Posts by Scott

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Lee Morris from Fstoppers did a fashion shoot using only an iPhone 3GS. As you can see, the results were nothing short of incredible considering the equipment being used. But I think this is less about the camera and more about how powerful quality lighting can be in photographic work. Of course, for a phone, the iPhone has an exceptional camera built in, but with good lighting a great photographer can make any camera take good pictures. Which takes us back to the idea that you shouldn’t ever blame your equipment, just ask this guy.

I personally don’t buy whole-heartedly into this concept. Yes, a professional with the right equipment and a lot of knowhow can get great output from almost anything. But better cameras do make a difference, they make it easier to get good results and many times are just easier to use from an interface / usability standpoint. I think this is all the more important for those of us who are primarily graphic designers. We often don’t have the budgets to hire professionals when we need photo work for projects. But we also might not have the background and expertise that a full-time photog would have. A camera like the 5D or D700 put professional results within the grasp of us mere mortals, because I’ll tell you right now, not in a million years could I get a iPhone to output the stuff you see above. But I shot a 7D last weekend and got the best pictures of my life in a living room under natural light.

But seeing Morris’ results definitely makes you think the whole thing over again.

I’ll be playing a warm up set tonight to tighten things up for Friday’s show in SF. Press Club, 10pm sharp!

Photo by +Russ

I’m not to up on the world of fine art but these paintings by Maurizio Bongiovanni really caught my eye. For a split second I thought they were manipulated photos, they look very Photoshop-ish with that stretch out effect.

Via Supersonic Electronic

Just caught this on NPR and was reminded of a couple great films: the William Shatner Narrated Trinity and Beyond (The Atomic Bomb Movie) and Nukes in Space: The Rainbow Bombs. Both were excellent docs that featured meticulously restored film footage from US atomic tests on land and in space (and also anywhere else they could make up a reason to blow up). The space tests are particularly (eerily) beautiful, the title Rainbow Bombs is very apt.

Happy 4th!

To celebrate their 100th release, Ghostly International has released a box set compilation entitled Manzoku: The Ghostly Bento (featuring Shigeto’s Tycho remix). They’re also putting on a couple shows in SF (Jul.9) and LA (Jul.10) next weekend. Ghostly was kind enough to give us one Mozoku Bento and a couple pairs of tickets to each show to giveaway.

To enter, just comment on this post and be sure to leave a valid email in the email field (will not be published) so we can contact you. Winners will be drawn at random from the comments. The first email drawn will receive the Ghostly Bento Box and a pair of tickets to the show of their choice. If the winner cannot attend the show, the tickets will be given to the next email drawn. Four pairs of tickets will be given away in all (two pairs for each show, SF & LA).

Entries must be received by midnight PST, Wednesday, July 7th, 2010. Winners will be announced shortly thereafter. Enter in the comments. Good luck!

I’m very pleased to announce that not only will I be speaking at the next FITC, but it will be right here in San Francisco, August 16th-19th, 2010. I’ve presented at FITC numerous times in the past — recently Toronto and Amsterdam — and it’s always an incredibly immersive and educational experience. For the uninitiated, FITC is a series of events focused around interactive platforms like Flash, Flex, and AIR, along with animation and motion/film. But that’s just sort of the core of it, there are all sorts of other design related topics being covered (case in point: the fact that a print designer / musician like myself is involved). Basically just a very inspirational event centered around design and technology. Also, they have incredible parties each night often involving boats and free booze.

For the San Francisco event I’ll be speaking a bit about my background, process, and theory along with some walkthroughs and presentations of recent work. For a rough idea of the style of my presentations have a look at my Academy of Art lecture from April (although this was geared for the students in the Academy program, as opposed to professionals, so it was a little different from what I normally do).

FITC always stack the events with great speakers but this SF date seems to be the most epic yet. It’s the only where you’ll see Yugo Nakamura, Colin Moock, Erik Natzke, Kyle Cooper, Jared Ficklin, Kevin Lynch, and Robert Hodgin (along with over 60 others). It’s also probably the last time I’ll be speaking in 2010 as I finish up the Tycho album and prepare for touring.

