My 2013 Christmas Greeting

WooHoo!  This year I finished it in time for Christmas Day.  Most of the work in this video is mine with the help of Corel clipart.  The Sun segment was purchased at Envato's VideoHive.

Have a happy Christmas and the best New Year's celebration ever.

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 --Marge

BTW, here's the full text of the poem --

Beneath the glitter and gold
Wrappings of Christmas today,
For each of us lies,

One heart at center
Perfect, unhurt, joyous --
Beating synchronous time with,
Singing in tune with
   the Source.
It's yours.
Own it.

Art: gallery under the waves

Lately I keep coming across images of Jason deCaires Taylor's work.  According to Wikipedia, Jason is "an English sculptor specializing in the creation of contemporary underwater sculptures which over time develop into artificial coral reefs.  His site features a slideshow of his work.

The combination of underwater light and limitless receding distance in the background give his pieces an ethereal, almost surreal, quality.  And there is a sense of isolation in some.

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Jason deCaires Taylor, "Vicissitudes"

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Over time the sculptures take on an identity all their own.  For example,

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How a sculpture changes with time, Jason deCaires Taylor

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This video from Jason's YouTube channel details his works, 

...starting with the oldest pieces through to the most recent in 2012. The filming spans three countries; Grenada, Bahamas and Mexico and is shot entirely using a 7D and Sigma Lenses. Works include: Vicissitudes, Inertia, Holy Man, The Phoenix, The Musician, The last Supper, The Listener, Collector.

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To quote from the Wikipedia article linked above --

In an interview with Diver Magazine he commented that "Buoyancy and weightlessness enable a detached physical experience that’s perceptual and personal. As time passes and the works change, they reshape and redefine the underwater landscape in unpredictable ways."

A school of fish swimming among the figures captures the eye.

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Jason deCaires Taylor, "Silent Evolution," designboom

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A line from Dylan Thomas' Fern Hill comes to mind:

Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15378#sthash.wtauYhTp.dpuf

-- Marge

DIY: filming to witness

Recently my son told me about a video on YouTube that showed a man arrested for filming the police and the police killing his dog.  The video has some disturbing elements, so I'm not including it here.  The exact title is "Cops arrest man for filming them and then kill his dog" -- you can search for it.  The lesson here is -- if you're going to film, be aware of how your actions may affect those being filmed.

That said, here's an excellent guide for filming from witness.org from a page titled "Witness Video Advocacy Training Guide: Tips for Filming."
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Going deeper into the concept of advocacy, good information can be found on the page Video Advocacy 101.  This film gives the basics:
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Note that both these pages refer you to the Hub, which is no longer accepting content.  A link on the front pages directs you to an explanation why.

Video4change offers some insights on reasons why you might use video for social activism.  Digital Democracy emphasizes "empowering marginalized communities to use technology to fight for their human rights." And MIT has a Center for Civic Media that promotes "visual literacy."

As Sergeant Phil Esterhaus used to say in Hill Street Blues, "Hey, let's be careful out there." ***

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-- Marge

Taking it to the street

While watching a video about spray painting techniques the other day, I realized that the artist was working on the street somewhere in Asia and that doing artwork on the street has elements of theater.  Wanting to know more about this aspect of art, I turned to Google search.  However, a search on 'street art', yields graffiti (tagging).  Zeroing in on the term 'street performer', I go closer but still not quite there.

But I did find an interesting article, "5 Crazy Street Performers (Who Happened to be Geniuses)," at Cracked.com.  The 5 performers are shown below, but please be sure to read the article -- it's well-written and a hoot.  Here's a sample of the writing, this part about Moondog:

A lot of street performers start off with a hard luck story, and Thomas Louis Hardin, or Moondog, was no exception. He was blinded by dynamite at age 16 ... aaaaand that's where his hard luck ended. Because despite performing with made-up instruments and making his living on sidewalks, Moondog was apparently a really influential musician. And also a little bit of a genius.

These videos of the performers were found on YouTube.

The first is Charlie Barnett, a contemporary of Richard Prior and Eddie Murphy, and mentor of Dave Chappelle.  Here he's performing in New York's Washington Square Park.  (Alert: rough language.)
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Then there's Moondog, who had Benny Goodman testify on the quality of his musicianship and performed with Julie Andrews.
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The story of Guy Laliberte -- accordian player, stilt-walker, and fire-eater -- who originated Cirque du Soleil is, well, inspiring.  Here Barbara Walters interviews him.  (Note:  ABC is exerting its copyright claim, don't be alarmed.)
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Here's a visual report on what happened when a world-class violinist, Joshua Bell, played at a metro stop at rush hour as an experiment.  (Looks like the video went viral.)
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Then there's the guy with flaming whips, Adam Winrich. 
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Give a cheer for YouTube.

