/* Tuesday December 25th, 2007 10:11:37 PM

Happy Holidays? I love you? More than ever, I am overwhelmed and confused by the holiday season. First, I am astonished by the gift buying frenzy. Does anyone know an essay or study that can help me understand this phenomena? Second, I am a dissatisfied with the motives for family gathering during the holiday season. Specifically, I am tired of using Christmas as an excuse for gathering with family and friends. Saying "Merry Christmas" has become an empty slogan that my mouth and air produce. It is a scapegoat excuse for sharing experience. ... Now that I think about it, "Merry Christmas" is simply a disguised version of "I love you." Why not just stop protecting ourselves and go all the way and say "I love you." If the I love you seems redundant, then you are already doing things right. Love, Richard

_Richard */

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/* Thursday November 01st, 2007 06:48:44 PM

I finally made my first three-dimensional images. I used an open source software called Art of Illusions, which can be found here. After doing the built in tutorial that walked me through making an hour-glass, I feel comfortable in 3-d software. It's actually easier to use than I thought it was.

Here are some more 3d images:

strip.gif
blah.gif
hourglass3.jpg
hourglass.jpg

_Richard */

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/* Monday October 22nd, 2007 09:50:15 AM

// Author: Richard Caceres
// Reflection: Meeting 1 (Sept 28) Confronting Media with Media
// Keywords: Heartfield, Found Footage, Situationism, Scratch,  Patch, ostranenie

The first lecture began with an introduction by the professor about what he has been and is interested in. According to the department’s website, professor Erkki Huhtamo is a media archeologist . Starting in the 1970’s, his original interest was in film. He watched more than one film a day for several years, but he eventually got bored of movies, and started investigating new other uses of the media. He discovered experimental film, which got him interested in media arts, which led him to become a curator for small and large exhibitions. From what I know so far, his interests also include writing, video games, and teaching.

“What is (are) the Media Arts?” is the question that introduced us to the course material. “Media Arts”, plural, is not a great label, but it is better than “Media Art”, singular. Other commonly used names are “digital art”, “information art”, and “new media”. The word “new” is also not a good descriptive word because it inherently gets outdated. Historians do not like the word new.

There are generally two classifications of media arts: exclusive media arts are art that use media technology as a tool to investigate the media itself – media about media, AND inclusive media arts are art that use media/technology for almost any creative purpose such as, personal, critical, poetic, abstract, formalistic, e.g. Of course, can have elements of each of these categories. In reality, very frew works are explicity focused on the media itself.

There are innovations that cannot be classified as media arts or media design. An example we saw in class is the game “Electroplankton” for the Nintendo DS, which blurs the boundaries of media art and video games.

Media innovation like “Electroplankton” reflect what Raymond Williams , “a Welsh academic, novelist and critic” envisioned for technology. He believed that technologies future is not predetermined, and he believed in the potential of technology.

The next thing discussed in lecture was the idea of televisual communication, which is distant communication through images. Before the television was invented, people dreamed about this possibility. Artists depicted a crystal ball that gave the viewers a view of a distant scene or even a tool to for “video chatting”. Some people believe that television never reached its full potential, because it is strictly a one-way medium. An interesting but somewhat unclear point that was brought up is that television is agricultural in that sense that broadcasting is an agricultural term. The example is to think of throwing seeds, and CULTURE is derived from the word agriCULTURE.

Part of the artistic process is working against these simple forms of communications, which could be described as discommendation. The mismatch or maluse of these organized technological and social systems is an interesting realm for exploration.

This method of making things strange is called ostranenie . This is described to us as art hat creates personal communication systems that often refuse to disclose their “codes” to outsiders posing as hermetic universes or riddles to be (un)solved. An artist notoriously famous for this philosophy is Marcel Duchamp .

The Dadaist cultural movement also shared this sentiment. Works such as Kurt Switters’ ursonate poems, which were composed entirely of rhythmic vocables, attacked the idea of what was rationally thought of to be a poem.

