Saturday, 7th July 2007
First of all I would like to express my gratitude to all those marvellous people who have deemed my work to be worthy of a place on their walls! And, a big “hello!” to those intrepid Googlers who managed to find their way here. Why artists’ email and website details aren’t included in the catalogue’s contact details is quite beyond me!
More importantly, please accept my sincere apologies for the delay in getting orders out. I have been out of the country for a few weeks, and had never expected such an amazing response from the RA Summer Exhibition.
I can confirm that I have secured the services of the best printer in the area, set-up a buyers’ database, ordered packaging, backing, mounts and tape, and will be sending the prints out by Recorded Delivery in the week beginning July16.
As an additional courtesy, I have also mailed-out explanatory letters to all purchasers in case they never get to see this blog entry.
Friday, 22nd June 2007
Saturday, 9th June 2007
Well, almost. Their fabulous dinos entitled The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth But Not the Mineral Rights are towering over visitors in the Annenberg Courtyard while my little print is tucked away in room IX (exhibit 982).
Obviously, photography is not permitted in the galleries (nor are umbrellas!), so here’s a controversial photo of me being glad at the appearance of red spots, for once! Hats off to the RA security staff though for their eagle-eyed enforcement though, we were politely admonished only seconds later.
The range of work was quite staggering, and even though we took a break from the exhibition (well, Bernice and I got lost in Oxford Circus), I’m sure you could spend all day perusing the 1200 works on display. There are some breathtaking pieces, but you’ll have to go there yourself to see them I’m afraid. Here’s a couple of personal favourites I sneaked in, only because they were on low plinths and could be phone-cammed discreetly.
The Summer Exhibition runs daily until 19th August, open from 10am to 6pm. Go there and feed your eyes!
Tuesday, 29th May 2007
Well, after the karmic see-saw that was the pattern over the last two years of my art career, it was a welcome surprise to get this letter from Sir Nicholas Grimshaw of the Royal Academy of Arts today.
Dear Thomas Newton
Thank you for entering this year’s Summer Exhibition. With nearly 12,000 entries, the competition was extremely strong, however I am delighted to inform you that your work Spindizzy has been selected and hung in the exhibition.
The Summer Exhibition will be shown in the Main Galleries from June 11 to Aug 19, and if you absolutely can’t make it then BBC2 will be televising the exhibition with three one-hour programmes during the run.
Monday, 21st May 2007
With the taste of Scylla’s exquisite fruit punch still teasing my palate, Bobby dropped me off at Birmingham New Street to catch my train to York. After a refreshing six-hour kip, had a scrambled egg breakfast with Patrick, and setup my cameras for the morning.
I decided that setting up the cameras in stereoscopic mode would be too troublesome in such a lively setting, so I stuck a wide-angle lens on one as a mid-field camera and used the other for close-ups. While the catching and ringing were visually interesting, the most amazing part of the visit was the constant aerobatic display from the resident colony of swallows.
Ironically, I can’t show any swallow images yet as they hurtled past the lens too rapidly and will need some processing before the birds are fully visible.
Sunday, 20th May 2007
Bussed up to Birmingham (there were no trains from Swansea!) and had a very enjoyable afternoon in the company of the Modulate collective. Met the featured guests, the Finnish video artist Mia Makela who performed her evocative work ‘Kamos’, Damian Frey who’d been invited from New Zealand to prepare one of his realtime interactive installations, and the Modulate collective themselves: Scylla Magda, Bobby Bird, Joseph Potts, Mark Harris, and Mark Bunegar.
Wingbeats was very well received and it was a thrill to chat with such a progressive bunch of people about all things digital. Not only that, but as Bobby was setting up the projector he played a whole episode of The Prisoner (The General), classic!
Sunday, 13th May 2007
Monday, 2nd April 2007
Popped up to the Royal Academy of Arts today to drop a print in for the Summer Exhibition. The brief was light and for some reason I decided that my Timeshear image of the local kiddie’s roundabout would fit the bill. Don’t ask me why, I think it has a kind of startling inconic quality about it, either that or I was just fed up of seeing it in my hallway.
Inclusion into the Exhibition offers an artist amazing coverage. Not only the huge number of visitors passing through, but BBC Two will be covering it in three one-hour programmes during the run in late June. Even if spindizzy doesn’t make it past the judges, it looks like I’m still in with a chance of at least getting the back of my head on TV as a BBC crew were filming as entrants queued expectantly.
Friday, 23rd March 2007
Oh, got this in the post today…
Thank you for entering the Welsh Artist of the Year competition 2007. This year we had over 450 entries. The standard was very high and the panel has made their selection of approximately 120 works.
I am delighted to inform you that your work has been selected to form part of this year’s exhibition at St David’s Hall from 4 June - 10 August 2007.
Obviously I don’t expect to win, but it’s nice to think that my favourite TimeShear photo plaitwithgirls will been seen by thousands during the exhibition from 3rd June to 10th August 2007.
Thursday, 15th February 2007
Okay, not my radio debut (that was back in 2000), but a very nice surprise as I only expected to be on the podcast.
