Wednesday, November 24, 2010

SPITTING NONSENSE



i love, love, love, love, love this song.

i finally broke down and bought a canon 7D about a month ago (along with a 60mm f2.8 macro, a lensbaby composer, and a minolta ring adapter). it's the first video camera i've had in probably over 5 years. i missed being able to explore ideas on a whim without having to call around and drive across town to borrow a camera i knew nothing about.

on one of the last shows i worked on, i got a chance to do some 'additional photography' where i basically dumped some milk, dry ice, and oil into a bowl water. since i was on such a short time frame then, i didn't really get a chance to dig into the idea... until a couple weeks ago.

while i knew the fluids wouldn't sustain the whole video, some crazy new imagery from SDO (solar dynamics observatory) started to give me some vague ideas. so, over about a week, i downloaded over 2,000 clips of soar data and sorted them into a couple hundred selections and select selections, etc. beyond that, i rummaged thru another couple hundred featured videos on the SDO, TRACE, and STEREO sites. even after going thru all of that footage (which took about three days), i'm still in awe of how complex, powerful, and elegant the sun truly is.

anyway, i know all of this is definitely not a novel concept (i probably steal way too much from sci-fi movies), but ive always loved the idea of juxtaposing the very big and the very small (coronal mass ejections vs heavy whipping cream in a clear glass bowl of water).

the only thing i had to do at this point was decide what the hell i was going to set all of this to. it took a couple days to decide, but i finally came to this song, the drunkk machine by thom yorke. i think i always knew i was going to use this song, but i guess i wanted to be absolutely sure.

since i wanted a sort of linear progression, where we start outside the star then slowly (in a way) make our way into the star, i knew i wanted something like this song with its sort of unhinged bridge and frantic second half. so why look for something like this song when this is more than perfect? also, i wanted something which would either complement or counterpoint some of the satellite glitches... which i had to include (much to SDO's pleasure... undoubtedly...).

not sure what i'm going to do next, but i've always wanted to make spaceships!





SDO sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/​
TRACE trace.lmsal.com/​
STEREO stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/​

thom yorke theeraser.net

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