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A podcast about movie making and the scifi featurette, Daughter of God, with Director Shri Fugi Spilt, (Dan Kelly). Daughter of God, Episode 032, Waves.
Welcome to the Daughter of Godcast Episode 032, Waves. Last week my life energy was shunted to an immune response, so episode 031 was a slurpy, sniffling mess, and very late. If you survived listening last week, I'm happy to report that I'm now back and firing on almost all cylinders, game to deliver a coherent and distilled episode, or a fair simulation of one.
I must have watched Transcendant Man on or before July 17, 2012 the day I wrote to Ray Kurzweil, asking if he had any open source tools for reconstructing his dad, and wishing him a safe arrival at the Singularity.
With this podcast, I am archiving enough of me to reconstruct a reasonably accurate facsimile of Dan Kelly aka Shri Fugi Spilt, if not THE me. So when Ray does eventually release his open source persona resurrection tool kit, these episodes could be the raw material for your very own version of myself. Oh, what I do for you people.
The Daughter of Godcast podcast is available as an audio/video version and an audio only version. The audio only version should be all you need, at least that's my quest. So I occasionally have to be a bit virtousic at translating images into words. Especially when expounding on the joys of visuality. We're hacking that old adage, a picture is worth 1000 words. These episodes are usually around 4000+ words, but you're definitely seeing more than 4 measly mental pictures...
This is a true story.
A man lies in a vaporous clawfoot bathtub watching the movie Airplane! – dubbed in Spanish. He doesn’t speak Spanish, but can recognize a few words here and there. He hasn’t seen Aiplane! in any language for probably 20 years. The experience is strangely satisfying, mystical.
For him, the movie carries deep associations to youth, he was in his late teens when it was released. A good movie, surreal and goofy. Iconic scenes well remembered and yet… they are inaccessible.
Watching it in Spanish is like having a stroke, the actors lines are almost intelligible, he sort of remembers what they should be saying, and yet the humor zooms by. It’s all familiar and yet deliciously remote, alien.
The loss can be savored because it is just a game. It’s a choice, something to do while having a hot soak. Revisiting a warmly familiar story told in a language that he doesn’t know. Just like life.
How often moments with friends or family are relived in a unknown tongue, with new characters and mis-remembered history. We are only half erased, incompletely duplicated, partially obscured with mirrors and smoke.
Features vs Benefits
In episode 030 I tediously explained the mechanics of rotoscoping, totally neglecting the second rule of sales... talk benefits not features. Who cares about what rotoscoping IS? Tell us why is it cool?! This podcast is expertly crafted to reach an audience that actually knows how to live, geeky obsessions notwithstanding. I imagine my audience sipping home brew gruit while reclining in bippling hot springs, walking their unusually intelligent tabby cats on shadow dappled byways, or reading Alexander Weinstein by the glow of a beeswax candles. Living Large.
Side by side the two plucky visual effects artists plied their ephemeral trade. Just past their flat screens, a laughing lake, either placid and ripple-free, or methodically waving against a rocky beach under cloud scudded or burning blue sky. The excellence of summer in Northern Michigan, making a movie. That was Ben and I until September 2012, before he returned to Western Michigan University to continue his debt accumulation, a chronic symptom of higher education in the alleged REAL WORLD.
So why is rotoscoping cool? Why drudge away for hours days tracing live action?
When Christina opens the cabin door for Uncle Joe, he seems to be gently shimmering with red light, he's a sunset, lurid and fascinating. His noir suit and fedora, his near incestuous leer, are juxtaposed by the sacred / profane radiance of capishe. The hallway is red too, lit by red bulbs... yet this light upon his body dances, celebrates. Perhaps he helps us see the living energy of light for the first time. Or is this just her POV, are Christina's eyes brimming, is she seeing through tears? The beloved and enigmatic Uncle, back from the spooky nethers, is haloed with her intense emotion.
That description was 105 words, 1/10 of a 1000. Not an inadequate audio homage to the rotoscope enabled image. Because the root of all art is feeling.
Joe's back from the dead hallway shimmer is subtle, the audience is not necessarily even going to register this as a visual effect, I am only helping them see what they want to see, goosed up a tad.
I’m proud of my FBI record. To clarify, I’ve never worked for the FBI. What I mean is that the FBI has a file on me. Not only do they have a file on me, but it’s secret. That’s why I am proud. That they would worry enough about me to have a secret file. I’m not being exactly fair, because the story I am going to tell you has nothing to do with my secret FBI file or how I came to learn about it. I only mention my file because it’s eerily unrelated to what follows, which is the essence of what follows.
