whew. Coming down from the nausea of performance anxiety. My performance at the Prelude Festival went well. Many thanks to Kate Hartman for helping out running the software and Frank, Ruth, and Andy for making things run so smoothly. Below is a link to the pseudo-documentation of Retrograde02.

- click to [...]

I saw a sign on the subway today and I couldn’t stop reading this one line over and over again.

“You will not be left alone.”

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The beach, originally uploaded by pecanjackson.

Sent from my iPhone

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Yeah, Saturday adventure!!!, originally uploaded by pecanjackson.

Sent from my iPhone

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I promise I didn’t do nothing, originally uploaded by pecanjackson.

Sent from my iPhone

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Go pro!!!, originally uploaded by pecanjackson.

Sent from my iPhone

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Tv stand, originally uploaded by pecanjackson.

Why do feel weird about buying furniture from target? Especially when
it absolutley fits my needs. If they are gonna charge $200 bucks they
should at least make the furniture section look [...]

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Singing, as usual, originally uploaded by pecanjackson.

Sent from my iPhone

Lost is Transition is a project that addresses social, environmental and technical issues associated with audio and video content that exist in older formats.  Media in older formats such as VHS, Hi 8, Laser Discs, LP’s, Audio Tapes currently exists in many homes where they have been shelved or are slowly being thrown away.
This project [...]

Some Old Media Players

So I’m in Amsterdam at this festival called Picnic. It is very corporate and very heavily-sponsored…but also incredibily well-organized and just, well, beautiful! As far as conferences go. There was definitely some extra effort put into making sure the food is good, the setting is lovely, the tech is there…all the extras. Here I am [...]

Cruising home from the PICNIC dance party on the back of my rented dutch bike. British Jess hanging on for deal life in the back and Nadya guiding us through canals: “take a right in 800m” (how far is…

My pal Timo made this RFID + Flickr photobooth for the PICNIC conference here in Amsterdam. You sit in the photo booth, it reads the RFID tag in your nametag, auto tags the photos based on who’s in it…

We are tessellating NURBS in a first step to calculate intersection points between curves.

 
#include <CGAL/basic.h>
#include <CGAL/Exact_predicates_inexact_constructions_kernel.h>
#include <CGAL/Partition_traits_2.h>
#include <CGAL/Partition_is_valid_traits_2.h>
#include <CGAL/polygon_function_objects.h>
#include <CGAL/partition_2.h>
#include <CGAL/point_generators_2.h>
#include <CGAL/random_polygon_2.h>
#include <cassert>
#include <list>
 
 
typedef CGAL::Exact_predicates_inexact_constructions_kernel K;
typedef CGAL::Partition_traits_2<K> Traits;
typedef CGAL::Is_convex_2<Traits> Is_convex_2;
typedef Traits::Polygon_2 Polygon_2;
typedef Traits::Point_2 Point_2;
typedef Polygon_2::Vertex_const_iterator Vertex_iterator;
typedef std::list<Polygon_2> Polygon_list;
typedef CGAL::Partition_is_valid_traits_2<Traits, Is_convex_2> Validity_traits;
typedef CGAL::Creator_uniform_2<int, Point_2> Creator;
typedef CGAL::Random_points_in_square_2<Point_2, Creator> [...]

is evolving…it’s taken a bit longer than i’d with a new update but that’s cause building this site has taken a bit longer and more time than i thought it would. anyway there is one coming. in the meantime check out the current installment and let me know what you think.

인생 살아볼수록.. 참 별 거 없다.
그 순간엔 내 인생 다 결정나는 것 같았던 일들도
지나고 나면 결국 별 차이도 없는 결과였던 것.
자조적인 냉소가 아니라
왠간한 일에는 참 아둥바둥할 필요가 없다는 깨달음.

Each year a distinguished jury will award a single $100,000 prize to support the development and implementation of a solution that has significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems in the shortest possible time while enhancing the Earth’s ecological integrity.
…After decades of tracking world resources, innovations in science and technology, and human needs, Fuller [...]

