SML Pro Blog = See-ming Lee 李思明 + Professional Blog 專業博客; See-ming Lee 李思明 SML is a designer, photographer, technologist and a Linux-loving gay geek in NYC; <a href="http://seeminglee.com">http://seeminglee.com</a>
PREF Magazine publishes Kiss series from SML Photography / SML Thank You (3/28/10) [View | Hide]
PREF Magazine, a french, bimonthly gay oriented magazine publishes photos from the Kiss series in their March/April 2010 issue (No. 37).
Cover
Contributors: pp 6-7
Goodies. Now I have a bio in French!
Spread: pp 92-93
Kiss: Ryan Gilbert + Michael Correntte / 20100117.7D.02106.P1.L1.SQ.BW / SML
Spread: pp 94-95
Kiss: Matthew Ossenfort + Jeffrey Denke / 20100117.7D.02081.P1.L1.SQ.BW / SML
Special thanks to Ryan Gilbert + Michael Correntte + Matthew Ossenfort + Jeffrey Denke who were so kind to kiss in front of my camera! Also much thanks to the editor in chief at PREF for this wonderful opportunity.
The Fairytale Fashion Collection uses technology to create magical clothing in real life. Electronics, mechanical engineering, and mathematics are used to create clothing with blooming flowers, changing colors and transforming shapes.
I first learned about this project by Diana Eng (Twitter / Wikipedia) at Eyebeam's Open Studios last year. As a designer + technologist, I actively seek out people working on things that infuses art + science. And so when Diana told me that her collection's debut at the Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in New York, I was more than delighted to check her out.
The Collection
Research and development for the Fairytale Fashion collection are shared online at FairytaleFashion.org as an educational tool that teaches about science, math, and technology through fashion. Fairytale Fashion was created with the support of Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, the leading not-for-profit art and technology center in the United States.
A total of nine looks were showcased on the runway on February 24th, 2010, and some of them will be available for purchase on March 1st at DianaEng.com.
1. EL Wire Dress. Aqua silk chiffon organically draped dress edge with electroluminescent wire controlled by an accelerometer. Circuit boards are housed in 3-D printed neck piece.
2. Deployable Hoodie. Red wood silk hoodie with Miura Ori structure pleat pattern to help the hood collapse small and open big.
3. Twinkle Dress and Twinkle Cardigan. LED circuits are hand embroidered with silverized thread and a custom sewable circuit board Twinkle Pad, developed specially for the Fairytale Fashion Collection. Twinkle Dress's removable grey silk chiffon twinkle pad circuit overlays washable black cotton American Apparel dreww. Twinkle Cardigan's removable black wool melton shoulder patches overlay a cotton sweater.
4. Cameo. Peach silk organza edged with electroluminescent wire. Circuit boards are housed in 3-D printed Cameo.
5. Twinkle Skirt. LED circuits are hand embroidered with silverized thread and a custom sewable circuit board Twinkle Pad, developed specially for the Fairytale Fashion Collection.
7. Inflatable Dress. Cream silk chiffon, draped over plastic inflatables and white silk flowers.
8. EL Wire Coat. White silk organza illuminated by EL wire patterns beneath which are controlled by an accelerometer.
9. Floating Dreams Dress.
Circuit Bending Orchestra
In typical geek fashion, the music accompanying the show was no other than a circuit-bending orchestra made up of team members: Lara Grant, Sarah Grant, Peter Kirn and Matt Ganucheau.
In fact here's a video of Lara Grant explaining to me how this all works:
Diana Eng is a fashion designer who specializes in technology, math, and science. Her designs range from inflatable clothing to fashions inspired by mechanical engineering. She is a designer from Bravo’s Emmy nominated TV show, Project Runway season 2 and author of Fashion Geek: Clothes, Accessories, Tech. Diana is cofounder of NYC Resistor hacker group. Diana is currently a resident artist at Eyebeam.
Extra, Extra!
Hilary Mason (Facebook / Twitter), a computer science professor with a background in machine learning, data mining, and web applications, tends the lighting control. She is currently on sabbatical to explore real-world implementations of these technologies.
Gadget Galore at the press section:
Twinkling Backstage. The backstage literally lights up because of all the electroluminescent wires and Twinkle Pads.
Last but not least, SML Me with Diana!
SoundCloud = Innovative Social Network for Musicians (12/29/09) [View | Hide]
SoundCloud is a social network startup for musicians based in Berlin. Originally from Stockholm, the founders created the site after they have grown "tired of getting emails with YouSentIt links or FTP log-ins just to be able to check out [their] friends latest soon-to-be released tracks."
Just a couple of years ago, when you mention music and social networks, the first site that came to mind is MySpace. Yes, MySpace is a social network and they do put much weight on music and musicians, but MySpace fails to innovate beyond implementing comments + music player, and that is barely social. In this blog post I will go through the many innovations SoundCloud brought to the music scene and explain why I like it so much.
Commenting is the backbone of every social network, but what SoundCloud provides which no one else did was time-based commenting. Each track on SoundCloud is displayed as a waveform, so you can visually see how the music looks like. You can leave a comment to the entire track, but most useful is to get feedback on a specific time segment on the track. Best of all, the UI automatically displays those comments when the playhead hits the time code, which is uber cool.
Innovation 2: Continuous playback of recent tracks from people you follow
A really useful feature on SoundCloud is the ability to play all the tracks from people you follow. Most social networks for musicians tend to treat the musician as a social media object, and if you want to hear what's new, you need to browse the musician's page to hear his/her new songs. SoundCloud, on the other hand, treats each track as a social media object, and places all the tracks on the same page. Best of all, whenever you are on a page with multiple tracks, hitting the play button will play all the tracks on the same page one after another. Want to be forever entertained by great original music? Sign up an account, follow a bunch of people you like and voila!
