So there is, as usual, a mix of emotions gathering and forming and deforming within my addled brain as my driver powers down Rte 3 swatting the mosquitoes of cars that swarm around him on this sunny, yet barely above freezing Monday afternoon.
The dawning of FINAL CUT STUDIO is illuminating me from my sexy MacBook Pro and it's power, much like the sun, fills me with wonder and awe. Yet again am I being forced to grapple with tools barely within my meager educational ability, yet tools non-the-less intuitive enough for a creative type like me to just get.
I get it.
I GET it.
I get IT.
Of course, IT is both really cool and incredibly irritating at the same time. That tools like this are (almost) within reach of the average bloke (that's me) is testament to the magical wonder of technological revolution.
NO WAY should I be able to explode people. NO WAY should I be able to create videos of myself talking to you whilst floating in space, or in Antarctica, or in Rome, just by downloading someone's free clip photography as a background to my green screen captured footage.
Yet here I am, on a bus, applying particle emitters to an explosion of my own head to simulate brain goop for a little more realism.
very topical that I should be doing that whilst metaphorically doing it in my real head as I realize what power I have.
Power, but no time.
The majority of these projects never see the light of day and end up in a "back burner Project" folder that has to be continually cleaned out as I run out of disc space for more projects. A wicked cycle of near creative endeavor. Still, it serves as a wonderful tool for education and I continue to blow myself up or have myself scaling gigantic guitar strings as I polish my chops.
Oh Final Cut, you are nothing but an enabler.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Munching.
My brain, in fact, probably most brains, have developed highly acute responses to the sound waves generated by certain orifices. Wow, I really could go anywhere after a sentence like that, but I am devoting this post to mouth noises.
I am surrounded by around 9 people in an open office environment for a number of hours a day for a number of days a week for a number of weeks a month for a number of months a year for a.....
Each individual presents new and interesting noises for my ears to intrinsically hone in on every single time these eccentric noises are exercised.
The rarer and more exotic ones are fine, but the incessantly repetitive ones? They grate on my very living being like the torn rusted edge of a piece of corrugated steel being scraped by an enormous earth mover (the Caterpillar D11T for instance) across a giant, spotless blackboard.
I am surrounded by around 9 people in an open office environment for a number of hours a day for a number of days a week for a number of weeks a month for a number of months a year for a.....
Each individual presents new and interesting noises for my ears to intrinsically hone in on every single time these eccentric noises are exercised.
The rarer and more exotic ones are fine, but the incessantly repetitive ones? They grate on my very living being like the torn rusted edge of a piece of corrugated steel being scraped by an enormous earth mover (the Caterpillar D11T for instance) across a giant, spotless blackboard.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
The Bitter Taste of Success.
So the gallery exhibition was a success. The gallery curators regaled me with the fact that it was apparently the second most successful exhibition they have staged in 2 years!
What made it a real success for me particularly was the fact that I sold two pieces!!!
One day, a discerning art lover wandered into the gallery, took a look around at all the pieces from the 6 artists and picked out three pieces. All three were mine! unfortunately my exorbitant prices forced her to settled for two.
Simulated Smashed Safety Glass
Simplicity, Harmony, Joy
Or... Balls in a Box (thanks Silvia)
Note those awesome little red dots denoting SOLD!
I should be over-joyed, and have been on a fairly large pink fluffy cloud since finding out about the sales, but it was Monday evening, when the exhibition had closed and I was removing the 2 unsold pieces from the gallery and packing them up that a pang of sadness struck me. It was a pang, I know, I was there, it panged.
The two pieces that sold have been particularly close to us at home (like hello! in the dining room) for over a year and the one piece, Simulated Smashed Safety Glass, might be my most favouritest piece I have constructed in years.
I know, I already have plans for creating more of the same, based on the pieces sold, and actually, am really buzzing with inspiration and excited about creating more pieces, but still, saying goodbye on Monday night was strangely emotional.
It was a perfect opportunity for a gin and tonic really.
