a few weeks ago i was approached by a book publisher in the u.k. about including some of my letraset animals in a book that they were putting together called “Alphabets: A Miscellany of Letters”. the book will feature works from many artists and sources including charley harper, peter blake and dr. seuss.

there will be different sections called things like “F is for Found”…, “I is for Illuminated”…, “P is for Physical” and mine will be featured in the section titled “B is for Bestiary”.

i re-worked a few of the animals with colored backgrounds.  i think that they work well like that… it seems to make the animals stan out a little more.  someday i hope to silkscreen some posters of them in a similar style.

i can’t wait to see the finished book.  i’ll let you know when they become available.

i finished soldering my bliptronic based monome clone on friday night. it was incredibly simple compared to my original monome 40h kit.  the hardest part of the 40h was all the tiny diodes that went between all 64 leds.  (so tiny that you have to use tweezers to place them) with the blipnome there is no need for any of that madness because you reuse the button board from the bliptronic.

i think that for me, the blipnome will be a great monome stand-in for just throwing in your bag on the go. the blipnome is really fun but is still no match for a genuine monome.  it is pretty much capable of all of the same functions but at the end of the day, a hand built, locally sourced piece of amazing minimalist design and craftsmanship it is not.

the other night i made this cassette tape loop.  i had made several of david chandler’s cassette loops in the past but i had really been wanting something longer.  after much trial and error i came up with this design in an attempt to use as much of the space inside the cassette that i comfortably could.  it took a while to get the tape tension just right but i think i have it pretty nailed down now.  in my 4-track tape deck (which at its slowest speed still plays back at a higher speed than standard tape players) i am able to get 8.5 seconds out of this loop.  with a foot pedal operating the punch-in/punch-out function of the 4-track i am able to turn it into a pretty nice lo-fi looper.

i will post sound samples soon.

here is a felt laptop cover that i made for matt tonight.  it is a long overdue birthday gift that jenny commissioned me to make for him.  i feel bad that it took me almost three weeks to get around to sewing.  it is a new design based off of my monome/camera covers.  i think it turned out pretty well. i hope he likes it.

today a great website called apartment therapy did a little write up on dust breeding as a source of inspiration to help kick off their february diy theme. it was very nice of them to choose to write about my project.  even gemma got a little mention.

here is a rewrite of an AU plugin that i made a few years back.  it is called buffer reverser and it pretty much just does what the name implies. it takes incoming audio and records it into a pair buffers. once one is full it plays what it recorded backwards while the next buffer begins recording in order to keep the cycle going.   there is a crossfader so that you can mix between the original and the reversed signal and a drop down menu so that you can choose between full speed and half time playback.

in order to use buffer reverser you’ll need to download + install sonicbirth (it is free but mac only, sorry windows people) and then drop the buffer reverser into the folder where you normally keep your audio units.

special thanks to brian for sending me a copy of the original one that i built years ago so that i could be reminded of how the guts worked the first time.

hope some of you find it useful.

buffer reverser AU (.zip)

sonic birth download site

(updated: i added a volume slider for the reversed signal and fixed a few things with waveform display)

here is another raccoon related creation.  nicole and i decided to try our hands at making some felted animals tonight.  it involves wadding up bits of wool and stabbing it repeatedly with a series of needles to get the fibers to interlock. it isn’t too difficult but unfortunately in also involved stabbing our finger tips repeatedly with a series of needles.

she got a great start on a really cute elephant and i made this tiny little guy.

it was a lot of fun + i look forward to making more little friends for this one.

it was gray and raining sideways all afternoon today.

there was one thing made today not so gray… this morning we saw one of our favorite NICU nurses.  he was by far gemma’s favorite and we could swear that she remembered him.  it made us so happy to see the two of them together again. so much has changed since they first were introduced, it is kind of unbelievable.

the three of us are looking forward to the next time we can meet up.

it was cold + windy, windy, windy today in portland.   there was also a blackout in parts of town due to a fire at a substation near the photography studio. so after waiting around a while we all went home to wait for news of the electricity restoration.

here is some wind inspired music along with one of the harp recordings from yesterday… it seemed appropriate.

the drawing above is my attempt at plotting out a system for my upcoming show.  it is still a work in progress but i am pretty sure that it what i’ll be using.  there might be a mixer in there somewhere but that’s about it.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/when-the-wind-blows).mp3

(listen/download)

here is a poster design for the upcoming installment of aleatoric. i was very excited to receive an invitation from the event’s curator (mike jedlick- optic echo presents/PRA) to preform a live set for the first show of the new year.

it should be a good show.  i’ve never seen helios perform, but brian (gasp) always puts on a great show.

the other night i started working on a performance set up . i think it will consist of monomes (128 + 64), eventide timefactor, contact mics and nylon string guitar.  more on that soon.

goodbye 009.

what a long and intense year.  although it was one of the hardest years that i have ever had i think it will always stand out as a landmark year for me.  i can’t even imagine what life would be like today had things happened differently for me and nicole back in august.

i am so thankful for so much and i feel like we are ending the year on an up swing.

thank you to my wonderful wife and daughter…

to my family and friends…

and to everyone that has shown their support to us this past year.

thank you, thank you.

i hope everyone has a wonderful 2010.

today i started doing some wood block. i want to use them in our letterpress so i decided to do the carvings using the back side of old letterpress cuts.  it’s really hard to find wood blocks that are type high so these seem perfect.  years ago we wound up getting a lot of cuts that we would never really have a need for so might as well give them a new purpose, right?

here is a short e.p. that i put together of new versions of six songs that have appeared on this blog.  it’s intended as a little ambient holiday/winter gift to all the people that have supported dust breeding over the last year.

thank you so much for all the kind words and encouragement.  your support has made all the difference.

i hope everyone has a happy holiday (if you are into that stuff)

thanks again,

marc.