SoundCloud has tight integration with other social networks. It currently supports integration with Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. You can independently customize the message you want to send to push to the different networks, with the option to select whether or not to publish your own tracks and favorites. I push new tracks to Twitter + Facebook but to lower the noise level on my very active Twitter feed, I do not publish favorites to it. The customizable message is sweet as it allows me to hashtag my tweets more easily for data indexing and searching (which I now use extensively on Friendfeed).
Here's an official demo video so you can see this action:
One of the most frustrating experience working with musicians and sound designers is sending large audio files back and forth. Do you put it on the FTP? Do you RapidShare? Host your own extranet? Creating custom and secured solutions are often costly, but SoundCloud made it easy with their DropBox. The DropBox enables everybody, even people who are not on SoundCloud, to share their tracks with you. The DropBox supports a versatile range of audio formats: AIFF, WAVE, FLAC, OGG, MP3 and AAC. Best of all, there is no file size limit to your uploads!
The embeddable widgets is written completely in html + css, which means that you can style it anyway you want, but the minimally designed stock widgets in both white and black fits in perfectly on any graphic design you already have.
All in all I have had a very good experience on SoundCloud, and I have been recommending it to all my musician + sound designer friends. While SoundCloud intends to be a tool for musicians, it is also a really great way for music lovers who wish to discover indie music not found any where else. Because of the very active community and group participation, I am grateful to have met many great artists in Brooklyn as well as people around the world who are passionate about symphonic electronca.
The Gewandhausorchester Leipzig (Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; sometimes simply referred to as Gewandhausorchester) is a famous German orchestra based in Leipzig, Germany. It is named after the concert hall in which it is based, the Gewandhaus ("Textiles Hall" - originally, a hall in the building that housed Leipzig's thriving textile trading floor). — Wikipedia
SML Thank You!!!
Eyebeam Open Studios Fall 2009 / Art in New York City (12/6/09) [View | Hide]
Eyebeam (http://eyebeam.org) is the leading not-for-profit art and technology center in the United States. Founded in 1996 and incorporated in 1997, Eyebeam was conceived as a non-profit art and technology center dedicated to exposing broad and diverse audiences to new technologies and media arts, while simultaneously establishing and demonstrating new media as a significant genre of cultural production. Since its founding, Eyebeam has supported more than 130 fellowships and residencies for artists and creative technologists.
Eyebeam organizes open studios twice a year, and I had the pleasure to visit one of them by invitation of Matthew Borgatti, a designer + technologist I met on Flickr a few weeks before the opening. Here are some highlights from my collection of photographs and video interviews conducted during the show.
The spokesperson of littleBits, a friend of the artist, talks to See-ming Lee about the sculpture / mixed media painting: a birds eye view of a little over 3 years of violence, strife, and very bright lights rocking Lebanon, remembered and replayed in 45 minutes of proportionally timed light display.
Ayah Bdeir Les Années Lumière 22 x 30 inches Electronics on Canvas produced June 2008 in collaboration with Rouba Khalil
3. Fairytale Fashion
Fairytale Fashion (http://fairytalefashion) is a project created by Diana Eng (LinkedIn / Twitter / dianaeng.com), a fashion designer who works with science and technology. She is the co-founder of the NYC Resistor hacker group, and is popularly known as one of the designers in the Bravo TV series hit Project Runway.
Fairytale Fashion uses technology to create a collection of magical clothing in real life, and share their work in weekly research and development web videos. Here are some video interviews shot during the event:
3.1 Fairytale Fashion: Part 1: Overview (Diana Eng)
Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese, two artists who have been collaborating on work together for over a decade in New York, chat with me regarding their new collectible sculptures limited-edition series Deadly Sins. The set of snowglobes are available individually, each of which contain one word from the seven deadly sins: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride - and represented by a unique color.
Window Farms (Flickr / windowfarms.org) are vertical, hydroponic, modular, low-energy, high-yield edible window gardens built using low-impact or recycled local materials.
In February 2009, through a residency at Eyebeam, Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray began to build and test the first Window Farms prototype. Growing food inside NY apartments is a challenge, but within reach. The foundational knowledge base is emerging through working with agricultural, architectural and other specialists, collecting sensor data, and reinterpreting hydroponics research conducted by NASA scientists and marijuana farmers. They have been researching and developing hydroponic designs that are inexpensive and made from relatively inexpensive materials. The working prototype is a drip system made from recycled water bottles, holding 25 plants. Beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, arugula, basil, lettuce and kale are thriving.
I had to pleasure of talking to Maya Nayak, who explained to me how it works:
Facebook + Flickr + Vimeo + YouTube: Simulcasting videos on multiple social networks (11/22/09) [View | Hide]
I usually simulcast my videos on multiple video social networks: Facebook, Flickr, Vimeo and YouTube. Many people ask me why I do this, so I thought that I would give give an analysis of these video networks, the pros + cons of posting to them, and the audience that they tend to attract.
Facebook is a closed network, so your Facebook friends will see your videos but if you intend your videos to be viewed by people who are not in your network, you are out of luck. While Facebook allow you to share the video with people outside of the network, it will never get indexed by search engines, so you will never get search traffic from it. This is good for personal videos, but for the sake of journalism / photojournalism it is possibly useless unless you have a very large following.
One benefit of posting to Facebook though is the people tagging feature. If your video is about a particular person, tagging them will auto-xxx="http://www.flickr.com/photos/seeminglee/4124788583/" title="Video Social Networks: SML Channel on Flickr / 2009-11-22 / SML Sceenshots (by See-ming Lee 李思明 SML)">
Most of my videos feature still photography, and since Flickr has traditionally been my social network stronghold (I have 3,000,000+ views on my stream), so it makes sense for me to post to Flickr. I could also link the still photography references in the description area so if someone sees something in the video that video that they would like to use per Creative Commons, they can find the source within the network.
Groups on Flickr are diverse and plentiful. This means that you can post your video to a very targeted audience, often outside of your existing social networks (aka contacts).
