PALAOA Acoustic Research Station

What it's like to be underwater in a really cold place.

. . .

The birds are outside
Here I am before the stove
Water is boiling

Neuromechanical enlightenment

Meme disease

"We believe you may have a memetic infection."

"So? Who doesn't?

"One thing I see in this business, more often then I'd like, are cases where someone remembered something they weren't supposed to. You're right, all of us have been exposed to memes, but less common are those which defeat our cognitive immune systems and pass to those around us without filtration."

"So you're saying the virus that cleaned my clock was someone deleting my records to keep their data secure? That's just great. I've been turned into a safe."

"One would think your attacker would have actually deleted the offending memories rather than mixing them up with the rest. Either it was an act of sadism or there is a higher purpose. There has to be some reason for subjecting you to such a penultimate mindfuck."

. . .

The day is different
A new mountain in time
Eternal but crumbling

"There is only one way of thinking in cinema: poetically. Only with this approach can the irreconcilable and the paradoxical be resolved, and the cinema be an adequate means of expression of the author's thoughts and feelings.

The true cinema image is built upon the destruction of genre, upon conflict with it. And the ideals that the artist apparently seeks to express here obviously do not lend themselves to being confined within the parameters of a genre." - Tarkovsky

What truly distinguishes a great mind from a mediocre one? Are there such distinctions? Can the range of human intelligence inform our understanding of machine intelligence? Concepts, expressed correctly, should be universally understandable. This is nobility of truth and expression; if it is what it appears to be it achieves its purpose.

Haute lynx

This has been ringing in my head for days now. It haunts me.

Procedural Normal Maps

Neat phrase, huh?

Imagine a dynamic surface shifting in the light, stretching and twisting to the forms of memory. If my hypothesis turns out to be correct, I should be able to create such an image in the Source engine. It may not even be that difficult. Then again, nothing seems all that difficult right now.

I like that the word vessel can refer to both a body and a ship. Perhaps that's what Conrad meant when he said that "Of all the living creatures upon land and sea, it is ships alone that cannot be taken in by barren pretenses, that will not put up with bad art from their masters."

Things I noticed while watching Blade Runner: The Final Cut

The derelict hotel where JF Sebastian lives is called "The Bradbury"

The photograph in which Deckard finds the link between Zhora and the snake skin looks like a reference to the stunning scene in Tarkovsky's Nostalghia when the writer collapses on his hotel bed.

The very act of investigating the photograph as Deckard does, through the machine he speaks with, is about shattering the borders of the image, about looking beyond what's actually visible in a photograph or any flat representation. If one can see closely, it becomes evident the way Deckard enters the reflection in the mirror is impossible. The foreground element which is blocking Zhora from view could not be shifted unless the image was stereoscopic or holographic. I believe this is the central metaphor of the film.

After Rachel saves Deckard by shooting her fellow replicant, Leon:

"You got the shakes? I get 'em bad."
"..."
"It's part of the business."
"I'm not part of the business; I am the business."

She's not talking about the business of being a replicant - she is talking about the business of being human. She is talking about shifting the borders of humanness just as Deckard shifted the borders of the image.

When Roy and Deckard have their showdown, there is a strong emphasis on the right hand of man versus the right hand of his gods. There is a lingering close-up of Deckard's right hand holding his pistol, the wall bleeding with water in the background, when Roy says "Come on Deckard, show me what you're made of." Roy punches through the wall and breaks two of Deckard's fingers - one for Pris and one for Leon. He then returns the pistol and tells Deckard to shoot straight. In this shot you can see that part of Roy's ear was torn off by Deckard's first shot.

Later Roy's right hand twists into a rictic (sp? old memory) claw, showing us he is near death. He resorts to desperate measures in order to reopen it: from a beam he draws a long iron spike which he drives through his hand, palm first. The hand, and his body, once again and for the final time return to his command. The nail is the only authentic-looking relic in the film. There are many antiques and reminiscent features of the old world, but I believe the origami figures and the nail deserve our special attention.

It is this same hand which catches Deckard as he slips from the beam atop the roof. The nail is visible in Roy's hand as he hauls Deckard from the abyss.