Anyway, I am excited at the future of my artistic endeavors now, like never before, and hope to continue the energy created from this experience into more exhibitions as soon as I have a few more pieces to exhibit!
Soon my website will be complete and all levels of Porl will be represented in some form or other. Or something like that.
I will be migrating the blog from here to the new and improved "Steak for Dessert" blog.
What made it a real success for me particularly was the fact that I sold two pieces!!!
One day, a discerning art lover wandered into the gallery, took a look around at all the pieces from the 6 artists and picked out three pieces. All three were mine! unfortunately my exorbitant prices forced her to settled for two.
Simulated Smashed Safety Glass
Simplicity, Harmony, Joy
Or... Balls in a Box (thanks Silvia)
Note those awesome little red dots denoting SOLD!
I should be over-joyed, and have been on a fairly large pink fluffy cloud since finding out about the sales, but it was Monday evening, when the exhibition had closed and I was removing the 2 unsold pieces from the gallery and packing them up that a pang of sadness struck me. It was a pang, I know, I was there, it panged.
The two pieces that sold have been particularly close to us at home (like hello! in the dining room) for over a year and the one piece, Simulated Smashed Safety Glass, might be my most favouritest piece I have constructed in years.
I know, I already have plans for creating more of the same, based on the pieces sold, and actually, am really buzzing with inspiration and excited about creating more pieces, but still, saying goodbye on Monday night was strangely emotional.
It was a perfect opportunity for a gin and tonic really.
Anyway, I am excited at the future of my artistic endeavors now, like never before, and hope to continue the energy created from this experience into more exhibitions as soon as I have a few more pieces to exhibit!
Soon my website will be complete and all levels of Porl will be represented in some form or other. Or something like that.
I will be migrating the blog from here to the new and improved "Steak for Dessert" blog.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Photocopied Bug Sounds?
So a memory from yesteryear struck me in the ear-hole this morning as I sat in my gray office pit with the skeleton crew of the good ship “Miserable Workplace”. One of the 45 machines that make noises whilst sharing our dull space has developed a squeak. Thanks to my iPhone I have managed to deduce that it is somewhere between 10k and 14k. Some of the crew can’t hear it. Others didn’t until I pointed it out to them (sorry guys). But to me, it is as if someone is persistently dragging a Stanley knife blade over a smooth steel surface with sickening regularity.
What this sound actually is remains a mystery other than the fact that it lives inside a sealed Fuser box inside a photocopier. Turning this photocopier off is out of the question as offices from all around the country send us printed documents to that machine that we in turn distribute and input into other machines. It is the lifeblood of our questionable existence.
Now, upon hearing this sound I was instantly reminded of my life when, as a concierge in a busy hotel back on the Gold Coast, in Australia, we had a plague of Mole Crickets infest our lobby.
The Mole Cricket.
Our lovely hotel was a block away from an entire block of the city that had been stripped of buildings in preparation for an enormous and amazing hotel. The promised hotel lay in the hands of some architects and developers for over 2 years and the boarded up block went back to its natural inhabitants seamlessly. Oh nature, your simple brilliance abounds.
Finally the day came when the sweat and tears of the planners and developers was transferred into physical motion. With bulldozers.
Mother Nature had to relocate fairly quickly and according the Mole Crickets that had set up an entire city in there, the next best thing was to find a hotel before a permanent domicile could be found. I guess their insurance would pay for the rooms in the meantime?
What this meant for me, the man in charge of greeting guests and looking after luggage, was that every time our enormous double glass doors slid open, anywhere from 5 to 15 of these enormous, threatening and brazen insects would hop on in. If left unchecked (the word “unchecked” in this sentence refers to a foot coming down rather heavily, directly over said Cricket, causing it to change shape quite rapidly and fairly fatally – most times) these crickets would find lodging within our marble tiled lobby filled with ample cracks and spaces, anywhere and everywhere they could. And it turned out that three or more of these little bastards in close proximity would actually activate the motion sensor on the door. I have to admit though that watching our guests, primarily Japanese school children, trying to circumnavigate the mobs of black, scary bugs was admittedly lots of fun.
