First, I finished the python code I was working on that will allow two -color- images to be merged into one color mosaic. The color transformations it has to make to fit in the smaller picture to the larger one seem to result in some pretty wild effects – I’m digging it. I’ll clean up the code and post it here tomorrow.

As far as social stuff goes: Angela Kleis’s blogger night at Artomatic was pretty cool. I don’t want to post a lot of thoughts on that yet (I will tomorrow), but it did reinforce the fact that a lot of event management will have to be done at the June 6th ArtDC Artist’s tour dinner. Unfortunately, people have short attention spans and the time each artist speaks will have to be managed and expectations set ahead of time. 5 minutes seems to be about the “max”. We’ll have to bring a timer or something. It’s going to be a -really- interesting night, though, and a lot of fun.

More info on the upcoming dinner can be found in this thread:

http://artdc.org/forum/index.php?topic=8997.0

Pictures of Blogger’s Night can be found here in a set:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sintixerr/sets/72157605133432629/

Finally, Erin Antognoli took a couple of great shots of my space while I talked about it to what was left of the crowd:

So this is cool. A couple of days, HeatherMG (who, among other things, chooses Photo of the Day for the DCist blog from the DCist flickr pool), contacted Angela to ask if I minded if my pic of Artomatic was used in their (DCist) post about Artomatic. I’m not sure why Heather didn’t message me directly (probably because she had Ang on gchat), but Anglea agreed on my behalf. Cool.

I wish, now, that my flickr name (sintixerr) was actually my real name, because the pic is attributed to “sintixerr”. It’s also a little too bad that the post doesn’t identify the installation as mine directly, but I’ll deal. Cool to have it on there at all

Artomatic Install: My Space DONE!!

Originally uploaded by sintixerr

Ok. So the space is done (minus a guestbook which Ill try and bring in before the Cure show Friday at the Patriot Center).

It’s a little more cleaned up than the last picture, better lighting, straightened drapery, a table, etc.

I ultimately ran out of time to do all the extra stuff I wanted to do. Ill most likely look back on that as a good thing.

It’s still fun to see people realize for the first time why the picture is so pixelated!! Dawning realization…a smile…then “oh wow!”…tough to get tired of that!

The position is really unfortunate the way it faces away from the foot traffic, but Im lucky to have a space at all and even luckier to be across from Angela and Paivi.

I also like the way my space looks next to my neighbor’s.

Here’s a shot of Erin (right) getting holga shots of Paivi (left), Angela (middle), and their spaces:

(As a side note, Paivi has two pictures of me up….that makes 4 portraits of me total up at Artomatic this year. Wtf? Im -not- photogenic)

Artomatic Space – Almost Done

Originally uploaded by sintixerr

Ok I so I got in to Artomatic tonight finally – despite feeling really physically bad all day long and managed to get the bulk of the installation work done.

This picture is the result and should help make the previous comments and pictures make a little more sense.

My big concerns tonight were lighting and hanging. I had no idea how I was going to fit those pieces together evenly AND close together. The normal wire method of hanging simply wasn’t going to work. Instead, I opted for screws with big, flat heads and hung the frames from them directly. I only used one screw per framed section so that I could pivot them to fit any variance in the positions of the adjoining sections. They’re not perfectly even by any means, but close enough for government as they say. I dont think it detracts from the effect.

They are, however, not as stable as I’d like so Im going to work on securing them better somehow. That and clean them – we have 3 cats in a 600 sq foot studio apartment. It shows

Unfortunately, the lighting is going to be a bigger problem. I want to (and still will) light up the area with red lighting, but the lights I have there (1 100 watt and 2 50′s) is simply not strong enough to overcome the ambient light from the window. Because so much of the piece is dark – and because Ritz’s shiotty matte printing forced me to use lustre – up until about 8pm it’s really hard to make out what the large image actually IS due to all the reflections caused by the window light. Im hoping that If I bring in a couple of stronger lights, the edge of the problem will be blunted a bit.

I had also considered using blue and yellow lighting to create a subtle mix of color on the black and white pieces, but Erin (Halo) rightly thought that the interplay would be lost in all but the darkest surrounding conditions. So, Im sticking with red.

There’s also a question of the other mixed media elements I was planning, but if the image remains unclear in the daylight, there’s not much sense in covering it up further, so we’ll see.

I was also really please to run into a number of artdc’rs at the end of the night who stopped by my space! It was good to see Halo, even in her sleep deprived state. These last few days make a lot of people loopy. I thought she held up her end of the convo remarkably well and appreciated her input!

