Super psyched for Sound Noir tomorrow night. Dance with me!

The timing of my finding this work is great, as I’m starting to generate ideas for April’s Sound Noir 3 Year Anniversary.

Because there’s no good place — screen — to project on at The Morgan, I’m again enlisting the balloons I used for the John Roberts / Norm Talley party in November of 2010.

The videos of the piece have opened up my thinking in terms of how the balloons might be arranged. I’m not looking to have them move throughout the space, but hanging them in a more dynamic pattern is definitely a possibility.

Additionally, as Jessica Angel prompted me, I could employ projection mapping onto the arrangement of the balloons. This would definitely be taking things to the next level, and at the moment I’m not at all sure how I’d approach it. I probably shouldn’t have even mentioned it… :)

Below is another perspective on the piece:

via @CJN

Right Click > Save As

117-RA-117-Portable_Bodycode-2008.08.25.mp3
22LWEPodcast22_Portablevs.Bodycode.mp3

UPDATE: I knew there had to be more mixes out there. The two above just happend to be what I already had. For more look here.

By now you’ve likely seen the flyer for the upcoming Sound Noir party happening back at Cameo on Sept 24th. As I have with previous events and previous flyers, I’d like to elaborate a bit on how this last flyer took shape.

Since reorganizing, we’ve been floating a bit in terms of the creative direction of visuals for our crew. We’ve moved into a new chapter and I’ve been working to differentiate where we’ve come from and where we are now.

The original flyers incorporated strong lines and angles formed by the neon lights we’d frequently mine for raw material. That changed gradually, often times incorporating elements from the installation work being showcased at the events. While the designs would stray a bit from our original branding, they somehow felt cohesive simply based on the way text was consistently treated.

One motif that struck with me was bokeh. Lenny had used it in the flyer for the John Roberts party. Also, I’d previously utilized bokeh in the projections for the fateful party we’d done in Long Island City in March of 2010, as captured in the image to the right by Jonathan Rhamani, so there was some sort of loose consistency.

Is it a stretch, or can you see the evolution of the theme being drawn through the two instances leading up to the finished product at the top of this post?

With influences and history out of the way, let’s take a look at how the most recent flyer was actually produced.

The image directly above is a sample of the screenshots I took of Bjork’s fantastic Biophilia app in action. I wrote about the app a short while back. The “play” portion of the app’s Crystalline chapter showcases the sounds of the track through moving and bubbling circles animated in tandem with the track itself.

What I’d done was to scroll through the entire track, taking screenshots of portions that I found particularly attractive. Next I combed through the samplings and found a couple that I thought might work in support of the information we were looking to convey in the flyer, namely the lineup. Next I tweaked the copy that was to be utilized in such a way that it flowed nicely with the graphic elements.

For myself, the way I’d justified using the Biophilia app was that the basic shapes mimicked the bokeh we’d been employing in the various places I’ve just described above. As for the copy, I approached it in line with the text in the flyer we’d done for June 11th. It was here, with the handling of the copy, that I thought we could build some consistency. Similarly the same treatment was applied to the flyer for the August 13th party with Chez Damier. From where I stand, the angular nature of the text we’ve most recently employed matches that same angularity that we’d originally started with in using the neon lights.

Then the partners came over.

I’m sure none of us really wanted to, but based on the last flyer, I think I can say we all thought we might be at it all afternoon and into the evening. Sitting down together I brought up the designs I’d been laying out. “YES!” came out of Jacob’s mouth instantly. Andrey was a bit more reserved, but also endorsed where it had come to. With a bit of tweaking we were done in 30 minutes.

Because the screenshot was of such low-res quality, from there it was a matter of rebuilding the bitmapped image of the screenshot in Illustrator with vector graphics. Though I’m not the best with Illustrator, that next iteration of the process took shape relatively quickly, and left us with an infinitely scalable version of the entire flyer.

Taking it back to a bitmapped form, I processed the flyer one last time to prepare it for printing 11×14 posters. I sent those off to AdoramaPix tonight and we’ll be picking them up tomorrow to be distributed in various places to help get the word out.

All in all I’m very happy with how this flyer came together.

The latest edition of the Sound Noir Podcast is up and features the mix Tim Sweeney played for us on June 11th.

We’re a bit sensitive when it comes to our podcast, as it’s so infrequently updated. This is changing as of Saturday as we’ve bought a digital recorder to grab the sets we and our guests play. One would assume we’ve been collecting the audio from all of the previous events, but each time, for one reason or another, we haven’t been able to finish.

We featured the podcast in the mailer sent out today which gently reminded people what they should be doing Saturday, namely, coming to our party. Its inclusion went over nicely — the link to the podcast was clicked on more than any other link in the email.

This one / two punch feels good. Look forward to us doing more of the same over the next couple months.

And if you haven’t gotten the hint yet, come listen to sultry sounds Saturday!

An umbrella app, presented as a galaxy that the viewer can fly throughout, is available in the App Store. Individual elements relate to individual tracks on the album and can be explored within the context of the galaxy. Different sub-apps / corners of the galaxy are being released over the next couple weeks in the run-up to the album release. The first element, Crystalline, is out now and I’ve had a bit of time to explore it.

Within this corner of the of the app’s galaxy are several ways of presenting and interacting with the song. A game is one method of exploring the song in which the viewer / player flys through alternating views of outer space and of tunnels drawn with colored vectors. By collecting “crystals” on the walls of the tunnel patterns can be decoded opening up still more levels to play. The soundtrack to the game shifts and develops along with the game play.

Another way of exploring the track is through a streaming timeline populated with animated colored circles that correspond with the notes of the song being played. At the bottom of the screen the lyrics of the song are presented in an enticing font.

It’s early yet in the evolution of this revolutionary and tantalizing presentation of the content of the album. I look forward to watching this app progress, and if you’re at all a fan of Bjork herself, of art, music, different forms of media or of video games, I’d suggest you take a peek at this stunning work.

And a pleasant surprise when I liked the video on YouTube: 1111. :)