Skipping through Huw Stephens’ show from last night, I suddenly heard my version of Konrad’s beautiful song Kites! Click here (I’m 34mins in). If you’re impatient click the 15min skip button twice and you’ll hear the end of Vessel’s Yuki just before that which is really not at all yucky.
For a condensed, super high quality version of the show, download the podcast instead (I’m 22mins in). There’s some really good work in it, so if you have a half hour spare, why not listen to the whole thing.
Wednesday, 14th February 2007
When Huw Stephens put a bulletin out on MySpace for Valentine’s Day songs I quickly posted him an .mp3 of Kites. Huw had enthusiastically presented my evening session tracks back in 2000, so I thought I was in with a fighting chance. As it got closer to the day my hopes began to fade, realising from experience that it takes a few days to sort out contracts for broadcasts.
So it was quite a surprise when I got this from Radio 1 Producer Clare Chadburn in the mail yesterday:
Hi there Thomas,
I produce the unsigned podcast with Huw Stephens. We’d really like to put your track in the podcast this week but I need to get permission from you. Would you be up for that?
Blimey! After my slight disappointment at not getting airplay I realised that the longevity and accessibilty of the podcast would give the track the best possible exposure. Contract’s in the post!
Not only that, but today we took delivery of a brand new body for our poorly Aibo, Ralph. He’d not booted for nearly a year, so it was fantastic to see him up and about again in a brand new 210A chassis. If you were an Aibo owner you would understand, trust me.
Saturday, 10th February 2007
Okay, not particularly arty but it is my work after all.
During my cheesed-off phase last November I made three tracks just to throw off a few cobwebs and take a break from being an ‘artist’. Amazing thing is, over this next month I will have three tracks published on separate albums in the US. Two of the new ones, and an old track from my ‘hardware’ period.
One of the most challenging to make was a remix of a wonderful song called ‘Kites’ by Konrad of Rock Island, Illinois. His vocal style captivated me immediately and though I’d never collaborated before, just knew I had to have a go at arranging the track as I imagined. It was really too late for inclusion in the official line-up for the new Radical Turf compilation, but Konrad appreciated what I’d done with the song and got it onto Hello Future as a bonus track. It’s a great compilation, if you’re a bit of an electro-head like me and I’m chuffed to bits to be a part of it.
The other two tracks soon to be released will be on Deeper in the Box from Waveform Modulations, and What has Eyes from Mannequin Oddio Media which will be donating all profits to ‘Artists for Animal Rights’.
Monday, 5th February 2007
Considering that I made wingbeats nearly a year ago, it is amazing to see how it seems to have found a life of its own. Regardless of what I’m doing or thinking it still manages to get selected for screenings every once in a while. I’d pretty much forgotten about it when I this popped into my inbox.
Hello again!
The wait is finally over!
The selection team have now made decisions on all work to be screened in the Optronica cinema programmes and we’re very pleased to inform you that your work has been chosen. It will be included in the main Optronica on Screen programme and, possibly, any Optronica touring programmes.
All selected entrants will be allocated two tickets to the screening at the BFI Southbank (formally the NFT). Please let us know if you can attend and which day/screening you’d like to come to (for times, please check out: http://www.optronica.org/).
Thanks once again!
With best wishes,
Francoise Lamy
Festival director/curator
Blimey, BFI eh? Well, let’s just hope that:
a) Swansea has trains on the day we decide to travel
Friday, 26th January 2007
After many months of email swapping I finally managed to get myself up to Coxwold to see the exhibition A Bitter Draught - The Starling and Slavery and to meet the man behind it, Patrick Wildgust, curator at Shandy Hall.
The trip up wasn’t too bad, though coming from Swansea it was inevitable that something had to be on the line, which on this occasion was a ‘burning train’! Top marks for originality I suppose. Still, once the replacement bus had taken us to Cardiff the journey seemed reasonably straightforward, apart from missing all the connections of course.
I don’t suppose I’ll ever really get literature, but Patrick did a very good job of conveying the essence of what Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (which he wrote at Shandy Hall) was really about. I must admit that just flicking through the book and seeing the kinds of trickery Sterne had used to convey non-linearity certainly got me intrigued, and reminded me somewhat of my programming work with visuals.
Unsurprisingly, co-incidence let me know that I was on the right track when Patrick pointed out two of my previous encarnations resting within the entrance to the local church. If I ever travel somewhere new and this kind of thing (or a jolt of déjà vu) doesn’t happen, then I tend to feel things are heading in the wrong direction.
Obviously I spent the first night wandering about the grounds with nothing but my trusty NightShot to navigate by. Just one of those things I’ll probably never grow out of. To me the night is not just the world darkened, it’s another world completely. There’s very little light pollution in Coxwold, so the starlight is quite breathtaking on a clear night.
It was very gratifying to see my video short The Stars Are Out in the context of the exhibition. It bothered me deeply that I’d spent so little time working on it last year, but once viewed in situ it took on a whole new quality and suddenly seemed to make sense in a way I’d never anticipated. Even the title had new meaning for me now (I was only thinking of starlings when I originally chose the name).