One annoying aspect of Flickr videos is that there is no way for you to set a thumbnail, so even if the thumbnail selected by the system is not the a good representation of your video, you are pretty much stuck with it.
There is a video duration posting limit on Flickr. Videos can be up to 1 minute and 30 seconds. If you post videos that are longer than that, they will be 'cropped' automatically. If your video is longer than 1:30, what you can do is post a 90-sec clip teaser / trailer on Flickr and then refer to your video posted on other network. I usually try to keep them all at the same length unless it is impossible to do it in a single go. This limitation has in fact got me to be a better video editor — constraints tend to drive better creativity. Sometimes the videos (mostly interviews) can be broken down into multiple parts anyway, and I post these clips separately. You might get a higher view anyhow as it's a lot to ask someone to sit through a 10-min video, but if someone like your first 1:30 clip, chances are they are more likely to check out the other video parts.
Vimeo provides many social features not found on other networks.
You can tag people who appear in the video, but you can also provide credits and set different roles for people who were involved in the production.
On Vimeo, you can reference still photography directly. If you provide your photo URLs, Vimeo will display those photos / stills from the video on the video page. This is helpful in cases where others wish to blog about your video or post to image sharing networks.
I wrote a bash script to facilitate this process more easily: flickr2vimeo (hosted on github). This is how it works: open up a Flickr page in your browser with all the images you wish to include. This may be a set page, photos from tags, whatever. Make a selection of of those photos and then view selection source, copy and paste those HTML in a file and run the script in your shell: it will then dishes out the comma-separated URLs that Vimeo requires. I am sure that there is a more elegant way of doing this, but it works for now. Eventually I would like to allow tag input or URL input so I won't have to do the selection source step - feel free to develop on top of it!
Vimeo requires your content to be original, and prohibits commercial postings, as such, there is a relatively large and active art / filmmaker following. So this is a network that you should definitely post to if you have contents in this area. Like Flickr, Vimeo has a diverse and committed community who participate in groups, and posting your videos to those groups will allow you to reach a larger and targeted audience more easily.
On top of your user page, it is very easy to create your own channels, albums, etc. If your videos are episodic, this is very beneficial as they get clustered nicely without additional navigation.
If you wish to reach the largest audience on the Internet, YouTube is your best bet. YouTube is free and natively support HD content. Vimeo supports HD but you will have to pay extra for HD embedding. The same is true for Flickr.
YouTube is own by Google, so there is a very good chance that it will get indexed by Google servers almost instantly. If your video is time-sensitive, news-worthy or viral in any manner, it has high value as they also show up on Google web search results. Your videos will likely show up on Google video search as well. And while Google Video does index Vimeo and Flickr videos, the Google interface will not play those videos directly from the search results page. So again, if you are doing journalism / photojournalism and intend to reach the largest audience, YouTube is your friend.
One additional aspect regarding YouTube that is often overlooked is YouTube's partnership agreements with multiple mobile devices and consumer electronics. For example, Safari on the iPhone / iPod touch does not support the Flash player, so you can't really see video content on Vimeo, Flickr and Facebook natively. You can sometimes see video on Flickr and Facebook if you use their iPhone app, but on occasion they just won't play. I don't know if there are just kinks on those apps that the developers need to work out, but the YouTube app will play everything. YouTube's iPhone app also plays the highest quality video among others: the Flickr video in the Flickr app is often choppy and leaves much to be desired. YouTube on Apple TV is also top notched. HD videos is so much sexier on the 100" projector!
How to use Gmail filters to maintain sanity with social media (11/1/09) [View | Hide]
One of the unfortunate side-effects when you belong to many social networks and subscribe to many listserv is the insane amount of emails you get on a daily basis. In this tutorial, I will illustrate how you can track these activities at your own pace and keeping your inbox tidy and maintaining an overall sanity in your very active technologically sound life.
Gmail Filters, in conjunction with Gmail Labels is all you need to achieve this. And is very simple to use as illustrated below:
This example illustrate how to take out those Twitter follow invites from your Inbox while allowing you to review them at your own pace.
1. Start by selecting Create a filter next to the search box.
2. In the Subject: field, enter "is now following you on Twitter!" and press Next Step > to continue.
3. Now choose the action you want to apply. You can do anything you want to it, but this is the common things that I do:
3A. Check Skip the Inbox (Archive it). This ensures that it will not show up in your inbox when it arrives.
3B. Create a new label in the Apply the label dropdown, or select an existing label that you would like to apply.
3C. If you are creating a new label, you might want to Also apply filter to conversations below. I guess I had 5000 follows on Twitter since I started using Gmail. Now *that* would be insane if I didn't use Gmail filters!
Don't be alarm if you think that you will never see them again since you have skip the inbox, they still show up in your filter list, and unread items still show up as bold.
I use Gmail filters for pretty much everything, and auto-archive most of the stuff that goes into my inbox, leaving it clutter-free only with important stuff that I need to get to. Here's a list of examples of where you would want to auto-filter:
1. Social network activites. I label all of these with a prefix soc: so they are grouped together nicely in the filter list. Aardvark, Facebook, FriendFeed, Flickr, Picasa, Twitter, or whatever. All gone. Best of all and especially for Facebook activities, I usually can just take a quick glance at the list titles to note the things that require actions, then select all and Mark as Read.