We talked about organizing an artDC dinner after opening weekend, but it seems Barry and Jesse have beaten us to the punch.

Tom Cardarella made an appearance down on 8 as well and we had a great talk about his work, mine, AOM, etc. I really like what he’s doing with his space and that kind of piece resonates with me as an artist.

Lastly, Cynthia & Paul of Britishink did come down as well. Being a bit slow and distracted, I was honest to god surprised to see that Paul didn’t actually have a tophat and was not sepia-colored. Again, I’d walked by him more than a couple of times thinking there was something super familiar about him. It was cool to finally meet both of them. I’m such a big fan of their space that I don’t even know what to say about it. Like everyone else, Im thinking about getting ink…but probably won’t. I wouldn’t dream of getting something done that I didnt draw myself…and I havent sat down yet and created the kind of inspired drawing I’d want for myself. My wife has 3, but personally Im not getting Sisters of Mercy or Cure tats and I’m not a scorpio.

It was a good evening and there was definitely a lot more hustle and bustle going on than the previous evenings and Im really looking forward to seeing everyone’s lights on and the floors packed.

Erf. I just got done saying I wasn’t going to do one of these (Artomatic Experience Posts), but I just saw the base image assembled as a whole for the first time and was excited enough that I wanted to post pics of the image at least. Just getting that out of the way first – this is a blatant excuse to post pics..(yet somehow this is long-winded…I have nights like this).

Artomatic Piece

Originally uploaded by sintixerr

So -

As mentioned earlier, when I first really started thinking about AOM this year, I thought I was going to be in Arkansas for the majority of the show and wanted to put together something “simple” (yeah, right, me? simple?). I was so strapped for time, in fact, that Angela and Paivi had to grab me some space for the second year in a row while I was out of town. ( My space is on the 8th floor at SE D6 btw.)

Ok. Great. Have space. Project? Art? No so much.  Ultimately I decided to do a huge (6′x6′) self portrait installation (covered in earlier blog posts – http://sintixerr.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/python-photography-digital-art-artomatic/ )

So, uhm, how do you print a photo that’s 6′x6′??? I ended up deciding to print the picture in 9 sections, 24″x24″ each. I originally wanted to do an 8′x8′ image, but at 24×24″ sections I could go one price category lower at Chrome than 32″x32″. Still, lots of cash. Hrm. Where else will print this? For a much more reasonable sum?

It turns out that -Ritz Camera- of all places will print really large images for less than half the price of Chrome. Supposedly archival. I test printed one 24×24″ section and it came out perfect. Sweet. I had a printing solution.

For framing I went with Angela’s suggestion of American Framing and picked the smallest frame borders I could – with no matting. The ultimate effect would hopefully look like the face was peering in through…something (window-esque?). That was an easy process and everything showed up toot-sweet.

I went with overnightprints.com for the business cards. They did a good job but, in hindsight, I didnt. I think my cards are a little bit juvenile and cheesy, but, we all make mistakes sometimes I mean, who puts “Artist” on their cards? I guess I do. Meh.

While I was still playing with my final image, I met Angela and Paivi at our spaces last Sunday to help them paint, do lights, and take a look at my space.

I got there first and spent an hour or so mocking up what I wanted things to look like with rope and gorilla tape (it made sense then). The final result was looking pretty good and I was feeling very satisfied. Until Ang and Paivi showed up.

“Thats not your space, Jack”

“Whu?”

“Thats. Not. Your. Space. Its the one next to it.”

–Insert vulgar words here–

Luckily I hadn’t done anything permanent and I sheepishly took down all my stuff. At any rate, I knew what it was going to look like and everything was good.

Angela and Paivi that day managed to paint their space, buy lights, put up lights. I managed to…put down duct tape and put up one wall of the shadowbox (seen in pics later). Really, I hate this part. Im slow as HELL at painting walls and usually a mess. People always regret asking me to help them paint their house/interior. I suck at it.

I came in the next Thursday after work by myself to try my luck alone and got a lot further. I managed to put up the second shadowbox wall, put down a layer of paint, and not end up with blood or paint all over my clothes. It was a good day in that regard. Still, I had forgotten paint rollers and had to use a brush. Those partitions, even with primer, suck. up. the paint. I was despairing a little bit about how things were looking, but put that aside knowing how much was left to do.

So far, I’d run into a couple of people here and there that I knew, but the AOM space is -so- large this year that unless youre actively wandering around looking for people or just outright lucky, it’s entirely possible to work with a dozen people you know there at the same time and miss them completely. (Except for Melissa, whom I run into every single time Im in the elevator.)