After leaving Shandy Hall, Patrick drove me back into York where we met Dave Chesmore of the Intelligent Systems Engineering Group at the University. We briefly discussed sonification of moths, amongst other things, and enthusiastically agreed that it would be good to collaborate on future projects. Patrick left me at the Minster to have a look around and I finally got back onto the train at 5:45, hitting Swansea just before midnight. Thanks to Patrick and Chris for looking after me, I look forward to returning there later this year to go mothing and, if all goes to plan, work there as Artist in Residence this October.
Tuesday, 16th January 2007
Tuesday, 2nd January 2007
I actually conceived the TimeScan technique over a year ago, but never got round to figuring out how to program it. Being a bit rusty with the old VB after months away from my last bout of coding, it’s been incredibly thrilling to compile my first few shots using the new method, even with such dull source material (shoppers in the local mall).
For once, I’m pretty sure that this is a unique treatment, and as such won’t divulge how it’s done. I’ve always been a generous spirit and never bothered about such things, at least until recent advertising campaigns and TV idents appeared which seem to be based very closely on my methods and subject matter!
If I had a pound for every time someone’s approached me over the last month and asked, “Hey, you know that thing on channel ***, is that one of yours?”
Tuesday, 5th December 2006
Well that’s the last time I get misty-eyed about rail travel, at least to and from Wales anyway! I was initially quite impressed that a return ticket to Manchester was only £44, but soon realised why. The journey there took seven hours, the first six of which we spent on a grotty two-car chugger with no buffet cart and a decidedly dodgy loo. After two platform changes at Crewe we eventually got ushered onto a 21st Century Virgin train which was more like a spaceship than our antique bus on rails.
We hit Manchester at 11:00pm and were astonished at how civilised the place seemed compared to Swansea on a Sunday night (see ‘Twin Town’). After a blinding flash of déjà vu, as so often happens when I travel, we ended up in the Hard Rock Cafe trying to compensate for the total lack of rail hospitality by bolting down veggie burgers like there was no tomorrow. Pricey, but nicey.
Next morning I packed a camera and made my way to the Square to see my work the way I’d always dreamed. Well almost. Just before leaving Swansea I checked the webcam and saw a thick black band down the screen which I assumed was just some peculiarity with the camera. It turned out that the horrendous weather had actually damaged the screen, leaving only 3/4 of the picture intact, and often blacking-out completely!
The highlight of the trip was probably watching the local pigeons interact with their on-screen counterparts. To have taken the original flight data, produce the work, put it back into the world, and then have the birds offer their commentary gave me a deep sense of completeness. It was also interesting to note that the local pigeons only flew across the screen during their shots, and often in the same direction as the virtual flock.
The sound system was quite impressive too. No delicate ‘gallery’ levels here, the soundtrack pounded out around the Square, afforded even greater impact by virtue of being the only musical soundtrack among the four featured pieces. Two of the others were silent, and the third had a simple spoken dialogue. My biggest regret of the day is that I bottled-out from riding on the Wheel of Manchester! It was so gigantic that I felt queasy just looking up at it. Well, at least I had the presence of mind to take one of my wonky photos before we left.
Quick stop at Cornerhouse gallery to grab a latte and say ‘Hi’ to Helen Wewiora, who’d made the whole thing possible. She assured me that the engineers would sort out the screen ASAP (which they duly did) and that a decent set of stills would be taken before the show’s close on Friday. The journey home was just as arduous as the first, despite being timetabled as nearly half the duration. Another two-car shed-on-wheels all the way home, no buffet cart, no leg-room and no way am I going anywhere by train again!
Tuesday, 21st November 2006
A couple of days after the opening of my experimental music video wingbeats in Manchester, I wondered whether I could prove to myself that it was actually being shown, or was just part of some strange waking dream. Yesterday I was amazed to find a webcam right in the middle of Exchange Square!
Okay there’s a hulking great ferris wheel in from of the camera, but if you peer through the spokes you can actually see frames of wingbeats at about 35 mins past the start of each programme (see post below). How strange it is to see your own work through someone else’s webcam.
Saturday, 18th November 2006
From Cornerhouse’s Bigger Picture page:
…a must watch is Thomas Newton’s Wingbeats (2006). In this film Newton combines his interest in birds’ flightpaths with that of experimental musical composition; using custom-developed software to track the movements of the birds, each movement is translated directly into music. Before our very eyes motion-paths of birds become aerial sculptures – the results are breathtaking.
Wednesday, 15th November 2006
Friday, 10th November 2006
As a my sonic ‘holiday’ draws to a close, I’ve recently completed a re-working of one of my favourite tracks by a friend of mine who records under the name of Austech. Molash, like much of his work, demonstrates a profound understanding of space and colour, so it was quite challenging when Dan reminded me that I’d expressed an interest in it.
The original was so delicately arranged that I found it quite tough to work with, and while I can’t say that I’m 100% pleased with my arrangement, I think it raised important questions about how I approach remix work in future. Having said that, I haven’t had any complaints (yet). You can hear it for yourself on my profile at MySpace.
