Sorry for the lack of posts this week (thanks Jakub for holding it down), I got back from Florida on monday and have been playing catch-up ever since. I flew Tampa -> Atlanta -> SFO so it was a rather grueling trip as I basically got there, played the show, then turned around and flew home. Thanks to everyone who came out to the show; it was great meeting you all and talking. I also want to apologize for the technical issues. I’m not quite sure what the cause was, but the power on stage was intermittently going out and dropping the sound system, luckily it only went out once during my particular set.

The visual highlight of the trip (aside from the sunset the night of the show which I didn’t have my camera around the catch) was the typography in the Tampa Airport. All of the signage was set in my personal favorite: Trade Gothic LT Std Bold Extended (and look at that logo!). Unfortunately, I dropped my D80 before the trip somewhat crippling it so I wasn’t able to get very good shots. I took a ton and most came out blurry or underexposed. Thankfully, Nikon has a great repair program (which I’ve used many times in the past) which is relatively cheap and quick. So I’ll just have to find a week or so when I can do without my camera and send it in. Or just upgrade…. But given that I just made another major upgrade (more on that tomorrow), I think I need to hold off a while longer on getting a new DLSR.

On a side note: A design student at the show gave me his card (the one with bears on it). I said I’d check the site but when I got home I couldn’t find the card anywhere. If you gave that to me, please drop me the link so I can check it.

Flying out to Seattle today for tomorrow night’s show. The show has sold out so I’ll see you all out there, and if you didn’t make it in this time I’ll be back up soon enough I’m sure. The doors open at 8pm and I’ve been informed I’ll be on around 11:15pm. I’ve worked out some new visuals and added some new effects and tweaks for this set so it should be fun trying it all out for the first time. I’ll also be playing a new unreleased song along with some of the old favorites.

I’ve got my D80 with me so hopefully I’ll get some good shots of the city while I’m up there. And for those of you who have been asking about video from the live sets: We taped the Toronto show at the Drake, it’s still in production but should be up in some form soon so stay tuned. See you tomorrow…

Seatac image (above) via Ramparts54

I’m probably posting this against better judgement, but here’s the raw footage from the FITC "Conversations" segment Si Scott and myself did in Toronto this year. I was under the impression this would be edited, but it just plays straight through, sort of funny. There are a lot of other conversations in the series, they can be found here. Some of them get pretty interesting, everything from pron to drugs…

Our conversation clocks in at 51:55 and sort of rambles all over the place, but Si Scott is an incredible artist so it’s interesting to hear his take on things. You can find Si’s portfolio here.

Took these shots of some amazing tiled designs in the Baixa area of Lisbon yesterday.

The festival has kept me pretty busy since we arrived so I haven’t had much time to walk around and get some pics. The first day / night I was able to get a few though, they are all from the Campo Pequeno area. We’ll have a couple extra days after OFFF is over to really explore, planning to get some bikes and ride all over this place. Really excited for that, from what I’ve seen there is a lot of visual stimuli out there just waiting to be shot. Still sort of limping along here with my Nikon D80. I’ve found ways around most of my big gripes with it but being at the OFFF I’ve seen a lot of people toting around their 5D’s and D400’s, been getting jealous.

I’m not sure "liveblogging" is even a word but I’m posting this from the booth at OFFF Lisbon so I suppose it’s fitting (the WiFi actually works this year!). All the above images are from today’s festivities, it’s about 3pm right now so we’ve a bit to go still. The beer is flowing and the sun is shining so come out; even if you don’t have a ticket you can hang out in the main area where there’s lots of people, food, and drink. So far Lisbon has been great, judging by the things I saw out the window on the cab ride from the hotel to the event I have a lot of walking around to do once I have a spare minute.

We just got into Lisbon, already amazed. We had the good fortune of sharing a bus with the KDU on the way to the hotel, good people. I’m traveling with my youngest brother this time around, that’s him up there in the pics. This place definitely looks like a great town for photography so I’ll be doing my best to bring home some good shots. We’re here for the OFFF which starts tomorrow, we’ll be at the ISO50 booth all day so stop by and say hello if you’re in the area.

Headed out for Lisbon tomorrow morning for the OFFF. I’ll be bringing my camera and hopefully getting some good shots. I’ve never been to Portugal, just heard a lot of good things. If it’s anywhere near as great as Barcelona I’ll be happy. 

There will be an ISO50 booth at the OFFF Festival complete with shirts, prints, CDs, etc. Stop by and say hello if you’re in the area, the Mercadillo is free admission. See you out there!

Photos via rabataller, Matilde B. & rabataller respectively.

Leaving early a.m. this morning so spent the night getting prepped and packed for Toronto. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ll be speaking at FITC and playing a couple live shows. For the live stuff I’ll be doing an all new visuals set using a new piece of software I’ve completely fallen in love with. It’s the most enjoyable app I’ve come across, maybe ever. It’s a modular video app called VDMX and it blows the doors off anything I’ve ever used for the purposes of live video. You can essentially design the way it works to your liking, you design the interface and the functionality. There’s a bit of a learning curve but once you get over that you start to realize how powerful it can be. At $300 it’s not super cheap, but considering the feature set and functionality it’s well worth it. It can do quartz composer effects and blending modes all in real-time. 

I am using a Novation Remote SL and footpedals to control most of the parameters of the video portion, and a the same Novation with split parameters to control another laptop running Ableton Live. I’m also routing a set of audio outputs from Live to VDMX which then analyzes the incoming sound and modulates various parameters based on the amplitude of selected frequency ranges. Somehow VDMX is able to do this all in real time, I’m still not quite sure how.

There’s a show Saturday and Sunday night, I’m hoping to video tape the show on Sunday night at the Drake but it remains to be seen if we can track down someone to tape it on short notice. If you or anyone you know has proper video equipment and some skills to go along with it, let me know.

Joaquim has made a short documentary detailing his trip to Stockholm for the ISO50 Workshop there this past January. Above are parts 1 & 2. Part 2 has some brief footage of the workshop itself. Thanks Joaquim!