Continuing to blog typographic trends, the new New York City taxi cab logos have been cropping up around town. No… no… I’m not talking about the Garden In Transit project, which is in itself entirely amusing, delightful, and a breath of fresh air. …

Julia Ellis forwarded me this photo of one of my late, great products. It’s is in Mark Morford’s book of Burning Man photos, Hips. Squeal!

I was just re-reading a terrific article about the hundred dollar laptop, or XO as it is now called. It was written by a Kenyan named Binyavanga Wainaina and it views the XO from an African perspective, taken in context with all of the other transformative technology invented by Americans and Europeans for Africans [...]

Hi - I’m in Amsterdam all this week at the PICNIC conference and Come Out and Play festival. Weather is kind of rainy, though city is kind of amazing (haven’t been here since 1997). This pic was taken from…

Nerrrrvous. I’ll be performing a wondrous phonetically-backwards performance piece about everything-in-my-life-ever to kick off the Prelude Festival at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center (located at The Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue (at 34 Street)) on Wednesday the 26th around 8:00pm. The night starts at 6:30 with “a discussion on the process of [...]

It’s basically an open design for actrive RFID:”OpenBeacon is a free design for an active RFID device which operates in the 2.4GHz ISM band…. The intention of this project is to offer a wide range of use cases such as visitor or item tracking and wireless remote control with a free self-contained and low-cost RFID design.”Thanks to Massimo Banzi for the link.

Who’s ready for a great tale of idiocy at the DMV? You know you love it.So, last week I get pulled over on my Vespa and humiliated for having an out of date registration. I get a ticket and a notice to appear in traffic court. Nightmare.I call up the D…

Ben Hopson has a good site detailing his work on his masters’ thesis at Pratt on designing movements.

Email is an asynchronous medium and, as such, I’d like to add a touch more ‘asynchronicity’ to the mix. I’ve waited a good decade for this feature, and since it still hasn’t emerged I’ve decided to photoshop it into the blogosphere in the hopes that the powers that be (hello Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) or an [...]

This weekend I visited the Espeis gallery to see the Helvetica 50 exhibit. In celebration of Helvetica’s fiftieth anniversary, fifty designers were put to the the task of creating 50×50 cm composition to represent one year in life of Helvetica.There ar…

We’re leaving Seattle tomorrow!

By now I think everyone in northern Berkshire county has heard of the ongoing feud between the museum MASS MoCA and artist Christoph Büchel. And now that the case has been settled by the courts what can anyone possibly add to the mix? Well, here we go…

In a September 16th 2007 article for the New York Times Roberta Smith ranted about MASS MoCA’s behavior. Smith states that MASS MoCA, in opening Büchel’s “Training Ground For Democracy” to the public prematurely, covered in tarp and re-titled “Made At MASS MoCA”, has insulted the artist and damaged the museum’s image in the eyes of the art world and the general public. Smith gives MASS MoCA credit for being the first U.S. institution willing to work with Büchel, but suggests they ultimately bit off more than they could chew. Smith also argues that an artist alone should have the ultimate right to say when a work of art is a work of art.

Smith asserts that “The museum deserves to be scathed” because “by opening this show without his assent, the museum has broken faith with the artist, the public and art itself.” That “what is visible above and below the tarps today is barely the skeleton of a Büchel. It’s just a lot of stuff.” Smith continues “You are reminded of Hollywood, where directors (that is, artists) are routinely denied ‘final cut.’ Of course, Renaissance popes often had final cut too.” Of course this isn’t the first time a work of art has been shown altered or unfinished. Finally Smith drags Robert Rauschenberg into the fray by quoting him in support of her “art isn’t art until the artist says it is” argument. Rauschenberg is an artist with whom (we are reminded in the exhibit “Made At MASS MoCA”) the museum worked successfully with to install his mammoth “2 Furlong Piece”.

While I don’t disagree with Smith and others that the “Made At MASS MoCA” exhibit is ultimately a confused mess. Could they make it any harder to find? Do they want me to see it at all? Why is this guard yelling at me for looking at what I was invited to see?