Another friend, who I recorded with back in 2000, is just starting a new label in the US, and has invited me to produce the cover art for the debut album Deeper in the box. Esiris, who records under the name Quetzatl, originally asked me for a track to go on the new sci-fi inspired Waveform Modulations album. After producing Adventure on Mars, he wondered if I’d lend a hand with the cover design, being a bit arty an’ all.
Saturday, 4th November 2006
Should you find yourself around any of Swansea’s Galleries, trendy pubs or other centres of culture grab yourself a free copy. I think I first asked for a mention in it about a year ago when it’s future was less than certain, so it was nice to be invited to do a Q & A out of the blue.
For more info, visit the SAFT (Swansea Arts Forum Trust) website. Thanks Susie!
Friday, 13th October 2006
I’ve only just spotted the date on my screen! Unlucky for some, perhaps.
Must admit, I’d been a bit cheesed-off with the whole arty thing recently. Sales (in Swansea at least) have been disappointing, and I was wondering if I could even afford to continue with the work. I’d kind of given myself a couple of weeks ‘off’ just to shake off the cobwebs and zone-out a bit. I had promised some friends from the States that I’d produce some music for them, so for the first time in six years I threw myself back into music world and came out the other side with a couple of decent tracks. You can judge ‘Adventure on Mars’ and ‘Kites’ for yourself by going to my profile on MySpace.
Anyway, today I was plodding home from Starbucks (my 2nd home), and wondering to myself what had become of the many DVDs I’d sent off around the globe in the vain hope that someone, somewhere, would sit up and take notice. My submission to the Bigger Picture immediately sprang to mind as I turned the key in my front door. ‘I’m just wasting my time’, I thought as I opened Outlook to pour over the day’s emails.
Then I see…
Dear Thomas,
We are delighted to inform you that your film, Wingbeats, has been selected by The Bigger Picture selection panel for screening on the Big Screen in Exchange Square, Manchester.
Your film will be screened from Saturday 18 November – Friday 8 December 2006.
[Speechless]
Monday, 25th September 2006
Well, lugged the exhibition prints back home today, so no more excuses for not adding my latest work to the main gallery pages.
I’d hm’d and ah’d about it for ages, thinking that I’d get enough time to rustle up a lovely flash interface that I could just drop new images and captions into. Months later, I still haven’t written a single line of flash so I decided to work around the aspect problem by doing a best fit and ‘letterboxing’ my new widescreen images on a black background. I’ll admit it’s not terribly elegant, but I’m finally getting the new HD images onto the site, and that’s what really matters.
Just noticed today that the carousel in town was swapped-out for a slightly less picturesque one. If you missed the Arts Wing exhibition I currently have a couple of prints in Ocean Gallery, including the one above.
Wednesday, 20th September 2006
Well, you know you’re on the road to superstardom when you actually appear in someone else’s blog! A big ‘thank you’ to Chris Elphick for letting me post this excerpt from his ‘Spiral Length of Alien Wire’ here. Be sure to have a look at the rest of his excellent, and sumptuously illustrated, daily blog and his vast information resource for all things Gower.
Visited the gallery at the Grand Theatre after work. I have seen countless exhibitions over the years but this has to be the most awe inspiring one I have ever been to. Thomas Newton’s timestream photography was billed in the theatre’s promotions booklet as ‘time bending’ and this was enough to get me take time out to take a look at his work. As I have already stated, I was not disappointed. Newton’s images were startlingly innovative and provided plenty of evidence of how meditation, of which he is a keen practitioner, can really open your eyes to completely new insights into the perception of the world around us. The shots seem to have been mostly taken in Swansea and show the progression of time on a single location in space. How he did this was, basically anyway, to record a specific sequence on High Definition Video, then he spliced the individual frames of the resulatant short film. He then took these thin slices and interpolated them back into one single image. This results in the static elements in the scene appearing as they are usually percieved but the moving object appears stretched and wildly distorted as they move through time. I think the bird images worked best - a pigeon, for example, taking flight into a Swansea sky looked like a spiral length of alien wire stretching upwards into infinity.
I have never seen the world like this before, but I will certainly try to see it like it again. Highly recommended - philosophical/metaphysical photography at its best and a definite reminder that photography really can be Art. The exhibition runs for a few days more but if you can’t make it, you can visit the photographer’s website to take a peep at his amazing work.
Monday, 11th September 2006
Tuesday, 5th September 2006
Another amazing preview night after a frankly exhausting month of shooting, processing, printing, ordering, endless phoning and carting about. The response was phenomenal and the new TimeShear work seemed to be very well received despite being such a quantum leap forward from my TimeStream work on wingbeats.
Thanks to everyone who came, and to the Grand Theatre staff despite the slight delay in getting the refreshments together. There was a one-man Star Wars show on the same night, so on my arrival many of the staff were busy taking photos of themselves standing next to stormtroopers. Cool!
A big thank you also to Tyron Francis of Clase who offered his services as event photographer. To see more of his excellent photojournalism, please take the opportunity to visit his website.
Saturday, 12th August 2006
What a fantastic day! Huge thanks to Emma Williams, the Young Curators (Jon Cooke, Kim Davies, Naomi Eagles, Sarah Evans, Ffion Griffith, Zoe Human and Bonnie Phillips), and last but not least Linda Garrison for actually taking the time to drive us up there.
