bon.champion

To Granddad

2010-04-12T14:23:00.000-07:00

My Granddad, Hilton Hunter, passed away somewhat unexpectedly two years ago while in surgery. I didn't feel really sad until we went to Torch Lake, Michigan, where we go every summer. The grandparents have a cottage up there, and it wasn't the same without him. There are two things I associate with him: his baby blue La-Z-Boy recliner, and his Nintendo.

When my older brother stopped using his NES, he decided to donate it to the cottage, so that whoever was up in Michigan had something to do if it was raining or stormy. Not long after, Granddad started playing Dr. Mario, the tetris-like game where Mario throws pills in a jar and you try to get four colors in a row to make the viruses disappear. He used to wake up every morning at 5, check the weather, and play Dr. Mario. It was the only video game he ever played. If me or my brothers wanted to play a game, we always had to put Dr. Mario back in after we were done. Even to this day, we put Dr. Mario back in.

The other day, I came across this piece that conceptual artist Cory Arcangel did, called Cloud Scroll. It's the clouds from Super Mario Bros. without any of the rest of the game, just scrolling by. Not only do I love the simple gesture of recontextualizing an element of a video game as art, but I can't help but think about Granddad when I see it. Even though it's a different game, the 8 bit pixels floating by and the baby blue sky bring him back.

electronics breakthrough

2010-03-26T12:14:00.000-07:00

I'm in Electronics for Art and Design this semester, which is a really exciting and challenging class. The class culminates at RobotFest, where we'll all be showing our creations, which I'm very excited about. I'm working on a box that takes sensory input which effects the colors of an LED matrix. The LEDs will be exposing a piece of photo paper inside of the box, effectively creating a document of the space which the box sits in.

When I first had the idea, it seemed like a simple enough gesture, but controlling the matrix turned out to be a bitch. Luckily, a pair of engineers who are behind RobotFest came into class on Tuesday. One of them helped me work through some of the psuedocode for my project and ever since then I've been itching to try out and experiment some of my ideas. It's been a busy week, so it wasn't until this afternoon that I was able to sit down and fuss around. And somehow, on my first try, I got it responding! I'm so excited! Here's a video:

The matrix is displaying different colors based on the output of a photoresistor, which reads light levels. As I move my hand over the photoresistor, the matrix responds. I did that!

By the way, you should come to RobotFest!

finished: toledo espana

2010-03-25T12:57:00.001-07:00

I finally finished my website for Toledo, Spain. I put in way too many hours on this thing, so it's a bit flashy. The project was pretty much to develop our jQuery skills, some some of the animations (the fading, sliding, etc) is a bit irritating after a while. Also, I made the background of the site weather dependent. Some code grabs the current weather in Toledo, Spain from Yahoo Weather, and the weather widget and the background change accordingly. It's kind of a useless function, because most visitors to the site aren't going to come back more than once or twice, but it's cool and I like it!

I'm still making some last minute changes based on my crit, but it's essentially finished. Check it out.

ALL CAPS

2010-03-23T17:30:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Recently, an old memo surfaced, written by screenwriter/director David Mamet, to the writing team of (the now cancelled) "The Unit." I assume he was a producer on the show or something. In the memo, Mamet rips apart the lazy writing that had been done, giving pointers on how to actually write drama, not description and information. It's a fascinating take-down of the current state of screenwriting (for television and film) in popular culture, not to mention the memo is HILARIOUS. The symptoms of lazy writing that plagued "The Unit" occur in just about every movie or show that I loathe, but is somehow popular.

For the sake of brevity, I'll just link to the article, but here are some choice excerpts.

“ANY TIME TWO CHARACTERS ARE TALKING ABOUT A THIRD, THE SCENE IS A CROCK OF SHIT...”

"IF YOU DEPRIVE YOURSELF OF THE CRUTCH OF NARRATION, EXPOSITION,INDEED, OF *SPEECH*. YOU WILL BE FORGED TO WORK IN A NEW MEDIUM - TELLING THE STORY IN PICTURES (ALSO KNOWN AS SCREENWRITING)"

The article at /Film.

add this to your rss

2010-03-18T09:33:00.000-07:00

SxSW is going on now in Austin TX, and for the first time this year, they're doing a competition to honor the best in movie and tv title sequences. I love this, because I'm a huge fan of ornate and elegant title design. I can't hate the mediocre Quantum of Solace because its title design was so damn cool. Se7en could have been horrible, and I still would have loved it, because the title sequence is absolutely genius.

While reading a New York Times article on the awards, I found two blogs devoted to the title sequence. The Art of the Title is a fantastic blog that deals with all types of movie and television title sequences. They profile everything from blockbusters (Sherlock Holmes) to little known foreign television programs (Meteo+). Their profiles offer clips of the sequences, in depth analyses, and often great interviews. They are incredibly comprehensive on their coverage. If there is a DVD extra about the title design, they'll link to it. It's fantastic.