2. Listserv. Do you subscribe to a lot of listserv? Anyone of those IxDA list will turn your inbox into a nightmare!
When I first saw her paintings I had originally thought that she had a graphic design background because of their calligraphic and typographic nature, but it turns out that she was educated in the UK at Loughborough College in 3D Design with a concentration in Jewelry and Silversmithing. Here's a short video interview where she talks about herself and her work:
http://www.choichun.com/artist.html Choichun Leung left Wales when she was seventeen to pursue a degree in metal-smithing at Loughborough college of Art and Design in the UK, afterwhich she studied Buddhist iconography in both Beijing and the Yangkung caves in China's Shanxi province. In 1988 she moved to London where she studied under the Ray Man Chinese Orchestra as a percussionist and a student of the Gu-qin - a traditional Chinese bass zither. Leung worked in Hong Kong as a background artist for animation film before returning to London in 1992 where she received a grant and Gold Award from the Prince of Wales' Youth Business Trust for the most innovative new business of the year: a line of symbolic art products using the traditional technique of Chinese paper cutting. With music and the arts always hand in hand, Leung came to New York in 1994 where she began painting seriously, worked as an assistant to artist Peter Max, and studied music composition. From that point forward, Choichun's artwork has been inextricably entwined with her interest in music and have continued to influence each other. As the single mother of a young daughter, Choichun moved to Germany in 2002 to write music, perform and collaborate on an audio/visual project based in Koln. Upon the invitation of a gallery in 2006 she returned to New York. Most recently Choichun has been featured in two solo exhibitions at JLA Baxter House in Manhattan and will take part in a group showing in Hamburg in November 2008. Choichun currently lives in Brooklyn, NYC.
Artist Statement
http://www.choichun.com/artiststatement.html Our lives are as long as we remember. Our memories are imbedded in us like DNA. But what of lives that through trauma or age have lost memory? What of the interplay of conscious thought and the sub-conscious? Which one really drives the show? My paintings are like rorschach tests in reverse, a psychological diary of that moment in time, an investigation of the relationship between past and present, reality and illusion and in effect a blue print to the past self. Through the symbolisms revealed, and the stories or objects we project into the abstract, we expose another layer of ourselves and in turn provide clues to what may not be fully aware. My paintings are simple traces of that activity, void of any meaning, but imbedded with the years of experience that shapes us, yet also holds us hostage.
Choichun never paints from sketches but instead allows the process and medium dictate. Each application is an expressive gesture evoking the emotion and inner psychology of that moment, a conflicted excavation of what may be hidden or imagined. The script like lines emerge as a non-cognitive language or what she has come to identify as 'glyphs' - a pictographic personal alphabet; where 'glyphs' document the days, weeks and months spent on a piece. The one actual reference that Choichun can identify in her work after the fact springs from her background in music and her fascination with its chaotic notes and interpretive patterns. These can be seen in the work's fine, rhythmic and frenetic lines as well as in the heavier, poured-on, black & white 'mono-glyphs' which overtake the paintings like visual representations of a sound. Choichun paints on both wood panels and canvas, using liquid acrylic, aerosol, oil bars and thread . With sticks, brushes, trowels and vessels: applying the paint and then scratching through the layers to reveal what is underneath, scripting with ‘glyphs’ throughout, painting over, sanding down and repeating this process until an image is revealed or another is hidden.
1. Process + Methodology. Dean Russo chats with See-ming Lee (SML) and Mac Farr (MMF) about the process and methodology in creating his mixed media paintings. The artist also mentioned interesting aspects of how the economy fundamentally changes the way he works.
4. Artist Toolbox. Touring Dean Russo's artist studio was an interesting experience, as I haven't really met any pop artists in person before. Here we find many interesting tools not commonly found in an artist toolbox: stencils, spray paints, etc. It's quite a wonder to see, but there are also the familiar tools like color pencils and pastels.
5. Process. Most people like to see the end result, but I prefer seeing the process. I believe that process is an important part, without it you cannot have the result. During our interview, Dean told me about his entire process in creating his mixed media paintings, as long as I don't record it nor write it down. As such, I cannot really write about it either but all I can say is that I find it very interesting — that an artist workflow is not far from that from designers (my primary profession).
6. Dean Russo's mixed media paintings include many iconic public figures, but interestingly also many cats and dogs — many of which are commissioned work. You can purchase his paintings at his Etsy site. Most items are priced around $69 depending on their sizes, which is quite a bargain for original artwork — it's not uncommon to find fine art prints asking for more than that these days so 1/1 editions at that price is a great deal!
Olek was born Agata Oleksiak in Poland and graduated from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland with a degree in cultural studies. In New York, she rediscovered her ability to crochet and since then she has started her crocheted journey/madness.
Here's my video interview with her the day we first met:
"I think crochet, the way I create it, is a metaphor for the complexity and interconnectedness of our body and its systems and psychology. The connections are stronger as one fabric as opposed to separate strands, but, if you cut one, the whole thing will fall apart.
Relationships are complex and greatly vary situation to situation. They are developmental journeys of growth, and transformation. Time passes, great distances are surpassed and the fabric which individuals are composed of compiles and unravels simultaneously."
Olek's work has been presented in galleries from Brooklyn to Istanbul to Venice and Brazil, featured in "The New York Times", "Fiberarts Magazine", "The Village Voice", and "Washington Post" and drags a tail of dance performance sets and costumes too numerous to mention.
Olek received the Ruth Mellon Award for Sculpture, was selected for 2005 residency program at Sculpture Space, 2009 residency in Instituto Sacatar in Brazil, and is a winner of apex art gallery commercial competition. Olek was an artist in an independent collective exhibition, "Waterways," during the 49th Venice Biennale. She was also a featured artist in "Two Continents Beyond," at the 9th International Istanbul Biennale.
Olek herself however can be found in her Greenpoint studio with a bottle of spiced Polish vodka and a hand rolled cigarette aggressively re-weaving the world as she sees.
The End of the Trail by Fernando Souto at Smack Mellon / 13th Annual DUMBO Art Under the Bridge Festival NYC 2009: Part 7 of 10 / Art + Artists (10/16/09) [View | Hide]
Also showing at Smack Mellon right now is the series titled The End of the Trail by Fernando Souto. I thought taht it would be odd to photograph someone else's photographs so I decided to do a video of the opening reception instead — you can call this the art + art lovers remix!
