Chile Blog

18.June Candlelight Dinner

Today there should be my Pure Data workshop and an Elektronengehirn concert but since the morning a storm and rain are raging over the coast and brought down the local electricity supply. So it didnt happend, the electricity didnt came back even in the night. We bought some candles and had red wine and cheese at the Open City.

Later I could write this blog with the last energy left in the batteries of my laptops. The wobbly internet connection here is done via UMTS sticks and usually in the evening the cells are so crowded that its impossible to do something, but tonight I am the only one in the cell it seems to be. The energy is over now but it was weird fun to type into the netbook at candle light.

videoediting on a netbook with Linux and KDEnlive but without electricity

17.June Exhibition

During the nice day I went to Concon by bus and went up the road at the coast / beachside which I wanted to do for a while. From Open City you can see in the distance some skyscrapers and I wanted to check them out. My only memory from Concon is the raffinery which is impressive from the Industrial point of view but shouldnt be the only memory from the city. In the direction to the skyscrapers Concon changes into a hotel area.

In the evening we show the installation at Oscars Place. I was a bit nervous while doing the final mapping because the video projecter (they call it here Datashow) is in a strange angle and its a bit difficult to input x and y values for each corner. I failed with the third screen on the floor which shows the camera input, but the screen with the 3d realtime graphics and the 2d screen worked.

16.June Setup

During the day we further setup the second screen for the installation. I used the opportunity to wash my clothes at Oscars house. Drying them took some time in the afternoon but I could improved a bit the sound patch in PD.

In the evening we tested the installation and I did some mapping on the new screens. Not really certain about the floor which should show the camera picture which is uses for the motiondetection.

Back the cubical I passed the rest of the night improving my mapping patch.

15.June rust in your hands

The installation at Oscars place, Hospederia Del Errante, should be shown on three screens, hanging in one of Oscars metall sculptures. We dragged one in the house and started to fix a screen foil on it. On these surface I am going to videomap three screengraphics:

the 3D realtime graphics, creating architectural forms with a composite of multiple cubes, the random based generative process is triggerd by motion of the audience
the 2D graphics made with 3 overlaying images creating architectural structures. The animated layers scale and scroll by random, also triggerd by the audience
a third view on the floor with the image from the camera which is used for the motion tracking.

In the night I created the sound synthesis in Pure Data. Its a separate patch which will be run on a second PD instance on the same computer, in this case a netbook. Its known that extensive GEM patches disturbs the sound calculation and its recommended to separate these tasks brutal by having several PD instances running. Communication between the applications will be handeld via the OSC network protocol. The graphic patch also do the motion tracking and tells the synthesizer patch when something happens.

A constant drone is running non interactivly, setting the mood of the installation. When the 3D generative part is triggerd, a granular synthesizer goes through a strange sample I made some days ago when I went shopping. At a Kindergarten they seems to gave each child a random instrument, from some percussions till even an electrical guitar, and each child autisticly banged on the poor instrument as hard and loud as possible, ignoring taste, timing and the neighbour child doing the same. Total antimusic. And it went on for a long while, not just an tuning introduction for an orderd music education.

Anyway, the 2D graphic process triggers an additional phase vocoder going through the same sample but creating a different, low pitched sound. Evil Childs from hell I named that part.

There are sentences you like to hear and some not. An example for latter case is 'Of course we have big spiders here but if they are in your house you just throw them out, with a glass for example. Dangerous are the small ones, their bite can kill you'. Or how about 'I usally kill everything with eight leggs. The big spiders attrack the poisonuos small ones who eats the bigger ones'. Again the cruilty of nature makes me a bit sick and I wonder if we really should support nature or if its preferable to do something against it.

When I arrived back at my Cubicula in the pitch black evening, a big spider awaits me on my door. Yes of course.

14.June The Impossible City

Finally everything comes together. While brushing my teeth in the morning the term Impossible City comes in my mind. Quo vadis Open City? You started as an architectural utopia and alternative way of living 1970, survived the Pinochet regime. Education became expensive in Chile but now we have some student protests going on.

I envisioned an interactive installation creating experimental architecture, a continuation of my Urban Units installation Formgeber I done 2009 with Karsten Drohsel. Also my non realtime 3d graphic I created in Blender for the invitation of that last exhibition of Urban Units comes in my mind:

The lastest Notstandskomitee live performance visualization served as an inspiration and, because its done in Pure Data and Gem, as basis.

Another part / screen should play with overlapping 2D graphics, creating complex urban structures, maybe like my installation City Generator.

13.June Valpariso

Today I went by bus to Valpariso to give a radio interview at Radio Valentin Letelier. It will be broadcasted on thursday and a podcast version will be available which I am going to link in the Chile section on Block4. Between the interview a selection of songs from my various music projects will be played. Ronald Smith is an excellent interview partner and we had a nice chat after the recording about the situation in Chile, education and Open Source.

11.June We made contact

Passed the day with Oscar and his family and later crashed a BBQ party at my neighbours, having a beer and nice chats (but rejecting the burned meat). With an USB UMTS modem I have finally connection to the web today and tomorrow. Cant get it running with Linux, some parts are missing on my laptops so I just can work on Windows but no mails. I tried to get Windows sharing the connection over an adhoc Wlan network which I named hasenfuss, but it didnt work either. But I could create this blog at least.

10.June mapped

During the day I was wandering through the alien landscape of the Open City. Its situated on the coast and you can hear the waves all the time.

Later when the sun set I mainly research videomapping with PD and GEM. The first approach with planes which get rotation, transformation and even shearing proved to be unpredictable and overcomplicated. The order of the transformations is important in OpenGL and leads often to confusing results.

Alternativly I tried to create a 4 vertex polygon and make the vertex editable with number boxes and it works. Now I can map a plane on a surface.

Above my test setup with my netbook, pocketprojector and a found small table which happens to be white (sort of).

Later Oscar helped me to get the oven started and firsttime its working.

Thats how an oven should look like

Its warm now but with the crackling fire in the dark I still feel like a digital cowboy.

9.June Kaltes Klares Wasser

While fighting yesterday with the oven I used all the matches. Today I realized that I need at least one to get the water heater to run, epic fail, no shower for me for today. I washed my hear with cold water, brain is working now, thats certain.

I realized thats outside its warmer than in the Cubicula, I am living in a fridge! So I went to the nearby town ConCon to get some sun and matches for a new trial at the oven.

During the afternoon I checked what I possibly can perform at the (first this year I guess) Elektronengehirn concert. In the last time I was more asked to perform Notstandskomitee concerts so rehearsals are due.

But I still failed to lit the oven, the wood seems to be to wet. Drying the blocks over the gas stove proved to be an interesting but dangerous and pointless experience. So another freezing night is waiting, I could actually see my breath, something you dont expect inside.

8.June Arrival

Arrived at the Open City in Chile, nearby Concon. The flight was ok but dont enter an Ibera plane as a hungry vegetarian. They only give you raw spanish vegetables which, as you know, pretty popular in Germany right now. After landing in Santiago a 2hour busride to north west takes me to Concon. In Chile the overland transport is handled with busses, not very much trains.

At the Open City I moved into the Cubicula De Poeta which is heated with an oven, cooking and warm water is done by gas. Internet is not available, only with UMTS sticks which I might get access to this weekend. More important, I am to stupid to get the oven running and while its warm during the day its freezing cold in the night. Feels like sleeping outside. Am I a digital cowboy?

view over the landscape of the Open City with some houses.