The journey up took a good three hours, so by the time we got there the Gallery’s veggie sausage butties went down an absolute treat. The curators had done a wonderful job with the selection, one of the most varied and consistently high quality shows we’d seen for quite some time. Loads of interest was shown in my work, and I got to meet the charming young lady who gave me the glowing review below.
At first glance, these pieces of work by Thomas Newton appear to be abstract pieces of art created in Photoshop. However, after taking a closer look you begin to see what is really hidden in the pictures, or should I say photographs! A mixture of birds and bugs have created a “display of motion-paths of objects as they cross the field of view”. The images are created from several minutes of High Definition (HD) video, which are then broken down into individual shots and layered on top of one another. The number of individual layers is then included in the title of the work as a reference, and the image bugs-4035 is ‘the most heavily layered image’ he has produced in his career so far.
These pieces are probably my favourite pieces of work in the exhibition, as they are both original and aesthetically pleasing.
Written by Naomi Eagles
Thursday, 10th August 2006
I’ve just taken a much needed break from my Deepview work to put a few pics on the new Your Gallery subsite of the Saatchi Gallery.
There was only room for 8 images, so I put my favourite wingbeats ones there and a bit of blurb about me and what I’m about. I could’ve put new stuff on there, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise for those attending my September show!
Monday, 7th August 2006
Patrick Wildgust just sent me this. Good job too, as I haven’t even started work on the special video piece yet!
Note to self: It’s often a good idea to produce work before arranging to display it.
Sunday, 6th August 2006
Thanks to Ray, Jan, Lyn and Gary for sorting this out for me. If you do visit on the 4th all you’ll find is me and a pair of techies hanging pictures. Come a day later and there’ll be pictures, video, drinks and nibbles!
I’ve been busy sorting through my images today, and have suddenly switched from thinking, “How am I going to fill the space!?”, to, “How will I fit in the space!?”. The panic is over, but now I have to decimate my set and hope that I end up with the right pictures, never easy.
Saturday, 5th August 2006
By Mid-September I’ll have stuff in four galleries!
It’s surprising how much hard work is involved in getting shows together, and I almost feel that I’m working beyond my capacity. As well as my September exhibition in Swansea Grand Theatre, I still have a video piece to complete for York by September. Phew!
For now, I have three of my wingbeats canvases at Oriel Davies Gallery in Newtown
and you can catch my 10 minute edit of the wingbeats multimedia project at the Swansea Open at Glynn Vivian Gallery in Swansea (exhibit no.55).
Monday, 31st July 2006
Just got a pair of Sony VCL HG0737Y Wide-angle lenses. These will give me the freedom of being able to get closer to my subjects (something you really appreciate when trying to film in public spaces) and they actually provide a handy means of easy vertical parallax adjustment. Because these things make the cameras front-heavy, I can adjust adjust the mounting screws to precisely nod the cameras up and down. No more fiddling with shims, hmm.
Oh, and before you think of going to the shops for these babys. I got both of these for the cost of one (from a UK shop) on ebay, yay!
Sunday, 30th July 2006
Yeah I know, it should’ve been there from the start.
I’m proud to announce the arrival of a new button in my main menu (over there on the left). Contact will (with any luck) enable you to send me an email. The tricksy bit that took so long to implement was to encrypt my address so that spambots don’t trawl it up and subsequently spew their junk into my inbox. If you’re a bit on the nerdy side and would like to know how to do that without having to prise open the jaws of an already challenged wallet, check out Jim Tucek’s excellent (and free) Email Protector.
Thursday, 27th July 2006
Since pushing ahead with my art projects, I have noticed a strange pattern to certain events. Last year I had two pieces of work rejected which I’d submitted for the Swansea Open at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery. On that same day, the cash machine kindly informed me that there was no more money in my account, on returning home I found a letter from the Arts Council of Wales informing me that they were giving me £5000 to get birds to write music! The rest, as they say, is history.
So, crank the calendar round a year and today I get a letter from the Glynn Vivian saying,
…we have decided it will not be possible for us to include your proposal in our programme which is now fully scheduled.
Hmm. I’m not really sure what that’s supposed to mean, but I was even more taken aback when I had another letter from the same gallery saying,
I am pleased to advise that this work (wingbeats video) has been selected.
This evening I had a very nice telephone call from Patrick Wildgust who is commissioning me to produce a starling-specific work for his forthcoming exhibition ‘A Bitter Draught’ at Shandy Hall, York in September. I also had an email from Gary Isles at the Grand Theatre going over the final arrangements for my show in September. Haven’t quite settled on a launch date yet, but here’s a roughie of my poster anyway.
But d’you know what the best bit is? Even though the Glynn Vivian don’t want to show my work, because their external selector has chosen it they now have to display my wingbeats video for six weeks! Priceless.
Sunday, 16th July 2006
Well, early days yet, but reassuring to finally get an image set.
The maths isn’t quite right, the source images are rather dull, the blending mode is wrong (actually, I can’t use any blending modes in PSD 3D Converter) but my idea is finally looking achievable. The source for this incomprehensible tangle was actually a horse and rider turning in front of the camera.