“My parents emigrated from Uruguay to Australia when I was eighteen months old. With my extended family still in Uruguay, I never had the opportunity to really know my relatives, particularly my grandmother, who always seemed to be really old to me. The brief, scrambled, international phone calls throughout my childhood did little for me to understand who I was and where I had come from.
In 2002, my grandmother turned one hundred years old and I got a brief opportunity to spend some time with her. Looking at family photographs and listening to the stories of her childhood inspired me to start this photographic project titled, The End of the Trail. During my stay in Uruguay, I set out to photograph the essence of her stories and to gain a greater understanding of my heritage. My thoughts of ranch life were mostly filled with romantic ideals of freedom and independence. I had no concept of the harsh environment that the ranchers lived and worked in, and how the intense solitude defines them. At that moment, I decided to immerse myself in their day-to-day lives, pulling from these experiences to create a unique perspective of their fading culture.
From my initial trip to Uruguay in 2002, my interest in this project evolved, and I decided to expand into other countries where ranching had a significant presence in the culture and traditional working techniques still existed. Through extensive research I decided upon seven countries that had adapted the original working techniques of the Spanish Conquistadors and established a ranching heritage that spanned centuries. Those countries include Spain, Mexico, the United States, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Australia.
To date, I have covered cattle ranches in central Australia, Uruguay, Montana, Nevada and Wyoming. My plan is to complete this photographic series, which would include south Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Mexico and two additional regions in the United States. I had never intended for this documentary to be a weightless visual record, but an enduring photographic series that is told on the faces of the people that live and work in this unique global culture.”
Fernando Souto currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Born in Montevideo, Uruguay in1972, Souto immigrated with his family to Sydney, Australia in 1974. Before studying photography at The Fashion Institute of Technology in 1994, he apprenticed with a Sydney-based photographer specializing in black & white printing. Originally planning on becoming a commercial photographer, he pursued assisting work with location-based portrait photographers throughout the late nineties. In 2002 Souto began his long-term project titled The End of the Trail, a humanistic story of the contemporary cowboy that spans seven countries. This series is shot on film and printed using traditional black and white gelatin papers. In 2008 Souto was chosen to attend the Review Santa Fe and exhibited his work at the Michael Mazzeo Gallery (NYC). Recently Souto was granted an emerging artists award from Photo District News for his work on The End of the Trail.
FASTFORWARDFOSSIL: Part 2 by Ellen Driscoll at Smack Mellon / 13th Annual DUMBO Art Under the Bridge Festival NYC 2009: Part 6 of 10 / Art + Artists (10/15/09) [View | Hide]
Next we went to Smack Mellon for the artists' reception for two solo exhibitions. The first is Ellen Driscoll's installation FASTFORWARDFOSSIL: Part 2.
1. Installation
Composed of thousands of discarded plastic bottles collected by Ellen Driscoll, FASTFORWARDFOSSIL: Part 2 takes a critical look at the environmental and human damage inflicted by the oil and water industries in the last two centuries on regions as diverse as Nigeria and the United States.
Artist Statement. “This installation is a continuation of a multi-year series which explores the dynamics of resource harvesting and consumption. This part of the series focuses on oil and water. Rising at 5:30 AM, I harvest #2 plastic bottles from the recycling bags put out for collection on the streets of Brooklyn. For one hour, one day at a time, I immerse myself in the tidal wave of plastic that engulfs us by collecting as many bottles as I can carry. The sculptural installation for Smack Mellon comprises 2600 bottles transformed into a 28 foot landscape. Constructed solely of harvested #2 plastic, the sculpture collapses three centuries into a ghostly translucent visual fugue in which a nineteenth century trestle bridge plays host to an eighteenth century water-powered mill which spills a twenty-first century flood from its structure. The flow contains North American, Middle Eastern, and African landmasses (sites of oil harvesting and their consumer destination) buoyed by a sea of plastic water molecules. The piece looks back to eighteenth century American industry powered by water, and forward to the oil refineries of the Niger Delta, site of prolonged guerilla warfare against oil corporations and the source of over fifty percent of crude oil for the United States—the oil that produces the plastic within which our privatized water is currently bought and sold.”
This installation is so gigantic that it was hard to photograph and examine the detail at the same time, so I created a video fly-through so you can experience the piece to approximate my own experience with the piece:
Artist Statement. “The wall drawings in the exhibition are based on a close study of the inner workings of an oil refinery. By using huge shifts of scale between the macro and the micro, they depict a dystopic future based on rampant oil consumption. An oil rig shares the horizon with ocean fires and garbage scows, mega shopping malls are abandoned to spontaneous communities of slums, and a refugee camp is inundated by the waters of a melting glacier. The worlds in the drawings are drained of color, but filled with the flux and spillage of a potentially chaotic future.”
Ellen Driscoll is a sculptor whose work includes FASTFORWARDFOSSIL: Part 1 at Frederieke Taylor Gallery, Revenant and Phantom Limb for Nippon Ginko, Hiroshima, Japan, The Loophole of Retreat at the Whitney Museum, Phillip Morris, As Above, So Below for Grand Central Terminal (a suite of 20 mosaic and glass images for the tunnels at 45th, 47th, and 48th Streets), Catching the Drift, a restroom for the Smith College Museum of Art, and Wingspun for the International Arrivals Terminal at Raleigh-Durham airport. Ms. Driscoll has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bunting Institute at Harvard University, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Massachusetts Council on the Arts, the LEF Foundation, and Anonymous Was a Woman. Her work is included in major public and private collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of Art. She is a Professor of Sculpture at Rhode Island School of Design.
J. F. Bautista / 13th Annual Art Under the Bridge Festival NYC 2009: Part 5 of 10 / Art + Artists (10/15/09) [View | Hide]
I met J. F. Bautista (BAP) towards the end of my tour of the Brooklyn Art Project headquarter.
Three of his paintings from the series Mutant Organic Architecture were seen at the office (the three black and white paintings on the left):
So what are they?
