todd thille

µ:avit

2008-05-24T20:20:07Z

The DMY festivities were well underway when I arrived from Istanbul. The Visual Berlin crew had a booth set up in the dark nether-regions of the cavernous Arena by the Spree River. The showcase schedule on the µ:avit site is up to date and all is in readiness for the Avit event on Saturday. The usual suspects from the Visual Berlin crew were present and accounted for: fRED, Flux, HilmeKillme, cyper…fALk was also present and Willow made a surprise visit.

Toby and I trekked out to the wilds of Wannsee to stay at fALk's place, nestled amongst 700-year-old oak trees.

µ:avit go underway around noon on Saturday. A series of lectures and performances were staged in two locations in the Arena. Toby *spark was first up with a Quartz Composer demo, Kristian Raue gave talk about his MASH tool. Ilan from GarageCube conducted a modul8 user group meeting. Bram did a hands-on session about MIDI, I talked about some AV pieces of interest, fALk gave his thesis on Live Cinema.

Closed the DMY festival for the evening. The Visual Berlin crew plus out of town guests made their way to a local beer garden. Delicious pizza and beer kept the group going for a while. I headed back to fALk's. Was happy to see the bed. Was up early hoping to get packed and ready to meet up with Toby and fRED, but never quite connected. Ended up walking through the woods to the local bakery to get some breakfast breads. Had a fantastic brunch in fALk's garden. Mogreens came by a bit later to record an episode of the podcast he and fALk are making. I got interviewed for the episode.

Engaged

2008-05-18T00:41:53Z

Engaged to Ms. Duygu Abak in Istanbul, Turkey.

META 2008

2008-05-04T01:17:07Z

Took the Greyhound overnight from Atlanta to Asheville, North Carolina. Met up with Duncan Laurie and his daughters Lena and Bryn. Headed into the "hippie" part of town for some vegetarian lunch at the Laughing Seed Café. Found one of Duncan's cast metal belt buckles from the 1970s in the Paul Taylor Sandals shop.

Finished lunch just as it started to rain. Piled into the car and headed for Rockmont, the former home of Black Mountain College. For one week, the Rockmont Camp for Boys would serve as host to a hand selected group of artists, musicians, and filmmakers from around the world. Primarily friends of filmmaker Roger Manley, the family is continually expanding.

Notable participants included: champion for world peace Lane Berk, visionary artist Paul Lafolley, multi-media artist Jonathon Hexner, photographer Cheryl Dunn, writer Tom Maxwell, harpsichordist Elaine Funaro, photographer Deborah Luster, cellular biologist Kevin F. Sullivan, Ph.D., cinematographer Dyanna Taylor, documentary filmmaker Les Blank, tenor Michael Bennett, composer Giuseppe Gavazza, sculptor František Skála, musician Steve Nalepa, sculptor Duncan Laurie, and filmmaker, author and host of META Roger Manley.

Spent a fantastic week meeting new folks and hearing talks about what they were doing.

Duncan and I set up the IBVA with rocks and plants 3 times to show off how they work. Lots of interest and at one session, an interesting trio of harpsichord, tenor and plants.

One of the nights I set up the projector and a Rutt-Etra Max patch with a live camera input going for the others have a go at it.

A visit with Richard Devine

2008-04-23T03:56:38Z

Paid a visit to Richard Devine at his home in the Atlanta suburbs. Spent the afternoon talking shop with him and Josh Kay, of Phoenecia fame. All of us will convene in June at Duncan Laurie's studio for Mind Meld III.

Got the grand tour of acoustic instruments, modular synths and circuit bent oddities that were used on the recent Sony Creative Software loop library, The Electronic Music Manuscript.

Brian Kane's Meat Water

2008-04-12T19:10:15Z

Brian Kane's latest brainchild, MeatWater, is gaining some traction. As well as some airtime on the Moffit & Frankie show on Fox radio.

Elvis in Istanbul

2008-04-08T22:49:54Z

Dara Kılıçoğlu and Çağlar Kanzık's piece in the Tershane group show, entitled "ELVIS." The group show consisted of a number of approx 40cm square pressboard boxes that the artists decorated the interior of. Dara and Çağlar's box was mirrored to provide an endlessly reflected view of a security camera with ELVIS emblazoned on the side. The camera was liberated from "watching" an ATM in Ankara a couple of years ago. The camera turned out to be an empty fake. The veneer of safety without any of the substance. The "ELVIS" piece is "...a critisim of Turkey's politics against EU standarts and shifting socio-control process nationwide." Dara's blog post. On Düğümküme here and here in Turkish.