For 3 nights we manned the doors. We actually ended up having one of us, full-time, employed to tread on Mole Crickets before they set up in convenient little holes all over our lobby. Whilst we were fairly successful, at least 30 of them found home in our lobby and for the next few weeks, we had the almost constant chirping of these creatures as they communicated and made jokes about our silly outfits to each other from the relative safety of the crevices of our marble halls.
As a man easily irritated by the inane, their relentless chirping started to drive me insane by the end of the first night. By the second week of this I was no longer to be toyed with. I had developed a path to the elevators that, by some choreographed stomping, would silence all of these hold-outs before I would ascend with messages, luggage, towels, bills and trolleys to our real guests. Leaving our lobby in a state of pleasant quiet.
I said that these Crickets moved into the ‘relative safety’ of our lobby as we, after a short amount of time, developed a way to silence them permanently using a combination of stealth and brute, murderous, deadly, high-pressured force.
We thankfully possess cans of Insect killer built for the harshness of our little Aussie friends the Cockroaches. Cockroaches are usually around an inch to 3 inches depending on how high up you were in our 48 story building (only the biggest ones can fly that high – they come in through the balconies). The insect killer cans were akin to fairly large fire extinguishers and combining them with a stealth-like approach (the Crickets stopped chirping upon approach at about 3 feet away) we would simply drown the offending crack with a long blast from the spray until it was flooded with the evil, killer chemical.
This had the desired affect and soon our lovely lobby, though slightly pungent from the spray, was once more serene and still – when it was not filled with hundreds of sun burnt Japanese School children fighting over their luggage.
I told the crew of the Miserable Workplace this story as we lamented the irritating and continual chirping squeak, showed them the image, and all agreed that the squeak is not that bad after all.
Except me. I would gladly trade the ability to stamp and crush that noise once and for all over having to sit here and endure it day after day.
Maddening.
What this sound actually is remains a mystery other than the fact that it lives inside a sealed Fuser box inside a photocopier. Turning this photocopier off is out of the question as offices from all around the country send us printed documents to that machine that we in turn distribute and input into other machines. It is the lifeblood of our questionable existence.
Now, upon hearing this sound I was instantly reminded of my life when, as a concierge in a busy hotel back on the Gold Coast, in Australia, we had a plague of Mole Crickets infest our lobby.
The Mole Cricket.
Our lovely hotel was a block away from an entire block of the city that had been stripped of buildings in preparation for an enormous and amazing hotel. The promised hotel lay in the hands of some architects and developers for over 2 years and the boarded up block went back to its natural inhabitants seamlessly. Oh nature, your simple brilliance abounds.
Finally the day came when the sweat and tears of the planners and developers was transferred into physical motion. With bulldozers.
Mother Nature had to relocate fairly quickly and according the Mole Crickets that had set up an entire city in there, the next best thing was to find a hotel before a permanent domicile could be found. I guess their insurance would pay for the rooms in the meantime?
What this meant for me, the man in charge of greeting guests and looking after luggage, was that every time our enormous double glass doors slid open, anywhere from 5 to 15 of these enormous, threatening and brazen insects would hop on in. If left unchecked (the word “unchecked” in this sentence refers to a foot coming down rather heavily, directly over said Cricket, causing it to change shape quite rapidly and fairly fatally – most times) these crickets would find lodging within our marble tiled lobby filled with ample cracks and spaces, anywhere and everywhere they could. And it turned out that three or more of these little bastards in close proximity would actually activate the motion sensor on the door. I have to admit though that watching our guests, primarily Japanese school children, trying to circumnavigate the mobs of black, scary bugs was admittedly lots of fun.
For 3 nights we manned the doors. We actually ended up having one of us, full-time, employed to tread on Mole Crickets before they set up in convenient little holes all over our lobby. Whilst we were fairly successful, at least 30 of them found home in our lobby and for the next few weeks, we had the almost constant chirping of these creatures as they communicated and made jokes about our silly outfits to each other from the relative safety of the crevices of our marble halls.
