Performance Piece & Art Parti - January 21, 2009

Every year the massive crew of the Jo-Tel and its "affiliates" gather together to celebrate the top 15 songs of the year picked by music aficionado and critic, Shark (assisted this year by Johnny D). In correlation with the top 15 songs, 15 people are chosen to create an artistic representation of the song. This can be anything, literally anything. In the previous years I've done staple drawings, and frogs embedded in resin. Other people have done paintings and drawings, but this year things had to be taken up a notch. I felt the air grow thick with the feeling of hardened competition.

As I patiently awaited the song to be given to me by Shark, I already began to formulate what I had to do to stun the crowd. Finally, the moment arrived, and I was dumbstruck to find out my song was "Happy House," by The Juan Maclean. I had no idea who the hell these guys were (my ignorance), or what the song even sounded like. Below is the entire song from YouTube (let's hope the don't strip it):

So, what I thought was going to be an incredibly dreary and horse sounding indie song ended up being quite an interesting piece. Actually, it was kinda epic. An epic song needs and epic representation of it, and the only way I thought to truly bring justice to such a fantastically orchestrated piece was via a combination of performance art, sculpture, and audience involvement.

I devised a plan. It would involve frozen brains, a gas mask, skulls, glow sticks, riot style dancing, and minimal amounts of destruction. The only portion of this piece that involved any construction of a physical object were the brains. I had this brain mold, which was perfect to make the brains. I ended up constructing a frozen red brain and blue brain, to represent a multiplicty of things (happy vs. sad, logical vs. "thinkative", fast vs. slow, good vs. evil, etc). For the performance, I dawned a gask mask and a wool skull cap, in addition to a flickering red bike light. It had the appearance of being more than distrubing. Here is the recap of the schedule. I won't go into much detail about the actual performance, because like most "good" art, it's hard to describe to someone.

0:00 - 1:35 > music gets quiet
put on mask & skull cap
walk down to the back stairs to the back yard

1:35 - 2:10 > music quiets down again, then picks back up

2:10 - 3:10 > head into backyard
turn on lights, which are placed on chairs
bring out brains
"demonstrate" brains
place brains on chairs
smash brains one at a time

3:10 - 3:55 > vocals start
began awkward dance

3:55 - 4:00 > turn off lights on chairs

4:00 - 7:50 > run upstairs
turn on black lights
incite dance party

7:50 - 8:13 > head back downstairs when the music cools

8:13 - 8:40 > toss out glowsticks one by one into backyard everytime "space" is sung

8:55 - 11:00> dance with glowsticks

11:00 - 11:30> toss away glowsticks

11:30 - END > lay down

Despite some small mishaps during the performance (lack of music not being loud enough during the dance party & losing my headphones), the piece was very well recieved. I can't imagine what I'll do next year.

I wish I had pictures to share, but alas, I do not.

Need a Barbecue? - January 16, 2009

I was recently in the market for a barbecue, a gas grill to be specific. As a previous resident of Texas, I'm programmed to only grill with charcoal or wood, but living in San Francisco limits how much one can smoke out the neighbors. I knew I wanted a grill, but seriously, where does one go to buy a grill living in a city? My first guess was to try Home Depot, and I was more than pleasantly surprised at how they marketed their grills on homedepot.com. In fact, I think it's so good, that more companies should follow their model. I know that online clothing manufacturers have some great ways for people to look at the details on clothes using a virtual magnifying glass, however, home depot took it to a new level.

When shopping for a grill, you get more than just a picture and a description, you get a full on voice recording that quickly describes the grill, and even goes so far as to elaborate why it's the perfect grill for you. Funny enough, the more expensive the grill gets, the better the more sophisticated and intricate the recording becomes. Furthermore, what I really loved about the user interface was that to find your perfect grill you could use a series of selection criteria (e.g. type of fuel, cost, features, brand). All in all, an awesome experience. Can't more shopping sites look like this!!??

I highly recommend you check it out, and all you digital marketers out there, take note.

My Etsy Studio - January 12, 2009

I am in a perpetual state of creation, sometimes making unique and beautiful things, other times, atrocious examples of creativity gone wrong. Failure is an important aspect to making art, however, too much of it can drive one insane. On the other side of the equation, perfecting one's craft can lead to alot of additional material and projects laying around the studio. Living in San Frnacisco doesn't afford me much extra space, as such, I'm opening an Etsy shop to see if the community at large wants to take home a little piece of history ;)

This post is to announce the launch of Pseudoreid's Studio on Esty!!! Right now all I have in my studio are a series of resin skulls I made over the past year. Some are very cool, others, not so much. I'll continue to update the shop as needed. I'm expecting to put in some colorful buddah sculptures shortly. In the meantime, enjoy!

One of Twitters Useful Applications - January 8, 2009

In case your leg has been trapped underneath a boulder keeping you isolated in the middle of the woods for the past couple years, you might not know about this whole Twitter thing. As always, I must state that I'm not an avid user of Twitter, I do, however, find a few things that I can do to put it to use.