The ending portion of our first lecture was spent viewing media arts from the early 20th century to the 1980’s. These works included Pablo Picasso’s Bottle of Vieux news paper collage from 1913, Yves Klein’s use of the newspaper as an art medium in 1960, and Nam Jun Piek naked cello player Charlotte.

John Heartfield is an artist who used the political photomontage as a media art. He did not want his work to be shown in galleries because he wanted his work to be shown in the mass media – he wanted to talk back to the media. He also would send useless gifts to soldiers on the battlefront such as teabags.

The works of video labeled “Scratch Video” (named after turntable scratching), were shown to us. This technique developed, because video was recently invented, which allowed artists to finally appropriate what was on the television and remix the content. The videos we watched in class were for the most part political. For example, one video made a mockery of the Queen and royal family of England.

_Richard */

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/* Monday September 17th, 2007 07:40:50 PM

Los Angeles, the name of an X album, (see wikipedia), is also the name of the city that I am spending my days and nights in. Specifically, I am in this place called Westwood, which according to my housemate Felix, who I have immediately been making quite a bit of music with, has a demographic of ninety percent students. As for the entire LA, right now, the main feeling I am getting is best represented by this video:

In words, Los Angeles is all about extremes - pushing things to their fullest limit and watching them break. Take for example, the wealth in the Beverly Hills. It seems like people believe that status is represented by their appearence, which is accomplished by struggling to buy clothe, cars, plasitic surgery, etc. These things are obtained by working, which is also believed to represent status. What I see is a struggle to fill gaps in their lives (see the ideas of Morris Berman).

Being exposed to this dilemma is nice because it shows what not to do and the places to not look for meaning. I am reminded of a phrase that I overheard an aquantence say one day at Pizza My Heart in Santa Cruz. Talking with his friend after just grabbing a half eaten slice of pizza out of the garbage, I heard him ask her, "Rich in money, or rich in friends?". ... I would rather be rich in friends.

Back to the idea of extremes however, an interesting way to evaluate choices is to imagine them to their fullest extent. It's like an all or nothing attitude - if something were to be realized to its full potential, is it worth it? or is it just another need to fill some gap in your life. What is the most important thing to invest your energy in to? Do you want to work work work work work work work so you can afford a car that drives you to work and a bed that you rest on in between work, or would you rather work as little as possible and live as much as your life as possible. See the philophosy of Henry David Thereau and John Acquatro.

More extreme. :-)

_Richard */

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/* Thursday September 13th, 2007 01:42:09 AM

Today was my third to last day here at my parents house before I venture off to live in a two bedroom apartment with four strangers in Los Angeles. I had planned to spend this last week in Santa Cruz, but I ended up not going because I kept waking up at about noon everyday and then had to work for several hours and by the end of the day it was too late to leave - the bottom line is I did not make it Santa Cruz one last time before I move to Los Angeles.

Like I mentioned above, I have been waking up at about noon everyday. I have spent my days simply since my friend Ronny has already left for school, and I can never bring myself to hang out with other farther away friends. For the past week all my days have been as follows: Wake up around noon, get on computer and work for several hours, play some piano (mainly the tune Deep Purple and Bach Two Part Inventions numbers one and two), and then eat meals with my parents, and play around with my apple laptop and also my salvaged linux laptop. Today I succeeded in getting a pci wifi card to work on the laptop which has Fedora Core 6. In the process I learned what Linux RPM's are (wikipedia) and how to go about installing these installation packages off the web. In order to make my D-Link G650 card work on the laptop, I had to install a package called MadWifi (http://madwifi.org/). The instructions I used can be found here. My aunts ex-husband found this laptop abandoned somewhere and he brought it home. Broken, it found its way to me. It is an older HP laptop with about Seven-hundred megahertz. The harddrive was busted and there was no power adapter. To fix it I used a hard drive that was in a broken firewire enclosure that I got for free from a garage sale, and for the power adapter, I bought a generic one off ebay for about twenty dollars including shipping. Oh and the wifi adapter I got off craigslist a few years ago for ten dollars for an older laptop that was also given to me.