+

download zip (24megs)

playing santa’s workshop tonight…

i’ve been getting together some things that people are buying from me to give their loved ones this christmas.  one is another felt G9 cover and the other is a print of one of my letraset animals.

i hope everyone is happy with their gifts.

i don’t know why exactly… but i really love wrapping presents.  i always have.

happy belated birthday to ericka.

i am going to work on a series of these black + white graphics based of cross cuts of wood (this one was from our christmas treee) and see if gemma reacts to them.  she loves this black + white animal book with a zebra in it.

it has been really really cold here in portland the last few days. if there were any moisture whatsoever in the air, i’m sure it would snow.  i really hope that we get a bit of snow again this year. maybe not as much as last year but maybe enough to build one of these guys in our yard.

(this video shows the midi velocity mapped to saturation, pixelate, zoom out, edges then a combination of all)

i posted about this a few days ago but have now wrapped it all up for public consumption.

Midi-Vidi allows you to control the playback of Quicktime videos with Midi inside of Ableton Live thanks to the magic of Max for Live.  Midi-Vidi divides your video into 12 equal parts based on the length of your video and assigns those parts to Midi notes.  There is also an effects section that allows you to map attributes such as velocity to some simple effects.

Midi-Vidi is based entirely on Cycling 74’s Jitter tutorial #26 with only minor modifications by me. I can’t take any credit for it’s construction.  I hope to use this as a jumping off point and make further modifications in the future to allow for more playability.

enjoy.

Download Midi-Vidi Max for Live plugin

]]> http://unrecnow.com/dust/2093/feed 4 http://unrecnow.com/dust/2063 http://unrecnow.com/dust/2063#comments Thu, 03 Dec 2009 07:56:39 +0000 marc http://unrecnow.com/dust/?p=2063

more experiments in cloud folding. this time in the form of an origami crane.

i finally got around to sewing the micorkorg cover that i promised to adam for his upcoming white rainbow tour to korea + japan. i made  a double layer of  felt to try and make it a bit more padded out. i just need to do some clean up to the edges and sew a little velcro in to it and it’s all finished.

three hundred posts.  can you believe it?

year one is almost over.

thanks to everyone who reads/looks at this blog.  you are the people that keep me going on it.

it finally happened.  after 11 weeks in the hospital, i’m happy to say…

“welcome home gemma corinne fischer!”

kathan zerzan asked me to show some photographs for first thursday this month.  she is curating little shows monthly in a little space on the top floor of her house that used to be the office of miller safety & health consulting. i selected a few photos from different groups that have appeared on this site and had them printed at my favorite photo finisher in portland.

i spent some time tonight mapping out the order that each grouping should be displayed in.  i’m pretty happy with the results.

if you are in portland and out walking around for first thursday… come by and look at some photos.

1631 NW Johnson St
Portland, OR 97209

… but that’s because i’m a sucker for black + white animals.

i’ve been joking for a long time that i was going to dress gemma up as a turtle for halloween.  although it would be cute, i don’t think that i have the time to sew her a tiny turtle costume… instead, here is a little painting of one.

fall is in full effect in portland.

just thought you should know.

a few weeks ago, nicole and i picked up a mandal dresser from ikea for gemma’s room. the raw wood and black drawer faces didn’t really match what we had going on in the rest of the room.  nicole had the idea of painting the dresser white and the drawers bright colors.  a couple of cans of montana later and we had ourselves a really cute new piece of furniture.

i think it turned out really well.

i’ve been wanting a compact usb midi foot pedal for using with live for a long time. off the shelf controllers are often bulky and require an external midi interface. i built one out of a usb number pad last year but it was less than ideal.  last night while working on some music, i tried another little idea out and it worked great… so i decided to make it more permanent.

tonight i popped all of the keys but five off of my korg nanokey in order to see how it would work as a pedal. it turned out that it worked really well.  i cut some small pieces of plywood out to raise the key height and some scrap plexiglass to cover up the missing keys. a little spray paint and double stick tape and it was all finished.

i think it turned out pretty well.  not bad for a cheap keyboard and scrap materials.

…not a trip for me but for my old friend adam.  white rainbow is going on tour to asia next month and needs a cozy cover for his microkorg synth.  i am proposing a grey and mustard felt cover with a pair of webbing handles.  i should start getting sewing on it soon.

i hope it is travel worthy.

here is a simple set of watercolor dot patterns.  it kind of reminds me of  lights moving across a monome.

(i’m obsessed)

more pencil patterns.  nicole requested a pinecone made in this style… i’ll have to give it a shot soon.

here are some pencil drawings of clouds.  it is kind of a continuation of my posts from the last two days.  it’s been so hard getting up in the morning the last few days with the darkness, clouds + rain.  i have to admit… i am enjoying dressing in layers and wearing scarves and coats again.

hello fall.

a series of photos taken around portland today with my new buchineko toy camera.

tonight i started experimenting with a new piece of software for image processing.  i started with the photo in the lower left and wound up with the graphic above in just a few steps.

tonight i am revisiting my canon g9 camera cover.  soon after nicole bought me a g9 for my birthday, several of my work buddies wound up also buying g9s.  so now i am making covers for their cameras too.  i wanted to give each of them a handmade cover in exchange for something that they create.  kind of like a gift exchange.  we’ll see how it goes.

the other thing i have for you all tonight is 1min of music.  it is another dropbox collaboration between my friend adam in LA and i.  he sent me two tracks of melodies that was about 20 seconds long.  i added some stuff, changed up the melodies and sent it back to him.  here is what i have so far.

oh, by the way… i didn’t pick the title.

