Hello fellow art geeks,
Well, my macbook finally crashed and I have been too busy to deal with it. My mom let me borrow her old laptop, it’s maybe six years old and running Windows XP. At first I thought this was a fate worse than, than… anything a relatively new mac snob could possibly absorb.
So I started researching Linux. Which led me to researching free, open-source software. Which led me to wondering why I think I need to ever spend so much money again on software. Probably not on hardware, either. Here’s a photo of cute otter so you won’t be bored by an image-free post:
Moving on – I haven’t made the switch yet. But let me share with you the best links I have so far for this whole new world:
1. Best of Linux apps
List of all time best/top/must-have apps for Linux
This is a great blog and a great link.
2. Projection mapping ecstasy
http://www.projection-mapping.org/index.php/projectiontools/software
Another great place. Has some free, some paid, but looks very on top of things. Rah!!!! Info, products, links, all kinds of useful stuff, run by a couple of media PhDs. Right freaking on!!!
3. VJ software? Hmmmmm
https://flxer.net/software/
I’m trying to get the vibe of this one… I’m posting it because I’m wondering how well it compares to Resolume, which we used in the iDEAlab quite a bit. It seems interesting.
OK, food for thought!!
XOXO
BJ
PS: I’m probably going to use Ubuntu’s OS 12.04 release and go nuts. I want non-commerical vvvv in a bad way but I bet my little 1.6GHz throwaway laptop can’t handle it.
Peter Bill is an Artist, Activist and Educator. He has, since learning photoshop v. 1.5, been interested in connecting under-represented communities with digital tools so their voices may be broadcast. He has been involved with large scale video projections, guerrilla art actions, and community building since the 90s.
Peter Bill's award winning paint and video landscapes have shown in such diverse venues as The Kitchen(NYC), the Henry Art Gallery(Seattle), FILE Festival(São Paulo, Brazil), and other international venues. He continues in his Oil paintings and video work to weave the painterly with the digital, pixels and paint, indigo and 191970 blue. He envisioned and realized the first time-lapse film festival in North America, the Gila Timelapse Film Festival and has curated and directed shows on three continents. "Art must be realized on the streets, as an agent of change and progress."
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Much of my art has been about creating a vessel, a space for meditation. Through my painting and video installations I hope to create a moment of quietude, a contemplation of this world we have built.
In my mural and documentary film work I have balanced a certain transcendentalism in my heart with my didactic scots-yankee bones. In the public sphere arts role is to inspire and provoke. Therefore in my mural projects I have attempted to involve the local community in the conception and realization of my projects. In my animations and short films I have attempted critiques of the bathetic apocalyptic culture we live in, the false utopia of the California landscape, the contested landscape of New Mexico, and tried to get to the situation on the ground in war torn Bosnia, among other subjects. The world is a complicated, granular place. We cannot oversimplify with our stories, but we can in their telling change opinions, and thus change the world for the better.