As a man easily irritated by the inane, their relentless chirping started to drive me insane by the end of the first night. By the second week of this I was no longer to be toyed with. I had developed a path to the elevators that, by some choreographed stomping, would silence all of these hold-outs before I would ascend with messages, luggage, towels, bills and trolleys to our real guests. Leaving our lobby in a state of pleasant quiet.
I said that these Crickets moved into the ‘relative safety’ of our lobby as we, after a short amount of time, developed a way to silence them permanently using a combination of stealth and brute, murderous, deadly, high-pressured force.
We thankfully possess cans of Insect killer built for the harshness of our little Aussie friends the Cockroaches. Cockroaches are usually around an inch to 3 inches depending on how high up you were in our 48 story building (only the biggest ones can fly that high – they come in through the balconies). The insect killer cans were akin to fairly large fire extinguishers and combining them with a stealth-like approach (the Crickets stopped chirping upon approach at about 3 feet away) we would simply drown the offending crack with a long blast from the spray until it was flooded with the evil, killer chemical.
This had the desired affect and soon our lovely lobby, though slightly pungent from the spray, was once more serene and still – when it was not filled with hundreds of sun burnt Japanese School children fighting over their luggage.
I told the crew of the Miserable Workplace this story as we lamented the irritating and continual chirping squeak, showed them the image, and all agreed that the squeak is not that bad after all.
Except me. I would gladly trade the ability to stamp and crush that noise once and for all over having to sit here and endure it day after day.
Maddening.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Art Exhibition Documentary
HERE! is a documentary about the Exhibition I am in at the Speakeasy Art Gallery in Boonton New Jersey.
Managing to almost successfully veil nerves and apprehension behind staring at the floor and fumbling for words.
Yay me!
Right at the end.
"Bringing up the rear" if you will.
Rounding off.
Summing up.
The show is on till March 6th.
Porl
Managing to almost successfully veil nerves and apprehension behind staring at the floor and fumbling for words.
Yay me!
Right at the end.
"Bringing up the rear" if you will.
Rounding off.
Summing up.
The show is on till March 6th.
Porl
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Squishing Bus Ride Reprieve Ends Ubruptly
So I thought, just for a moment, that I finally nailed how to deal with the murderous full-bus scenario I deal with on the majority of the days that I spend commuting. Using a bus. A coach, if you will. And you will, there are velvety seats.
Firstly, take one half-carafe of warm Sake and follow it with a Lychee Martini. Magically, this entire expenditure can be as little as$14! In New York City?! I found this out as I was too frightened to go into the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 6pm when hordes of people from every direction are walking the New-York-walk (determined, brisk, confident) to get there and go home.
Secondly, Get on a crowded bus and take the last remaining seat next to an ignorant and insanely large human being. A human who is permanently connected to a cell phone by their massive fingers and ignoring the fact that to do so means their entire arm has to force you into the adjacent arm rest. The arm rest being the last bastion of safety before being bull-dozed into the corridor by said arm.
Immediately close your eyes before examining this human anymore than you already have, which may already be too much. AVOID EXAMINATION AT ALL COSTS.
Ensure iPod is charged and playing awesome music Ensure that noise canceling headphones are placed correctly.
Imagine the person that is pressing you off the seat is your favorite celebrity.
I found this worked for, oh... …minutes.
It failed because of my acute sense of touch, smell and feeling.
1. Mila Jovovich is not 310 pounds. So, by definition, 170 pounds of her could not be on the side of her touching me.
2. Mila's lungs are not so enormous that just her breathing causes her to inflate three inches…. SIDEWAYS.
3. Mila could not possibly generate one hundred thousands BTUs of body heat.
4. Mila would never smell of over-washed Old Navy fleeces and Old-Spice.
DAMN IT, I was so close.
Literally.
Firstly, take one half-carafe of warm Sake and follow it with a Lychee Martini. Magically, this entire expenditure can be as little as$14! In New York City?! I found this out as I was too frightened to go into the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 6pm when hordes of people from every direction are walking the New-York-walk (determined, brisk, confident) to get there and go home.
