Archive for May, 2008

Some very exciting news about the new CS suite (dubbed "CS Next"). It is being reported that Photoshop CS Next (CS4) will have GPU acceleration, meaning that it would be able to leverage the extremely powerful processor that, for 2D work like Photoshop, usually sits dormant on that $400 gaming video card you have in your computer. This is really big news and could lead to very big performance gains for large computations like filters and screen rendering. No news on how the lack of a 64-bit flavor of Photoshop for the OS X platform will affect this development. Via TG Daily. There’s also some more info over at TUAW.

We’re in  Detroit for DEMF (Movement) and it’s pretty insane. I played a set today, thanks to everyone for coming out. I had no idea this thing was so big, and loud. The first picture is unfortunately from my iPhone, so the quality’s not so hot, but it’s all I had on me at the time. I did have my Nikon for (a very small) part of the day and got some interesting stuff here and there. Incidentally, that’s your faithful correspondent Jakub in the last shot; if you see him out, ask him for more information about Willits. We’ll be out and about tomorrow so hopefully I’ll get some better shots of the festival and Detroit in general. I think we’re also taking a drive up to Ann Arbor (always wanted to visit) so maybe I’ll get some up there too.

Update: This print is sold out.

As some of you already noticed, the Barack Obama site announced the arrival of the print today. You can purchase the print now for $70, all proceeds go to the Barack Obama Campaign.

After all is said and done, I am very happy with the finished product. Unfortunately the colors on the JPEG above don’t come through as well as they did in print and there’s a lot of fine detail that’s lost at this size, so you’ll have to stretch a little bit to imagine what the real thing looks like. I just got into Detroit, will be playing a set at DEMF tomorrow, so I won’t have time to put together a good case study on the process of creating this print until I return on Sunday. But I wanted to post this up in the meantime after holding it back for so long.

Comment on this post | Purchase Print

Right around the time the Ghostly Swim tracklist was coming together i had to check out some more releases by some of the new faces and picked up this limited 7″ vinyl from School of Seven Bells called Silent Grips. You might remember them from the last Prefuse 73 record or saw them on a tour date with Blonde Redhead. They have this wonderful full sound that is worn down, its like if you molded together some of the best parts of Slowdive and replaced the guitars with warm synths and but brought the vocals up front and add some slower dusty Black Moth Super Rainbow percussion. I hope you enjoy.

School of Seven Bells – Silent Grips

This is the AKAT-1, a Polish made analog computer from the 1960’s which apparently was rumored to have been used as a synth on Beatles recordings [source]. I happened upon it while reading an article about analog computing on Wikipedia. I’m not trading in my digital computers for the analog variety any time soon (as I did with my synthesizers), but if they would just make a MIDI / DAW controller that looked like this I would be set.

"An analog computer (spelled analogue in British English) is a form of computer that uses continuous physical phenomena such as electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic quantities to model the problem being solved."
Source: Wikipedia

I place songs into two categories: those that have the power to change my state of mind and those that don’t. This song falls squarely in the former, and within that category there are several subsets. I would have to say this song fits into a very rare space for me, there are lots of songs that make me feel excited, melancholy, nostalgic, etc.. But this is something entirely different and I love that. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Postprior – Climber

[audio:climber.mp3]

Also, the cover reminds me of The Impossible Art of Li Wei, so it’s just that much more awesome. It actually reminds me of someone else’s work too, but the name escapes me right now, anyone know who I am talking about?

Star Wars has nothing on this, costume / set design at it’s finest.
Still from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Via FFFFOUND.

I’ll be playing at the Detroit Electronic Music Festival (DEMF) this weekend in, of all places, Detroit. I have extra tickets and wanted to offer up a pair to be given away. I will pick one (1) email at random from the contest entrants, this person will be given two (2) full passes ($80 value) to DEMF. Entering is easy, simply comment on this post and be sure to include a valid email when doing so and type "DEMF Entry" in the body of your comment. Your email is not visible to anyone but myself.

I know this is a bit last minute, but we weren’t sure if the extra tickets were coming through until just today. Again, DEMF is this weekend, so you would need to be in Detroit, THIS WEEKEND. Please do not enter if you do not plan on being in Detroit at that time.

Click here to enter the ISO50 DEMF Ticket Giveaway. Be sure to include a valid email in the email field and type "DEMF Entry" in the body of the comment.

The contest ends May 22nd at 11:59PM (23:59) west coast (PST) time.

Good luck, see you in Detroit!

These Spirograf posters by Greig Anderson (Effektive) are absolutely wonderful. I love when people use techniques or styles that have laid dormant or were just overlooked as passé to create new and exciting design. Also check out the rest of Greig’s work, it’s all very good.
Via ffffound.

UPDATE: The position has been filled, thanks to everyone who submitted their work!

Over the past year a lot of outstanding web tasks have cropped up and I really need to get a lot of them taken care of. I used to handle all this myself but my technical skills are definitely slipping and I just don’t have the time to keep up on this stuff anymore. I’ve talked to people about contracting them to do the projects, but they’re just too small and scattered to be worthwhile to most agencies / developers.

The gig would certainly net you some shirts and posters, linking / credit on the site, and all the recommendations you could ever want.
Geographical location is not an issue.

Desired Skills:

* HTML / DHTML / Javascript (Ajax?)
* Knowledge of sIFR and how to implement
* Knowledge of the WordPress platform (the .org installed variety)
* Strong Knowledge of PHP
* Strong Knowledge of CSS
* Flash Knowledge (particularly relating to audio)

If you have the time and a good mix of some or all of the skills listed above, please contact me at talk [at] iso50 [dot] com. Be sure to include some examples of your work / portfolio and any other pertinent details. This would be pretty light work, around 10-20 hours per month max and possibly only for a limited time.

Image via eye_capture