I just downloaded "Sexy Back" by Justin Timberlake.
Does that make me a bad person?
I just downloaded "Sexy Back" by Justin Timberlake.
Does that make me a bad person?
It's an ellipses kind of day. You know, it's not a good day. It's not a bad day. It's just...
An emotion undefined by words. It can only be summed up with three little dots...
So much can fit into those little dots...
It's not that I'm sad. I'm just...
I'm not overly happy, either- just kind of...
Hmm...
More films are coming...
...until you find that you have no cables that work with any of the equipment that you have (despite the fact that you have a lot of cables). In the meantime, you can check out my famous neighbor's pictures that made it onto the local news! That's our house behind the deer!
If you can't be a famous artist, become the muse of a famous artist. Or at least the neighbor.
the days are getting longer and the days are getting longer
yet the hyacinth clouds of mid-winter still brush the mountain peaks
far too low, far too early for sleep, yet far too late for light
In other words, I haven't been able to find the time to get the rest of my films online! Veuillez patienter...
My apologies- I slacked over the weekend! The next film in my series is not an easy one to watch, I must warn you. It juxtaposes a moment of pure joy with one of horror. While there is no up-close imagery of violence or bloodshed, it captures one such moment from a distance- the burning of the World Trade Center towers before their collapse. I felt it necessary to warn any readers who might not want to relive the moment in images (I often fall into that category myself).
(Again, this film is silent. Originally shot on black & white super-8 film.)
"Munphilm" came to me through a dream: I had a great job working with the orcas at a monastery (yes, a monastery with killer whales- what?) I swam with them at night, which was quite frightening. I couldn't see them approaching me and suddenly, my body would lurch through the water. I would find myself tumbling through the air and plunging down to the bottom of the pool... luckily, we can do things like this in a dream and not drown!
One morning, a monk approached me. He handed me a toothbrush and told me to clean the orca pool, brush stroke by brush stroke. I took this duty and found that just as I had made a complete circle around the entirety of the pool, algae began appearing at my starting point. My day became an endless circle of the minutiae of whale care!
The monk in the dream was my friend Phil (hence the title). In this film, I try to explore yin and yang- depth, mystery and darkness interrupted by cuts of smooth, metallic vibrancy (note: you guessed it, this film is also silent - there will be sound in later films, but aren't you glad you don't have to turn the volume down at work?)
I briefly interrupt my film show to announce that tonight is the opening of the Art in Science | Science in Art show at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (DMNS). Yours truly was lucky enough to have a piece chosen for this show (which will be traveling- I will announce venues when they become available) as well as two pieces for the online show. I was interested in how many of the finalists also worked with polarized media. I can't wait to see some of these pieces "up close." I felt that the competition was somewhat slanted more toward "Art in Science" than "Science in Art" (I think I fall into the latter category), but there are some really amazing pieces (such as this one, below, by Marshall Dines).
In this piece, the artist injected "cells" of bubble wrap with paint.
As you can tell, I have been playing with the look of my blog. Please don't hesitate to leave comments if you find that it doesn't perform well for you. My second film, made as Gossamer Conglomerate's twin, is "The Light Touch Dust Nebula." Click on the image below to watch (note- this film is silent):
This film was made by applying thermotropic (changing with heat) paints to decayed film leader and filming the result before the heat of the projector lamp. The color of the paints changes from red to blue with heat. These are the same paints found in mood rings. For more information about this film, please click on the link in the title of this post.
Now that I have my technical wires uncrossed, I plan to post one of my 16mm films here every day for the next few weeks. Although the compression looks much better than I thought it would, I do have to take a moment to say that this is not the preferred format for my films. They are best seen in their original 16mm format in a darkened theatre. Well, not all of us live near an experimental film venue, nor do we have finances at our disposal to rent film prints from places like Canyon Cinema, The Film-maker's Coop, CFMDC (Canadian films) Light Cone, or Le Collectif Jeune Cinéma (though you can click on any of these if you do- they have many great films in their collections). I decided to make my films available online, too. You can also subscribe to my podcast (you'll need iTunes) or check out my blip.tv channel.