The other blog, Forget the Film, Watch the Title does more to archive great movie sequences. Also highly recommended.

movie settings

2010-03-13T23:48:00.000-08:00

For a project in IM 2, we had to work with the Google Maps API to create a site that maps something about us. I chose to map the settings of some of my favorite movies. This means I had to cut out movies that don't take place in the real world (Monsters Inc, The Dark Knight). And I tried to choose movies that have a real sense of place, like Fargo and Amelie. I spent way too much time on this, so it came out looking pretty good.

I'm planning on returning to this later, and adding more movies, building it up as a catalog of my favorite movies (and maybe TV shows eventually).

Open Source

2010-02-25T09:10:00.000-08:00

Lobby Group Says Open Source Threatens Capitalism

I'm not generally an activist in any sense, but when I read something that hits a nerve, I have been known to write an angry email or two. I wrote one such email to day after reading the above article on Mashable about software lobbyists bullying nations that decided to have their governments use open source software to cut costs and boost security. And why wouldn't they? These programs are cheaper and often better than their expensive counterparts. This isn't always true, of course. I haven't seen a Photoshop quality open source image editing program yet. But I'm sure there are database and finance based programs that are great, for free, that governments could use. And now the IIPA says these governments don't "have respect for intellectual property?" Bull shit.

Here's the email I wrote:

To whom it may concern:

As a concerned citizen, I am appalled at your actions against Indonesia, Brazil, and India, alleging that their use of open source somehow harms, or does not have respect for, intellectual property. This is utter nonsense. If a creator decides to make his or her work open to the public to use and alter, that is the creator's decision. It is, in fact, the creator's intellectual property, to do with what they will. The only entity that doesn't have respect for intellectual property and the rights that go along with it, is you, the IIPA. The idea that using open source software, as it is meant to be used, should get a nation on a watch list is absurd. These are underhanded tactics to scare our own governmental organizations (such as the city of San Francisco) into continuing to use expensive, broken products instead of products based on progress and innovation. The open source movement may not have lobbyists, but it has the voice of the people, and as one of those voices, I will not let you and your organization scare the world away from progress in the name of profit.

Bon Champion

2010-02-10T11:53:00.000-08:00

Here's a heat-map for a day of surfing the web yesterday. A mouse tracking program makes a diagram of the position of my cursor over time.

toledo, spain

2010-02-01T19:39:00.000-08:00

The assignment this week for my interactive media 2 class is to redesign the site for a city. We had to pick out a poorly designed (aesthetically and functionally) site and redo it. It was suggested that we choose a location that we had some sort of connection to. I didn't want to do my hometown, Toledo, Ohio, because it has no flavor that I could inject into the design. But then I thought of Toledo, Spain, the city that my hometown was named after, and one of the cities I visited in my trip to Spain in 2006. I found their website:

Needless to say, it's all kinds of atrocious. With my redesign, I'm trying to keep it relatively simple. So far it's kind of boring, but I'm trying to keep my code clean and orderly. Here's what it looks like so far:

If you have any design suggestions, leave a comment, or write on my facebook wall.

by the way...

2010-01-29T19:47:00.000-08:00

I want this.

PAPPELTALKS from vizage on Vimeo.

this is why I go to art school

2010-01-29T19:31:00.000-08:00

Boing Boing has a new Games to Get page. They always recommend the most amazing and elegant games, so I perused the new page. One of the games was called Every Day the Same Dream. I played it and was in awe. It's not so much a game as a small piece of art. I won't say too much more, because it's more devastating and effective to play it and experience it.

anticipation

2010-01-22T20:26:00.000-08:00

in less than five days, apple will unveil their new toys. this may or may not include an update of the iphone and the much rumored tablet computer. I probably won't be buying a computer or iphone in the next few years, so my excitement is a bit tempered, but the geek inside of me is still peeing his pants a little in anticipation. in honor of this event, i'll reblog this great piece by beat poet Gary Snyder about his mac

Why I Take Good Care of My Macintosh

By Gary Snyder

Because it broods under its hood like a perched falcon,

Because it jumps like a skittish horse and sometimes throws me,

Because it is poky when cold,

Because plastic is a sad, strong material that is charming to rodents,

Because it is flighty,

Because my mind flies into it through my fingers,

Because it leaps forward and backward, is an endless sniffer and searcher,

Because its keys click like hail on a boulder,

And it winks when it goes out,

And puts word-heaps in hoards for me, dozens of pockets of gold under boulders in streambeds, identical seedpods strong on a vine, or it stores bins of bolts;

And I lose them and find them,

Because whole worlds of writing can be boldly laid out and then highlighted and vanish in a flash at “delete,” so it teaches of impermanence and pain;

And because my computer and me are both brief in this world, both foolish, and we have earthly fates,

Because I have let it move in with me right inside the tent,

And it goes with me out every morning;

We fill up our baskets, get back home,

Feel rich, relax, I throw it a scrap and it hums.

Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/technology/personaltech/22sfbriefs.html?scp=1&sq=beat%20poet&st=cse

nine beet stretch

2010-01-17T16:03:00.000-08:00

I've recently become addicted to WNYC's radiolab. It is an insanely good podcast with all the great production quality of This American Life, but with geeky science content that ponders the simple, but huge, questions in life.

I just finished the episode on time, where they discuss conceptual artist Leif Inge's sound piece 9 beet stretch. The "9" and "beet" refer to Beethoven's 9th Symphony and the stretch refers to the piece being stretched from 90 minutes to 24 hours.

It is an extraordinarily beautiful piece that builds and builds and never climaxes, waxing and waning in huge crescendos and decrescendos. Fortunately for your hard drive, there is a constant webstream of the piece that cycles every day. Listen to it here.

2010-01-10T14:03:00.000-08:00

So I got a little work done today, but instead of continuing and getting ahead on my to-do list, I decided to procrastinate and make a definitive, ordered list of my favorite movies.

Children of Men
Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind
Monsters Inc
Amelie
The Prestige
Fargo
25th Hour
The Fountain
The Dark Knight
Trainspotting
Pan's Labyrinth
Memento
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
No Country For Old Men
LA Confidential
Anchorman
Toy Story 2
Let the Right One In
City of God
Kill Bill
Being John Malkovich
Fight Club
The Matrix
There Will Be Blood
Raiders of The Lost Ark
Stranger Than Fiction
Back to the Future
The Incredibles
The Lion King
Man On Wire
Big
Diving Bell And The Butterfly
O Brother Where Art Thou
You Only Live Twice
Donnie Darko
The Host
Wall E
Rushmore
Jaws
American Beauty
Milk
The Princess Bride
Howl's Moving Castle
Almost Famous
Knocked Up
The Fall
Juno
The Lives of Others
Finding Nemo
The Departed
Spiderman 2
Lost in Translation
Tell No One
Minority Report
V for Vendetta
The First 3/4 of Unbreakable

my winter project

2009-12-31T10:02:00.001-08:00

I really need to design myself a good personal website, but I don't want to go to all the trouble after only one semester of coding and then have to completely re-do it after I learn the good stuff. So I found a great idea via a web designer named Tim Van Damme. He has created what he calls a business card website. So essentially it's a place to bring together all of your web presence. Sounds like a good starting place for a small personal website. So this is my winter project.

I was hoping to have something done before the end of break (which is still two weeks away!) but that's probably not happening. I'm teaching myself javascript and reteaching myself php, which may take most of my time. So that's why this is a winter project and not a winter break project.

Check out the wall of fame for more Van-Damme inspired business card sites.

twenty four ways

2009-12-24T14:18:00.000-08:00

24ways.org is an advent calendar for web people. This year's edition is over now, but that shouldn't stop you from checking out their 24 up to date tips on staying ahead of the ever-changing game that is web design. I'm using some of the things I learned there to start my winter break project, which I may unveil in a future post.

another interactive installation

2009-12-14T23:37:00.000-08:00

I've got an installation in progress in the lobby of the brown center. contribute by going to the installation itself and coloring a square based on suggestions, or head over to the website and suggest a color.

you.pixel

three frames

2009-11-23T18:10:00.000-08:00

three frames

these are supposed to be animated .gifs but blogger fucked them up. i'll try to find a way to repost them. until then, head to the three frames tumblr and prepare to be mesmerized.

interactive installation

2009-11-14T11:23:00.000-08:00

an interactive video installation rosey albertson and i did for our video one class.

wave goodbye to the rest of your free time

2009-11-10T06:24:00.000-08:00

click the little squares to make awesome music

if you are planning on doing homework in the next two hours, DO NOT click this link

none shall feel the illinoise

2009-11-07T10:46:00.001-08:00

sufjan stevens+aesop rock/outkast/etc=delicious

yum. politics.

2009-11-06T14:51:00.000-08:00

last night, John Stewart did the most perfect impression of Glenn Beck. this is amazing.

on a related, political note, the house of representatives is planning on voting on health care tomorrow. if you support the bill, call your representative and tell them.

http://bit.ly/45mF3X

listening to...

2009-11-04T23:07:00.000-08:00

tomac - another day

first post or whatever

2009-11-04T20:09:00.000-08:00

so I'm finally getting a blog of my own.

here's an awesome site that is featured in the sight+sound+interaction show on the second floor of brown. head over and check it out. it's pretty cool.

essentially the site scans anonymous sources around the internet for your name and creates a live data visualization of what the internet sees in you. as cool as it is scary.