_

if you don’t have flash you can listen here. otherwise…

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/modernunicorn.mp3

_

here are some mock-ups of a logo that i’m working on for the brand new field studies label from south carolina.  they wish to specialize in releasing “electronic, electroacoustic, generative, minimalist, micro-sound, field recording, and drone”.  sounds right up my alley.

look for great things coming out from them in the future.

tonight nicole and i delivered a batch of homemade gemma-sized blankets to the hospital.  we picked up some blankets yesterday for gemma’s incubator but many of them were much too large… so this afternoon i cut some of them in quarters and used the handy serger to finish off the edges.  nicole had the great idea to insert a loop of bias tape in the seam to act as a tag.  we need to label all of the blankets so that they don’t wind up in the hospital laundry.  we also picked up some assorted flannel pieces from the fabric store to make more blankets. i loved the sock monkey fabric.

it seems like everyday in the n.i.c.u. the nurses have gemma wrapped up in a new baby blanket with cute little illustrations on them.  here is my attempt at drawing cute little animals that i would like to see on a baby blanket.  i meant to draw a panda too but i forgot.

just a few paper constructions made from photos of empty pools + colored tape.

today was a really good day for nicole + gemma. nicole got to hold her against her chest for two whole hours.  it was so great and made me so happy.  nicole started working on a little web site to keep people updated on gemma’s progress… it looks really nice so far.

good-night. sleep well.

today was another long hospital day. nicole is still amazing everyone with her progress. there were a few set backs with her health in the last few days but they all seem to be resolving. so far so good.

today was also the birthday of two amazing people that i know.  the first is my 92 year old grandfather back in the philippines, ernesto medrano. he is one of the warmest, kindest, most generous people that i have ever had the good fortune to know. i love him dearly and wish that we could be (geographically) closer. he has been such a wonderful father and grand father and friend to all of us in the extended medrano family.  when my mother first came to america he would write her two letters a week so that she wouldn’t feel alone and so far away.  i guess he kind of made writing letters to her his dust breeding.

the other member of the birthday club i could put into the warmest, kindest, generous category as well. she is maura… nicole closest friend since they were four years old. she has been so great to us over the last week. visiting everyday, checking on our cats back at home and just sitting quietly with nicole while she rests. she is an incredibly great calming force around these parts.  we were able to have a tiny birthday party for her today in the hospital. it was the least we could do for someone that has been such a help.

we are so lucky to have so many great friends that show their support every single day.

we love you all very much.

a nice sunday.

i started the morning off by having another great drone session with ted + matt (maybe i’ll post some excerpts if people are interested) then went to a really nice bbq at the zerzan compound in Milwaukee  where i was able to scavenge a bowl of blackberries from the bushes around the property after two other groups of pickers had already swept through.  i guess being tall with long reaching arms really comes in handy sometimes.

nicole and i also went on a nice evening stroll around the neighborhood. there were a lot of cute cats hanging out on porches but none of them came down to say hi to us.

here is a new letraset animal that made tonight.  he is a chubby little quail.  it’s been a while since i last posted one. i’m hoping to get back into it again once summer is over.

anyway… back to work tomorrow.  where does the weekend go?

goodnight.

earlier today i was talking to some coworkers about art + physics. we thought it would be cool to photograph shapes with an odd perspective… or the possibility of building whole room sets where you could play with perspective and size where none of the angles are correct .

i made these little boxes kind of as a test to play with that idea.

my one man monome cover sweatshop has slowed down a bit in recent months.  it’s kind of nice to have a little break from it now and then.  i really enjoy making them but it was pretty much consuming all of my free time for a while.

this charcoal felt monome cover is for trent in reno, nevada.  it think it turned out really well.  i hope he likes it.

i tried again (with mixed results) to work with the trackmate software to do some motion controlled music experiments.  i think i need to come up with a better light source for my set-up. i think it is much too bright and the computer/camera is having a hard time adjusting.  has anyone reading this had any trackmate success?  please give me some tips.

on a more positive note…

one of my songs has just been released as part of an ambient compilation put out by public spaces lab from barcelona.  i have the honor of being the artist whose piece of music starts the whole thing off.  the album is called ceci n’est pas une pipe and you can download it for free here. it has some beautifully designed artwork that you can print and assemble yourself.  please check it out… there are a lot of really good pieces of music on there.

thank-you public spaces lab!

just a little painting of the sky + power lines.  the sunsets have been so pink this week… kinda like cotton candy.

i think i might be coming down with a cold.

…star wars.

i know it’s super geeky, but i heard about this project and thought it would be fun to get involved.  i had 30 days to finish a 15 second recreation of a scene from star wars.  i slacked off and now i only have 5 days left.  i think i will just animate these cardboard stills in flash and add the dialogue using the good old apple mac voice.  it’s only 15 seconds… but it sure takes a long time.

in better news… i am now on my 200th consecutive blog entry of documenting a creative thing everyday.  i am pretty proud of myself.  it’s strange to think of all that has happened in the last 200 days… and all that could happen in the next 165.

i am working on a little animation based around triangles at the moment.  when i figure out exactly what i’m doing i’ll be able to go into more detail.  it might involve a flash animated paper plane + random quicktime videos.  we shall see.

in the meantime, here is a little piece of music recorded at tonight’s unrecognizable now practice session.

it is a continuation of last week’s unrecnow post.

08_03_09un

or if you don’t have flash… listen here

~

here are details of some graffiti on the drop box behind city liquidators in the east side industrial area. it might be hard to see, but most of it is done in silver ink.  it looks really great in the hot portland sun.

just a few macro photos of these little people.  nicole has been making little things using these railroad miniatures for years. now we’d like to try and make a little shadow box scene using them and one of those little peep-hole lenses (like the kind you find on someone’s front door) to give it a kind of fisheye view.   i’ve almost collected all the parts that we need to start the project. we’ll see how it turns out.

here is just a little water color painting of a geodesic igloo… nothing too fancy.

the packaging that i’ve designed would be a folding paper sleeve… maybe letterpressed with the relevant information and a photo stuck to the outside.  i made this little template out of chipboard so that i could cut and fold the paper easily.  i’m not sure how many i would actually make…. we’ll see how much work it ends up being and how many people seem interested.

i’ll keep you up to date on the progress as it goes.

so i’m trying to come up with a t-shirt design and need people’s help.  i want my good old penguin to  be standing on this letraset iceberg that contains a little message.  i thought that something related to the melting antarctic ice shelf could be good… but i’m open to suggestions.  here is a little mock up that i put together in illustrator. the real one will be done in letraset like the rest of the series.

let me know what you think.

thanks!