Okay, enough. Here is my first film, "Gossamer Conglomerate" (click the image to play- note: this film is silent):
Well, Colorado is in for another storm. Earlier this week, I awoke to winds so strong my ears were hurting from the change in pressure. Today, the temperature has plummeted 20 degrees (Fahrenheit) since this morning and is going to keep dropping as an Arctic front moves through the region this weekend. Don't get me wrong. I love weather phenomena. I used to chase tornadoes when I was a teenager. In fact, one of my favorite cable channels was The Weather Channel. I am a weather geek, but boy, I'm getting sick of being indoors! I guess I prefer my storms to be a little faster...
(From my film "Petrichor." Click image or link to play Quicktime.)
There have been some interesting things falling from (or through or beyond) the sky lately, and I wanted to comment on some of them.
First of all, the weather has put me in a pensive mood. I recently recalled going through bouts of insomnia as a kid. I was absolutely terrified of aliens (if you read my posts below about my early fears, you will understand this). One year my brother and I both got cable television in our bedrooms as a Christmas gift (woo hoo- a kid's dream come true). I found that watching the Weather Channel was the only thing that helped me sleep. While I will acknowledge that the lack of action-packed story lines at 2:00AM might have contributed to this, I must also add that I felt an odd sense of security knowing that I wasn't the only one awake in the world. I think it also comforted me somehow to know that satellites were monitoring the Earth's atmosphere. I thought that if there were UFOs, surely the National Weather Service would see them and alert us all (or at least the person standing in front of the weather map, appearing to hover above us all from his Star Trek Enterprise-like view in the television studio). In a sense, it was almost like verifying God's existence on a physical level: I was being watched from above by wiser forces...
I'm not so sure how safe I feel anymore knowing that there is a bunch of bus-sized space junk floating around over our heads. This sense of unease was confirmed early this week as a "Russian rocket body" fell through the Colorado skies at 6:15 in the morning. I'm sorry I don't have a photo. Most of the images were taken by local news traffic helicopters, so they have a monopoly on the images. I HIGHLY encourage you to click on the link and watch this clip, though- it is incredible.
It is also an incredible example of media stupidity. Thankfully, the video above is silent. When the clip was first released, the news media were calling it a "meteor shower," saying that it was the Quadrantid meteor shower. They then went on to say that the shower is named after an "extinct" constellation. Well, I wrote my first angry "letter to the editor" (I think this is a sign of aging- the older we get the more letters we end up writing).
First of all, I wish meteor showers looked like this! This is clearly something bizarre. From my first viewing of it, I knew it was not a natural object- it was too scattered. It would be highly unlikely that a solid, dense meteor that large would break up in that way. Additionally, it looks a lot like the footage of space shuttle Columbia when it exploded in the atmosphere.
Secondly, there is no such thing as an "extinct" constellation. Yes, the Quadrans Muralis constellation is obsolete, but it didn't go extinct! With the exception of a handful of supernovae, the stars have remained pretty much fixed throughout recorded history! I digress...
Well, I got a response and the web site, at least, was updated. Turns out a Russian rocket body fell from the sky, Chicken Little. Strange how it took NORAD five hours to identify the object, yet they were quick to say that they knew it was coming all along and that we really shouldn't find such a thing remarkable. Huh...
In related...news...I was tickled to hear this NPR report on a UFO sighting at Chicago's O'Hare airport (here is the interviewee's report, as well). Their story pretty much sums it up. Strange!
Tonight I will be missing one of the brightest comets in 30 years: comet McNaught. I encourage anyone in the Northern Hemisphere with a clear view of the Western horizon to take a look right at sunset. I've heard it's spectacular! I've tried to see it several times now, but each attempt has been thwarted by either mountains, bad timing, or dense cloud cover. Damn! I even dreamt about it last night. I don't have a camera in my dreams (well, at least not one that will let me share images in this reality...yet), so I will close this lengthy post with another video clip from my storm chasing video "Petrichor."