I’ve been reviewing James’ letter to his Kickstarter backers, and it’s about 12:15 am or so. I’m in the hammock that stretches across the studio area, tip tapping away at the laptop. I keep whiffing the faint odor of a not unpleasant burning, like aromatic woodsmoke. Perhaps the pot of chaga has cooked down to it’s chunks and is beginning to carbonize. Or maybe something worse. There’s food on the counter – left over pancakes and watermelon from dinner with Luke and Abigail.
Ready to browse without remorse and feeling a bit parched too, I slide out of suspension, balancing the laptop and it’s swivel base like a svelte titanium pizza box. Clunk onto the floor and stiff but serviceable standing joints. Into the kitchen and no, the chagga is off. My imagination or crosstalk from an adjacent dimension more likely. Turn to the counter and the crash landed dinner. The comal has a few pancakes – dryish but beginning to wilt with the trapped humidity.
I extract one onto the bare counter but… no. Watermelon. That’s the ticket. Returning the pancake to it’s dark lair I reach for the less than ideal serrated knife, start to saw waxy rind and then it happened – the eerily unrelated event.
Out of nowhere, out of an unknown, unsuspected aspect, I spoke the words, “Mitt Romney”. It came out clear and calm, like a statement. Without any emotion or context, just “Mitt Romney”. I can’t say it was a message, a sending or a channeling, because it was completely and utterly devoid of any content. As if I wanted to hear myself say it. The simple music of speech, but why those words, why that… name?
Why not that name? Is not THAT name as equally sacred as “Earth”, as “Philip K. Dick” or “watermelon”? Sure, that’s all well and good, but the whole incident is still a bit creepy. To be surprised by myself is not an everyday thing, more dreamlike than waking, methinks. In conclusion, I offer with these words…
“Mitt Romney”.
Say it. See if it sounds like the thrum and rush of the cosmos to YOU.
Being
When I play at being thought free, I arrive in an inexplicable state. Words can't touch where I am, and what I thought to be my life, turns out to be a map. Being is way wider than what we think, write or speak.
Which is why I am never trying to say anything here, make sense or tell the truth on the Daughter of Godcast. Because the noise my words make is more then mere meaning.
Daughter of Godcast, podcasting about podcasting about podcasting.
In Stamford, Connecticut around the late 70’s there was a slightly shabby theater we used to drive by on our way downtown, the Art Cine. They never advertised the features, the kiosk remained unchanged for years. In big bold letters it read, “HAVE A NICE DAY, SEE A MOVIE. I grew up driving by that sign. I never really noticed the RATED X until I was in my teens. Then my friends and I would giggle in the backseat, not really knowing what it was all about except that parents weren’t willing to explain. The sign obviously had a profound influence on me as a kid, “have a nice day, see a movie.” That’s what stuck.
Courtesy Stamford Advocate Archives
All you need is a Question Mark
On September 25 I acquired spiritual stewardship of the Wonderland sign from Jon Wagman himself, via email. Mutterings from the locals about the derelict Question Mark building being sold or demolished. Clearly, the sign should be snatched, historic preservation, echos of a bygone age.
Wonderland was an environmentally oriented art gallery launched by Wagman in the early 90s, coinciding with an improbable influx of artists into little Benzie County. The gallery's sign was a just a giant jagged question mark with the planet earth as the dot, 12' high by 8' wide.
Jon stole the color scheme from a swatch of retro fabric he liked. His buddy Mark Whiting (later of Iron Giant fame and Finding Nemo) had executed Wagman's design with matched house paint.
As soon as the gallery started making a little headway, the landlord raised the rent. Frustrated, Jon gave up and hit the road. The cantankerous landlord removed the lower panel of the Wonderland sign, the panel of the earth, leaving only the swirling curlicue above and the rough 2 x 4 armature below, his revenge on the town of Honor for real or imagined slights. The building and remains of the sign were an iconic feature of Honor, Michigan for a decade, their story and significance eventually forgotten.
The derelict Question Mark Building before demo. Photo - Traverse City Record Eagle.
I had been given stewardship over the energetic essence of the sign, the soul of Wonderland, but how to nab the physical incarnation? In plain sight or in the dark of night? And where was the third panel, the Earth?