( i know this poll is kind of clunky, i looked for better ones but many of them wouldn’t work at all… i guess clunky is better than nothing)

here is just a little water color painting i made.  i have been trying to think of triangle based ideas/designs for a video that i am going to put together for autistici (a great artist from the u.k.).  he sent me a mellotron based song from an album that comes out this fall.  i have a few ideas already that might incorporate the video+flash animation that i have been doing lately. i’m sure i will post more about it soon.

it took me a while to get back to writing an entry for these photos due to some frustrating internet troubles.  sorry about that.

here is one of the first finished drone boxes that i posted about in an earlier dust breeding entry.  it has a 20 second digital voice recorder that is set to loop infinitely  (or until the batteries run out).  these boxes will be placed in a tree in a nearby part as a kind of guerilla sound art installation.  i have about four more to build and then i’ll be ready.

let’s hope they all work out.

_

what a hot day. it’s almost 11:30pm and it is still over 90 degrees. i made this paper construction of snow drifts to try and put myself in a cooler mental state. it didn’t work so well. i’ll have to try something else soon.

a friend of mine is taking submissions for a new blog that she started about patterns and repetition.  you are supposed to send in photos of patterns that you’ve drawn inspiration from recently.  the top three (monome buttons + 2 x letraset) i actually have drawn inspiration from recently… the bottom two are just for fun.

today while on the coast i picked up a little piece of driftwood on the beach. i started whittling away at it and this was the results.  it’s a little whale.  he is a bit asymmetrical, but i think he turned out pretty good for a first attempt.

when i was a little kid i used to use my swiss army knife (naturally) to whittle away at sticks while on camping trips. i don’t think that i ever attempted to make anything out of the sticks… except for sharper sticks.

this week i graduated from the swiss army knife to the bad boy you see in the bottom photo.  it’s called the remix and i really like it.  many thanks to the folks at gerber legendary blades for sending me this knife.  i hope to make more stuff with it.

-

matt, brian + i have been doing a bit of improv ambient recording recently and i’m really enjoying the results.  my goal new goal is to try and come up with a relatively simple set up for quickly recording and processing my parts of the improvisations where i can access them later in order to arrange them while also still actively participating in the actual playing of music.  i think that using a set of the built in loopers in live 8 along with a track for resampling and loop storage will work out great.  i created a template today and gave it a little run through.  it seems to be pretty streamlined.

i’ll post more about it soon.

july 2nd is my 3rd wedding anniversary.  time really does fly when you are having fun. it’s hard to believe that it’s been three years already.  it’s kind of funny, when i say it…three years doesn’t sound like that much. mostly because at this point, nicole and i have been together now for ten years.  i think we need to refer to it as 3/10 year anniversery or something like that.  at least until it evens out a little more.

-

note: the m+n ? is a reference to the engagement ring that i designed for nicole that was made by swiss a really nice swiss artist.  it has a two sided lens that if you hold it very close to your eye  you can read one message on one side and another from the other.  needless to say, she accepted my proposal.  yay, a win for me!

photos here

tonight i decided to try and make my self some business cards on my dusty old letterpress.  there was a time when i was printing on it daily  but that was a long time ago.

at the moment, i don’t really have any need for a business card but i figured that they could come in handy.

i tested out printing them using a clear varnish on a variety of different paper that i have stacked up in the basement.  most of it came form s.c.r.a.p. + the east bay depot for creative reuse

once i decide on a paper stock and work out a final design i’ll print a bunch of them.  let me know what you think.

today, after years away from the retail world, i’ve jumped back into the store window display game.

i designed this window for our friend modi’s store idom. i based it on the photo shoot that we did a few months back for her spring summer collection.  i can’t wait to see how the photos that we did on saturday turned out.

nicole made this yarn bird to match the yarn deer that she spent hours wrapping for the yarn shoot.   they are a cute pair.

today i created this recording studio inside our photography studio for a photo shoot tomorrow… floor, walls and all.  we were going for a really clean, kind of late 60’s 70’s vibe. i pulled a bunch of stuff from my basement and the unrecnow rehearsal space to use as props for the set.  i never realized until now how much old equipment i have.

i really wish my home studio looked this nice.

i’ll post more photos tomorrow after the shoot.  i hope it goes well.

here’s my first attempt at a walrus. tusks, whiskers and all.  once again it has been a while since i made one of these little letraset  animals… but i think i’ve become better at jumping back into it. getting started is always the hardest part.

a few weeks back my friend joe ryckebosch and i got to talking about a the possibility of a collaboration. joe makes really amazing art from old chartpak graphic tape (you really have to see it in person to appreciate the level detail he puts into it) and i have been making these creatures from old letraset transfers…  each one of our chosen media are obsolete graphic design tools that are now being re-used in way they were never intended.

at some point, we would really love to do a show somewhere together displaying some of our work and possibly collaborating on some pieces that would incorporate both the tape and the letters.  i would love it.

nicole requested that i make a drawing of this little plastic whale that she picked up from a party supply store. so here it is… this little guy is a paper, colored pencil + watercolor combo. it was the least i could do after she brought a glue stick home for me (as promised yesterday)

it was a pretty good weekend . i picked up a little battery powered amp that i plan on using to do some outdoor recordings with unrecognizable now soon.  we had a really productive recording session this morning. things seem to be shaping up nicely.