I haven't been able to do much of anything lately. One week after the first snow, Boulder was hit with THREE new blizzards that left over one foot of ADDITIONAL snow. Snow is piled up in parking lots in hills so large you could ski down them (this is NOT an exaggeration- people are actually skiing and snowboarding down them). Now we are being hit with yet ANOTHER storm! This one is expected to dump an additional 12-18" on Boulder (that's on top of the foot that was already there from these last storms). The University has been either closed early or closed entirely an unprecedented FIVE times in three weeks. Needless to say, the new job I started three weeks ago has been the easiest I've ever had...
The thrill is gone (no more snowrkeling), and now it's time for some quiet contemplation. Many of these images look better in a larger size. You can download large pics from my flickr page.
First of all, some fractals of nature:
Icicles:
Falling Snow:
And in the darkness:
For the first time in years, we actually got a snow day at the University of Colorado! The plains region was hit by a massive snow storm that dumped almost three feet of snow on Boulder in less than 24 hours!
My little cat wandered out, and although she had seen snow before, she was not prepared for the mounds that surrounded her:
I found that the snow put me in a variety of different moods.
Contemplative:
Artistic:
Um... "Other:"
The full story on that one can be found here:
I've just had to "introduce myself" as a filmmaker for a couple of different audiences. It's always an interesting exercise for one to try to define oneself. The first audience was a foundation from which I am seeking funds, the second was a class of beginning filmmakers. Needless to say, I had to tweak my story to fit each audience. I thought I might share a bit of that biography here and then explain the journey upon which I am about to embark:
I have wanted to be a filmmaker since the age of five. Why? I was terrified of E.T. Fear drove me to my desire!
I guess I should explain that. E.T. scared the living crap out of me. I'm always surprised when I meet people my age who weren't frightened by this long-necked, sickly-looking, Debra-Winger-backwards-talking creature, but I guess most people found him and his creepy smile to be "cute." Yikes. I was convinced that he lived in the downstairs bathroom- the creepy, cold, dark one down the hallway from the roaring washer and drier and in front of the garage (which was full of poisonous brown recluse spiders that bit my mother on the arm- and people think children have irrational fears). We only used that one when we came in from playing in the snow and had to go to the bathroom so badly that we could not hold it to make it upstairs to the "real" bathroom. I might add that my fear for this room was confirmed by an accident involving my father confusing "D" for "R" in the family truck and driving through the wall of the garage. I digress.
My mother noted my fear. It made her a little sad that a child should be terrified of such a touching story. She decided to show me the "behind-the-scenes" clip of the film. She showed me that not only was E.T. just a puppet, but that he was hatched from the creative mind of this guy named Steven Spielberg. While I still avoided the downstairs bathroom (what do parents know, anyway? After all, it looked like Drew Barrymore thought it was pretty real), I was fascinated that something someone had once imagined could become so real to someone like me; real enough to provoke this strong emotional response. I decided right there and then that I wanted to be a film director just like Steven Spielberg.
Another film that stood out in my mind was "Pete's Dragon" (made the year I was born, I saw it much later on television). The concept of "real from imagination" became even stronger when I learned that the dragon was nothing more than a series of drawings! How could this be? I became obsessed with the concept of animation. I made flip books out of my scary biology textbooks (yes, I had some strange fears as a child, but even E.T. didn't like frog dissections) and dreamed of the day I could play with a film camera and make my drawings come alive!
These dreams were quickly snatched from me. My grandfather decided to give his Super-8 camera away and I begged him for it. Even at the age of 10, I knew I could not animate with my father's video camera because it couldn't shoot single frames. He merely told me that I wouldn't know what to do with it and gave it to my cousin (who I'm sure threw it in a closet when he realized a video tape wouldn't fit into it). Besides, he added, it wasn't a toy for girls anyway.
Not a toy for girls? Why not?
This stuck in my mind. Indeed, I only knew of one female director, and that was Penny Marshall. At such a young age, I was not interested in the types of films she made. I was convinced that the only way I was going to be involved in films was to become an actress. As I took absolutely no interest in my appearance, I saw my chances of working in film become quite slim!