Artist description: this project is about the absolute mutation of our metropolis, reversing the process of evolution and turning things inside out. The end result is the unfolding of fantastic new architecture, and it draws whomever into the depths of a gigantic, dark, strange and absurd morphed grimy variegated skeletal, organic living reptilian defined as Organic Mutant Architecture or New York Modern in reverse.
Or if you prefer plain English like I do, here's a video of the artist talking about his own work:
J. F. Baustista is an architect by profession and he works with his paintings in his free time. His art and architecture portfolio can be seen at his web site at jfbart.com.
1. James carries a Moleskine with him and does quick ink drawings on the notebooks as he rides the subway. He applies watercolors to them afterwards. This mixed media painting titled si ves algo II, was created based on his Moleskine sketches.
2. Subway Moleskine Sketches
3. More Moleskine sketches
4. Tools matter. James' weapon of choice for his Moleskine sketches: the Rotring rapidograph, for its ability to draw very fine lines as well as its archival quality.
5. Moleskine lovers rejoice!
6. Mixed Media Painting: ContinentalDivide lr by James Cospito. 3,500 USD. Available for purchase at artist's website.
7. Artist Toolbox: lots and lots of clamps!
8. Artist Toolbox: wild array of paintbrushes.
9. Still Life Drawing (Detail).
10. Still Life Drawing (Detail). I thought that the blue marks are interesting bit. I didn't know that it was James' work when I photographed these originally so I did not inquire as to their function, but they add an interesting accent to the piece:
Brooklyn Art Project is a free social network for artists, collectors, and art enthusiasts. Since its launch in 2007, it has had 5500+ members from over 44 countries featuring over 44,000 artworks and 800+ short films and videos. James Cospito, founder of BAP, talks about the site and the art seen at their office in this mini video interview:
1. River City Ransom Street Fight 18" x 24" (457mm x 610mm) by Adam Shub (Facebook / SML Flickr). Adam is an artist in New York. He is currently working on a series of paintings on arcade video games. This painting is available for sale at $350 USD. To purchase it, visit the artist's portfolio site at artbreak.com/squarepainter.
2. More paintings by Adam Shub
From left to right: Adam ShubMike Tyson Gets Pwned 18" x 24" 350 USD; Mega Man 2 Intro 18" x 24" 350 USD; Contra Opening 36" x 28" 600 USD. Bottom painting origin unknown. Leave a comment so I can give them proper credits!
3. Digital Painting by (unknown artist: if you know who the painter is, let me know so I can give them proper credits)
4. Still Life Drawing (Detail) by James Cospito (Brooklyn Art Project / Facebook / Flickr / LinkedIn / SML Flickr / Twitter). James is an artist, painter, photographer, illustrator, designer in New York City. He is also the co-founder of Brooklyn Art Project.
5. Paintings by Mey Veral, Soule and Collaborative Drawings from BAP Member Meetups.
6. From top left, clock-wise: Organic Mutant Architecture paintings by J. F. Bautista (jfbart.com); drawings + paintings (data unavailable. Leave a comment below if you have additional info. Thanks!)
7. LiAnne Cospito (Facebook / LinkedIn / Twitter). So what do the administrative staff at Brooklyn Art Project HQ do all day? Facebook, it appears.
Ruza was born in Croatia. Ruza Bagaric obtained her MFA in painting from the New York Academy of Art in 1996, and currently works and lives as a painter in New York City. As you can see from her portfolio site at www.ruzabagaric.com, she is interested in painting cityscapes, landscapes and still life. But her passion of late is human figures. She thinks that human beings are "spooky entities" and she aspires to explore the "strangeness of human beings."
During our conversations with, she mentioned a fascinating opinion regarding the relationship between art + music, artists vs musicians:
I have lived in Dumbo for the past 6 years, and it is only until very recently that I don't get a confused look from New Yorkers when I told them where I live. DUMBO (Wikipedia), an acronym for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, is a neighborhood in the New York City, New York borough of Brooklyn. It encompasses two sections; one located between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, which connect Brooklyn to Manhattan across the East River, and another which continues east from the Manhattan Bridge to the Vinegar Hill area.
Until the 1890s, it was primarily a manufacturing district, housing warehouses and factories that made machinery, paper boxes and Brillo soap pads. With deindustrialization it began becoming primarily residential, when artists and other young homesteaders seeking relatively large and inexpensive loft apartment spaces for studios and homes began moving there in the late 1970s.
When the luxury condos started to go up due to the outrageous rent in Manhattan, the neighborhood in Dumbo became a really fun place to live in. When I go out for dinner, usually sitting at the bar at Superfine, next to me are people who belong to either one of these categories: artists, construction workers or the filthy rich. The clash of profession and social status makes for *really* interesting conversations, and this is also perhaps why the art coming from this neighborhood has a unique personality of its own.
Every year, Dumbo Arts Center organizes a three-day multi-site neighborhood-wide event called the Art Under the Bridge Festival. This is an event where artists open their studios so you can look at their work and chat with the them in a fun and casual setting. This year I went with Mac Farr (MMF) and found many inspirational work.
I took so many photos and videos during the festival that it took me 2 full weeks to process them. They are finally all done. All 109 photos and 12 videos in their own Flickr set.
Because of the amount of content, I will break the artist interviews into their own posts, but here are some highlights as well as non-artist specific shots during the day:
2. 100% Acrylic Art Guards (crochet / textile / wearable sculpture / public installation) by Agata Olek (Facebook / Flickr / SML Flickr). Check out her portfolio at http://agataolek.com
8. Painting: River City Random Street Fight by Adam Shub (Facebook / SML Flickr). Adam is currently working on a series of paintings on arcade video games. You can check out his portfolio at http://www.artbreak.com/Squarepainter
12. Collaborative Installation: I left this here for you to read by Tim Devin (SML Flickr).
13. Full-block long graffiti in Dumbo. Since it's graffiti, the artist is unknown. But if you know who did this, let me know so I can give them proper credits!!! Panoramic photography stitched together using three RAW files.
