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.
by pixelpusher on Thursday 5 June 2008
[Software, Blog]
A software art project that remixes the skylines and sights of cities I’ve lived in and visited. Download at: NYLONCityBlob
Awhile back, in 2006, I put my lifelong obsession with New York City’s buildings to good use. 2006 was the year my wife and I moved to London to start a new life as expatriates, reversing the colonial journey that started our home country in favor of the old country on the edge of a new, powerful-again Europe.
Leaving New York, I felt like a traitor. New York is in my family’s blood. My grandfather loved nothing more than to take us around the sights - the Empire State, the Twin Towers, Macy’s, the countless delicatessens shining as culinary diamonds in the rough preserve of Mexicans making Chinese food and Chinese baking Pizzas. My grandfather spent all his years in New York, knew every inch of the serpentine BQE (Brooklyn-Queens-Expressway) slithering over and through industrial Brooklyn on its way up north to upstate and sweet oblivion, finally exploding into the Hutch, the Cross-Bronx, and the Bruckner.
Not that he would have ventured that far north - he hated grass, and crickets. Especially crickets.
I don’t want to give the impression that my family is parochial; they’re well-traveled and world-wise, but they always come back. I still haven’t returned.
I ‘ve turned my world travels into an art project - just as the skylines of all the places I’ve visited and lived get jumbled in my head over time, this software remixes them and rescales them and blends them into a chimera of a city. I’ll add to it over time but right now it is NY (New York City) LON (London). Sometimes it gets intimate, and small places crowd out the big, important, impersonal ones. Use the mouse to navigate. Mac-only (for now). Enjoy.
If you’d like to show it somewhere, please contact me at pixelpusher@flkr.com, I’m open to the idea.
tonight they banned alcohol on the tube
so, as good citizens, we organized (via facebook) a massive party to drink on the circle line all night until they kicked us off
so they kicked us off
but not before
i got an entire car of the circle line singing
“the final countdown”
Hi there pixelistas and pixelisimos, in order to make my videos more accessible I’ve created a channel on Blip.tv: http://pixelpusher.blip.tv/
Why Blip.tv, and not Youtube or Vimeo? (I have accounts on both of those, actually). Blip.tv has a better license for content, which allows me to use Creative Commons to distribute my (and others’) work, as well as better tools for sharing videos. Plus, I like the way it looks.In the future I’ll post videos there and link to them from the blog (this site). That way you get the best of both worlds - easy-to-watch video and my witty rapport.
A few years ago, my alter-ego did some work on this film while he was a semi-starving graduate student living in NYC. Paul H-O took me under his wing and showed me a world of art Tribeca lofts, Manhattan Special soda, art celebrities, how to sit and shoot the shit about art and sound like I knew what I was talking about, and most importantly, how to get properly thrown out of a gallery. We did some websites, blogs, test animations, and talked art, abused interns, and it was a generally a good time.
Now the result of all that, culminating in a few years of monk-like dedication by Paul and Tom Donahue, has produced a feature film for the Sundance Channel, currently screening at the Tribeca Film Festival. Rising to the occasion, Paul has an interview out on Salon.com.
Personally, I haven’t seen the (finished) film but what I’d seen before was compelling stuff. Certainly worth a look if you’re in New York City, and hopefully we’ll see it on Sundance soon enough.
I’ve been playing with the offsetcircles patch from before, and came up with a whole bunch of nice results. Taking a page from Claude, I made the drawing recursive (hmm… makes me want to use Scheme…) and rendered out these two short videos. These are fun experiments in basic, rotary motion. Its really amazing what fun you can have with simple math, rotations, and some blending.