Using Twitter Search, one can make a query to find all the most recent tweets about something. I've been using this for quite sometime, before it was actually Twitter Search (formally Summize). Beyond doing silly queries like, "dancing hotdog" or "web 2.0," one can do queries to find real-time news updates (hell...CNN even has their own Twitter feed). I recently used Twitter to find out information about last night's riots in Oakland. Below is what I got:

Pretty decent information, but it could be better. Moral of this post: There are new ways to gain instant original information about real-time events from the point of a view of bystanders, witnesses, etc.

The Ultimate Compliment - January 5, 2009

Hello and welcome to 2009 at 1 Million 1 Shot. Soon to come, a recap of 2008, but for now some new material.

A while ago, I built a rotational casting machine so that I could cast hollow objects. The project ended up being a success, and was a featured project on Instructables. I really had no idea what I was doing when I built the machine, and I was totally uncertain if it would even work. I was glad to see that it eventually turned out to be a positive influence not only on me but the community at large, which brings me to the point of this post.

Because I posted information on the Internet about my project, I was able to influence others that were attempting to do the same thing as myself. As a result, a much more refined and smarter rotational casting machine has been constructed, and posted onto YouTube. I received a personal note from the YouTube user who stated that my video and instructions were tremendously helpful. I think that is the ultimate compliment. As such, I'd like to share their much better video of their roto cast machine.

p.s. On a side note, I learned that when you choose to share helpful information (perhaps things realted to ideas or projects) with others online, it's important to provide good written descriptons, photos, and videos. I found that many of my videos had distracting music in it, or even the dreaded sound of me chewing gum.

Pseudoreid's Top Albums of 2008 - December 16, 2008

In no particular order, I aggregated a list of the top 30 albums I loved to listen to this year. Once again, I must make it clear that there is no particular order to this list. Unlike Shark at the Jo-Tel, I will not be dropping any mad knowledge, nor will I tell you why I chose each album. I will also not go to the extent of giving any details about the musical nature of each album. Just take this for what you will!!!

1. Empire of the Sun - "Walking On A Dream"
2. Fleet Foxes - "Fleet Foxes"
3. Of Montreal - "Skeletal Lamping"
4. Crystal Castles - "Crystal Castles"
5. Girl Talk - "Feed the Animals"
6. Chairlift - "Does You Inspire You"
7. Death Cab For Cutie - "Narrow Stairs"
8. The Hold Steady – “Stay Positive”
9. Okkervil River – “The Stand Ins”
10. Conor Oberst –“Gentlemen’s Pact”
11. The Walkmen – “You and Me”
12. MGMT - "Oracular Spectacular"
13. Kings of Leon – “Only By The Night”
14. Vampire Weekend – “Vampire Weekend”
15. Elbow – “The Seldom Seen Kid”
16. Lil Wayne - "Tha Carter"
17. Bon Iver – “For Emma, Forever Ago”
18. She & Him – “Volume One”
19. Robyn - "Robyn"
20. The Islands – “Arm’s Way”
21. Beach House - "Devotion"
22. Portishead – “Third”
23. Shearwater – “The Snow Leopard”
24. Alina Simone – “Placessness”
25. Haley Bonar – “Big Star”
26. Mountain Goats – “Heretic Pride”
27. No Age – “Nouns”
28. Santogold –“Santogold”
29. Flying Lotus – “Los Angeles”
30. The Helio Sequence – “Keep Your Eyes Ahead”

Tweetwasters - December 15, 2008

I've never been a huge proponent of Twitter, nor am I an avid user of the product. I do recognize the value Twitter provides individuals & brands , however, there is a distinct problem Twitter faces, mass adoption. That being said, Twitter has been successfully used by all sorts of people and brands and companies to help communicate their message, but was it really worth the time and effort?

A newly birthed piece of Twitterware has been developed, and its purpose is to show how much time someone has spent tweeting. The way Tweetwasters calculates this number is by taking the amount of updates someone has posted, and then multiplying it by 30 seconds (the big caveat is that it assumes it only takes 30 seconds of time to tweet). Tweetwasters will then let you know how many hours of your life you've spent tweeting, as well as how you rank amongst the rest of the Twitter population.

It's a cool idea, especially if you try to use it to determine ROI for any brands or companies that have a presence on Twitter. AdLab had a great break down of the Comcast Twitter feed (ComcastCares):

"ComcastCares is run by the company's director of digital care who makes, let's say, $50/hr and has written 20.719 tweets in ~173 hours. Total time investment into Comcast's Twitter account is $8,650. The account has 6,001 followers, which results in $1.44 per follower"

It's an interesting attempt at giving marketers an idea of what it costs to get a follower, however, it neglects to measure the additional sphere of impact a brand generates by having a focused and relevant feed on Twitter (however, that may be impossible to ever do).

Things You May Not Know - December 10, 2008

Ahhhh....jell-o!  It's incredible.  But do you know where jell-o came from?

Gelatin has been well known and used for many years. It was popularized in the Victorian era with spectacular and complex "jelly moulds".

Jell-O was first started in Venice, Italy. Jell-O was also first started in Gelatin and was sold in sheets and had to be purified, which was very time-consuming. It also made gelatin desserts the province of the relatively well-to-do. In 1845, industrialist Peter Cooper (who built the first American steam-powered locomotive), obtained a patent for powdered gelatin.

The first jell-o usd ground up geese bones.  Yuck!

Here are some great shots of jell-o's fantastic uses: