palais. Paris

Some great images from the recent festival of European Digital and Visual Art held in Paris during December 2008, courtesy of Vernissage TV.

Yin Gao

Ying Gao studied fashion in Geneva and Montréal and earned a Masters Degree in Multimedia at Université du Québec (UQAM). Since 2003 she is a professor at UQAM’s fashion school.
In this video, Ying Gao talks about the works on show at plug.in, her background, and future projects. The exhibition is running until the 1st March, 2009. Plug.in, Basel / Switzerland, January 16, 2009.

Brian Eno - 77 Million Paintings

77 Million Paintings project by Brian Eno has been around for some years now and is still attracting significant attention primarily due to the way it subverts the notion of a singular art work. This instead is a work that perpetually grows and gives the viewer a rare visual and aural experience. About it's inception Eno says..

“I walked passed a rather posh house in my area with a great big huge screen on the wall and a dinner party going on,” he says. “The screen on the wall was black because nobody’s going to watch television when they’re having a dinner party. Here we have this wonderful, fantastic opportunity for having something really beautiful going on, but instead there’s just a big dead black hole on the wall. That was when I determined that I was somehow going to occupy that piece of territory.”

This edited video opens some interesting areas for discussion about the nature of art experience and the relationship of the audience to the repeatable experience of singular artworks.

Design in Australia

AustralianInFront is a site worth looking at for the heads up on new design in Australia

"Australian INfront is a collaborative project space and launch pad to Australia's best online designers, artists, companies and other design related web sites. INfront is also a growing community of like minded individuals who meet up face to face at INfront gatherings to inspire and motivate each other, lean on each other at times, bend the rules and help; when there's a need for a freelancer, a brainstorm, an opinion or some constructive criticism."
Some very good interviews here.

View more @ http://www.australianinfront.com.au/

Glen Marshall Landscapes

"This is a test film I made a few years ago, using one of my favourite software apps ever - Terragen. Music by Ligeti.

It’s just a study of natural landscapes and rock formations, with care for composition, lighting and camera, inspired by Kubrick and Koyaanisqatsi cinematography.

Terragen uses height-field maps (flat grayscale images) to create its land forms, but another wonderful piece of shareware software called World Machine makes the creation of heightfield maps an artistic, mathematical and geological pre-production stage before rendering these in environments through Terragen." Glen Marshall

Craig Ward and 'Processing'

Craig Ward uses open source programming to 'grow' designs that allow for true random elements to enter the projects he works on with Sean and Karl Freeman.
See more at http://www.thereis.co.uk/

Wacom Community

Illustrators and tablet users. Wacom Community have an extensive site full of artist profiles, galleries and tutorials. Featured artist is currently Vofan (anime artist) whose use of light and soft colours breaks with the traditions associated with this genre of illustration. See more at http://www.wacom-asia.com/community/procorner/

Video on a Shoestring

Anyone looking to make good quality video without having to run into big dollars might take a look at the work of Cesar Kuriyama who produced/directed the clip "Long Gone" for Fat City Reprise.....................All the footage was shot on a Nikon D200 DSLR.

45,00 stills later, a mac laptop, iphoto (to organise stills), Eyeon Fusion (for the look) and Final Cut (editing); Kuriyama had a work that broke all the rules for video production.

Get the directors own take at http://vimeo.com/cesarkuriyama

Clicking on the image for the video takes you to a new page where you can read all the specs, watch the clip (again if you wish) and afterwards scroll down to a nice posting by Hunter S Thompson.

And further down for the tech heads a nice bit of enlightenment from Kuriyama in a reply to a post by Thomas Fransden.

If you have the time have a look at "What Else is There?" and "Khoda". Links are provided under 'recent activity' .