This past Saturday night I had my first volunteer shift with Angela and Paivi, so I came in ahead of time to get some work done. I met my “partition-mate”, who’s name I can’t recall at the moment, but who’s work I had been familiar with and am really psyched to be next to. If I had space in my apartment, Id buy some of it honestly. More painting ensued and things were good.

Queue the volunteer shift.

I have a gripe here. We were given a 3 minute introduction to our responsibilities by the GM on duty. The instructions did not mention two big things that we were asked about -all- night:

1. Lights. Anything about them. Where to get them? What to do if any were broken? Etc. I know this was a GM responsibility, but by Saturday you’d have figured that there were enough questions being asked that the volunteers should be given some sort of heads-up.

2. Brightest Young Things:

Anyone who was at AOM that night figured out very quickly that there was some shindig on the first floor. The only instructions of info we were given by anyone about the first floor party was “oh yeah, tell people bathrooms are on the 10th and 12th floors if they start bitching about the first floor bathrooms”.

What about the first floor bathrooms? Huh? And who’s making all that racket next door? Apparently Philipa Hughs’ Pinkline and Artomatic collaborated to help throw a relaunch party for a website called BrightestYoungThings.com ( http://www.brightestyoungthings.com/events/byt-relaunch-party-1200-1st-street-ne/ )

So, in addition to AOM people, there were tons of the trendiest, coolest, hippest, artsiest, brightest young things wandering in and out of the front door. Nothing against them (and it was cool something else was going on there), but it was really a pain in the ass to do “lobby” duty while there were bands playing, a plastic fence between us and them, etc.

I was asked to “keep people from there going up to AOM”…but really…how was anyone supposed to tell the difference? There were also a lot of people bringing in artist materials through the lobby that I didnt catch because I couldn’t always pick them out from the crowd milling about in the lobby.

This all would’ve been cool if we had been given heads-up….but we weren’t. We were left to piece it together ourselves…

I also wish I’d NOT worn the -skankiest- shirt I own to paint in. Felt like I was bringin the place down just sitting next to the party Wink

The monotony was broken up a bit by a trip to Sketchies (aka Wendy’s) to bring us back some much-needed diet cokes (Angela and Paivi were covering Loading Dock duty that night) and also by Jim, who gestured for another volunteer and myself (I think he meant me too) to come out front where he proudly showed us the new lighting for the Artomatic signage in the windows. The “ART” in “ARTOMATIC” was glowing red! Cool!

By the end of the shift, we were all -done-. Id gone running that morning for the first time since the Cherry Blossom 10 miler and between that, working on the space, and the volunteer shift, I was no longer human. Paivi wanted to take some pics of the graffiti kids up on our floor (Cool doing their thing (didnt work out), but we did run into Halo and Arty4ever putting down some finishing touches on Michael’s space (which looks great!).

I also met a couple of cool volunteers, but unfortunately was too brain-fried to ask for the business card of one of them and now forget her name. Ill need to check the volunteer list later if I can…

That brings me to today. Lights are up, painting is finished, etc. I just need to get some fabric to frame the shadowbox, hang the piece, and add some other artistic touches to the installation (and it will be an installation) that I dont want to describe here. I managed to frame all 9 sections (woohoo – Im really slow at that, so Im proud of myself here) today as well!

Ok, whew. Finally, this behemoth of a post is at it’s end.

(As a side note, the lighting in the first pic is provided by a couple of White Lighting 10,000 strobe, which we’ve now started using as generic apartment lamps lately. Heh.)

Ouch. I must’ve been pretty tired when I wrote that last post! Oh well – it’s still accurate.

Moving on…

I posted 3 self-portrait concepts to ArtDC.org the other day (you might have seen them on my flickr stream). None of them are particularly traditional and all of them relate to my exploration of the concepts of self and location.

To quote (slightly edited):

I’ve been toying with the idea of Self Portraits for a few months now in my head…especially the different perspectives people have on you…you on yourself. I’ve also been interested in how being online affects perception of people and who they are. In the past, for example, I’ve had to put my IRC nickname on my real life mailbox because no one who thought they knew me ever really knew my real name. Also, I’ve faced live life and death situations (heh, no contradiction intended) with people who only ever saw me as text on a screen. It kind of makes you wonder about what it means to be who and where you are when you can have a tangible impact on people’s lives and their whole visual perspective of you consists of moving text.

