That Was The Week That Was – 21st August 2022

Operator – Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti – are two of my favourite artists; their work is brilliant, engaging, challenging and always thought provoking. Everything art should be. When it was reported that a work loses value when a female or non-binary artist adds their signature they decided to do something about. Unsigned was the result. A series of signatures from female and non-binary artists, for sale on Objkt. I managed to grab the signature for Martha Skinner before the latest series sold-out. Smashing these archaic stereo-types is what this movement is about – challenging the expected, the normal and "how it's always been" mentality of the art world.

A Little bit more of Less but Better

Having been using my new Mac Studio setup for week now, I'm not keen on having the unit itself – a kind of stacked duplex Mac Mini – sat on my desk. Instead I've ordered another shelf for my Vitsœ 606 system so I can place another shelf under my desk and have the Mac Studio sat on it. This is were the 606 really shines – it's flexibility to add or rearrange shelves as things change.

Starting to dig into the Eno project

As I begin to dig into the Eno project, I've been working my way through the first bits of footage Gary Hustwit has given me so I can start to play around. One part of my process is exporting frames of videos which I can then bring into things like Houdini or other such software. In the past I used the excellent Quicktime Pro, but that no longer works with the latest Mac OS and hasn't done for a while. So I needed a new workflow to extract these frames. I could have fired up Premiere or HitFilm but that's like a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

One way is to use FFMpeg from the command-line like this:

ffmpeg -i filename.mp4 '%04d.png'

This will export still frames in the PNG format with 4 leading zeroes.

I use FFMpeg quite a bit in my process and you can check out some of the other commands I use in this blog post.

Another way is using an app called SnapMotion which did exactly what I needed it to do quickly and cleanly.

Crypto Art Book

This is the first of two books on NFTs and Crypto Art which is coming out before the end of the year which my work is featured.

Crypto Art Begins is published by Rizzoli illustrati in Italy and Rizzoli New York, written by Eleanora Brizi. I'm honoured to be included in the book which also features a drop from all the artists involved on NiftyGateway in September.

North by Northwest

We had our niece to stay this week and one of the traditions is to watch a classic movie together at night. One of the selections this week was Hitchcock's North by Northwest. It's been a while since I've watched it, yet it still remains one of may all-time favourite films. The way the narrative unfolds so quickly and perfectly is just beautiful. The visuals, the screenplay, the Bernard Herrmann score all fuse together so wonderfully. Then there's Cary Grant's tailoring... flawless.

As I write this the Prodigy is playing. My God they were bloody good. Firestarter still reminds of when I played Wipeout on the PS2.