Deckard himself is a replicant, this much is made clear by many clues. The implication of this though is not that Deckard is inhuman, but that the replicants (specifically Roy and Rachel) are inartifical. Who is the skin job? Creation is a universal act; we invent our gods and they invent us.

The care that went into creating this final cut is extraordinary. Wherever you are, find a way to see it while it's still playing in theatres.

MemSync

"MemSync on its own will not lead us to paradise. If anything, it makes our questions about existence even more onerous. It's been said that the more one learns about physics the more depressing reality seems. This is sad atavism; humans have gotten it in their heads that the past was better. The idea that until that scurrilous whore took the bait we were unified and pure. Somehow the entire essence of humanity in its most ideal state was bound up within those two prototypes, the original avatars. Since it became possible to redesign oneself we have entered Eden in simulation, and yet the nostalgic doubt remains, inflamed by the most basic question of the virtual age: what truth is there in simulation, and what truth came before it?

The boundaries of the mind now exist outside the body. Charlie and George lie comatose as our evidence. As a species I wonder if we are ready for such a radically new paradigm. Just as most children of my generation had never seen a rotary phone, there are children born today who will never know what it is to be alone in their body. They will know loneliness though, a loneliness of spirit, a loneliness utter and complete."

On weakness

“And most important, let them believe in themselves, let them be helpless like children, because weakness is a great thing, and strength is nothing. When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible, when he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it’s tender and pliant, but when it’s dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death’s companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.” – Stalker

Reeds cut for thatching
The stumps now stand forgotten
Sprinkled with soft snow.

-Basho

"How simply and accurately life is observed. What discipline of mind and nobility of imagination. The lines are beautiful, because the moment, plucked out and fixed, is one, and falls into infinity." - Tarkovsky on Basho.


Seascape from Schuyler Kelly on Vimeo.

William Wegman

I forget about Wegman and rediscover him every six months or so. It's a nice cycle.

Cat + Theremin = lolz

Via Dutty Artz via Prancehall.

Thought I would post this

It goes

It's going quickly now. The slowest part is uprezing and transcoding.

Link to 1080p Teaser

My friend Muerl was kind enough to host a 1080p version of my teaser. You can download it here. I suggest a right-click "Save As..."

Teaser

Editing what's available

Well, it's finally here

The utter freakout, that is. No matter how many times I told myself that I wouldn't have as much to do in the final stretch, I do. I have what seems like more to do now than when I started - I suppose that makes perfect sense, since you don't know what problems you're bound to encounter until they hit you in the face.

I have all this great audio but no moving images to go with it. I'm supposed to be making a film not a fucking lecture. It's driving me crazy. On top of that my great looking skin looks totally weird when it talks. I'm having all sorts of trouble with faceposer. It's a real challenge to get the proper phonemes at the right magnitude. Either the mouth just flaps around looking stupid or it doesn't move enough.

I spent too much time sitting around twiddling my thumbs waiting for my film to show up last week. I kept tweaking the skin and tweaking the skin without doing any animation, and then when I finally got him talking I realized that the mouth isn't in quite the right place and he looks totally strange when speaking.

As of an hour ago I have 10 days until it's due and 20 until my screening. That means I need to have a really solid rough draft done by the 24th. That's 240 hours. If I work 12 hours a day that's 120 hours. 7 for sleeping and 5 for etc. That's too much et cetera! I can pare that way down...

Final shaded avatar

And at 1920x1080:

Stalled

I still haven't gotten my film back from the lab. This is vexing me, because without seeing the film I don't know what changes I need to make to the story. I haven't been charged for the order, which means it hasn't been completed. I should call but I'm worried that when I do they're going to tell me that nothing was properly exposed and I didn't get any images.

At any rate, my work with the Source Engine is coming along nicely. I'm going to spend the rest of the day working on the choreography of the opening scene.

This makes me laugh every day

Garfield Minus Garfield

New gallery, new normal maps

I'm using Photoshop Express to host my images now. I'll still post them here, but from now on I'll probably just post lynx. Like this one.




The gallery can be seen here.

I told you pixels were people

Apparently you can /take a "bad" photograph of a simulation, too.

As a side note, I want to credit CrazyBump with the incredible highlights on this model. It's an extraordinary piece of software.

Lights!

Phong is glorious!

history

many places