Category Archives: general

Pitchfork Megapuss
Photo: Pitchfork

So everything went pretty well the other night. A few places wrote about the show and the band’s “unique” choice of fashion accessories. It was a difficult task of showing images from Lauren’s forthcoming book, many of which feature Devendra, while not showing too many pictures of him projected behind him which is just weird. We did our best and tried to pick the strongest shots that allowed for some fun animation potential. At one point, Devendra got upset about his image on the screen, but in the end I think it all worked out.

For the animations we used a combination of manual work in After Effects and procedural elements from processing. The procedural elements were fairly simple, some image averaging to blend faces together, some perlin noise to make images flap in the wind, a few particles, a little bit of random walking lines, and — in perhaps the most bizarre code I’ve ever written — recursively packing the space around Devendra and Greg using images of the prosthetic penises they wore for a Megapuss photo shoot with Lauren.

The entire animation lasted about 40 minutes, so I’ve compressed all that into a quick 1 minute video showing all the vignettes back-to-back. Something is definitely lost since we were going for a thick, slow, molasses-y feel to the whole thing, but who has 40 minutes on the internet?

The Public School is a new, community driven, program happening at the TELIC Arts Exchange. The idea behind the school is that anyone can sign-up, propose a class they want to teach, or a class they’d like to take, and express interest in classes that others have proposed. A rotating curriculum committee then chooses which classes to offer based on interest, feasibility, etc.

The Public School Diagram

The general thrust of the curriculum is art and technology based, but there has been interest in a variety of topics which hopefully will keep things lively. I’m a member of the course-selection committee (D.A.N.) and after our first meeting I’m even more excited about the school and what’s to come. There are so many great classes proposed so far, I can’t wait for class to begin.