14. Untitled Forms. Not entirely sure if this is a deliberate installation of sorts, but it's interesting to me. Filed under my Abstracts and Forms series.
15. Unitled Forms. Yet another 'mystery' find at the Rabbit Hole Studio where I cannot tell if it is part of the show or not. But it's interesting to me. Filed under my Forms series.
16. The always cheery Mac Farr (Facebook / Flickr / SML Flickr) aka MMF in the SML Universe is the best guy to go art-hunting with. MMF also participated in many artist interviews, which was great because the ADHD-afflicted SML speech is barely comprehensible in many instances!
17. Interestingly there were many weddings taken place on the same day during the festival.
18. The bride and groom was so excited when they saw me snapping them. But I know that with the reflection on the window it is simply impossible to get a good shot. That said, the reflection of the bridge and pedestrians on the road create a really interesting shot so I photographed it anyway. I call this a one-frame collage!
19. Walking around we found a sculpture made with cardboards and other paper waste materials. Particularly interesting is their forms which resemble tree logs, the same materials which create them to begin of. It's an interesting before/after dialog within itself about paper, trees and the effect of modern industry with regard to the environment.
20. How fitting it is to find the perfect frame of lines under the Brooklyn Bridge at a festival called Art Under the Bridge!
And that sums up my experience with the festival. I had a great time! As stated above, interviews with the artists will be posted in their own blog posts as otherwise this blog post, which is already *very* long would be unbearably long to read!
Meta Search xxx="http://wiki.seeminglee.com">SML Wiki so I can track people and things more easily.
This is great until I started writing very long description of photos on Flickr after realising that photos are often referenced as a singular entity — that while you would prefer that people check out the entire set to see the description of the info, most simply don't have the time and patience to do look at them.
For the sake of human browsing, including long description (for example, full bio about an artist that I photographed) in everyone of my photographs about them is useful when items are referenced singularly, but then if you know what you are looking for and wish to cluster them in a single place, the content become repetitive and tired after a very brief instant.
This is why I created a baby version called Meta Search xxx="http://wiki.seeminglee.com/people:agata-olek">http://wiki.seeminglee.com/people:agata-olek
And you can compare the difference between its grand daddy and itself here:
I was riding the M train last week and I spotted this new LED signage system. I am not sure how new they are as I have not seen them before, but then since I mostly travel on F train (or actually mostly cabs...), I don't know if these are really spanking new or just that I have not been riding on the line.
The photograph alone does not show how it is a superior improvement to the previous system, so I did a video of it to show you how it works:
The signage is split into two halves. On the left side of the panel shows where the train is at while the train is stopped (with a flashing bounding box), and when it's in motion, it displays the next stop. The name of the next 10 stops, in yellow, are displayed to the right of 'you are here sign post'. Each station name is accompanied with designation in green which shows the additional lines you can do an interchange. A red handicapped icon designate whether there it is a station equipped with accessibility access.
At the end of the right half of the panel shows the last stop of the train, and the LED displays loops through the rest of the stop in multiple of 10s, so you can get a glance of all the stops while keeping the display small enough so as not requiring an extra large panel for the longer lines.
This design is smart, efficient and very usable. I am very glad that MTA enlisted a clearly great design team for this project. When MTA upgraded the signage on the 4/5/6 a few years back, I thought that those signage is a nice upgrade but cannot imagine how flexible it can be when the map was essentially a static print-out. This new system not only is more efficient, but it makes it portable to any line without the need to upgrade the hardware. When new lines are introduced, it can quickly adapt to the new environment, so kudos to the design team, whoever you are!
Newmindspace NYC: People Photographing People Photographing People (9/26/09) [View | Hide]
It's a commonly known fact: photographers hate being photographed - but I love photographing photographers. So when Newmindspace announced the People Photographing People Photographing People event, I obviously went and as expected had lots of fun!
Newmindspace was founded by Lori Kufner and Kevin Bracken (Facebook). Their mission is to reclaiming public space, inventing new ways of having fun, and creating community. Since 2005, they have been hosting free events in cities around North America, and creating free, fun, all-ages events like parties on subway cars, public pillow fights, giant games of capture the flag on city streets, massive bubble battles, public art installations and much more.
Photography alone probably doesn't do the event justice, so I used my P+S and recorded the insanity for your pleasure. The quality is not too great, but you get the idea.
Here are some highlights of what I shot. Be sure to check out full set on Flickr as well.
Keith Dorsch is a filmmaker in New York. He graduated from C.W. Post at the Long Island University in 2008. He is currently working as a filmmaker and editor for ad agencies.
Human Hasselblad popped in out of nowhere and surely got much deserving attention.
Shirley Yu (Facebook / Flickr / Twitter), seen here with Keith Dorsch, is a young aspiring photographer. You can check out her photography portfolio at photobyshirley.carbonmade.com. Shirley is now using this photo as her Facebook profile photo. SML Thank You!!!
You don't need expensive equipments to do good photography. Nick Roach happilly snapped away with his camera phone. He learned about the event from Timeout Magazine.
Francisco Javier Andaur (Facebook / Flickr) aka Fran Juan DeMarco with friend jointly created this two-eye robot.
Francisco Javier Andaur (Facebook / Flickr). Francisco is now using this photo as his Facebook profile photo. SML Thank You!!!
Friend of Francisco Javier Andaur. These two share the same Flickr account. Not sure how they are related though!
Yepo Kayeebo (Flickr) was traveling from London. At the beginning of the event, I was disappointed at how little poeple showed up. It was she who pointed me to the right direction where the crowd is. For this, SML Thank You!
I met Novaid Kahn (Facebook / Flickr) originally on Flickr. I told him about the event when he generously drove me to photograph the Eastern State Penitentiary a couple of weeks ago.