Todd joins duncanlaurie.com

2008-04-07T04:27:36Z

Duncan Laurie, Steve Nalepa and Todd Thille @ Spark Fesitval - Feb 2008.

After over a year and a half working behind the scenes to build up online presence for Duncan Laurie at duncanlaurie.com, I have joined the front of house team as a designer. The first project that I will collaborate on with Duncan is the design of a print edition of his Radionics book.

Project: USB Wiimote Sensor Bar

2008-03-19T21:17:04Z

Finally got around to putting together a USB powered Wiimote Sensor Bar. 4 IR LEDs dissipated 4.8v forward which is close enough to the 5v coming off the USB port. Cut up some old circuit boards as a base for each side and Velcroed them to the lid of my 17" MacBook Pro. Used my old Sony DCR-PC5 to check that the LEDs were indeed firing. Nice remote mouse control for the computer via DarwiinRemote.

Spark Festival - Rock Music Paper

2008-02-28T21:40:28Z

Steve Nalepa flew the redeye out from LA and arrived at the Holiday Inn around 07:00. Let him get an hour of sleep before we headed off to get breakfast at the Hard Times Cafe. Headed over to Ferguson Hall in time to catch the end of Megan England's talk about Second Life. Duncan and I were up next with "Rock Music". Started out with a brief intro and Rock Star. Continued along with the work of T. Townsend Brown with petrovoltaics and touched a bit on Cleve Backster's work with plants before getting into Gordon Salisbury's work at Duncan's studio. The talk was well received and garnered some interesting questions afterwards.

We skipped the afternoon concert to go and check out some of the Minneapolis museum scene. First we found the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting in an industrial park. The building was stuffed with all manner of early telegraphy, wireless, radio and TV electronics. It seemed more geared to school groups, with several "working" radio control booths and large scale demonstration rooms. The main hall full of electronics was breathtaking.

Next up was The Bakken, A Library and Museum of Electricity in Life. There were a handful of exhibits of electricity throughout a beautiful mansion on the shore of Lake Calhoun. The real prize was a visit to the vault to look at the few radionics devices that were in the open and some interesting devices from Dr. Otto H. Schmitt. The librarian, Elizabeth Ihrig, was incredibly kind and showed us around even through we turned up without an appointment.

We came back over to the university to catch Gregory Taylor and Andrew Pask show a sneak preview of Max/MSP 5. Ran into Ali Momeni on the way to Hard Times Cafe and took a detour through the installations. Headed over to The Whole for a super inspirational talk by Richard Devine about his influences and career.

Spark Festival - Found Sound

2008-02-27T04:10:16Z

Up at the crack of dawn to bid Kim and Bryn goodbye and hit the road with Duncan. Made good time over to Bradley International in Hartford Connecticut. Had some fun finding the long-term parking but got right on a shuttle in the lot and were on our way. Good flight out to Chicago, but delayed on the Minneapolis leg. Finally got in and through the airport fun to find that the Holiday Inn Metrodome was best reached by Super Shuttle. Stopped at all the rest of the downtown hotels before making our way over beyond the Metrodome. Checked in to the hotel and freshened up before heading across the river the check out the Whole where Duncan and I would perform the following morning as part of the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts' Concert of Found Sound/Audio Appropriation. The venue looked decent, with video screens flanking the stage.

Were over at the venue by 08:30. Well ahead of our 09:30-10:00 soundcheck. Dave Hill, the manager of the Whole was happy to have us step right up and get plugged in and our levels adjusted. Chatted with Bob Siebert for a while about airport security and him being a terrorist with his circuit bent Casio SK-1 keyboard. Greg Carr was along a short while later with a turntable coffin from the wayback machine. It was sporting 3 tonearms and was piped to a Space Echo tape delay.

A series of CDs followed Greg's awesome opener. Then Duncan and I were up, he made a nice intro and I got busy with Ableton Live. The IBVA software went on the fritz and the performance was less than optimal. But the audience had no idea and Duncan along with the curators were quite pleased.

Zipped out before the last of the CDs played in the Found Sound event to go and take in a talk by James and Todd of Graffiti Research Lab. Friend Ali Momeni had built 3 of the Mobile Broadcast Units. GRL put on a nice presentation about their recent work. Had lunch with the GRL boys, Ali and some of the students.

