regularly scheduled programmed

Well I hate to have given the impression that we have not been working since last I posted. Just not true.

Pictured above is Willie at the show opening, with a bit of Sweet 16 projected onto him. Check out those pixels baby.
This is actually the only picture that I ended up taking at the opening - if you were there yourself, you'd know it was absoultely packed, totally insane. Really hot inside, shoulder to shoulder. Its a good thing I got to see it all together the day before, because I forgot that art openings are generally not places to actually see art. You couldn't hear the phasing on Sweet 16 'cuz people were standing in front of the speakers. It was really hot. Everyone looked really hot.

Some highlights-
-meeting Cory's parents (they are real nice, figured they might be kind of crazy since Cory is their offspring.. HAHA only kidding Cory!!)
-having a buttload of my friends show up, to the point that I couldn't make time to talk to anyone very much (SORRY!)
-seeing lots of people who I'm sure are famous artists/curators but I didn't recognize them
-seeing my friends' pictured in a photo some guy took who reviewed the show online ("oh-so-Soho" - HAHA)
-seeing Cory in this crazy euphoric state

there were so many people that the crowd was spilled out into the street. I was inside the whole time but the GRL guys were telling me that the cops came at one point and were kind of just confused about what was going on. James was saying it was almost too bad that someone didn't get arrested, that would be some serious press for an art show.
So speaking of press, oviously there was a whole lot of it because there were so many darn people there.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The next week Cory held the screening for the Dazed project (which shall henceforth be referred to by its official title "Untitled Translation Excercise") at Anthology Film Archive. Basically the idea was to sync up his new soundtrack to an original film print.

This turned out to be a larger challenge than expected. I've not worked with film much myself, but obviously its a bit more analog than a DVD or digital file... basically there is a lot of natural speed variation in the movie when you project it off the original reel.
Cory being the smart guy that he is, got a demo copy of Max/Jitter and wrote a program that allowed him to speed up and slow down his movie file using knobs on a midi keyboard. So basically he sat up in the booth during the movie making slight adjustments throughout the film so that the sound matched up with the visuals. The program that he wrote also played the movie on the screen of his laptop, so we could also watch that video and compare the cuts between scenes to see if the soundtrack was getting too fast or slow. I wish I had brought my camera - the projection booth was so awesome, I have never been in one before or seen how they have to switch reels in the middle of the film like that.
After doing all the publicity for the show opening, we didn't push the screening too hard. It was a lot of Cory's friends and associates of the gallery, Charles brought his friends and his whole lecture series that he goes to, and I convinced a bunch of my peoples to come see my summer's hard work. I was looking forward to sitting in the audience and getting to take in my hard work as it was meant to be seen, but it turned out Cory needed me to be up in the booth too - he needed to have another pair of eyes because its really easy to get confused about whether its too fast or slow. He was crazy nervous! He introduced and explained the piece before getting started, and me'n Chuck got some shoutouts for helping him work on the project. He also credited it as a collaboration with Ben Jones (of Paper Rad, who helped him come up with the idea) and another "silent collaborator." Who could it be? I wonder. Cory says that he is fine at public speaking, but only gets nervous when he has to perform something as part of it. Totally understandable.


So since then things have been a bit calmer around Eyebeam and such. Actually I haven't even been there much. Most days I work for Cory I gotta stop by Team or run errands or something. Kinda of dealing with administrative stuff. People being interested in buying his work, etc. Sending out DVDs for shows in Asia, making posters to send out, making preview DVDs for potential buyers, taking a copy of "Totally Fucked" up to MoMA.


(look, a non-blurry photo of Cory! I must not have taken it.)

OH YEAH actually on a semi side note, I was volunteering at the Tokion Creativity Now Conference last weekend, which Cory was speaking at in one of the panels. Overall definitely a great place to volunteer, I was running the Q&A sessions at the ends of the panels on the first day so I actually got to watch all of them.
Cory's panel was called "Lost and Found," and it was him, Christian Marclay, and Matmos, moderated by Carlo McCormick. Honestly I thought it was the best of the 8 or 9 panels I saw all weekend. Granted, I know and like all the artists in the panel, am familiar with their work, and it was maybe closest to my own artistic interests, but still. The theme was "Lost and Found" but what was so successful was that they had artists from multiple genres, or who work with lots of different kinds of technlogies, so they were really talking about the theme of the panel instead of just their experiences. It was definitely the most conversational, the artists would ask eachother questions, make jokes with eachother, talk about YouTube videos they had all seen (figures). They are all really intelligent and obviously reflect upon their own uses of outdated technologies and their aesthetics, as well as ideas of mastery of a certain medium, and were of different ages and experience.

The T.V. panel was also good, David Cross makes for a good moderator since he's hillarious and fucks around and tells dumb stories, but is also really intelligent and got all the other panelists to speak on their experiences in comedy, movies, TV, etc.

also:
-Mark the Cobrasnake was all around taking photos, talked to him for a minute
- talked to Jerry Hsu at the afterparty a bit:
youtube=
- ate a bunch of free food in the Green Room, mmm


So yeah as I said things are a bit calmer, Cory has promised to do a bit of coding with me, has discussed some web-based quick fun projects we'll probably put out soon. So yeah.