Still, I stubbornly held on to my dreams. You can't stop a child's imagination. On the Catholic school playground, I directed the other children in reenactments of Disney cartoons, using those Tinkerbelle read-along books as my script. My mother and father were called in for a parent-teacher conference. While I was doing very well, my teacher noticed some...strange things about me. My desk was a mess. The top was designed to open up to a metal storage tub. I was not using the tub to store my papers and books (which were piled under my desk). I was using the tub to... well...
She opened the desk and my mother recognized it immediately: it was the entire set of the show "Moonlighting," recreated in miniature and clearly labeled. It was a show we used to watch together. One episode stood out in my mind: the detective team is chasing the "bad guys" and suddenly, they wind through the film set (it was a comedy)! They run past gaffers, extras, and cameramen! My mind wanted to fill in the blanks and figure it out. What did that set look like? To my parents' credit, I was not scolded. I was, however, advised to clean my desk.
My brother and I began making movies with a borrowed video camera. I would "direct" and my brother and his friends would "star." The stories usually involved dinosaurs or space travel. I became famous among his friends for creating "dino-vision" and a science lab explosion in the basement (I did get in trouble for that). Of course, I became infamous for ruining their illusions when they took away my creative control! I did things like zoom in on their empty cereal bowls that were supposed to be full of food and exposing the fact that they were eating Air-on-a-Spoon.
Despite our creative differences, my brother and I were tight film partners. We'd watch the same films again and again, trying to memorize the lines of our favorite characters and noting all of the continuity errors. As brothers and sisters tend to do, we drifted apart a bit when he entered high school. My film interests matured slightly. While I still found Sci-Fi fascinating, I also started developing an appreciation for drama. My biggest revelation came when I saw "The Piano." Finally, a film I loved, directed by a woman! If Jane Campion could do it, maybe I could, too...
My obsession with film (particularly animation) continued. Although I was attending the University of Colorado (in state=cheap), I decided I wanted to go to film school. I weighed my options and chose CalArts, where both my interests in directing and animation could be cultivated. I drove out to Los Angeles alone at the age of eighteen...
It's been a while since I've posted. There's an exciting reason for that, and I plan to unveil it soon. In the meantime I just wanted to send out a little announcement that a couple of my films are going to be screened in the San Francisco Bay area as part of the MadCat Film festival:
I must add a rant. While I had agreed that any of my silent films could be accompanied by live music, "Europa" is not at all silent. Its soundtrack actually incorporates Voyager recordings of the magnetosphere of Jupiter- pretty cool stuff. I'm kind of sad that it will be turned off and replaced with something else. I mentioned this twice to the festival director to no avail (with twelve programs, I'm sure she has plenty to worry about- I just let it drop). Still, it's listed as a "silent" film, which gives the wrong impression. It's like billing "Raging Bull" in a comedy program and replacing the dialogue with slide whistles. It's okay, though. I'm usually rejected from women's film programs because my films do not obviously deal with "issues," so I'm glad to be a part of this.
I mentioned this to a friend of mine, who joked and said it "served me right." I imagine he was referring to the fact that because I had agreed to let my silent films be shown with music and thus violated "my" artistic integrity, I had no right to complain. Fine. This is a fairly common view in the experimental film world (which at times- I will take this opportunity to note- can be more rigid than the "traditional" film world from which it claims freedom). Music video is often viewed as the lowest of the low, so musical accompaniment probably hovers just above death. Now, I love my friend and we see eye-to-eye on most things, but I also like music videos. Some of them are brilliant, in my opinion. I also admit that if I could actually compose music, I would probably be a musician, so I admire anyone who chooses music as their canvas. I can play a mean Bartok and sing all the Tori Amos songs I want, but most of my "original" compositions turn into "Mary Had a Little Lamb" after a few measures. I would love to direct a music video for any one of my favorite musicians.
To defend the experimental film world:
A. This isn't everyone's view. It's just a very vocal subset (and don't even mention George Lucas or Spike Jonze to any of them). For the most part, I love my imaginative and supportive experimental film community.
B. I understand their frustration. Many people would rather organize pocket lint than sit through a silent film. These people inevitably ask, "have you ever thought of, like, putting some techno music or something to that stuff?" As if techno will make anything bearable.