here are just some simple paper constructions.  what the heck did people do before glue sticks?  it can be kind of tough to make clean flat layouts using regular glue (or wood glue in my case).  i’ve got to remember to pick some glue sticks up soon.

p.s. i also just updated the audio links to yesterday’s post.

a few years back my dad gave me this allan sherman record out of his collection saying that he remembered it being very clever and funny .  this year, for father’s day i recorded it for him and burned it to disc.  i tried my best to remove the major pops and skips in the vinyl digitally. i then photographed the cover of the lp and printed it out to adhere to a cardboard cd jacket.  i hope he doesn’t see this before it arrives in the mail. (fingers crossed)

here’s a little lullaby i punched out and recorded tonight on the music box i finished yesterday. the recordings isn’t the greatest but you get the idea.

sleep well.

_

if you don’t have flash, you can listen here.

otherwise, see below.

lullaby

i finally got around to finishing off this new music box enclosure.  it’s the junior version of my classic music box.  i made it from a wooden container that i found at ikea a long time ago.  i first noticed it because it reminded me so much of the box i built for my old one (…even down to the card slot with the rounded edges). when nicole and i found a mini version to the same music box movement down in silverlake, i knew it would be the perfect size.  where i had installed a guitar pickup in the larger music box i opted for a simple contact mic in this version.  it sounds great.  i’ll post a recording soon.  

today marks my 150th creative-thing-a-day post.  it feels pretty good to have made it this far.  

speaking of thing-a-day projects…. jon (a fellow portlander + monome-ist) and his sister have each started their own thing-a-day blogs.  jon is not ever a week into it and has already posted some great music + his own music box related project.  please check these sites out…

toiletooth.com

hergentlemadness.com

i’m just trying to think of some fun t-shirt designs right now.

here’s a little something based on a photo of me as a kid flying a kite at a park near my parent’s house.  in the actual photo you can see that i am wearing a pair of baby blue slip-on vans with a rainbow printed across the tops.  pretty funny.

i know that i said there would be a music box on tap for today’s project… but after i started working on it i realized that i forgot my drill at the practice space.  it will have to wait until tomorrow.

just drew up some plans for my new music box that i plan on building tomorrow.  it involves a little ikea hacking.  i’ll explain more tomorrow.  enjoy your weekend.

when i was clearing out a bunch of stuff from our 2nd bedroom/office last week i happened to unearth a cd ep that i designed and made years ago.  it was for a band here in portland that i played drums in for +1 year called nordic.  the covers were silk screened, letterpressed and sewn. it was quite a production.  the white snowy area was a silk screen. the igloo and text (front and back) were letterpressed… and the edges were sewn shut with a nice zig-zag stitch.

finding this ep made me want to experiment with sewing paper again. my mom used to give me sheets of paper to mess around with and sew when i was a kid.  it was a lot of fun, plus it got me pretty comfortable  with using a sewing machine.  here are a few paper and thread tests.  nothing too fancy, just adjusting things to get the stitching to work right.  the nordic ep is the piece on the lower right.

just some paint blots.  what do you see?

what a busy weekend.  i was not at all prepared for today to be monday.  

this evening matt and i cleaned and reorganized our practice space in downtown portland.  it looks really nice so far.  we are thinking of painting and adding fresh carpet. it took a lot of work and was really dusty…but it was well worth it.

here is a new monome cover for paul in colorado. he joins an elite group of people that have purchased more than one monome cover.  luckily  he also owns a presonus firebox which fits the 64 cover amazingly well.  i hope he likes it as much (or more) than the first one.

this afternoon i built these pedal boards for imaad from some scrap wood and carpet that i had laying around the house.  it all came together really quickly and easily. it helps to have a table saw hand for quick cuts.  imaad picked up this nice green suitcase at a thrift store on hawthorne today and it was the perfect size to fit all his pedals. we used little rubber bumpers to the back edge of each board, both to elevate the back edge and to keep the boards from sliding on the stage.  little things like this that can save you time on set-up and tear-down can really make a big difference in helping things run smoothly.  

the pedal boards made their debut tonight and passed the stage test with flying colors.  the pedal boards will be appearing at the warfield later this week…. along with some other people.

it was a long hard battle… but i finally finished this custom cover for a 40h kit.  i’ve made a few 40h covers before so i really don’t know why this one was so tough to make…  it took me about 2 hours longer than normal.  i guess on thing is that the 40h kits are always different. it looks really huge compared to the standard 64 cover. you can see the size difference in the second photo.  this 40h cover will be sent off to vinay in killara, australia tomorrow.  i think it turned out really well. i hope he likes it. 

tonight i also finished up the audio for my lantern. it was pretty easy to load the sound files onto it because of the easy access to the usb port on top.  i think kathan is delivering it to store for a month tomorrow.  i hope people will be able to hear it inside the store.  we shall see.

two things. the first is this little map to oxbow park that i made to go with the wedding invitations that nicole designed for e + d.  she printed the invites today and they look great. i hope that she will rework this map to better match the beautiful invites.  

the next thing is just a little ukulele + granular delay thing that i recorded tonight on the good old zoom h4.  nothing too fancy.  it turned out much darker than i intended.  funny how that happens.

