Post secret, for secrets

i found this site (post secret) really interesting. This is a amazing community tool. Instead of people having to give up their secrets privately they are encouraged to share said secrets with a huge volume of people in a completely anonymous way... how satisfying. i Went through a fair few of these, and was kind of amazed at the variety of secrets told. There were secrets on adultery, lies, sadness and truth among others. I found the simplest secrets fascinating. I can relate sometimes to things like this.



However, another part of me looked at this site and thought about the weakness in people this site encourages. People have an avenue to escape the reality of their problems and secrets... still that point of view is pretty heartless. Everyone has secrets and what better way to share them than splash them all over the web.

regards

A certain realisation

well its only just now as i sit down, with pretty much fuck all to do - 'surfing' the net instead of working, that i actually see how a blog/media collection can be adventagious to me.

I sort of took in the lecture about the yahoo pipes, it seemed like a cool enough idea, but, i didnt truely appreciate it until about three minutes ago when i started having trouble, a. remembering all the cool sites i had been to and b. figuring a way that i would keep track of all of them. yes yes i know, had i payed more attention to the lectures i wouldnt have had this issue. but im glad i did, it really openned me up the idea of being a dedicated blogger/yahoo pipes, not just for the class but for my own entertainment in moments of pure boredom at work.


Also i have had a brain wave. now that i have access to the internet at work i am going to start reconfiguring my blog here. yay! getting paid to maintain my blog.
hope all are having as top hols
regards

OFFF, wow sick

This is seriously cool, i have had a look at the stuff around the next relating to this OFFF conference and i looks amazing. They have speeches and presentations from some of the world's leading figures and motion graphics. If you have a chance go to http://blog.offf.ws/ and check out some of their stuff 

OFFF 2009 Main Titles from Prologue! from OFFF on Vimeo.

Ze Rational Project A

The idea was to design an exhibition on the "Minimal", minimal techno music genre. I wanted to create somewhat of a basic reference page for people who had little to no idea of what minimal music was under the disguise of an exhibition, thus using the exhibition to build on their knowledge of the genre and music in general.

I tried to keep the exhibition as simple as possible, attempting to maintain the minimalist feel of the genre. The idea was to keep vast open spaces and a sparse look.
I chose to use a blog format for my exhibition, due to simplicity and functionality.
The initial layout of the blog pages did not suit what I was looking for so i made it a point to strip the blog's html down to its core elements, again to maintain the general aesthetic of the movement. In order to get the simple text, nav bar layout there was a fair bit of chopping and changing involved, however, i think the end product shows how much i have learnt about blogs in general and the concept of html manipulation.
I tried to maintain a very block revolved design, with minimal flair. At one point i showed the exhibition to a friend who asked why i had kept the default heading style and simplicity in colour as opposed to doing something like my main blog heading. Personally, think the default heading style really suits the idea of the minimal genre and the basis of a tradtional exhibition aesthetic. the back contrasts well with the white, again achieving my design solution.


I had an in-depth look at variety of ways in which i could format my music into an exhibit able medium. There are a whole lot of licensing issues with the distribution and bootlegging of music in an online forum, this made the process a little more difficult than i had originally counted on.

I found two great ways in which i could easily access and display my exhibition pieces without infringing on licensing regulations.

The first was reverbnation, an excellent platform for organisation and display of music. Reverbnation offers an online player that creates a visual playlist for the user in a format where they can see what music is in the playlist in what order. This was an excellent option however; there were two main problems with reverbnation. For my exhibition i was looking for of a shuffled playlist where the music sorted itself out for the user as the target audience would have no idea what to look for in an ordered playlist.
And reverbnation is designed more for users to upload their own music not that of other artists, what i wanted would have been in breach of their licensing.

The other option and the one that I choose to use was last.fm. Not only can you create your own playlist from music of other artists in a legitimate way, but you can also generate a widget from that music library and direct it through to your blog.

There were issues with the size of the collections. Last.fm does not create a playlist without considerable content in the user’s library. This did work in favour though as it pushed me to add more than i had originally decided, which increased the depth of my exhibition piece.


I had a detailed look at the licensing arrangement for Last.fm had a detailed read of their main user guidelines and widget usage rules.
The regulations are very basic: ‘(a) must not frame, surround, obfuscate or create a browser or border environment around any of the Content of the Website; (b) may link to, but not replicate, the Content; (c) must not imply that Last.fm or the Website or any artist or performer are endorsing or sponsoring it or its products’. The ideas of the widgets are to ‘enable our users to share Last.fm with their friends. It is not provided for commercial use, distribution or exploitation’. On this basis last.fm provided a very simple option for sharing of music through the exhibition.

The pictures used were also used in accordance with licensing through creative commons. All the photos had full usage, and only needed to be attributed to the photographers. refer to references page for more details.


From research point of view i have trawled through the internet in search of information, i have looked a huge number of sites relating to the music genre. To this point i have not really found anything, that directly replicates my exhibition.
There are individual resources for and playlists on the music genre. However nothing really stand alone as a collaboration. There is wikipedia that has a huge level of text based information on minimal but no media. Then you have platforms such as reverbnation that have all the media but no information.
Of course there is last.fm’s minimal resource, however, again it is not really a standalone independent page that covers the same information that i do, in as simple a format that caters for the users i do.
In fact i got an email from this music company/music channel(?) http://www.mangarepublic.com/ based out of Hong Kong, wanting to know if i could develop a few more online reference exhibitions for their new website using their playlist streaming.... enough said? ha ha.

All the images used in this project are licensed appropriately and attributed accordingly.

My Exhibition can be reached at minimalexhibition.blogspot.com

Regards

blah blah blah... oh skating, videos, style and music? tell me more!

The idea of mixed media is really attractive, as we are being confronted with more and more collaborative work from renowned designers, photographers, musicians, filmmakers and other industry specialists, there is an increasing body of work looking at new ways to present certain types of information in more creative and exciting ways. 

There is no doubt that skateboarding has long used music in a similar way to MTV video clips, using music to cue certain actions and vice versa, however, now film makers are pushing the boundaries in order to back up the musical element with equally exciting movement.

 

I was watching fox the other day and i would hazard a guess to say that it was 'fuel tv' that supplied me with the info, but anyway, skate company teams across the US have begun to do some pretty sick stuff with film and dare i say it, interior design concepts.... Im not sure who is running the idea, however, said skate teams are competing for heaps and heaps of money and are now pushing the boundaries of new techniques of filming and are coming up with some unbelievable results. I cant find particular the stuff on the net, for whatever reason, however the main idea is that a skate team sets up their own formation in a warehouse, uses their own film crew (or hired professions) and try to create something that hasn't been done before (i will update if i find anything). 

I did find something similar though, on topic. This is a film festival revolving around skateboarding, some pretty rad stuff....

Little Balloon from The Skateboard Film Festival on Vimeo.

I did also find this really cool clip by a skating company, that is the promo for their new video... it is amazing, hope you enjoy.

Lakai, fully Flared /w m83

im really looking forward to stepping out in this industry at a time when boundaries are being pushing, nobody know what will be next.

regards