Nuclear Pow uh
Through the summer and fall Fukishima was often on my radar. As a two year veteran of wild open water, I was an interested party. I was feeling personally responsible for the vitality of my big fresh water lake, flanked as she was by dozens of Fukishima-esque blunders in the making. I had sailed by several nuke plants. The abrupt end of Around Lake Michigan's second expedition was presided over by brooding relic of atomic misogyny. Were they alive and sentient? Ancient malevolent dragons sleeping.
I was making a post apocalyptic movie at front of the 21 century, while entertaining the possibilities for preventing, fluidly side stepping or remediating the apparent apocalypse in progress. Two projects, one aim.
The study found that mutation rates were much higher among butterfly collected near Fukushima.
Exposure to radioactive material released into the environment has caused mutations in butterflies found in Japan, a study suggests.
Scientists found an increase in leg, antennae and wing shape mutations among butterflies collected following the 2011 Fukushima accident.
The link between the mutations and the radioactive material was shown by laboratory experiments, they report.
The work has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Two months after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident in March 2011, a team of Japanese researchers collected 144 adult pale grass blue (Zizeeria maha) butterflies from 10 locations in Japan, including the Fukushima area.
When the accident occurred, the adult butterflies would have been overwintering as larvae.
Unexpected results
By comparing mutations found on the butterflies collected from the different sites, the team found that areas with greater amounts of radiation in the environment were home to butterflies with much smaller wings and irregularly developed eyes.
"It has been believed that insects are very resistant to radiation," said lead researcher Joji Otaki from the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa.
"In that sense, our results were unexpected," he told BBC News.
Image caption The Japanese researchers have been studying the species for more than a decade
Prof Otaki's team then bred these butterflies within labs 1,750km (1,090 miles) away from the accident, where artificial radiation could hardly be detected.
It was by breeding these butterflies that they began noticing a suite of abnormalities that hadn't been seen in the previous generation - that collected from Fukushima - such as malformed antennae, which the insects use to explore their environment and seek out mates.
Six months later, they again collected adults from the 10 sites and found that butterflies from the Fukushima area showed a mutation rate more than double that of those found sooner after the accident.
The team concluded that this higher rate of mutation came from eating contaminated food, but also from mutations of the parents' genetic material that was passed on to the next generation, even though these mutations were not evident in the previous generations' adult butterflies.
The team of researchers have been studying that particular species butterfly for more than 10 years.
They were considering using the species as an "environmental indicator" before the Fukushima accident, as previous work had shown it is very sensitive to environmental changes.
"We had reported the real-time field evolution of colour patterns of this butterfly in response to global warming before, and [because] this butterfly is found in artificial environments - such as gardens and public parks - this butterfly can monitor human environments," Prof Otaki said.
The variations in colouration of the butterfly were previously reported by Prof Otaki and his colleagues in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, as he told BBC News.
"Colour-pattern changes of this butterfly in Aomori, Japan was [previously] observed only in the recent northern range margins during a limited period of time. Most importantly, the range-margin population did not show any 'abnormality' per se," he clarified.
The findings from their new research show that the radionuclides released from the accident had led to novel, severely abnormal development, and that the mutations to the butterflies' genetic material was still affecting the insects, even after the residual radiation in the environment had decayed away.
"This study is important and overwhelming in its implications for both the human and biological communities living in Fukushima," explained University of South Carolina biologist Tim Mousseau, who studies the impacts of radiation on animals and plants in Chernobyl and Fukushima, but was not involved in this research.
"These observations of mutations and morphological abnormalities can only be explained as having resulted from exposure to radioactive contaminants," Dr Mousseau told BBC News.
The findings from the Japanese team are consistent with previous studies that have indicated birds and butterflies are important tools to investigate the long-term impacts of radioactive contaminants in the environment.
Seems almost wrong to be staring at screens when it’s so lovely outside, implementing roto, roto, roto. That’s what has to be done as I drive forward on DOG’s conclusion. This repetitive visual work leaves great chunks of my brain unoccupied, so I’ve started research on nukes for the proposed future expedition of ALM. I’ve been meaning to aggregate Fukushima news, and so here’s some of that. Also A bit of Mooney’s work might also apply when discussing the matter as I travel.
Waves
Wisdom laps upon my consciousness, little waves curling in and then receding. I knew things and then forgot, knew and then forgot, each time the knowing lasting a little longer. I had learned that the super power of generosity if paired with consciousness could yield boons. Otherwise, nightmares. I had learned that I could give myself permission to feel love, happiness and exhilaration anytime, anywhere, not just after achievement or when conditions cooperated.