(if you don’t have flash, you can listen here. otherwise see below…)

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/090531.mp3

tonight after dinner, nicole and i stopped by the goodwill just to see what there was to see.  i happened upon this tiny rusted lamp on one of the shelves.  it was just what i was looking for!  kathan asked me to contribute a sound element to her portion of the store for a month show that opens next week.  she is working within the theme of canaries in the coal mine.  she has been busy making (dead) birds out of chrome wire and recycled yellow caution tape.  our original idea was to place some kind of sound emitting device inside one of the birds. it seemed like there would be plenty of room, but something made me want to try and embed the sound generator inside of an object that would exist along side the birds.  this little lantern was perfect.  it reminded me of something you’d see in an abandoned mine.

once i got it home, i went for a complete tear down of the lamp and all its parts.  i unscrewed the glass lens and to my surprise, the first speaker that i picked up was exactly the right size to pop right in.  inside, i was able to embed an old mp3 player that nicole and i found on a hike.  i also soldered on an 1/8″ jack that goes to the speaker and a momentary switch that can turn the mp3 player on/off and play/pause. i was able to allow the usb plug to pop out the top (under the red dome) so that i can still access it in order to load sounds onto it without taking the whole thing apart again.  i can’t believe how fast the whole thing came together.

this little guy sounds pretty good for just a tiny speaker with pretty much a tin can body.  

next step: make some ambient music using canary sounds as the main source material.

i picked up some new felt to experiment with last weekend. it’s only about 2mm thinner than the nice thick stuff that i’ve been using for my monome covers… but it feels a lot different to sew.  i got a little of this chocolate brown and some clay grey/brown felt.

this 64 cover turned out really well. i think i will be able to sell these for slightly less than the monome covers that use the thicker stuff.  i am going to start making some when i can and keep them on hand from people to order that way.  i am still willing to do custom stuff as well.  just ask.

if anyone likes this cover and would like it for their very own, drop me a line.

nicole recently designed and made this copper cuff.  she hand etched the woodgrain design and did all of the cutting and shaping. it really has a great amount of fantastic detail. copper jewelry can be tough because of the way it tarnishes and can turn your skin green.  i think we came up with a nice solution.  tonight i added the felt lining to it, made from a nice scrap of  green felt left over from my monome covers.  i  think that the green is really fitting for the natural feel of the wood. kind of like a moss covered log you’d find in the forrest.  

i’m pretty sure that the cuff will be available to purchase at the idom’s new location on nw 23rd here in portland.  once they re-open, stop by and check it out.

right now i’m in the process of putting a website together for portland artist kathan zerzan.  i took some photos in her studio yesterday and mixed them in with the existing photos of her work to use for the top header/banner on the site.  the idea is that they will randomly cycle through each time that the site is loaded or refreshed. here are nine of the banners that i created tonight.  i put a little test together that seems to work well.  thank goodness for wordpress and all the developers that make it so easy to create sites like this so quickly.

this afternoon i made this little terrarium for nicole out of an old pyrex laboratory beaker.  it was kind of a small area to work in because of the narrow opening at the top, but i think it turned out well.

i also made this little recording of me playing around with a baritone ukulele outside on our front porch.  it’s all being run through some granular effects and compressors.  i like the sounds of cars and kids playing that kind of works it’s way to the surface now and then.

(if you don’t have flash you can listen here.  otherwise…)

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/090521.mp3

-

here are a few more custom monome covers i finished tonight. the small one on the left is for paul in ft. collins, co. the one one the right is for jonathan in new york, ny.  jonathan opted for a rectangular back pocket on the 128 cover.  this is something that i had thought of doing in the original design but had decided to leave it out and instead offer it as a custom option.  i didn’t photograph the last pocketed 128 that i made so i’m happy that i had time to shoot this one.

orders for the monome covers have been slowing down a bit lately which actually works out well for me.  my supply of the thick felt that i use for the main body of the covers is running very low. i have been trying to decide if i should re-order more felt and keep the one man sweatshop running or to cease production once my current felt supply runs dry.  there are pros and cons to both.  i really like making them and getting to know (albeit briefly) people from around the world that get in touch with me… all of my interactions have certainly reinforced my belief that people in the monome community (not only have great taste in felt monome covers.. but) are some of the nicest and most supportive people around.

another thing that i’ve discussed with people is to do away with the custom options and instead produce batches of them in different color combinations and let people order from whatever stock i have available at the time.  that way i could just spend some time making a bunch of them at once and not have to worry about making one here and there as the orders come in.   for me the worst part of making the monome covers is the time that passes between receiving an order and the cover being delivered.  i really don’t like holding on to people’s money.  it makes me nervous… i always feel like i have to start sewing the moment i get the email that a payment has been sent.  maybe letting people order from the covers i have on hand would help relieve some of that stress.  

i don’t know… is there anybody out there that has an opinion on what they would like to see happen?

(sorry about the rambling.  i should go to bed now. it’s late + i have an early call time tomorrow.)

if you don’t have flash, use this link (listen/download)

otherwise…

hearing tests

a number of years ago at a surplus electronics shop, i picked up this great little suitcase that had this variable oscillator inside. the device was used for those hearing tests that we used to take as kids.  i remember wearing those blue plastic headphones and sitting in a chair with my back to the tester… raising my left hand or my right depending on which side you could hear the beep.  it always made me a bit nervous that i wouldn’t hear anything or would mix up which hand to raise.

i made this little track using just this machine and my usual pair of delay pedals recorded straight into my handy recorder.

i also wanted to say happy birthday to my dad and happy mother’s day to my mom.  love you both very much.

what a long week.  today was pretty jam packed… early call time for a video shoot with rob and a late meeting downtown.  they were all good things (but tiring).

i made some little paintings of unspooled tape. i used to make long loops of 1/4″ tape that would go from one side of my house to the other with two reel to reels on the same loop. it was pretty fun to make really long delays like that but the tape would often wind up in piles like this on my floor when the tension between the two machines would snap it.

the orange cassette tape painting is just me revising an old t-shirt idea.

matt and i made some tape loops a few years back that made up the bones of this song that we performed at holocene a few years back.  like so much of our stuff, we never recorded an official version… just a live one.   it’s about 25 min long with guitars, midi’d up drum set, music box, laptop and xylophones.

