In case you didn't know, pixelpusher (evan.raskob) is a live video performance artist, or "pixelist" based in London, UK. Click the Info button above for hiring and contact info.
For an upcoming exhibition (my first solo exhibition) I’ve been working on a series of 5-7 new works, from interactive software to prints to sculpture. These tests are from a live capture of my hand opening and closing in front of a camera attached to the computer, using custom written software (a bit of OpenFrameworks and lots of standard C++) that exports each individual motion into a vector-graphics file (SVG) that I can edit and send to a laser-cutter (in our excellent arts workshops at UCA Farnham) to create a sculpture that solidifies the motion into a physical object.
This test is about 80% size, and about 25% of the total slices (the rest I will add this week). Its using 6mm plywood from the local building shop, and will be 78 unique slices in total when finished, connected together at the bottom via a metal cable.
An interactive exhibition by pixelpusher – pixelist.info/
This series of works re-imagines the artist’s hand in a number of different mediums as a series of modern mystical symbols. Their meaning is uncertain, removed from their traditional context: are they waving at us, or flailing in a sea of lost meaning?
by pixelpusher on Tuesday 23 February 2010
[Blog, Visuals, video]
A visualization of each individual word used in twitter status updates overnight from 6PM GMT on Feb 22 2010 until 10AM GMT on Feb 23. Movement is caused by the list of words growing, as the program sees more individual words. Words used more often are larger and brighter (they grow logarithmically). There were a few points where the feed was lost, and it recounted the same status update over and over (you can tell where because the same words grow larger) but I decided to post this version anyway, because I still think it is interesting in this state. I have collected more data, such as word ordering, and will work on another version. done in Processing – source code is here (you need to add your twitter username and password)
The video above is a bit fuzzy – here’s a better image:
A visualization of words used in twitter posts over a single night
by pixelpusher on Thursday 21 January 2010
[Blog, Visuals, video]
I’m working on a music video for a song by PJE called The Employee and doing some tests. The idea is to create the surrealistic daydream of a 1950’s woman on her first day on the assembly line of a dreary, machine-like typist job. I’m doing all the visuals rendered in fluxus, cut with some excellent archival footage of office films from archive.org. This one, a 1950’s film called “Office Etiquette” is singular for having some really nice, sweeping, tracking chots mixed with good close-ups, which work well in a music video. The original has such a cheery attitude about mind-numbing, repetitive busywork that is practically crawling on its knees and begging to be subverted.
I will first cut the video as a straight music video, with close/wide/tracking shots and clean cuts to the beat, then add in the surrealistic, colorful 3D animations done using fluxus and bit by bit break down its sanity. Look here for more…
by pixelpusher on Wednesday 13 January 2010
[Blog, Visuals, video]
Recorded from a live performance. My first audio-visual (not just visual) work in about 5 years. Created for NOISE==NOISE and The Curiosity Collective’s JohnnyMass on 28 Dec. 2009. Uses Fluxus & SuperCollider.
I’ve been experimenting with extruded shapes, with the end goal of fabricating some interesting ones using a 3D printer at the University I teach at, University for the Creative Arts, Farnham (UK).
So far, it has been a long learning process – first, making extrusions of my hands using Fluxus and a custom-written OpenCV-based image-outline-tracer in C++ (using some OpenFrameworks); then, using Dave’s extrusion functions in fluxus mixed with my live-drawing sketches, coupled with the OBJ-file export, and finally imported into Blender (for some nice ray-tracing).
The trouble is, I can create 3D shapes but hey have no “solidity,” which means their outlines have no thickness. Apparently you can’t 3D print objects and just hope that they are thick enough, or tweak it on the machine, as I’d hoped. No, as with all computers and electronic devices, they only do EXACTLY what you tell them to do, and nothing more or less.
The image here is a reject from Fluxus/Blender, where I created an inner shape by duplicating the original shape and growing it outward along its normals (used for lighting, normals are perpendicular to the surface of the object, meaning they point exactly outwards and are useful for expanding shapes). The problem is that my shape is so complex, I can’t get away with simply growing it. I’m going to need to do some horrible maths, I can feel it…
Still, I really like this image. I’m a big fan of Salvador Dali (don’t laugh) and the infinite blue background and contrasting, surreally-melted hand shape in front lends this image a particularly Dali-esque quality, I think.
