Monday, April 25, 2011

Making books is fun! (to watch)


YouTube Uploaded by Ziptrivia on May 31, 2007

"Back before inkjets, printing was a time-comsuming laborious process, that took teams of people working together to produce just one book. Now days, any crabby person can sit at home and crank out stuff on a blog or even make internet video. This movie will make you happy as you watch others toil for 'The Man' under primitive conditions."


Saturday, April 16, 2011

The Mountain

The Mountain from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.


"This was filmed between 4th and 11th April 2011. I had the pleasure of visiting El Teide.
Spain´s highest mountain @(3715m) is one of the best places in the world to photograph the stars and is also the location of Teide Observatories, considered to be one of the world´s best observatories.

The goal was to capture the beautiful Milky Way galaxy along with one of the most amazing mountains I know El Teide. I have to say this was one of the most exhausting trips I have done. There was a lot of hiking at high altitudes and probably less than 10 hours of sleep in total for the whole week. Having been here 10-11 times before I had a long list of must-see locations I wanted to capture for this movie, but I am still not 100% used to carrying around so much gear required for time-lapse movies.

A large sandstorm hit the Sahara Desert on the 9th April (bit.ly/​g3tsDW) and at approx 3am in the night the sandstorm hit me, making it nearly impossible to see the sky with my own eyes.

Interestingly enough my camera was set for a 5 hour sequence of the milky way during this time and I was sure my whole scene was ruined. To my surprise, my camera had managed to capture the sandstorm which was backlit by Grand Canary Island making it look like golden clouds. The Milky Way was shining through the clouds, making the stars sparkle in an interesting way. So if you ever wondered how the Milky Way would look through a Sahara sandstorm, look at 00:32.

Available in Digital Cinema 4k.

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Press/licensing/projects contact: terjes@gmail.com

Music by my friend: Ludovico Einaudi - "Nuvole bianche" with permission.
Please support the artist here:
itunes.apple.com/​us/​album/​una-mattina/​id217799399

Thank you to my sponsors:
canon.com
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dynamicperception.com/​ (Best dolly in the world!)"


Monday, April 04, 2011

holocene

holocene from stretta on Vimeo.


"hardware: arc4
software: electric dharma wheels

I received a production-run arc4 with the final firmware on Friday. This signaled a mad scramble to update my work for that and the latest serialosc with arc support so it'll be ready when people start receiving their units in a few days. So what do I do on Saturday? Make a new app, of course. Sure, that totally sounds like the responsible thing to do.

After receiving the arc4, I thought it might be a good idea to produce an example that demonstrates a 'bank' of encoder values that you can switch between. That gave birth to an application idea involving triggering modal notes from a pool of probabilities across three octaves of scale degrees. There is a separate bank of pitches depending on clockwise or counterclockwise rotation so you can shift the harmony with a simple gesture. The weighting of scale degrees is programmable and editable in real time on screen or with a MIDI controller. This allows for a more controlled structuring of compositional development over longer periods of time. The speed of the rotation determines how often a note is triggered, and can also be used as a modulation parameter for the FM synthesis engine.

Relevant synthesis parameters are also editable on the arc as the notes are triggered. The state of these parameters is overlaid on the LEDs, so interesting patterns emerge when this mode is engaged. There was a really awesome bug where switching editing modes also transposed the output modally, so I built in a score feature that allows you to advance a programmed chord progression with a button push.

A sit-the-arc-in-your-lap-and-doodle app has been on my mind a lot and I have at least three good starts in this area, but other priorities have often pushed these out of the way. The prototype arc2 I had lacked the mounting bracket for the USB cable and the logic board was floating free inside the enclosure, so I always had to use it (carefully) on a stationary, flat surface. It is really nice to have an arc that can be moved around or used in the lap. My cat disagrees.

I recorded this video, holocene, as a demonstration of this app, which I'm calling electric dharma wheels. This is the raw output from the electric dharma wheels, with some Eos reverb added after the fact.

more information about monome can be found at monome.org

more information about me can be found at stretta.com"