http://unrecnow.com/audio/06.17.07_holocene.mp3

download (29mb)

here is another alphabet animal to add to the series.  this guy is a red-winged black bird like the ones we spotted on our way back from the coast (on day 100).

it’s my first three colored letraset animal.  i thought that the red-winged blackbird would be a nice one to try since i had all of the colors on hand.  i think that technique tuned out pretty well.  i’ll have to try out more combinations soon.

last year i started gathering some pieces to put together an outdoor guerrilla sound art installation in a small neighborhood park.  i dragged my feet and didn’t get it finished before the rain set in. this year i have to finish it.  

my idea was to build small speaker boxes that could be hidden in the branches of a tree or inside a bush.  each box will contain a small digital voice recorder connected to a compact speaker that will play back a 20sec loop of sound.   at the moment i have six of these 20 second recorders and an inexpensive rca mp3 player (for longer loops).   part of the original idea was to use field recordings of things that don’t exist in close proximity to the park along with short bits of guitar and xylophone.  i’m not sure if i’m going to stick with that idea or not.  i might try and compose a 20 second song and divide the different instruments among the boxes… letting them fall in and out of sync.

we’ll see.  i’m sure i will post more about it soon.

just some simple blocks of color.  watercolor on paper.

this little egg head is a blue tit. they are only a little over four inches long and suffer from an unusually high annual mortality rate (75%!!!).  pretty sad to think about.  

i need to get back to making these letraset animals on a more regular basis… it’s always hard to get started on them if i haven’t made one in a while.  i’m thinking of making a shark for my next one after watching a nature show tonight where they followed a migrating one around the world.  maybe after that i will finally start working on prints and a t-shirt design based on some of the ones i’ve posted before.

we shall see.

just some watercolor bird houses.  i’ve been thinking about building some out of the scrap wood that i have laying around… actually maybe i’d make bird feeders instead of bird houses.  i bird house is such a tricky thing because those little guys can be so picky about where they live.  they seem a little less picky about what they eat.

tonight i got back into the sewing game after a short break from it.  this felt monome 128 cover is for Robbert from the netherlands. i think it turned out really well. i hope that he likes it.

here’s a 9min drone piece i recorded using baritone guitar and my homemade granular delay plugin.  it was all done live…i should have edited it down to make it shorter but i couldn’t decide what to keep and what to cut out..

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/feltdrones.mp3

(edited: uploaded the wrong audio file at first. now it’s fixed)

_

today was a wonderful day (weather wise) in portland.  my allergies got the best of me though… it pretty much ruined my morning.  

i made my first felt monome cover for a local today.  this one will help transport surya’s monome down to california on tuesday where he will prepare to do some live visuals for the coachella festival. it was pretty satisfying to hand it over in person rather than packaging it up and saying my farewells to it at the post office.

 i wish it were always that easy.

oh, not sure if anyone really cares or not… but i added this little share button to the bottom of the posts that lets you send links to things like delicious, digg, twitter and so on.  i’m not sure if it works or not.  give it a try and tell me how it goes.

here’s a little fox for you.  it’s been a little while since i last posted any of my letraset animals… it was nice to get back to making one.  it took me a bit longer than i thought it would but i’m pretty happy with it.  i think i’m getting better at making fuzzy animals.

today was a much better day than yesterday for these reasons…

all that video rendering from yesterday was finished today and it looks pretty good.  

the custom felt 40h cover that i messed up the measurements on yesterday was finished today and also looks pretty good. 

i did not fall victim of any fooling today.

best of all…

today marks the 75th day in a row that i’ve posted a thing or creative project on this blog.  so far so good.

thanks to everyone that checks in on my progress and leaves comments for me here.  that stuff means a lot to me.

(the cover above is for steve in LA.  hope he likes it.)

it’s been a long night of sewing and rendering video.  i’ve had a few set backs in both departments… why does video have to take so long to render?  i guess it would help if i had a computer with an actual video card.   i got most of the way through a custom sewing job and realized that i messed up the measurements of the side panels.  hmmpf. i guess that means that it’s time to go to bed.

the natural/rust/lime monome cover above is for jonathan in new york.  it is the one thing that turned out well tonight.  i hope he likes it.

today i picked up one square yard of this nice charcoal gray felt.  the color reminds me a lot of  this little guy. it’s the same thickness as the stuff i was using before but much softer.  i made myself this 64 cover as a test.  i think it turned out really well.  I’ll only be able to offer it as a color option for a limited amount of monome covers and unfortunately i’ll have to charge a little more for it too.  

i’ll put a swatch up soon.

when nicole and i were in kyoto we happened upon this little park down the street from where were staying.  we took way too many photos of this little concrete panda.  i was kind of obsessed with him for a while.

…i guess the obsession continues.

this morning we had quite a few visitors to one of our bird feeders. there was a young downy woodpecker that we had never seen before.  he was so cute. we think that he lives in a half dead tree right next to our house. i hope he comes out more often.

i put together this poster tonight for a show that matt and i are playing in april.  we’ve been preparing muisc for the last few weeks and will start putting together some video this weekend.  we are going to mess around with multi-camera shooting and compositing.  that should keep us pretty busy for the next few weeks.

tonight i realized that one of the things that i really like about making all of these monome covers is getting all the little details just right.  it’s kind of silly but i really take great pride in it.   

this cover is for Taro in Santa Cruz.

this big guy took much longer than i thought he would.  i guess i’ve become pretty rusty since i’ve taken a break from this series to focus more time on making monome covers.   today was one of those days where nothing really went the way i would have liked it to.

oh, i also finally put up an archive page of all of the posts so far. it’s at the top of the page in the menu bar. take a look. it’s easier than clicking through the pages one by one.