Donald Hanson (Flickr) showed up with Novaid Kahn. He noted that we both liked the same lens: Canon EF 24-70 f2.8L for everyday shooting.
Lloyd Leary is a personal trainer in New York who also plays the classical violin.
Michelle Humphries (Facebook / Flickr) and Alan Gordon (Facebook) are both students at NYU, class of 2011. I was interested in how Michelle came up with her FlickrID:carvinkeeper12 meant. She explained: carvin = skiing, keeper = soccer, 12 = her favorite number.
Alan Gordon (Facebook) is originally from New Orleans. His t-shirt says "reNew Orleans". Alan explained to me that his t-shirt was made after Katrina, and is designed to be a simple combination of the word renew and his hometown of New Orleans. he wears it to remind people that the work isn't done yet and said it's the "right way"!
Alan Gordon (Facebook) is now using this photo as his Facebook profile photo! SML Thank You!!! Love to SML Love to him!
At first I thought that John Carbone was shooting a Canon 1D when I spotted him holding onto a huge Canon body with a big gun but was wondering why someone would be shooting with a 1D with a non-L glass. Then I learned that it was a Canon Rebel with battery-grip. Imposters!!!
The whole thing was a geek porn galore. People shoot with films, digital with makes of cameras from Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, Sony and all kinds of strobes.
SML Me: Last but not least, I got to see what I look like when I was doing my thing!
See-ming Lee (SML ME!) interviewed Keith Dorsch. Photo by Novaid Kahn (Facebook / Flickr)
Possibly the best photo of me doing photojournalism! Photo by Novaid Kahn (Facebook / Flickr)
The truly evil SML in action. This photo was originally titled "guy with watch" by Shirley! Photo by Shirley Yu (Facebook / Flickr / Twitter)
This is the first time I have participated in a massive public art installation, and I will definitely look forward to future events!
Today is my birthday so naturally I am getting greetings all over the globe. This is my thank you card to all of you!
I am a believer in thanking people. As an ADHD-afflicted geek, I have often forgotten the kindness and generosity from others, and I make a point of recording them so I can search through them.
I started a blog called SML Thank You (http://thankyou.seeminglee.com) a while back but it was getting a bit challenging to maintain. It also become a bit insane to keep too many blogs so I have since imported them onto SML Pro Blog and labeled those items as SML Thank You.
But what about all those people I've thanked which did not appear on Twitter. I need to find those thanks, and perhaps in comments area on other places. So I built a Yahoo Pipe to do it:
Update 01: 2009-09-25 Since posted the design on Flickr, I noted that the 500x500 version does not really work as a comment to thank you, so I created a mini version for 'thumbnail' comment use. Thanks for visiting the blog! Here's my thankyou card just for you!
Synergy: an unfocused approach to learning about oneself (9/24/09) [View | Hide]
A lot of people prefer web destinations to have a very specific focus, but it appears that I am inherently an unfocused person, and therefore my web destinations also are rather unfocused.
In the beginning, SML Pro Blog was just the SML Blog, and it contains pretty much everything that my life contains, until I am getting some negative feedbacks from professional colleagues who wish not have their photos appear next to blog posts relating to my gay activities, which is when SML Gay Blog was born. Then some folks who got really annoyed with my massive photography output, and so SML Photo Blog was born. Then after a while I started to have so many blogs that I cannot keep track on, so I have now reconsolidated the SML Thank You and SML Notebook back into this blog, because it soon became *very* challenging to manage them all.
Conversely, I take a very-me approach when it comes to content on Flickr. I post pretty much everything onto it: my designs, my photography, my hacks, my screenshots, and source of inspiration all bundled up together. It's me, after all. By not separating these data, I gain a much better insight into which of my stuff is good and 'interesting' to folks.
I know far too many people who keep a separate Flickr profile for their "professional" life vs their "play" life but when I view the content, I can't tell the difference and reason as to why they are separate. Consolidation is good. Just filter, and tag. I think that via my very unfocused postings, I have successfully cross-marketed my designs to people who came to my stream because of my abstract photography; or that they discovered that I am much much more than a photojournalist who run around events.
Because of this content cross-pollination, I also learned based on my data that what people find to be interesting is also very all-across the board, and that is interesting to me. I made screenshots of the top 5 pages from the 500 Most Interesting Flickr (set) and bundled them together, and it provides a great sign-post as to where I should be headed next.
Actually these are photography disguised as paintings. I have always wanted to paint but I lack the drawing skills so I try my best to create what I wish to do through the lens of my camera.
Slow Photography at Sunday LES NYC (9/24/09) [View | Hide]
Thanks to the wonderful and fabulous Julien Aleksandres (Flickr:DitMartian), I went to Sunday LES' opening reception for a group show titled Slow Photography:
The phrase, "slow photography," might conjure images of large format cameras or glass plate techniques; even the idea of loading film may seem slow considering the efficient speed in which photographic images are created today. However, another connotation may not allude to a technology so much as it does a sensibility — an approach to understanding particular roles that photographs can play, a methodical and drawn out way to produce paintings. The three artists in Slow Photography use photography as a starting point, taking exorbitant amounts of time to produce ostensible "photos": paintings that appear to translate a photographic record, yet are something else entirely. — Horton & Liu press release
Becker's painting can best be described in geek-speak as a mashup:
...in that they appear to depict an actual space, however, they are in fact a seamless combination of photographs from disparate landscapes. These photos, along with impressions from the artist's memory, create his measured, deliberate and lonely paintings. Becker has an acute disquiet that portrays the landscape as eerily strong and resilient, but never heroic. The photographic vantage point often acts as a subtle overseer, a reminder that the camera has forever distorted how anyone sees nature.
More information about the show
Slow Photography Sep 17 - Oct 11, 2009
Sunday LES, 237 Eldridge Street, New York, NY 10002