In that light, I’m very interested in what constitutes a self-portrait when so many people relevant to your life might never see your real face…when so many people have so many distinct versions of themselves they present to the outside world.
Here are three thoughts-sketched-on-screen (ie, unfinished and maybe never will be) of what my self-portrait would be depending on who you and when asked

• In this case, the first is what old industry friends 3 years ago would see and is a direct reflection of who I was then.
• The second is what my wife sees during a game of virtual tennis – my Nintendo Mii – and it has evolved for weeks now
• And the third is who I am from a Second Life perspective and has taken half a year to evolve

The idea is to have a lot of these perspectives assembled together at once.

Where have I been?!!? Such old news here on this site! Well, I’ve been getting ready for Artomatic – the semi-somewhat-annual DC universalist, almost immersive art festival. Artomatic opens April 13 and runs through May 20 at 2121 Crystal Drive in Arlington, VA just off of the Crystal City Metro Redline stop. The event is taking over two floors of an office building undergoing rennovations and will feature over 400 artists.

 What’s my involvement?

I have a space on the 6th floor, Section A, Room 44 (Room 6a44). I will be featuring three different groups of art on my wall: Individual framed traditional work (my portraits), a collection of photo prints of every drawing Ive done in the past 15 years arranged in chronological order (like a visual diary or self portrait!), and I will also have a section of digital photo frames, prints, and a canvas print of my data visualization and Second Life work.

HOWEVER! The coolest thing is that I will also, through Dorkbot DC’s courtesy, be projecting my Second Life 3D world SintixErr Gallery for DC Artists into the digital arts room! Not only that, but since they have WiFI, I’ve been working with Claudia Vess (in charge of the digital room) to broadcast various live (music, poetry reading, etc.) events into the Second Life gallery as an extension of Artomatic into the virtual world! That’s pretty cool

This is all very last minute. After having heard of Artomatic in the background for ages (I wasn’t around for the last one), it really didn’t make my radar for a long time. Everyone else, though, was really excited and the enthusiasm spread eventually! I ultimately registered and got a space, thanks to Angela Kleis who volunteered to grab me an area on my assigned day while I was out of town seeing the Cure. (Yes, Paivi and I went to see them play – I was the first one past the gate at Ultra and was front and center the whole time – saw Porl play for the first time! – at the Ultra dance music festival in Miami..I might write a post about that later). 

So far, Ive been at the building every night this week, and a few last week, volunteering or setting up my space. It’s a deep red with off-white molding (you know, opulant victorian). It’s a very powerful color and is the only one that’s NOT in any of my framed work. Im in the process of framing the wall itself with black curtains, covering the ugly blue carpet with gold material, getting pillows, etc, etc, etc. It should be gorgeous – or at least tacky (Im often a bit over the top). My only gripe is that Ive absolutely destroyed my last good pair of pants (long story) – Im a really messy painter.

All of the set-up, though, has also given me the opportunity to spend some time with and get to know better a number of people I like and don’t normally get to see often (or just met) – Angela, Mr ArtDC himself (Jesse), Sean, Michael, Rebecca (although she still hasnt met me for coffee yet, pshaw!). 

 Angela also interviewed me a few weeks back about my Second Life work and you can find the link HERE.

During all this, we’ve also introduced two new artists to the SintixErr Gallery in Second Life and worked out the arrangement with Small World galleries (affiliated with a real life NYC gallery). I sent over the works of a number of the artists at the SintixErr and the Small World people are doing an outstanding job with them – 5 of the artists I sent over have sold work there  – and they’re not even open yet! Amazing, Im thrilled!

 Luckily for me, Artomatic had provided a good break from Second Life, but Ill be back in-world extensively later this week prepping the area for the next month’s artomatic stuff!

In the next several months, it looks like we (speaking with an artoutlet.org hat on) are going to be having at least two more shows that we’ll be looking for artists to participate in. One will be a self-portrait focused event and the other will revolve around more “active” art: anything that moves, shines, has electrons flowing through it, involves live performance, thinks, connects to the internet, or is in any way interactive.

The self-portrait show I expect to be juried and I’m not sure about the other event – details are at their early stages. I do believe, though, that we’re going to have a different taste and style from other shows. So, if you’re in the area of greater Washington, DC (or want to show your artistry here) and happen across this post, feel free to contact me  or info@artoutlet.org (until the artoutlet page has something official up) – even if you haven’t considered showing before. I’m very much interested in finding interesting, moving, fascinating art – regardless of what the art world in general is doing or has done. If it works, it works.

(Bear in mind this is still tenative and I’ll put out a more formal call here when things are firmed up – but I’d still like to hear from you in the mean time. These are community events, first and foremost, so your questions and comments are absolutely considered and welcomed.)