Anyway, the reason I post all these details is to hopefully get some people excited or inspired about salvaging yesterday's technology. Usually the free stuff such as linux has a steeper learning curve, but it is really satisfying to get something working for free.

Just for the record, there are six computers in my room right now - two green imacs, one purple imac, one hp desktop, one hp (linux) laptop, and my trusty apple laptop.

_Richard */

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/* Thursday July 26th, 2007 04:01:25 PM

I actually filmed this video with my friend Ronny Kerr. We were playing one of our favorite SNES games called "Contra 3 - The Alien Wars". We wanted to film ourselves beating the game in hard mode, but we did really bad once we turned the camera on. Here is the description that we put on youtube:

Ronny is challenged to beat Level 5 in Contra 3 in hard mode without using a continue. Meanwhile, Richard's older brother's drunken friends talk in the background of the video.

_Richard */

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/* Sunday July 22nd, 2007 07:11:01 PM

I try to resist posting every cool video I find on the web, but this one is relevant to my previous posts.

Here's another video of a someone playing Dr. Mario on their circuit bent NES. I like how he still plays even when the machine is glitching out. I also really like the music, because its an awesome original chiptune.

I don't think this is the freshest stuff that's happening these days, but I do think its a good way for our generation to make meaning out of the "goo of childhood"(1).

(1). This is a phrase coined by my friend John Acquatro aka Goodbye the Band, see http://www.goodbyetheband.com/

_Richard */

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/* Sunday July 22nd, 2007 04:01:00 PM

For whomever it may concern, I am transferring from UC Santa Cruz to UCLA for next year. Why? I have concluded that the main reason is curiosity. I already know what is offered at UC Santa Cruz and in the city of Santa Cruz. I am curious what opportunities are waiting for me in LA. My housing situation is still not final, but I seems like I am going to be living off campus in an apartment with another Design | Media Arts student.

_Richard */

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/* Monday June 25th, 2007 04:59:28 PM

Here is a trailer for a documentary about 8-bit art and culture. I have not seen this film, but the trailer is interesting. Their website is, http://www.8bitmovie.com/.

_Richard */

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/* Saturday June 23rd, 2007 02:06:57 PM

I have been discovering 8-bit music and "Chiptunes" (music made for the sounds on specific microchips) on the web. There is a musical style, visual aesthetic, and consistent mentality to the whole thing. Also, artists' interests appear to be generational. What I mean is, it seems like the older you are, the older the systems you use to make music. People are making music with the video game systems they spent their childhood on. Right now the scene is dominated by Commodore 64, NES, and Gameboy music, but I wouldn't be surprised if newer systems are soon used by the younger generations. Here are some links:

• http://www.littlesounddj.com/lsd/ - Turn a GameBoy into a musical instrument (Rom $40 + Blank Cartridge $89 = $130).
• http://www.wayfar.net/index.php - Turn a NES into a midi controllable synth an responsive glitch video machine (Cartridge with midi cable $98).
• http://qotile.net/synth.html - Turn an old Atari 2600 into a synthesizer (Cartridge $25).
• http://music.headlessbarbie.com/ - An album released on a NES cartridge!
• http://www.8bitpeoples.com/ - A hub for some fine and free 8-bit music
• http://www.micromusic.net/ - Another hub for free chiptunes. Notice the aesthetic too.
• http://personal.inet.fi/taide/junttila/desert/engani/linklinklink.htm - A ton of similar links for further research.
• http://www.chiptune.com/ - Finally, this site takes the cake! There is a ton of free music to download, and design of the site is fucking awesome! They say it is "Based on the @Amiga Workbench 1.3" (needs Firefox). This site embodies the connection between the chiptune scence and the demo scene. Maybe I'll do a post on the demo scene later.

I'll post more links as I find them. Talk to you soon.

_Richard */

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