Way back in the 90s I had played in the waves of Shakti Gawain's creative visualization, manifesting misplaced car key and wallets more times than I care to mention. But not always. Here's two 2012 excerpts illustrating a wave rolling in and out again.
09-05-12 visualization is not about the future
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Visualization is not about the future, it’s about having our life in the now, becoming adept at being open and feeling love and adventure in the moment. Not projecting some about to be, but knowing and feeling what we truly are (want) in the present. Visualizing is experiencing, not simulating or even practice or rehearsal, but being. With all my wondrous potential and perception, just be. Then want and fulfillment together.
Think about it, normal orgasms are transient, to get the most we want to know how to stretch them, perhaps stretch them into infinity, where they never started and can never end. To exist as infinite is to have our bliss instantaneously and always. That’s visualization.
[snip]
To live with pain teaches us to cherish feeling just plain comfortable. Once we know this, why not just skip the pain?
Think that any system of thought can be infallible? How can one camera show every angle? Though profoundly liberating, even science is just a viewpoint. To truly know, we must go beyond systems. This is mysticism.
Sitting in a room is quite boring, meditating, contemplating, even listening to me is a waste of your time. get out and do something, find out who u are.
The current push is to get the to do list to a manageable size. This means the plans for any given day are actually achievable. Obligations are being consistently met, no new obligations are taken on unless they are strategically essential – they get me radically closer to an existing outcome.
All current open projects that can’t rapidly be completed must be stabilized by bringing them to a state and or location where they can remain indefinitely without deterioration, danger, waste or getting in the way of other projects. In the future stabilization is built in, by projecting phases for projects. Here’s the new protocol, immediately followed by a list identifying projects and what’s needed to stabilize them.
Project protocol
• start and finish projects in manageable stages, don’t leave a stage partially complete.
• no more than three projects open and only for the following reasons
waiting on parts
waiting on assistance
engineering and research
surprise re-prioritization
need sleep
emergency
• order projects according to weather, availability of parts, master plan, primary categories, current priorities
• don’t start new projects to procrastinate on older projects
• make time to play, pure play
[snip]
September 5's Visualization is Not About the Future reveals the moment as the font of creation in contrast to goal setting, planning and effort. That wave had washed over me before and would again until eventually, I am as you hear and see me now, wonderfully wet and slippery.
In Projects In Progress Chapter 2, I was heavy into goal setting, planning and effort. Still damp from the wave a few weeks earlier, but drying off, becoming future focused, action oriented.
Notice tho that my action plan was informed by feelings. "Manageable size, actually achievable, obligations consistently met, no new obligations, stabilize, don't start new projects to procrastinate on old projects," these directives are clearly about reducing my stress, feeling easy and more free. "Play pure play" is even more juicy, not just lowering pain but increasing pleasure.
The waves wash up, splash us a bit and then fall back. Again.
That’s a question for little kids, right? I’ll be 50 next May! So what’s the point of asking this question now, isn’t it too late? Didn’t I squander my youth and if I haven’t grown up by now then chances are I never will, right?
These are antique cliches. Everything is about to change, IF we can learn to steward the global life support system. Assuming sustainable civilizations, it’s highly appropriate to ask more momentous questions. What I want to ask is – what’s living all about, what’s the point? To raise vivid replacements? To expand consciousness? To have fun?
Note – this isn’t a rant on ‘the meaning of life’. What’s the meaning of a flower, what’s the meaning of a flea?
As a good disciple of Joe Campbell, rather than look for meaning I’m interested in the experience of being human. Anyone who’s tripped knows that choice determines experience. What’s my life about? Or better, what might I like my life to be about? What feeling and flavors, what insights would I like to have? What outcomes would I like to manifest?
In summary, rather than search for the meaning of life (of my life), I constantly choose what it is to be me. So we come to the question of the morning, my life’s work. A life’s work is usually thought of as the stuff left behind, results, contribution. Results flow from process, so a life’s work is a continuum of process (experience) and results.
Running time backward, results could be melted down into process, just as heat applied to ice will yield water. Following this metaphor into the ridiculous dimensions, the forms of ice can be many, but water is universal. Can all results be achieved by just one practice? Are there many paths to achieving one unique result? Swami used to refute the many paths up the mountain metaphor, “there is only one path!” Anyway, that’s another post.