This afternoon we went out to oxbow park to check out the spot where ericka + david are having their wedding.  it was a really beautiful location overlooking the sandy river.  i’m sure it will be even prettier this summer.

this afternoon i made this for chad in virginia.  it was a day full of green things.

here are some photos of the new felt cover that i finished tonight.  it’s a special version of my felt monome covers made to hold not one… but two of the original monome 40h.  it was a custom made for Julien from metz, france.  the 40h was thinner but had a larger footprint than the current monome 64 so i had to build a whole new set of templates based on monome.org’s excellent documentation. i made a pair of fake monomes out of old gift boxes to test the fit.  those are the two white things in the lower photo.  

i hope the real things fit as nicely as my cardboard version.

it was a good challenge

here is a mini take on my felt monome covers 

i decided to try and make a little camera case for my new canon G9 (an awesome b-day gift from nicole).  i think it turned out pretty well.  i think it will still work even if i have the neck strap on… i know the strap is dorky but i really don’t want to risk dropping it.   

i’m sure that i will be making felt covers for a lot of things now.

here are some penguins marching their way to the post office tomorrow.  i made these thank you cards to send to my friends and family from dust breeding entry number 13. it’s just an inkjet print… i still hope to someday letterpress prints of a few animals in the alphabet animal series.  if anyone has a favorite in the series that they’d like to see turned into a letterpress print, leave a comment or send me an email.

this is otto.  nicole and i found him next to our chimney when he was only a few days old.  we had to bottle feed him and make him poop every few hours.  nicole and i took turns taking him to work with us every day in a little bowling bag with a hot water bottle to keep him warm.  at times, we weren’t sure he would make it.  

that was years ago and now he if big and fluffy.  he feeds himself and uses the litter box on his own.

by looking at him….

you’d never know that he is the devil.

here are two brand new green on green on green monome covers.  this could be my new favorite color combo.

one is going to fletcher in new york and the other is for cody in colorado.  it’s off to the post office saturday morning for these two.

here’s one of the new green monome covers i started sewing this week.  i added a bunch of new color options for people to choose from here.  this particular one will be going to joseph in Greenville, SC.  i’m really happy with these new ones.  this felt is even denser than the first batch of natural colored felt that i made the prototypes from.  there are many more on the way soon.

hard at work tonight cutting + sewing a new batch of felt monome covers.  i’m excited to get them out to all the people that have been ordering them.  they have been turning out really well.

now it’s time to sleep.

while up on the mountain this weekend, we went snowshoeing for the first time at white river.  it’s really hard work but a lot of fun.  once we got off of the snowshoe highway and headed for the trees nicole and i spotted these funny little snow mounds that were just begging for faces to be put on them.  most of them were done by nicole but most of the photos were taken by me… group effort!

here’s the newest member of the letraset animal family.  he’s a pigeon standing on a crack in the sidewalk… i guess that means that somewhere this little fellow has a mother with a broken back.  that’s kind of sad.

something that is not sad is the fact that this is my 32nd day in a row posting something to this blog.  i have officially made it through my first month of this one year project. someone pointed out yesterday that i was 1/12th of the way through it.  somehow that a bit more overwhelming  than just making it through my first month. they were right though…

 i have a lot of work in front of me.

here’s to the next 11 months.  thanks for looking.

two things to post today…

tonight i started working on this little layout for an e.p. by he can jog from new york. it’s just a rough version at the moment. erik contacted me about wanting to use the image of my black capped chickadee for the cover.  was totally flattered that he asked me to do it.  if you are not yet familiar with his music i suggest that you give it a listen.  it’s beautiful stuff.

earlier today matt and i got to work mixing a bunch of bits of music that we’ve recorded over the past few weeks.  we were able to piece together four related but separate pieces to send off to yesenia in los angeles who is working on a great new documentary .  the pieces are pretty rough at this point but they are mostly just short examples.  yesenia was the editor on the last film score that we worked on back in the fall.  

here’s one of those short little bits…

score4

I finally set up a little shop page off of this blog for people to order my felt monome covers. it’s complete with a page of material/color swatches .

here’s a pair that i finished tonight.  the 128 cover is for chad in virginia and the 64 cover is for  jody in LA. they both happened to pick the same color combinations. funny.  

more on the way soon.

happy valentine’s day.

this baby elephant was part of a v-day gift for nicole + the heart was the card.

here’s another version of the monome case from yesterday.  this one uses the same materials but is designed for the monome 128.  i decided to skip the rear pocket on this version (since you have to carry a separate power supply anyway).

i’m really happy with the way it turned out… and now i have matching cases for my 64 + 128.  i have enough felt left over to make one more case for a 64.

here’s a dark-eyed junco.  they were familiar visitors to our feeders throughout those snowy days in december.

it’s no secret. everyone that knows me well knows that i love penguins… although not as much now as i once did.  it’s kind of hard to see but this little guy is standing on a letraset iceberg.

thanks so much to everyone for the kind words on the last bird i posted.  a site that i really love posted a photo and a link to that one.  it was very exciting for me.

here’s a little alphabet bird that i made from rub-off letraset letters.  it’s a black capped chickadee.

ink from some leaky pens after traveling down through 11 sheets of standard copier paper.

happy inauguration day!

so i am coming down with a cold.  i felt pretty crappy all day at work today.  this seems like it was my first true test of  weather or not i really want to continue this… but i do, so here is my entry for today.  

a while back i built a little granular delay thing using this useful little program.  it pretty much takes whatever sound going into it and chops it into tiny bits and plays them back at half-speed.  i use it a ton when i play live shows but when i use it at home it always makes me sleepy.   taking advantage of that property, i sat on the couch and made some sleepy time drone music that i looped and napped to for more than an hour.

here’s about 9min worth.

i sewed this monome cover tonight for Jonathan Ntuk in New York.  he saw the one that i made for my 128 and asked if i could make one for him.  i was glad that i kept the template that made when i designed the original.