-- Marge

Mel Brooks' on first

Today's funnies take a trip into the past with videos, namely clips of work done by Mel Brooks. This first one, posted by cujofriend, is the Unemployment Insurance scene from "History of the World, Part I."  Note that the clerk is played by Bea Arthur, one of the "Golden Girls."
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From the same movie comes this scene, centered on the time of the French Revolution and featuring Harvey Korman.  It was posted by AnasAbdinCreation.
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Then there's Madelaine Kahn as the Empress in "History of the World..."  Be warned: PC sensibilities about race were not as refined in 1981.  This was posted by TheCinemaVampire.
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And finally, because everyone should have the chance to see the original routine by Abbott and Costello, here's "Who's on 1st." This video was first recorded sometime between 1950 and 1955; it was uploaded by paulheston.  Wait for it -- let the dancers do their thing...
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Have a great weekend.

-- Marge

Sim-on-a-stick, part 3: meeting people and exploring in OSGrid

In today's video I'm exploring OSGrid.

OSGrid is one of the virtual worlds powered by OpenSimulator, aka OpenSim.  OpenSim's front page states

OpenSimulator is an open source multi-platform, multi-user 3D application server. It can be used to create a virtual environment (or world) which can be accessed through a variety of clients, on multiple protocols. OpenSimulator allows virtual world developers to customize their worlds using the technologies they feel work best - we've designed the framework to be easily extensible. OpenSimulator is written in C#, running both on Windows over the .NET Framework and on Unix-like machines over the Mono framework. The source code is released under a BSD License, a commercially friendly license to embed OpenSimulator in products. If you want to know about our development history, see History.

OpenSim's history page traces its origin to Second Life(tm) releasing their client to open source in January 2007.  (Second Life has their own open source portal.)  Now there are a number of individuals and companies that run OpenSim.  You can find a grid list at OpenSim's site, where a number of public sites are listed.  Not listed are private grids, usually behind corporate firewalls, that can be used for conferencing, training, and so on.

Advantages of downloading, installing and setting up an OpenSim are having your own land free of  payments to another landowner, complete control over the content, and the ability to back up the world and your work.

When I was considering setting up my own world, I identified three important factors:  a processor fast enough and powerful enough to render the world, a secure database for storing and accessing assets, and enough bandwidth to maintain a reasonable frame rate.  (If you would like to add to my list, feel free to submit a comment.)  It seems to me one of Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) setups would work great (but may be pricey).

Because I was unable to upload the video ("Virtual World Tours: OSGrid") to Blogger, you'll have to view it on YouTube.

It always surprises me how creative work knows no deadlines -- it's simply done when it's done.  This video has flaws, but it was time to move on.

-- Marge

Making a video with YouTube's Video Editor

The controls for this editor seem to me subtle and somewhat easily broken.  Be sure to put the title in first and don't change it after you've started editing or you'll lose your work. I restarted the project below 4 times (or more -- wah, wah, wah) due to errors being injected during the editing process.  (I swear I can break any piece of software you give me.)  It's also probably a good idea to select whether this is a "new project" or "my edited video."

Here's a breakdown of the controls:

• To see a selection of video snippets and videos you can use, click (cc) in the title bar; for music, the musical notes; and for transitions between scenes, the facing triangles ( >< ).  The "a" allows you to make a text page.  To edit videos you've uploaded, click the camera icon.  The selections are drag-and-drop. 
• Once you've placed the selected video in an empty square below the viewing area, you can adjust the length of the video by clicking on the bar at the top.  Two brackets will appear ( [] ) that can be moved at either end.  You can delete a video placed in the timeline using the small X at the right end of the top bar of the selected video.  The symbols that appear when you mouseover the selected video are self-explanatory.
• Drag the music selected to the bottom placeholder.  Note the slider that selects original audio to favor music to music only, and that your audio selection applies to the whole music stream. There appears to be no way to control the length of the music selection.  I may have missed it.
• The "Q" slider give finer detail on the timeline.  Not sure that it was particularly helpful.
• Slide the red tab back and forth to start playback at a specific place in the timeline.  Click the play button is the viewing area to see what you have.

Once you click the publish button in the title bar, it goes into a processing mode that seems to take forever.  In fact it has been processing for more than half-an-hour.
 
The video I made from scratch using YouTube's Video Editor is entitled "City Trek."  The music is "Ball of Waxx" by Dratini; I saw no credits on the video samples.  Here it is --

 
-- Marge