Still, I grow tired of hearing that I've sold out every time I find a penny on the sidewalk on my way to a screening. It's exhausting to sell out so frequently and never reap the benefits. At times, I wish I could just sell my screenplay and direct my narrative feature for a few million dollars. That way, when I'm accused of being a sell-out I can at the very least afford to drink a good wine while listening to the accusation! After a good sip of a Châteauneuf-du-Pape, I could just smile, nod, and drift off into my wildly landscaped dream world where I don't have to alphabetize nauseatingly colored file folders all day so that I can afford to paint on strips of film! As it stands now, someone accuses me of selling out because I have a fancy web site and all I can do about it is dig in the cracks of my car upholstery, looking for enough change to by a box of Mac and Cheese! Of course, things have gotten a much better since I've really sold out and taken a variety of jobs that have nothing to do with anything I am interested in. Now I can eat at Qdoba (sometimes).
Many people see the mind-numbing day job as necessary. "Yes, but we've all done that. None of us cares about spreadsheets." Fine. Then we're all sell-outs. Let me design my web site in peace.
Humor aside, this MadCat program looks like fun. The rest of the programs look great, too. I really have no problem having my work integrated into someone else's artistic vision (sound). I wish I could be there to see the results.
I should probably preface this by saying that I am not high, nor is anyone painting, gluing or doing anything else with fumes in my vicinity. That being said...
The other night, I was thinking about time- a normal activity for an astro-filmmaker (especially one who just had to shove a whole story into a single minute of video). I think it's fascinating that we don't really know anything about time, yet it seems to have always been a part of our reality. It's so intangible, yet integral to science, philosophy, art, and life in general. How do you measure it, really? Every form of measurement is pretty arbitrary- every "standard" having been created by humans for convenience more than anything else.
Still, we know it exists. We feel it pass, sometimes painfully, sometimes fleetingly. It seems to be our measurement of reality (manipulation of time being a common way to imply altered states in film and music).
What the heck is it?
I was thinking about all of this while watching my aquatic roommates float in the current of their aquarium. Do they know that a mechanical pump is making this current? Do they even understand what a current is? For them, it is just something that happens- they know it innately from Nature.
I began thinking about fish in the sea. When the current is turbulent, do they understand that it is because there is a giant hurricane blowing over the water and changing the pressure? How could they? It would blow their little fishy minds to see that giant spinning cloud! ("And why," they might imagine, "does such a thing exist at all?") They don't even see that side of reality, except through a shimmering, blurry lens. All they know is the water.
I feel that we live in a similar reality when it comes to time. Time drives our "currents" (oh yes, pun entirely intended), creating pockets of turbulence and calm. What if we are like fish- unaware of enormous vortices of time that drive us while we swim in our sea of "reality." Almost everyone has experienced deja-vu or even "missing time-" phenomena that challenge the "linear time" reality that we know best.
And are there the "dolphins" of our world who can exist in both worlds (albeit temporarily)? Dolphins use the "mysteries of the world above the water" to ensnare their prey. They blow circles of "bubble nets" around schools of fish. The fish, afraid to pass through the strange shiny bubbles, school together while the clever dolphins take turns picking them off.
(Actually, dolphins love playing with "air reality" in water. For more info, see this article from Scientific American. They seem to be very good at manipulating it!)
I think there are dolphins amogst us. Many people throughout history have claimed to have manipulated time in some way or another. There was also Einstein, who presented the concept of time dilation in his relativity theories (time dilation was later proven). Some of the brightest minds have imagined (and even proven mathematically) some strange time realities- like those involving black holes and wormholes.
And then there are us filmmakers. Some of us just like playing with time. I've never met an experimental filmmaker who hasn't liked playing with slow motion, high-speed, or reversed action!
For the dolphin in all of us- keep blowing those bubbles!
Just a quick update:
My neighbor told us that the baby deer were down the street, so we went on a walk to see how they were doing. Not only are they fine (one is quite a bit bigger than the other now), but their mother was there too! Although I am still sad for the deer that was hit, I am relieved that it wasn't her. I was so happy to see her there, nuzzling the necks of the little ones!
