Awhile ago, a friend said something on twitter to the effect of:

“I dreamed about making art last night, does that count?”

His question got me thinking: I thought I saw for sale a headset (called “Mindset” from a company called “Neurosky”) that claimed to read your brainwaves (alpha, beta, theta, gamma, etc) and allow you to use them to play video games.

I wonder if I can record my brainwaves to make art while I sleep with that?

A few months later, and after a lot of custom code was written,

I have the first proof of concept done that says yes, I can!

This video clip wasn’t generated while I was asleep – that will be later – but it was generated in part from my brainwaves. My mind influenced 6 sets of x,y,z coordinates, 6 sets of colors, and a few other attributes. The music playing in the background influenced line count, line length, and rotations/speed.

In some very real sense, listening to and watching the visualization as I was making then went on to influence the next few seconds of the recording by the patterns watching it generated in my brain. Remember, this is just a proof of concept/demo, but enjoy. I think it’s cool *make sure you turn your sound on too*:

Brainwave Music Visualization #1 from Jack Whitsitt on Vimeo.

Next up, for the actual “art” instead of just “proof of concept”, I’m working on being able to manipulating paintings, photos, and other images over time with brain waves. This would be the “make are while dreaming” piece.

The other project Im building simultaneously is an add-on to a paintbrush for photoshop or gimp (or some drawing program) that changes the brush properties according to your neural activity…..so if you were, say, drawing with a pen tablet, the actual output would be a cross between what you consciously intended to draw….and the influence of those brain waves.

Catching up on some posts here – it’s been awhile.  First, here are three quick sketches I did a couple of months ago.  I really really really felt the need to draw that night. These drawings feel a lot like some of my older portraits (from years ago).  Whether they are really alike or not,I  dunno. Each was done in less than 5 minutes with almost no light at all (just a monitor). Photos of the sketches were taken with an iphone…intentionally for the non-clear effect. Also, all three are musicians.

This is a photo-drawing combination piece I recently made similar to the ones I was making at Artomatic. Instead of rushing it, however, this one took several days and was my first real attempt at making a “finished” piece using this technique.

The portrait is of Amanda Fucking Palmer (of Dresden Dolls fame) and the photo I used was one I took of her in Los Angeles at a secret show she had for 30-50 twitter followers the day before Coachella this year.  She twitters links to “art of the day”about her or the Dolls every day and I was hoping she’s tweet this one out – which she did! (stoked!).

The photo was projected on paper hanging on the wall. I used a variety of pastels, paints, markers, and some charcoal in the drawing.  I like how her hair glints from the gold metal paint, and I used some white paint to cover up more serious “oopses”.  I’m not entirely happy with it – it feels a bit forced to me – but it’s a good start. I’ll definitely be doing more.

Now, for something altogether different. Everyone knows I have a ton of film strip gear. I’ve been promising myself since October that I’d do something with the gear itself. I finally did so and made a sculpture out of one of the projectors. It is fully functional, just much much more attractive (and cleaner inside). The plan is to make a few of these for shows…and make specific film strips for each projector.

Here is what I started with:

The end result is a “steam punk” looking projector and is my first try at hand painting anything since elementary school…much less attaching parts to things (first, I had an aborted “military camo” version, but it was accidental and sucked!).  Here are some shots:

Hopefully, I’ll add some more, smaller detail work to this but I’m just not sure what to add yet. I’d like to make the next ones a little more elaborate. I’ve ordered some neon/LED lighting…and I’d like to replace the inside projection lamp with something a little newer and a little less 500-watts-y. I’m going to be building a modern “sci-fi” one, a gore-covered “zombie” projector, and possibly also an Amanda Fucking Palmer Punk Rock Cabaret Special to give to Amanda. We’ll see.

In keeping with the zombie theme I keep bumping up against (in fact, as I write this I’m on my way to dragon*con in Atlanta where I will – you guessed it – dress up as a zombie), Paivi and I attended a staged “zombie” raid in DC a few weeks ago – this time as photographers.  There weren’t as many zombies as we had hoped, but the effect couldn’t have been better. The zombies: Scared a woman back into an elevator, scared Starbucks patrons by clawing windows, broke a metro escalator by riding down at the same time, converted innocent bystanders on the metro train to zombies, mixed and mingled with Scientology Protesters in costume, and finally ended up at the MTV Real World DC House where they convinced one of the cast members to put on some makeup and a zombi-fied tshirt.

For the raid, my goal was actually to create an 80’s style fim strip of the raid (to be projected)using a cheap half frame 35mm camera.  I did get some great shots, but I had the camera 90 degrees the wrong way the whole time (horizontally positioning the camera resulted in….vertically framed shots. ugh).

I’ll try and figure out a fix for that later, but for now I wanted to post some of my digital shots from the raid. I think they’d some of the best shits I’ve gotten in awhile. In keeping with the theme, though, I did break one of my rules and really played with the colorization of the shots to make them feel more apocalypse-movie than they did by themselves. Let me know how you like the results?