There are no depth maps in the layers, and the relative spacing was automated within the software. All I’ve got to do now is, sort my depth maps, fake blend modes (to enhance the translucency), calculate my individual layer depths from the camera parallax, build the frames, interlace, mount, and I’m done. Oh boy.
Thursday, 13th July 2006
Wow, this 3D stuff ain’t easy!
The sync was doing really odd things when I did my calibration run. The first few hundred frames were absolutely bang on, then there seemed to be a drift of nearly ten frames, then right at the end everything was perfect once more. Not only this, but during a practical test in the park the other day, I found that it was almost impossible to get the cameras to respond synchronously with the Infra-Red remote, particularly using a wide (40cm) baseline, and the sunlight didn’t seem to help either!
I also discovered that the two (supposedly identical) cameras have a vertical offset, losing me a precious handful of pixels in the alignment process. The only way I could get round it was to cut a sliver of perspex and wedge it between the camera and the base plate. Very Hi-Tech! To nail down my sync issues, and zoom control problem, I have ordered the Lanc Shepherd from Steve Berezin in California. This will ensure synchronicity between the cameras internals and enable perfect dual control of their vital functions, including zoom.
Monday, 3rd July 2006
No this isn’t anything to do with cars, perish the thought!
Due to some administrative misunderstanding, I got my grant (thanks ACW) almost a month later than I’d planned (grrr ACW), so I don’t have that much time left to get results with this new combination of technologies, ie. displaying Timestream/Timeshear (Video Echo/Slitscan) in 3D lenticular format.
First thing I had to do was check that the cameras are going to cooperate temporally, as any slippage would complete ruin the stereoscopic effect. My quick-and-dirty method for this was to spend half an hour cloning my old settings onto the new camera, balancing them on a box by the window, and filming cars going past. Now all I have to do is download all the footage and check the sync by watching the positions of moving vehicles in the Left and Right video streams.
I’m hoping that getting them into standby, and starting the recording with the IR remote should be good enough, but who knows. IR is light after all, and light travels at the speed of, you get the idea. If that doesn’t work I’ll have to consider employing a Shepherd. Man, this 3D stuff is weird.
Blimey, it did have something to do with cars after all…
Thursday, 29th June 2006
Not really anything to do with art as such, but some of you may be interested to know that Kahvi Collective have just released an EP of some of my old music. Neglected Transient Quirks was recorded in 2000 using hardware samplers, sequencers and effects. A bit rough and ready by today’s standards but still pretty good fun.
Thursday, 8th June 2006
Just to let you know that I’ll be having a stand in Swansea’s popular Natural Living Show on the 17th and 18th of June. As well as the beautiful large canvas prints, there will also be high quality photographic prints in mounts and frames, as well as my usual A1 posters and greeting cards. Enthusiasts of my video work may also be pleased to note that both Flatland and Wingbeats DVDs will be available for purchase. See you there!
Sunday, 14th May 2006
At last!
Ever since I first had my HDV camera I’ve been itching to see how it would handle lightning. I was so knocked out by the viral thing last Thursday that I hardly saw anything of the storm, but I had just enough presence of mind to push the camera up against the window and press record before finally collapsing back into bed.
The shots are nothing like photographic quality because of the interlacing, but they’re still quite pretty nonetheless. If storms are your thing, and you’re living in the UK, have a look at my favourite real-time online lightning tracker.
Actually, if you have a MySpace account, I’ve just added a clip of this storm with re-synthesized audio on the Videos page of my profile.
Sunday, 7th May 2006
I got this in an email today,
How amazing is that!
Wednesday, 26th April 2006
What?
Well, deepview is the working title for my next project which will take my time-altered work into a whole new dimension, quite literally.
As I was putting the finishing touches to the wingbeats exhibition, I thought how cool it would be if you could actually ‘get into’ the time-structures, rather than just see them as flat swirly patterns. I’m really not ready to go all sculptural. I don’t have the physical space in my flat to work that way, and besides, most of my works would be impossible to build into solids anyway. What I needed was a way of getting the depth, without getting too dirty, and without breaking the bank.
I finally settled on lenticulars. You know, those little novelty sticker things with the images that switch or animate as your turn them in your fingers. Well, if you build a set of stereo pairs into a lenticular, they’ll give you a 3D image, and with decent lenses you can get nearly two feet of depth! Not only that, but they only cost a few hundred pounds a piece to produce. Now if you’re thinking, “hang on, that’s blinkin’ outrageous!”, bear in mind that it would cost many thousands to produce an equivalent hologram.
Well, last friday I got a letter from the Arts Council of Wales to confirm that deepview will be receiving their full support!
It’s fantastic that they’re going to back something this innovative (well, I’ve never seen this combination of time-modification and lenticulars before), but absolutely horrid when I think of the dreadful maths I’m going to have to wade through to get these images to work!
Friday, 14th April 2006
The full version of Wingbeats will be complete at the official closing date of the project on April 21st, and will be available for purchase on DVD.
Until then, I’ve plonked a short clip on my profile at MySpace for your enjoyment.