I have been researching the Harvard Computers for a while now.
Never heard of them?
I'm not talking about Dell or Mac, I'm talking about Fleming, Maury, Leavitt, Cannon (and that's Annie Jump Cannon, not the imaging company), and later, Payne-Gaposchkin. I'm talking about people. Women, to be precise:
The notion that women "suck at Math" is relatively new. Around the turn of the 20th Century, women were sought out by the director of the Harvard observatory for their mathematical abilities, their attention to detail, and, of course, their relative exploitability. They didn't seem to mind the tediousness of their work, and most of them had no aspirations to do their own research- a job in astronomy was glory enough. Interestingly, though, many of them still managed to make some extremely profound discoveries.
Henrietta Leavitt, for example, tracked variable stars (specifically, Cepheid variables) in the Magellanic Clouds. She discovered a curious pattern- the period of the variable star was related to its brightness. Brighter variables had longer periods and vice versa. She published her findings in the Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College. She continued to study this phenomenon until it could be confirmed that there was, in fact, a direct relationship between the two. This discovery became one of the most important "yardsticks" in astronomy. If you can monitor the period of a star, and based on this relationship, determine its true magnitude, you can calculate (based on how bright it appears here on Earth), its distance. These findings were used to prove that the Magellanic clouds and Andromeda, then thought to be nebulae, were actually distant galaxies and not part of the Milky Way!
Cecila Payne-Gaposchkin was the first person to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard (that's right: first person, not just woman, to get a Ph.D. in astronomy, though she would later go on to become the first female professor there). Her work as a computer was a little more comparable to the kind of work the average graduate student would do (and she had to fight for that). She studied stellar spectra. She was able to (accurately) apply ionization theory to the spectra of stars and relate their spectral classes to their actual temperatures- effectively establishing that Hydrogen was the most abundant element in all stars (before this, it was thought that different spectral classes indicated a presence of different elements- a bit too much to explain here).
If I went on to list all of the important achievements and discoveries made by these women, this post would be too long!
I find it interesting that while I am studying these women, I have become a "computer" myself! Right now, I am using a virtual microscope to search for interstellar dust grains that might be hidden in 40 to 100 out of 1.6 million movies! The project is called Stardust@home. It involves the sharing of millions of images with the general public to help scientists find interstellar dust particles- the largest of which may only be a few microns across. These are the remains of distant stars that have traveled across the expanse of space to our solar system.
The Stardust spacecraft flew through the tail of a comet and then through a stream of interstellar dust particles, collecting bits of comet dust and star dust in tennis racquet-shaped aerogel collectors. Aerogel is some pretty cool stuff. Below, a sample weighing a little over two grams suspends a five pound brick (from wikipedia and NASA):
This is an image of the collector from the Stardust@home web site (note the hand on the left of the image for size comparison):
It's not for everyone. There is a test that you must take and you are frequently presented with "test movies" to keep you on your toes. I've gone through hundreds already, but there are a few folks who have already gone through thousands! Like I said, there will be only 40 to 100 grains in the 1.6 million "slices" of aerogel.
Who better than a filmmaker to determine whether an imperfection is a scratch on the surface of the aerogel, regular "Earth dust" on the surface or something embedded a little...deeper. Furthermore, a woman with a tedious receptionist "day" job (ahem) is all too happy to give some of her time to stardust hunting! Without the help of thousands of people like us, it would take them about twenty years to go through the whole thing! I'm not sure if they are still accepting volunteers at this point, but if you have a keen eye for detail, they need you! Click on the link above to learn more.
So far, I have detected about a dozen candidates, though we won't find out for a while if they are dust particles or not.
I debated over what I was going to write about for this blog-a-thon (organized by girish). A friend of mine told me that she thought some people might want to know the science behind my liquid crystal films, so here we go:
My work is made using a technique known as cross-polarization. This technique utilizes two Polaroid filters which are placed at right angles to one another. Under normal conditions, this blocks out most light.
How?