(Shots at bottom of post)

Last I left this blog, I had plans to head out to Eastern State Penitentiary to do a model shoot with my wife and a group of DC Strobist photogs. We did end up going and the results were fabulous.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with ESP, it:

is considered one of America’s most historic former prisons…Its revolutionary system of incarceration was the first to establish the policy of solitary confinement, emphasizing principles of reform rather than punishment. Notorious criminals such as bank robber Willie Sutton and Al Capone were held inside its unique wagon wheel design. When the building was erected it was the largest and most expensive public structure ever constructed, quickly becoming a model for more than 300 prisons worldwide.

When we went, we were escorted into areas of the peniteniary normally closed to the public. It was dark, dank, and – more than anything else – dusty. There is still moldy, rotted toilet paper in some of the cells left over from when the facility was closed down in 1971.  Walls were collapsing, old equipment rusted through, and you could fell the mold clawing at you.  Usually, this is the kind of thing you only see on movie sets.  I’ve been walking through thousand-year-old temples in Cambodia, but despite how “recent” its history is, all of the human detrius laying around still helped ESP give off much more of a creepy, immediately visceral vibe than the temples.

Regarding the shoot itself, I still felt a little out of place around the Strobist crew because I don’t use off-camera lighting. I still feel like I’d like to concentrate on working the camera until I know it was well as I breathe. Then, I’ll work on using lights to enhance the shots and increase the number of options I have. If I do it before Im totally comfortable with the camera, I think I’ll use the lighting as a crutch and that, psychologically, they’ll limit my creativity.

Working the shots was also interesting. The models themselves wonderful and many of them were willing to sacrifice both comfort and clean clothes to help get the shot. On the other hand, I really don’t feel like – in these group situations – I get to develop the kind of photographer:model relationship that I think would lead to some good shots.  In my installation art, I always need to get a feel for the relationship between the space, the viewer, and myself before I really make good art.  In model photography, I feel like I’d like to work the models into the space and into the kind of shots I want. Instead, we get a few minutes at a time and pass them off to someone else (or there are many people directing at once).

Still, I managed to get some images that I’m very, very happy with. In particular, Lacy (one of the models) put on a nightgown and went stumbling down one of the darker, wetter hallways in the penitentiary looking quite zombie-like.  You can find the whole set below.

Enjoy.

More later, but I just wanted to announce that the current version of the Quartz Composer background I’m using for my Artomatic Installation is available now for free download. It’s for Mac Users only, unfortunately, but thats the nature of Quartz.

I’ll do a more detailed write-up of it after tonight…like instructions, hints at things to try, etc.

In the mean time, for now, download it here:

http://jackwhitsitt.com/Artomatic09-final-whitsitt.zip

Click here to see it (sortof) in the background of my live art demonstration:

http://vimeo.com/5045791

This is obviously a terrible example, so Ill have better video up soon.

You can find out more about the project described in this post by going here:

http://jackwhitsitt.com/installation-and-concept-art/#num1

Repost from artdc.org:

I finished yesterday. For once – despite last minute technicaal glitches – I wasn’t there until the last minute of the last day. Just the last day.

The space is clean, cables hung (although, its still pretty ugly…maybe ill cover it with a box friday at noon), the laptop is DUCT TAPED to the projector for lack of a better solution (it is in the cage bag, so if it comes undone, it wont break), and the projection is mostly in-line with the drawings and frames.

I’m still not sure if it will (and this is important) a) turn on when the show starts or (less important) b) play music. I made a last minute decision to use internet radio instead of mp3’s to avoid broadcast rights issues, but there are some technical hangups with that that I wont get into.

This also means I’m typing this from a $300  tiny Eee PC laptop which will be my only personal home computer until AOM is done.

I do count myself lucky, though. Poor idiolect (rebound design’s bf) lost his HD -the last day of install-. It crashed. He weathered through it gracefully and put an “out of order” sign up. Hopefully the AOM gods will let him come in to fix it off-hours – he did everything right and it’s just pure bad luck that the drive crashed.

It’s been lovely getting to know my fellow AOM-ers (mostly, heh) and I regret being so focused on getting my own shit working that I havent been as chatty or social as Id have liked. Trust me, it’s me not you. I think many people have stepped up this year and I really enjoyed walking around and looking at the art yesterday.

I can’t wait for opening night, meet the artists night, and zombie prom and being more focused on having fun and lss narrow mindedly self-centered about gottagetthisdonegottasgetthisdonegottagetthisdone.

I also adore how my wife’s wall came out. I know Im her husband and all, but Im truly a fan of the pictures  she put up from Vietnam and Cambodia. She is two core walls over from my space, so please check her stuff out.
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Finally, this year I’ve felt like Ive really been able to come into this and use past artomatic and art outlet experience, take a broad vision, execute it, deal with and change my plan as it starts to flesh out into reality, and still come out of it with a piece that im happy with, still has roots in the original vision, and remains a satisfactory  progression of the rest of my art this past year.

I want to make special thanks to: Lexi, Sherill, Sean, Stephanie, Paivi, Barry, Caitlin, Justin, and Tom – all of whom made specific, repeated, concrete contributions to my art, my sanity, and my ability to get it done this year.

(edit: added lexi…she’s been super helpful. i knew i forgot someone important.)

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