November 12, 2006: Colonel Abrams

I am knee-deep in a new project. Shown here filming "Pump Up Da Crowd", with Jason C at my side, helming the monitor. I am nervous to tell too much, as I really would like for it to be presented as a whole, but it is an installation / art object / quasi-entrepreneurial DVD, loosely related to those people who try to pump up the crowd before an event. We'll see.

other things passing through:

I recently put on a robots/humans event called "AUTO + MATOS". I organized it with my friend Sarah as part of PRGRM BRD PRFRMiNG RTS.
It was a blast. The bulk of the event involved outside artists (robotic technicians, musicians, dancers, performers), but we were also able to create and show something of our own. We worked on a piece that had audience members submitting "commands," in the form of two and four digit codes. The commands/codes were along the lines of Forward=>0001 or Dance=>0004. These codes were then transmitted through a not-so-secretive pulley/string mechanism to humanoid robots hidden throughout the audience. The numeric nature of the commands limited the breadth of transmitted signals in a very interesting way; there was a perverse incentive for audience members to create devious command schemes ("forward-backward-forward-backward-forward-backward-circle"), providing an interesting counterpoint to the typical, self-aware representation of robots (i.e. robots are usually presented as turning against humans, but no one ever thinks about humans turning against robots...which in a way is humans simulating themselves turning against other humans).
However, towards the end, we had our "robots" doing much more than moving forward and dancing, performing wild routines like raising audience-members from the dead, and fighting each other like cats. Which was fantastic.
More here, with pictures and video

I am also in the process of redesigning, in a awfully general sense. But specific to tha 'net, up top I have a new section with the links that I visit (via del.icio.us) and I am always trying to update my things with new projects.

photo by julie