Most light waves, seen head on, propagate in all directions; up and down, side to side, etc. Polaroid filters work as "prison bars," blocking out all light except that which is propagating in the direction of the alignment of the "bars." This is called polarization. Incidentally, this happens when light is reflected, as well (this is why your polarizing sunglasses block out "road glare" which is reflected, polarized light).
By placing a horizontally aligned Polaroid filter in front of a filter that is vertically aligned, one can create a sort of "light prison" trapping all light between the two filters. To visualize this, see the diagrams below:
When both "jail bars" are aligned vertically, a vertically vibrating light wave can make it through both sets of "bars," while all other vibrations are blocked.
When a horizontally aligned set of "jail bars" are placed in front of vertically aligned "jail bars," the vertically vibrating light wave that makes it through the first set of "bars" will be blocked by the second set, preventing the light from "escaping" from its prison!
Artists are often required to bend the rules. I bend the light waves, liberating them from their polarized prisons!
How?
By using liquid crystals, of course! Liquid crystals and some other materials display a property called birefringence (double-refracting or light-bending) Liquid crystals are materials that are not quite solid and not quite liquid (despite what we are taught in school, there are more than three phases of matter).
Using these "double refracting" materials, I can selectively bend the vertically aligned light waves that make it through the first set of "bars" so that they are vibrating in a horizontal direction and can pass through the horizontal "bars!" Through experimentation and study, I can choose my pallet by choosing the materials I use, the severity of a bend, the harshness of a twist, or the depth of a scratch. In effect, instead of painting with different colors of pigment, I'm painting with different wavelengths (colors) of light waves.
"Enough, chatter, egghead! Show us the results!"
Fair enough:
Stills from…
"The Light Touch Dust Nebula"
From "Munkphilm"
In Light Touch, I used temperature sensitive (thermotropic) liquid crystal paints (available through Edmund Scientific at a reasonable price). This is the stuff that makes mood rings and those rainbow thermometers work. To obtain different colors in "Light Touch," I blew on the paints (and nearly passed out). “Munkphilm” is made from melted plastic.
Stills from "Europa"
This made a HUGE mess! The liquid crystal at play here is soap, which doesn't like to stay in one place for too long! Soap is a lyotropic liquid crystal (changes based on its concentration)
Stills from "The Counter Girl Trilogy"
I unveil my newest films!
From "Snake Oil"
From "Anti-Rides"
From "GWP (Gift With Purchase)"
This is a very special little trilogy for me. This film features three different shades of lip gloss that I got from my job as a makeup counter attendant. This particualr liquid crystal...(drum roll)...cholesterol! Can you imagine using that as a selling point? "Ooh! You'll love our new lip gloss! It contains green tea extract, Vitamin-C and a suspension of thermotropic cholesterol in its chiral nematic phase!" Which, I guess, quite a few of the cosmetics companies employ (click here)!
I have worn it, and yes, it does taste "greasy." Here is its "before" picture (this was the shade I used in "Anti-Rides"):
You can see how nicely it refracts the light...
The images in "GWP" show what this liquid crystalline material looks like when simply lit from above. In "Snake Oil" and "Anti-Rides" the material is cross-polarized to even further isolate and exploit the colors.
If you would like to see more examples, please click on this link to my site (or click on the film image to the right).
Begin shameless self promotion...
So, I found this quirky little company that was holding a film competition:
The deal is: make a video one minute or less in length and use two of their mis-matched socks at some point in the video. If your video gets the most votes between August 2nd-16th, you win their first place prize: $1,000!
That happens to be just about enough to cover the costs of getting prints of my films made and putting them in distribution, so I figured I would go for it (plus, it seems like a good enough company)...
Now today is August 2nd, so I'm trying to get the word out. Check their web site out and watch the movies. I am hoping that you might like mine best ("I Was Left (You may be right)" is the title and my real name is Courtney Hoskins) and give me a vote, but vote for someone, at least (there's something in it for you, too)! My bestest buddy Carl Fuermann has a film ("Sockadoo") there too. I'd be thrilled if he won, as well!
End shameless self promotion...