I didn’t share this back in January (oops), but I’m proud of this piece I wrote about the editing in Arrival (2016). I’m a huge fan of this film and its editing, so I watched it too many times to count to get at the heart of how it was put together and why it was put together that way.
It’s also the perfect chance to plug Lewton Bus, which has grown a lot over the past year. For anyone who likes film and television (all of you), it’s a pretty cool place to dive into.
Interference
Hey there, it’s been a while. I’ve been busy working, busy thinking. Busy with distractions, and detractions. Swamped with bullshit, from above, and within. The fight for balance continues, but I know the score. I’m gaining on myself.
Today I saw something that fooled my eye. A small nothing on the floor that I thought moved. I stopped and stared, trying to be certain. But as I looked, I realized that from my distance, there was enough variation in light, enough air in the way to create subtle differences, and movement in my head and eyes to amplify those subtleties to fool myself into witnessing something that wasn’t happening.
It was just a piece of lint, but it got me thinking about interference. Like how the gravity of a black hole interferes with the light from stars and galaxies behind to distort them unrecognizably. The way trees and mountains interfere with radio waves, creating intermittent bursts and cackles of sounds that defy intelligibility, turning a normal listening into an exercise in puzzle solving. Or the way that propaganda interferes with seeking the truth by clouding the mass consciousness with false ones.
Interference occurs naturally on many levels, in all areas of life. It’s the space between certainty and doubt. Like hallucinating a pond in the heat reflection of the desert, it challenges our senses. Is my visual sampling of sufficient fidelity, or do my eyes deceive me? And this led me to remember calculus.
Although calculus is more about the rate of change, its underlying structure is the sum of slices. Taking samples at different points on a curve to approach a mathematical image of the curve that is close to the truth. The more samples you have, the higher fidelity image you reach, like the 48000 samples per second of an audio waveform we’re accustomed to. Which is to say, a higher level of certainty. Another way of thinking about it is like a trail with markers leading you along the way. The fewer the markers, the more likely you are to get lost and not reach your destination.
Interference “takes away” those markers by distorting them, making it harder to reach the truth. Whether that truth is the unknown on the floor, an unknown from another galaxy, or the unknown from the mind, we have to contend with interference. I would add that interference isn’t necessarily negative. Without it, everything would be black and white, a 1 or a 0. Instead, a wide spectrum of colors and values exists for us to explore and sample. Interference is at the heart of mystery and curiosity; both virtue and vice. It’s a beautiful concept.
P.S. I encourage you to look at this animation in different ways. Take it full screen and try the “Magic Eye” technique and experiment with your distance from the screen.
old shoes
the new cues wear
old shoes that tear
so quick, but stick
like tar to faces,
tongue-tied by laces
pulled through lungs
that lie in vats
of acidic pride;
how far will they run?
how fast will they stride?
but the questions fall again
between gasps for oxygen
as carbon dioxide
and nitrogen
fill the void;
such are the old shoes,
always outlasting
their feet.
Hey there! It’s been a long time, but I’m back. If you’re still following, thank you! I really appreciate it.
I’m trying something new with Society 6. It’s something I’ve thought about for a while, and I’m excited to finally share my art with the world. Selling my artwork is new to me, so I’m taking it slow, but my intention is to add new designs on a regular basis.
“Downtown Convergence” is the result of a generative modeling experiment in Blender. I posted an older version of this before, but the render was updated for the final print. I’ll be looking through my art and photography to decide what to add to my online store, but if there’s something from this Tumblr that you’re interested in putting on your wall, let me know! I would be happy to add it and give you an exclusive discount.
If you like this particular work, or are interested in more, please like and share! You’re the first to know. :)
Zedward
Reality TV
reality television
doesn’t just sell a vision
it crawls & squirms like
disease-ridden worms
contracted through the eyes
to terrorize the temples
of self & hope, pushing us down
this precipitous slope of
cannibalization feeding on
station after station & projecting
its virus to every nation
LOOK@ME
LOOK@MEwhy?
what ever have you done
beyond sell your being to
the vultures circling the
stumbling corpse of dignity
cackling in the sunny waste
at our utter lack in taste
eroded by the steady stream
of soulless visions hellbent on
sowing never-ending divisions
ENOUGH IS ENOUGHbut it’s never enough
because the machine is lubed
& cheap to boot, all the better
for execs collecting the loot
thus the only prescription
is to denounce this fiction
with the utmost conviction
and step back into
reality.
I re-cut Ghost in the Shell’s intro with the intro music from HBO’s Westworld as a bit of an editing exercise. Enjoy!
“I didn’t choose the mech life…”
Spudnik meets Space Rock.
I’m just about finished with this minifig model. I’ve modeled and remodeled each piece several times (except the head), trying to create clean meshes with minimal polygons. This guy comes out to 5050 polys without subdivision, or 79k in this render at subdiv level 2. Overall, I’m pretty happy with the result.
The only thing left is to refine the material/texture, add some bump, and perhaps create a rig.