Secondly, Get on a crowded bus and take the last remaining seat next to an ignorant and insanely large human being. A human who is permanently connected to a cell phone by their massive fingers and ignoring the fact that to do so means their entire arm has to force you into the adjacent arm rest. The arm rest being the last bastion of safety before being bull-dozed into the corridor by said arm.
Immediately close your eyes before examining this human anymore than you already have, which may already be too much. AVOID EXAMINATION AT ALL COSTS.
Ensure iPod is charged and playing awesome music Ensure that noise canceling headphones are placed correctly.
Imagine the person that is pressing you off the seat is your favorite celebrity.
I found this worked for, oh... …minutes.
It failed because of my acute sense of touch, smell and feeling.
1. Mila Jovovich is not 310 pounds. So, by definition, 170 pounds of her could not be on the side of her touching me.
2. Mila's lungs are not so enormous that just her breathing causes her to inflate three inches…. SIDEWAYS.
3. Mila could not possibly generate one hundred thousands BTUs of body heat.
4. Mila would never smell of over-washed Old Navy fleeces and Old-Spice.
DAMN IT, I was so close.
Literally.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Dave the Sate!
Dave always liked to ensure that people had what they wanted. In fact, it went beyond that, he would totally immerse people in the things that they most desired. Satiate them totally. Hence his moniker.
Oh crap, wait, I meant Save the Date!
February 11th holds my initiation into the world of art. You see, the great folks at Speakeasy Art in Boonton, New Jersey have invited me to show some of my sculptural pieces in a themed collaborative exhibition with 5 other artists entitled Industrial Evolution.
Here is the official blurb…
Opening Friday, February 11 from 6-10pm, "Industrial Evolution" promises to be one of Speakeasy Art Gallery's most exciting exhibits to date. The artists in this show are more inclined to get their materials at a hardware store, junk yard or scrap pile before going to an art supply store. The works in the exhibit incorporate wood, metal, plastic, glass, clay, wire and more. Not only are the materials non-traditional, but the work itself aims to not repeat what has already been done and strives to evolve the visual arts itself. Each of these artists have an individual voice and push the boundaries of what art can be.
How cool is THAT!
I have a number of pieces, currently adorning the walls of our dining room, that fit the M.O. and have 2 more in the works right now that promise to be the very epitome of my sculptural prowess and cannot wait to see them in a gallery!!!
So yeah, if you are at all free on Friday February 11th, come down and be all wine-and-cheesy and arty-farty and definitely go "ooooh" and "aaaaah" as you point at my stuff. Wait, that sounds rude, I meant point at my artwork. gulp.
Oh crap, wait, I meant Save the Date!
February 11th holds my initiation into the world of art. You see, the great folks at Speakeasy Art in Boonton, New Jersey have invited me to show some of my sculptural pieces in a themed collaborative exhibition with 5 other artists entitled Industrial Evolution.
Here is the official blurb…
Opening Friday, February 11 from 6-10pm, "Industrial Evolution" promises to be one of Speakeasy Art Gallery's most exciting exhibits to date. The artists in this show are more inclined to get their materials at a hardware store, junk yard or scrap pile before going to an art supply store. The works in the exhibit incorporate wood, metal, plastic, glass, clay, wire and more. Not only are the materials non-traditional, but the work itself aims to not repeat what has already been done and strives to evolve the visual arts itself. Each of these artists have an individual voice and push the boundaries of what art can be.
How cool is THAT!
I have a number of pieces, currently adorning the walls of our dining room, that fit the M.O. and have 2 more in the works right now that promise to be the very epitome of my sculptural prowess and cannot wait to see them in a gallery!!!
So yeah, if you are at all free on Friday February 11th, come down and be all wine-and-cheesy and arty-farty and definitely go "ooooh" and "aaaaah" as you point at my stuff. Wait, that sounds rude, I meant point at my artwork. gulp.
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