Liquid Change

March 31, 2007

A Record?

Filed under: Uncategorized — liquid06 @ 1:19 pm
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So who has been paying attention to the impact of technology on music? While most people are focusing on copyright and DRM, there are great things happening to music as an art form. I can’t wait until lessons for this are mainstream! Think of all the ways you could use this to do live recordings or remix existing tunes.

If you’re a fan of “real mixing” as in “two turntables and a microphone” then you’ve noticed all the shiny new Technics units on the market and called that advancement. Imagine recording six different tracks (from vinyl of course, to save that endangered crackly sound at the beginning) onto one of the cubes in the demo, then being able to mix and tweak them live using this interface. With that tempo tool that was a circle, I bet you could beat match two different tunes simply by placing them directly diagonal from one another. The only thing missing is that preview element so you can listen to how they sound together before going out to the amp.

The fact that it happens in the dark is just like an added bonus. Think of how easily this would fit in at a rave or a club! What a great way to get the artists illusioned and involved again. Yes. I just invented a word. It’s called “illusioned” and it’s the opposite of “disillusioned.” It means: to become enchanted and engaged by something you used to be enchanted and engaged by, but then you dismissed it as silly or childish. This is the return to the childhood where you were enthralled by the simplest things.

From a raver’s perspective, all the people who try to talk them out of their illusion of a “good time” (whatever they think that means!) is really just another person trying to rain on your parade. Those people who say “there’s only drugs at raves” have never heard the music because they’ve never experienced it themselves are the same as the people in the business world who say “that’ll never work” or just plain “no” because they haven’t tried it and they don’t see the value of the idea.

With this project, nobody said “that’s silly,” or “that’ll never work” because there it is in the demo – working. I think it’s likely that the artists behind it (and yes, I think they are artists because to come up with this they must have been imaginative and illusioned) were those kind of people who want to try everything and don’t think twice about why “it’s not feasible” or “it won’t make any money” or “we don’t have time to do this.”

My life dream would be to see the people around me willing to try anything without thinking twice about how much it will cost, how much time it will take, how much work it will be or how silly they think it is. I would like to see people get inspired with every project they are working on and try to take it the extra two steps.

I’m a pessimist, and some people have called me defeatist. I don’t like people, so I don’t actually expect my life dream to come true. “If this were a good idea, we’d all be doing it already.” See? I can play the game too. Just some days, I don’t feel like playing. I feel like trying!

March 16, 2007

Interestingness

Filed under: Uncategorized — liquid06 @ 9:53 pm
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For reference:

from flickr

There are lots of things that make a photo ‘interesting’ (or not) in the Flickr. Where the clickthroughs are coming from; who comments on it and when; who marks it as a favorite; its tags and many more things which are constantly changing. Interestingness changes over time, as more and more fantastic photos and stories are added to Flickr.

March 14, 2007

New Stuff!

Filed under: Uncategorized — liquid06 @ 2:13 pm
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Even when it feels like I don’t have time to get all of my work done much less have extra time to putz around the internet, I still can’t seem to satisfy my appetite to see and follow new trends and new stuff. Here are my discoveries of the day, both via 9rules.com listed blogs and people.

The Digital Outlook Report that I started reading was full of interesting information pertaining to marketing and the internet. http://guykawasaki.typepad.com/DMOR_FINAL_reduced.pdf

I didn’t get very far in reading it, but scrolling through it my favorite pull quote has to be this one from page 50:

If history has taught us anything,
it’s that the only constant in
this industry is change. So join
me in bidding the page view a
fond farewell and get ready to
embrace what’s next.

So true.

VIRB.com

This is something that’s been about for awhile, but I saw a flurry of posts on it today so I decided to check it out. My feeling is a huge sigh of relief – finally something like MySpace that’s better designed than MySpace. As if I have time to keep up another profile, I had to sign up. Once it becomes the popular MySpace alternative, I want to be there.

I hate MySpace because it perpetuates bad design, not because I hate my friends. :)

Yummy!

March 13, 2007

My Screen Printing Adventure!

Filed under: Uncategorized — liquid06 @ 12:56 pm
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So I was excited as soon as we started talking about the T-shirt assignment in my typography class. I found a great tutorial a long time ago about screen printing and I always wanted to try it. Here was my excuse! After class that day I felt inspired and I went down to Sarnoff and bought myself some screen printing ink. While I was there, I realized the reason why the tutorial I found was called the “cheap screen printing tutorial.” Screen printing supplies are expensive!

I continued developing my idea for the shirt and bought some more supplies: 2 plain T-shirts, embroidery hoops and fabric. I decided to try using a stencil made of cardstock instead of glopping glue on the screen itself to mask it. It worked for me because I was going for a sloppy/grungy look and because I don’t have to make very many passes with the same stencil – if I were doing a big production run, I would probably do it the same way the tutorial describes.

Then I read the assignment sheet a little bit closer:

All designs will be printed as a transfer and transfered to shirt or printed directly onto shirt.

misspellings are my teacher’s
Aww, man. But I wanted to screen-print my shirt! Oh well, the design I want to do is too complicated to stencil anyway, and besides, it doesn’t fit the assignment because

NO PHOTOS…ILLUSTRATIONS OR CLIP ART!

It’s beyond me why someone would want to put clip art of a T-shirt (as it’s beyond me why my teacher often mistakes ellipses for commas) but I supposed somebody must have done it before or the warning wouldn’t be there.

My dream design

The front
Front T-shirt design
and under that:
Front of shirt, under first image.
Going from the bottom right corner onto the back:
Back graphic

Maybe I can still make my dream design, but I was anxious to try screen printing so I made the beginnings of a design:
The one I made

I only have blue ink, so I was thinking of adding some shading and detail to the text with a Sharpie after I heat set it. I am also thinking about making a stencil of a hibiscus flower so I can put a faint outline of the flower on the top-left and bottom-right corners of the text. Again, all blue and black. I think it turned out neat for being my first try ever.

I still won’t be able to get away from the class assignment (the sheet gets an F in my gradebook), so here’s what I’ve been working on for that:
dj-beauty-summary.gif

I was sick last week when we had class, so I sent an e-mail to my teacher that didn’t get through. Frustrated I waited a couple days and tried again. That message did get through and my teacher said to send .pdfs. I have been trying to send .pdfs but the system is down again.

I have printed everything and I’m on my way to his office today. Stupid e-mail.

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