So my life’s work is not only about results, but what I want to experience along the way. This is critically important when I think about making more movies or games or the next thing. The categories are themselves fluid.
Last night I watched Indy Game The Movie. The shots of designers staring at code on the screen gave me a little thrill. I wrote games professionally for awhile, deploying them as interactive installations at a local museum. They lived there for several years and engaged a couple hundred thousand people. That was fun.
I continue to hire roto artists for DOG and while glancing over FXPHD for the latest courses started wondering how to identify the core skills for my future, which begged the question what do I want to experience in my future? I know what I like, but are there other things that I might like that I haven’t yet experienced? What’s the ultimate Dan Kelly palette?
Huge right?
Immortality
First, back to the fundamentals. Is 50 too old to start a life? Have I already used up my chance?
I’ve observed two drawbacks with how others age 1) becoming rigid in thought and thus frightened of consequence 2) loosing physical flexibility, strength, vigor and beauty. I feel very grateful to know these are not inevitable, to live otherwise.
Living forever scares some people. Perhaps the prospect of indefinitely prolonging the horror show that is their life drives the fear. Trapped in dire circumstance – a bad marriage, shitty job, ignorance, poverty, crazy parents, disease, injury – forever? Yikes.
I had a bad marriage followed by prolonged fall out post divorce – chronic illness and depression. Years lost in grief and pain. I can relate to despair, been there.
Hard work and good luck helped me find my way back home, I now have a pretty intriguing life and a body I enjoy. Having a long, long life is very attractive to me.
If Kurzweil is right and I make it to 2023, I might be able to live indefinitely. Even if he’s not, I’ve learned a lot about slowing and even backing up the biological clock. I can do things with my body that fit people 20 years younger can’t. I expect at least another 30 years of robust function, even sans the f’ing singularity.
I think about being 50 as sort of a fantasy scenario. I find myself with experience, resources, confidence, knowledge and health, with prospects for more of the same being very good. Maybe the first 50 were just setting the stage, perhaps my unique Gaian contribution requires a serious foundation. Or maybe I was just a scallywag and shirker.
The point is, I feel excited (and a bit in awe) about designing my future, my presence as an artist and channels of expression. Ephemeral technology? Live performance? Culture hacking? All of the above.
Super Meat
An extended introduction, now to business. An assessment of my capacities is in order AND I want to know more about what I don’t know. What the hell is possible in VFX? How will I dance with digital technology? Identifying the practices I really enjoy. What I would dearly love to be better at. What change I want to see in my world. Seems clear that I am good at many different things. I have excellent luck, overall. These are the categories to search on. Begin.
Check out these svelte goals from 2012 for the future, I didn't even need to snip anything. Trusting that everything's in the emotional escrow, and only trotting out the shiniest baubles. We were learning, getting the hang of this reality thing.
Specifically, December 15, 2012. What I want to have accomplished, that is. What I want to experience.
DOG is done. Pretty much good enough, 80% of awesome. Doesn’t suck, watchable, fun through out, even stellar at times. Screeners going out to festivals. The rest of December is lessons learned and consolidation of all resources, archives. More about feelings.
A robust passive solar greenhouse that can handle winter wind and the weight of snow and ice while harvesting heat for the casa, and sunlight for green beings. More about feelings.
Ready to take on some basic jobs and pay off debt! NMC Extended Ed at Up North. Push the VFX angle around the state, what we feel truly competent to do. Editorial. Small, low commitment.
Grab bags and caches ready. Plenty of food and fuel. Car solid.
Boats are secured and stabilized, under cover. Shack is protected against water coming in. Tools are sorted and available.
Consistent practice of yoga, tai chi and stunts from October 15 through. Picking up dance and strength again.
Health solid. Feel good, reliable performance, endurance and balance
The later half of 2012 was a waking up... and up. Blog posts splitting along the seams and light pouring out.
October 13, 2012 ~ 7:30 AM
After DOG then what? What do I want to do?
FXPHD [fxphd.com] and widening my horizons, knowing what i don’t know.
[After taking the] VFX supervisor course, turns out I am naturally doing what the big kids do and finding out what they know. I may be groping in the dark, but so are they – an opportunity.
The big kids are groping in the dark?! In spite of ridiculous amounts of money to hire gangs of artists, the result is trite eg Hunger Games, Prometheus… The VFX in HG were ok – not groundbreaking or even very compelling. In fact the dogs were downright… bad. The movie had some beautiful shots sure and moments of fun but, I was lost, lost, lost in a forest [corn maze] of mediocrity. The curse of the big studio daunts these creators. They may have all the keenest stuff, but perhaps the very nature of the process dooms the product.
Ridley Scott gets a lot of credit for Alien, but perhaps it was the very limitations of production that made it great. A stellar cast and a fiery director who did (perhaps accidentally) the right things to get them there. Perhaps bigness is it’s own liability. The production of Alien cost 11 million, (34 million in 2012 dollars) but how does that compare with today’s budgets for features with serious effects? The studios in England, Shepperton Studios and Bray Studios… were they big studios, did the production dominate them? Checking out the handy list from ThinkProgress.org we can see the revenue for more recent releases in the Alien franchise steadily going down as the budgets went up. Bigger budget, less box office?
Alien (1979)
Budget: $11 million ($34.8 million in 2012 dollars)
Domestic and International Box Office: $104,931,801 ($331.5 million in 2012 dollars)
Sigourney Weaver’s Salary: Approximately $33,333 ($105,321 in 2012 dollars)
Aliens (1986)
Budget: $18.5 million ($38.72 million in 2012 dollars)
Domestic and International Box Office: $131,060,248 ($274.3 million in 2012 dollars)
Sigourney Weaver’s Salary: $1 million ($2.1 million in 2012 dollars)
Alien 3 (1992)
Budget: $50 million ($81.8 million in 2012 dollars)
Domestic and International Box Office: $159,773,545 ($261.2 million in 2012 dollars)
Sigourney Weaver’s Salary: $4 million plus a share of box office ($6.5 million in 2012 dollars)
Alien Resurrection (1997)
Budget: $70 million ($100 million in 2012 dollars)
Domestic and International Box Office: $161,295,658 ($230.5 million in 2012 dollars)
Sigourney Weaver’s Salary: $11 million ($15.7 million in 2012 dollars)
Prometheus
Budget: Estimated at $100-$150 million
October 13, 2012 11:05 PM
Just watched P, what shite. Theory supported.
October 13, 2012 ~ 7:30 AM
I am one to talk, hoo ha. I haven’t made anything really, even anything that sucks. But if I really believed my post about health and the approaching singularity, and if Jeff is right and it’s Storytelling (capital S) that makes the human species a super organism, then the horizon stretches. At slightly shy of 50, I’m just getting started.
Continuing the research, let me say what a horror show coding in a spreadsheet is. Writing complex functions is next to impossible because the little one line cells can’t be easily formatted, so it’s very hard to tell whether you’ve even got the appropriate number of closed right parens. Meanwhile, we are also cracking the door on expressions with another FXPHD course. Awakening the sleeping giant within – who likes to code. The spreadsheet thing is not trivial. Sheena the VFX supervisor and John Montgomery did a huge intro spiel about the planning and budgeting of a VFX project, and it was chock full of planning / projection spreadsheets and databases that were of the VFX director and producer’s own making! Anyone remember my prototyping a cost estimating spreadsheet? Reinventing the wheel! Sheena herself doesn’t come with her own number crunching toolset, and why is that? I’ll just ask her online.
If I want to breathe my full being, I’ve got to be able to make tools, just like I can fabricate gear gizmos or draw storyboards, prediction and project management are pretty fundamental to getting where we want to go.
So a database like Filemaker pro versus a spreadsheet. What about being able to break these open? I can imagine a tool including true coding that can express itself as a spreadsheet or database. I suppose I need a better understanding of these two types of applications and the sort of viewports they are (vaguely recalling Fred Oeflein’s metaphor). Because with open source apps like open office or neo office, I could potentially pop the hood, switch some wires around and fire the whole thing back up again. THAT’s the true potential of open source. Standing on the shoulders of giants, taking a thing that already exists – tons of fantastic infrastructure – and pwning it.
[snip]
October 13, 2012 (morning continued)
How to hire artists V2.0
How to finish this movie, exactly where to step so far as we can see and manifesting the rest of the path after that.
Do I really need or want another apprentice or intern? I certainly want the possibility of another Ben Woody calling me. Maybe that’s a once in a lifetime thing, but if I could cultivate, what would that look like.
My god, it’s full of stars! My god, I’m building infrastructure to become an agent of the sustainable super organism! Appropriate the super organism! Hijack the super organism? I am Gods plan for the planet, muhahahahaaa (pinky in mouth).
This is cool -> appropriate the super organism can mean both take it over or make it suitable to the circumstances. The circumstances are a global life support system, a web of species. I mean both!
World domination through ART! Art (and USA funding) is why the Nazis got as far as they did, they were a bunch of reality hackers and (gulp!) artists. Call Hitler a mediocre painter, but he was just getting started. What would have happened if he stayed a painter? A different super organism, certainly. But… he switched to performance and the 3rd Reich and Holocaust (so many capitals) thing was a show that everyone is still talking about, 70 years later. He’s an icon, mythic almost. We know he wasn’t the son of god because unlike Jesus, we’ve got him on film (he loved movies and Leni Riefenstahl, uh oh…)
So this is a very dark road we travel, we creators. Perilous. This is a riff on the Architecture of Doom, for those who haven’t seen. I don’t agree with the dismissive Wiki summary, it’s a profound insight into art making generally – a cautionary tale. Why do we want to discount Hitler's artistic prowess – because he was such a fucker? Sure, assert that his aesthetic was flawed (mass murder) but why that he was an *amateur* painter and architect. Why do we want to say that evil and art are mutually exclusive? If we imagine that art is only the domain of the righteous and humane, we do so at our peril. We are all Hitler potentially. He started out just like most humans, a little kid who was loved and was lonely, who laughed and dreamed. Then what? There’s the story. To imagine he is not our brother is to reprise his horror show.
So appropriate the human organism, and what is our sense of the appropriate? Vidi well, brother. Consider carefully what we propose for the world. Look within, realize that there could be ovens and vengeance weapons just around the corner. What’s this all for?
This isn’t quite an abstraction and thought experiment. I recognize myself as a wild card. I feel super alive, sparkling wth power. I strive to organize and deploy my power, to be what I am AND perhaps change the world. To free the prison planet, to swap awakening for suicide. With art, I might some day appropriate the super organism. It’s kind of a big deal!
October 13, 2012, evening again.
Ok, so here’s the list of key topics upcoming. Repeating the two from above…
How to hire artists V2.0
How to finish DOG, step by step.
Projects in progress chapter 3 (was incomplete projects) and Projects to finish by december 15
The credit card caper
James speaks
A study in virality
Phew! and now for my bath.
Good lawd, what a ride. It’s November now and peddle to the metal. Today I am going to finish revisions on the team and tasks document. Roto artists are providing a constant flow of results. Money is definitely thinning out but we’ll find a way.
Roto is beautiful. To be able to isolate whole characters and have my way with them. So much better than greenscreen because the actors are someplace. Sure imagination is good, but if their “processing power” is dedicated to the interplay of the moment rather than imagining sets and props, shouldn’t that theoretically yield more authentic presence? Again taking a page from the Nostromo set and Ripley’s merciless immersions on the original Alien.
So here’s a little fun test of Joe as hologram. I am also thinking about playing around with depth of field. Reshooting the shot in post, only $1 / frame. :)
After frittering around with and dismissing a platoon of alleged roto artists, integrity showed up. In October, Richa and Veshan started bidding on jobs and cranking out results. They became the staple of my roto team. Remember Cody from Episode 28? Around about December, he entered the scene, my last intern from the Career Tech Center's Film and New Media program. With productive artists to supervise, I was now a VFX supervisor, for real. My name on the credits, yet again? Time for another pseudonym. Stephan Ganesh, VFX supervisor to the stars. The Hindu god Ganesh is traditionally the overcomer of obstacles and was given responsibility for information technology in the last couple of decades. Stephan honors Steve Jobs, who gave Around Lake Michigan a laptop and the company behind a primary channel of my expression. Also my grandfather Steve Redling, who painted the concrete naked ladies in his backyard garden white... with red nipples and pubic hair.
You've been listening to the Daughter of Godcast, episode 032, Waves. That's a wrap on 2012, End of the Great Cycle in the Mayan Calendar. THo for us not the end of time, Along this strand of the golf ball / multi-verse the spooling continued. The years just keep coming.
4 more and change to get to the now in our story of the Daughter of God. When and where I am recording and roughly corresponding to your watching and listening, or maybe not. Because you might be hundreds of years ahead, listening to what the ancestors squeaked and squawked into their crude instrumentality, so primitive that only the sound and picture were captured, which is such a tiny fraction of the moment, the now. How quaint.
Courtesy Stamford Advocate Archives
