Nuit Blanche afterthoughts, children

I'm not sure who this little boy is, so if you recognize him, please let me know. He was happy to pose for me, while he was looking at my tabletop anamorph at Nuit Blanche.

So I never did write about how things went with the “homework” performance aspect of Nuit Blanche. Well let’s see… I worked on the (as yet unfinished) Maya model of the virtual baby – manually fixing intersections off and on (mostly on) from about 2pm to midnight and alternated one of my projectors between my laptop and a DVD of one of my short (stereoscopic) films. As soon as it got dark, I pretty much stopped projecting my homework and stuck with the dvd – mostly because the Maya User Interface projected so brightly that it became a distraction and also because, fewer visitors were interested in what I was doing.

Nuit Blanche – preparing the cg model

So I though I would be clever and purchase a 3d model online to save some time and because I dug the irony of baby-shopping (more on that later, promise).

Anyhow, I did save some time but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been considerable intervention and modification to get this into a (first) workable form.  Minor repairs, uv mapping, creating and “skinning” the skeleton and posing took a few days. UV mapping is done for texture mapping and was not really necessary for this production but I’m glad I did it because it offers an alternate way to divide the model into logical sections… (I don’t expect anyone who doesn’t know 3d to understand this stuff – let’s just say it’s all tedious.)

This is the model as it was originally purchased (for about $11 from Linefour.com).

Nuit Blanche 6:00/9:51pm

It is quite remarkable… not only have I been sitting here all afternoon listening to performances, watching and eavesdropping on people looking at my work (very gratifying), but I’ve actually been getting work done on Kappa Garden. I’ve been spending my time working with the CG model that I purchased online… anyhow, this post has become disjointed and I should have hit “publish” because I started this 5 hours ago and in the intervening time have been buys chatting and had to go home to take out the dog… it is now 9:47.

There is spoken word in the cafe, dancing in the “Silent Disco” (participants have headphones), and in the main room (mine) there is a nodern dance troop performing to live vocals. I am in a small room with projected video documentation called “Poetics of Space” of a performance that happened in this very building a year ago.

But back to Kinder/Garden. I have picked up my laptop and abandoned my former post. I am hitting publish NOW,

Nuit blanche 2:34 – 3:01 pm

Nuit Blanche is well underway and I’m about to start work on my Kinder/Garden CG model.The Celtic band ARISAIG is currently performing about 20 feet from me to a small crowd of about 25 and there must be at least 100 people wandering around the building. I have borrowed a friend’s camera but don’t seem to have a cable so sadly cannot upload photos of the event immediately…

So why am I working instead of enjoying this big event? Well first of all I’ve over-scheduled myself this semester. I’m not regretting any of it… love having the opportunity to teach in multiple areas and am enjoying my class and this project. I started this class intending to write a final paper and not do a project. Projects (especially mine) take a crazy amount of time. In addition to research and writing, they are fraught with (usually unpredictable) practical and technical challenges – and highlighting those challenges – making the work process-oriented actually adds to the work and time required. There is the research, the production and (ongoing) documentation. Not that writing isn’t difficult and time-consuming too… but to write, I need time, pen and paper. To make stuff, I need materials, technology and know-how, and often those resources are outside of my control. Not that I’m complaining – I love what I do. However, I’m not sure that projects are always fully appreciated – certainly I never seem to appreciate how much work they take – especially before I start them… well, time to get to work…

Nuit Blanche

Tomorrow (Saturday, February 27th) is Nuit Blanche in Montreal and I’ll be spending the day (and evening) in Griffintown at New City Gas , 141 Ann St (2 blocks east of Peel between Wellington and Ottawa).

I’ve got two anamorphic installations there (last summer’s Kappa Garden from Boundary Crossings, reinstalled in collaboration with artist Margaret Griffin and a tabletop video made this past Fall for Elizabeth Miller’s Media Lab class). Additionally, I’ll be “performing” Kinder/Garden while I’m there… Anxious over chronic over-ambition and an ever-growing list of commitments, I’ve decided the the best use of my Nuit Blanche is to work through it. I’ll be connecting a projector to my laptop to screen live blogging and CG modeling throughout the day. I even have little business cards for the project to distribute.

So stay tuned for more tomorrow… or better yet, jump on the free STM shuttle and join in on  the festivities of this crazy “Let’s put a show on in the barn!”  event.

Kappa Garden at Hybrid Media Gallery, Portland, Oregon, Nov 2009.