It’s the final ’slow movement’ which I filmed at the Wetlands and Wildfoul Trust in Llanelli , and features slow-motion footage of hungry gulls which have had their flightpaths and ‘collision’ points translated into a mesmerising toy piano soundtrack.
Thursday, 23rd March 2006
Well, what a night!
Thanks to everyone who came on the night, and all those who gave me their support and encouragement along the way. From all the positive comments and feedback I received at the launch and over the last couple of weeks, it seems that my work has really managed to capture the imagination of everyone who’s come into contact with it. Quite gratifying for a ‘beginner’ like me.
Congratulations to Cecily Hughes of Mumbles who won a complete set of Wingbeats cards and a copy of my first experimental DVD Flatland. The greeting cards I printed were a bit of an afterthought, so it was frankly astonishing to sell nearly sixty of them on the opening night! Not only that, but they gave instant feedback on which pictures aroused the most interest.
Thanks also to Hugh Evans, who, among many others, suggested that people may appreciate reproductions of the images at a more affordable price than the canvases. To this end, I have now produced a set of glossy poster prints at A1 size (841 x 594mm / 33.1 x 23.4″) which are reproduced on photographic paper using lightfast inks, and are individually signed by yours truly. They are currently available at the Dylan Thomas Centre for only £19.95, and seem to be quite popular. When I went there yesterday, once the chap on reception had twigged who I was exclaimed, “Hey, when are we having more posters!?”
Monday, 20th March 2006
Sunday, 19th March 2006
With all the buzz surrounding the exhibition I was a little apprehensive to be moving out of the epicentre, but our weekend away at the Krishnamurti Centre in Brockwood was just what we needed.
Two days in the middle of nowhere, with simple, comfortable accomodation, excellent organic food, and marvellous country walks. Not only that, but on the last day I met Steve who lives near the Centre and runs a sanctuary for injured birds of prey. He invited me to see his birds and even let me stroke an owl! I felt deeply priviledged to get close to such amazing creatures, and it seemed extra poignant nearing the end of the wingbeats project.
One of the best things at Brockwood is an enchanted wood called The Grove where I once sat filming the sun going down. It was great fun trying to find my way back in complete darkness amid all the squeaking and rustling of the abundant wildlife. In fact, if it wasn’t for the excellent nightshot mode on my camera I probably would’ve been there all night.
Friday, 17th March 2006
Friday, 17th February 2006
For those who absolutely cannot wait to see the final canvasses I’ve selected for the show, or simply can’t get to the Dylan Thomas Centre you can now see them on the BBC Wales/South West website.
Major thanks go to Paul Turner of Massmedia Digital for his invaluable assistance in the selection process.
Wednesday, 1st February 2006
or Graphics Tablet at least.
I was just looking over the images I’d intended to have reproduced for the exhibition on the 9th of March, and thought they were a bit rubbish!
Don’t panic, it’s just the perfectionist in me. I have thought it through, and discovered that I’d been doing myself out of resolution by using a blending deinterlacer. This means that I have retained the full-frame of HD (1044×1080) at the expense of the temporal resolution (25fps). Where I had used my split field to produce faux high-speed footage, I’d stupidly reduced the frame down to PAL (720×576) before resizing to HD, thus chucking good pixels away in the horizontal reduction.
So I’ve gone back to my source footage, split the fields to get 50fps, stacked the images at 1044×540 and then resized up to HD. Obviously, the high-speed trick doesn’t produce a real HD image as I lose half the vertical resolution, but I think it’s worth it, don’t you?
Monday, 23rd January 2006
It’s amazing to look back only 12 months, when I was in yet another gallery, asking my Girlfriend what the difference was between myself and those who had their work on display. Her reply was that they’d simply, “turned up”.
Well, in my year of turning up I’ve met scores of people who are enthusiastic about my work, had a film on public display, been awarded funding from the Arts Council of Wales, and have my first solo show in only a few weeks from now! Not a bad start.
My first exhibition this year will be launched at 7pm on March 9th at the Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea and will run until April 2nd. On the opening night there will be refreshments and a chance to see a preview of the ‘Wingbeats’ video. If you’re interested, click on the No Comments link just below this post, leave your details (they will be kept securely off-site) and I’ll send you an invitation card.
Wednesday, 18th January 2006
In case you hadn’t noticed, Google are now doing a streaming video service called, wait for it, Google Video.
The submission procedure is very straightforward and they’re quite generous as to which filetypes and formats they’ll accept. I’ve just uploaded my first film ‘Flatland’ and, considering it’s streaming, it doesn’t look/sound too bad at all.
If you have video you’d like to share, or just enjoy unusual clips, give it a look.
Sunday, 15th January 2006
I feel it’s time to acknowledge the chap who wrote a wonderful program called Coagula, which has made possible a significant portion of the audio processing in ‘Wingbeats’.
The basic function of his program is that you can turn any 256-colour bitmap image into sound. I’d tinkered with it long before embarking on this project, and found it very satisfying and straightforward to use, a real does-what-it-says-on-the-tin type affair. Once I’d written my bird tracker, it was relatively simple to convert all the points into pixels on a horizontal bitmap and feed it into Coagula for sonic rendering. Once I’d got the basic sine wave clusters out I fattened them up with an audio editor, lovely.