Gadgets and Kane

2008-02-25T16:36:47Z

Spent the day working on a Max patch to get MIDI data coming out of the Doepfer Pocket Electronics controller attached to Gordon's homebrew Octo input box massaged into something that Ableton Live would like. Input was provided by a magnetometer attached to a Rate of Change Convertor.

Brian Kane drove down from Boston to hang out with Duncan and I for a couple of hours in the late afternoon. Was good to see him in fine spirits after some hassle of getting his installation at Le Cube in Paris working right.

Snow over the Eastern Seaboard

2008-02-24T06:55:26Z

Made a long trek from Istanbul to Jamestown, Rhode Island via Frankfurt, Amsterdam, a bonus stop in Detroit instead of Newark and Hartford, Connecticut. Here to prepare for an audio/visual performance with Duncan Laurie at the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts in Minneapolis.

Fog in Frankfurt delayed my flight almost an hour...eating up the precariously short layover time I had in Amsterdam. Couple that with the plane taxiing in from one of the far runways, seeming to circle the whole airport and my outbound flight leaving from the opposite end of the massive Schipol Airport...and you have me getting to the gate as the walkway was freshly pulled back from the plane. It sat there taunting me for some time as the gate staff arranged an alternate route through Detroit that only added 20 minutes to my flight schedule.

Had 40 minutes of delay coming out of Detroit for de-icing. Got into Hartford at midnight. Duncan had opted out of getting me that night, choosing instead to come and get me in the morning. Found a nearby hotel that wasn't terribly outrageous, $55 for the night. Crashed out and fell almost immediately to sleep. Up in the morning to find it snowing. Duncan was by around 10am. Took the windy back roads across Connecticut and Rhode Island to reach Jamestown. Snowed all the way. Only go stuck behind one plow.

Started into work as soon as we could get up to the studio. Both Duncan and Gordon had had trouble getting up the road recently. Spent the first evening working with the IBVA and a stone bowl and the RockStar. Had a long session with Gordon the following day working on the Doepfer Pocket Control that was the interface to a multi-sensor input device he was building from scratch.

Elements 7 Year Anniversary with Robotkid

2006-01-26T20:57:48Z

Cake for the 7 Year Anniversary party at Elements. Robotkid mixing up some wicked visuals.

Rocked a four hour set of 180+ BPM Drum and Bass with Robotkid at Elements 7 Year Anniversary in Boston at Phoenix Landing. DJs Lenore, Crook and MDOC spun an amazing tag team mix of blistering tracks. Robotkid and I set up three laptops, DVD player and an infrared camera.

dj rndm and sosolimited

2006-01-25T16:57:39Z

In Boston to visit Robotkid. Caught his A/V collaborator dj rndm over at middlesex lounge. He threw down a wicked awesome set of classics for the 80s. An A/V crew called soso limited did an interesting set with some custom software the one of the members had written in C++. The software would take a video feed and manipulate it in 3 space. In the case of a TV feed, the closed captioning could be extracted and used to draw text on the screen. They were using the software with whatever the club had playing on their Satellite Dish (mostly Emeril Live.) This ultimately rendered the show less interesting than it could have been. With some well thought out material, their set could have really shined.

Robotkid (AKA Josh Randall) in his office at Harmonix.

dj rndm and the soso limited software crashing.

Taksim Evening

2005-11-05T23:48:08Z

Up at 10:00. Got a slow start but put the computers to work digitizing and converting. Decided to go and see a movie with Eda. She wanted to see Lars van Trier's Manderlay. Grabbed the first bus to Taksim I found. It took an inland route which was choked with traffic at several points. I arrive 10 minutes late to the upper end of Istiklal. Rushed down to the movie theater and ended up with plenty of time. Eda did not enjoy the film and was very restless. About 45 minutes into it we left. Tried to go and have a bite at Zencefil, but it was closed. Found Pia Café where we had put up some posters for the workshop. They had some veggie items. We both had some pasta. Another patron was showing off things on her computer to her companion, but kept turning the computer up on its side. It looked like they were reading some sort of strange book.

Eda with some new corrective lenses.

Finally decided to head home around 22:30. Dropped Eda near her house in Beşiktaş and continued on my way to Ortaköy. Got some more NTSC to PAL conversions set up and called it a night just before midnight.