Smith’s view, however, totally disregards the fact that when an artist accepts support from an outside source in the form of money that artist is then obligated to deliver something in return. In refusing to finish his work Büchel has not only bitten the hand that feeds him (and other artists), he has damaged the system that funds the arts and everyone who appreciates art. Büchel’s display of endless ego has hurt not only MASS MoCA as an institution but the entire region. Individuals and businesses of northern Berkshire county, many of whom support MASS MoCA and their programming, have suffered from a drop in visitors to the area because Büchel’s no-show is a profound disappointment on every level. Will these patrons continue to support the arts when the bad taste of Büchel lingers on their palettes?

Büchel is not a Hollywood director being denied his ‘final cut’ because MASS MoCA has given Büchel every opportunity to come back and complete his unfinished business. Unlike MGM, Universal or Paramount, MASS MoCA is a non-profit institution that relies greatly on public funds to produce and display art. There are limits to MASS MoCA’s resources and to their ability to accept a loss. Should they sink themselves so that one unreasonable man can have his way? Hollywood studios are self-sufficient commercial entities capable of accepting an occasional loss, and I might add, rarely do they make valuable art. Even if no public funds were used to produce “Training Ground For Democracy” MASS MoCA invested in Büchel, and he owes them a finished work of art.

Coppola remarked of the famously bad “Apocalypse Now” shoot, “We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane.” Büchel is no Coppola though because ultimately Büchel was not personally invested enough in is own work to get it done. Even if “Apocalypse Now” had tanked at the box office, at least Coppola delivered something to the studio. If Büchel was as truly committed to finishing “Traning Ground For Democracy” as artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude where to completing their massive art project, “The Gates”, Büchel would have found the necessary money to buy his bombed out 737 and complete his grand scheme. Surely if Christo and Jeanne-Claude can raise $20 million for “The Gates”, Büchel can beg, borrow or steal a few grand to complete his grocery list.

Any reasonable person recognizes that when you collaborate with an outside entity the work that is generated will inevitably be a compromise. If Büchel’s visions exceeded what MASS MoCA was able to provide and he could not find areas of compromise in his art then he must either raise the additional funds himself or in the future work completely within his own means. Büchel must also recognize that when you spend money to create on this scale the end result is business as much as art. Just ask any Hollywood director.

Until Büchel proves he is truly committed to finishing this project one way or another, and that this isn’t just another of his stunts against the art establishment, then he isn’t (in my eyes) entitled to say “my art isn’t finished until I say it is.” And until Büchel steps forward to complete his work it will remain “not even art, but simply a compilation of materials” as MASS MoCA contends in their lawsuit. A better fit for a landfill than an art gallery. It’s time to stop blaming MASS MoCA for the failings of an artist to pull it together. MASS MoCA has simply asked the court to provide a way out of this stalemate.

-Matt

citykitties is fostering Crumpet and her newborn kittens. I was lucky enough to get a chance to go over and meet them today. They are 11 days old! And they are all girls, which means that they will all need to be spayed around the first of December. Can you help City Kitties with a small donation? Click here to help spay Crumpet and her babies!

…And I only bring up 9/11 at all because a) I coincidentally happened to just finish re-reading David Foster Wallace’s “The View From Mrs. Thompson’s” today. b) I am extrememly disappointed in how The Events Of are still hanging over this country as we are determined to allow the most ridiculous security measures be taken [...]

hearing from someone from the past after a long silent break is such a mind-stirring experience. it brings up all the buried memories not only around that time, but also all the way through up to today, and make me look back at myself back in the days and how much i have changed over [...]

started a job at Createthe group as a producer/ project manager.
it is a thrilling opportunity for me that almost happened sepedipitiously - the job that seemed so right for me (right timing, right work, right field, right position, and even right location!) called in to me first! -, and i am very excited to start [...]

In the movie i recently watched has a line something like “there is no recipe given to you for your life, and it makes it hard for you to figure out how to live a life. but you just have to know that the best recipe is the one you make.”
so many ways to live [...]

When it comes to reality, it is hard to ignore the real things - money, family, social values – because there are things you need to respect in order to sustain the basic needs in life; to secure a roof over your head, you need a job that pays off your rent. Because no man [...]