Only trouble is, while looking for Mr Ekman’s contact details, I bumped into a musical programming language called Csound that enables you to script every aspect of audio synthesis. Just the sort of thing I needed at the start of this project. Well, I simply don’t have time to learn it now, so I’ll have to leave it until my next multimedia extravaganza!
Tuesday, 10th January 2006
These are the trails described by the flock of starlings that gather their forces in the centre of Swansea early every evening. Who needs fireworks?
Most of us will at least lean out of the window to watch fireworks, but no-one seems to give these amazing birds a second glance. Generating the audio for this sequence was one of the toughest challenges yet, with three minutes of tracking up to 807 birds at a time. At last count it required the generation of over a million sine wave events (1,010,357 if you must know). I had to compute it in two halves as my 2Gb got eaten up in no time. The final comp wasn’t quite snappy enough, so I multiplied the half-speed HD footage by four to produce a motion that was double real-life speed. To contrast, I regenerated my favourite section at half-speed as an alternate version I will drop-in to the final cut.
Also, I’ve decided to order a sound card as my on-board sound sucks donkeys, not quite what you’d expect for £1500 machine. I’d always noticed that my mp3 collection played with frequent little clicks and skips, but the worst bit is when I try to edit audio. The timeline skips and jumps all over the shop, making it almost impossible to do any precise operations. I’ll soon be working on transitions and fine details for ‘Wingbeats’ and I’ll need all the precision I can get.
Sunday, 1st January 2006
Well, this one had been bugging me for ages, almost to the point of me abandoning it in fear of it taking so long that I’d run out of time to complete the project.
You see, I had this dumb idea of having the title made out of birds. Of course, this alone would’ve been too easy, so I decided that they would have to fly into position, hold still to be read as letters, and then gracefully fly apart again, all without looking corny or mechanical.
While many of you may have been mangling birds on the Christmas dinner table (yuk!), I was busy attempting it on my PC, and it wasn’t easy I can tell you! I started by going through 8,000 frames of seagulls fighting over crumbs in Brynmill Park. I eventually got all the letters I needed, but when I checked the lead-in and lead-out times of each bird I had to abandon them. Hungry gulls will contort themselves into amazing shapes for a discarded kebab, but only stay in shot for a second at a time. I tried pigeons too, and starlings, which hurl themselves around like bullets, were quite out of the question.
Then I go back through my old footage to find half a minute of kestrel on Kilvey Hill, perfect! Flys into position, stays steady and then drifts off gracefully. Once I’d separated out all the shapes I needed to build the letterforms, the rest was easy. Well, okay, it took a few goes, and I had to learn about hierarchical compositing in AE, but it was worth all the brainbleeding, really.
Friday, 16th December 2005
Well, it’s been a while since my last post, so here’s a quick summary of what I’ve been up to.
As I’ve hit the halfway point of the ‘Wingbeats’ Project I though it would be sensible to touch base with my local support network to check that everything’s in place for the project’s completion. I’ve confirmed with David Woolley at the Dylan Thomas Centre that I’m booked in for next March, probably just for display of the canvasses. After scanning the Spring 2006 flyer from the Grand Theatre flyer (without my name in) I got back in touch with Ray Foulston. He apologised that he’d been on extended sick leave and had gotten out of sync with the Arts Wing bookings. He suggested that September was the first full month available, and would be a nice time of year for a show as people might be scouting for early Xmas presents. I asked if there was were any floorplans of the Arts Wing as an aid to visualising the layout. He admitted that there weren’t any, and that they’d be useful so I hung around with my clipboard for a couple of hours and measured the place up with a Leica Disto borrowed from work. Being a Senior CAD technician in a survey office sometimes has its advantages.
With the lack of usable daylight outside my working hours I was getting a little edgy that I couldn’t get as many shots as I’d have liked. Bearing in mind that the project is only halfway through, and that the video part wouldn’t have to be complete until the official completion date of April 21st, my initial panic has since subsided. There’s loads of work to do, mainly technical brain-bleeding type stuff, but I probably have enough footage already (about 18 hours so far) so things aren’t really so bad.
It’s also surprising what you can uncover in your own backyard. Work colleagues were telling me about a couple of sites where spectacular flocking regularly take place, but without a car it’s not so easy to get to these remote places, least of all at the crucial hours of dawn and dusk. After observing the starling colony in the centre of town for a few days and working out the timing of their movements I have got some pretty astounding video. The sight of these birds breaking from a high altitude amoeboid pattern and firing themselves like winged bullets into their ivy bush base camp is truly a wonder to behold. It’s for this reason that I now choose to call these birds startlings.
To think that I could be living only two minutes walk from such an amazing thing is even more incredible.
Sunday, 4th December 2005
Nearly 20 years in Swansea, and this was the first time I’d ever ventured up the hill. Actually, I once got ridiculously drunk at a Samba Band party at the top of Morris Lane and crawled all the way home on all fours, but that doesn’t really count.