Early bird pricing for the event ends Friday July 2nd, so be sure to get your tickets now (they also sell out very quickly, so if you don’t get in on the early bird be sure to get them soon after). You can register here. Enter code “isofifty” under discount code to get an additional 10% off the registration.

Hope to see you out there!

FITC: Tickets | More Info

Update: Sangki Kim of Kee Utility writes: “Desk Phone Dock has been modified to fit iPhone 4. The product will be available from July in some countries.”

With iPhone-Frenzy-2010™ in full swing I thought I’d add some fuel to the fire with this beautiful, yet suddenly obsolete, little peripheral from Korean design firm, Kee Utility. Of course, it will never see the light of day in this form — for some reason, concepts never do — but at least we have this nice model to salivate over. Couldn’t find any word on pricing or availability other then that it was supposed to have debuted at the China Sourcing Fair in April, 2010.

While it’s definitely a looker, there’s not much in the way of originality going on here — the dock looks straight off the cutting room floor of Apple’s design lab and hits all the cues from Cupertino pretty much on the mark. Kind of unfortunate timing to be releasing something like this when they did; apparently they don’t read blogs. I’d like to see Kee do a redesign based on the more angular aesthetics of the iPhone 4. The current base seems a bit overwhelming, I think it could do well without the curves.

Via Geeksology

On a side note, after trying to act all hard saying I was going to defect to Android for the past 2 months, I used Beamer’s iPhone 4 today and immediately purchased one for myself. I couldn’t resist, that thing is incredible. I also bought a pair of rubber tongs to hold it with in light of recent developments.

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I am about as big a fan of Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim’s work as exists on this planet. So it was a very, very pleasant surprise to see that [adult swim] (the network that features one of Tim and Eric’s greatest works: the Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! show) was running a bump featuring Cloud Generator and a shout for the Past is Prologue digital reissue after the show. If anyone from [as] is reading this, thank you!

adult swim has run some other bumps in the past featuring Tycho tracks, you can check them out here. Was cool to find all of those, I had only seen one and didn’t know the rest existed.

We’ve posted on him in the past, but I’ve seen Alex Varanese around a lot lately so I thought I’d put up some more of his work. He made a splash on Reddit yesterday, making it all the way to the front page (which, for the uninitiated, is sort of a big deal — at least among geeks and programmers) with his recent Alt/1977 series. This sort of overt retro-ism doesn’t always settle well with me (Yes, perhaps the pot calling out the kettle, but I’m a fan of restraint in these circumstances), but Alex executes so well you can’t help but take notice. His mastery of the orange spectrum is unquestioned and while there is a bit of borrowing from the James White bag of tricks — and with some of the type-centric work, maybe more overtly so, Alex Trochut — it is a very focused and impressive collection of work. I don’t think I’ve seen 3D meld so well with this sort of textured print aesthetic in a while and the noise he’s getting in those color fields is spot-on.

Check out more at Alex’s Behance and check out this process piece Alex did for Signalnoise.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been going through the process of putting together a live band for the Tycho show coming up on July 9th here in San Francisco. Those of you who’ve been to my past shows will know that I usually play solo and the focus is on the visuals and some light synth work. But this recent break from playing live (been working on the new album) has given me a chance to re-evaluate what I want the performances to be about and it’s also afforded me some time to put into developing the whole thing a little more. The visuals will still be a central element of the show, but I also want to try and bring some of the instrumentation to the forefront as well.

This upcoming set at Mezzanine will be my first show back in a while — and one of only a few I’ll be playing this summer as I wrap up the album — so I wanted it to be something special. I’ve been working with some other musicians on the new material so it sort of made sense to try and incorporate them into the live stuff. I spent the past couple weeks deconstructing a lot of the songs and working them into live versions that sort of bridge the gap between electronic and traditional instrumentation and have been rehearsing with the band at Ira Skinner’s studio in Sacramento. Zac Brown (frequent collaborator and guitarist for Dusty Brown) will be handling bass duties while Matt McCord will be on drums. I’ll be on some guitars and synth and Dusty and Jessica Brown will be joining us for a couple songs as well. We’ve got a few more practices but things are sounding really good and I’m excited to bring it all to life on the 9th. Hope to see you there.

More info: Ghostly A/V Showcase – Facebook event page