Tuesday 28 June 2011

KORG NANO KONTROL 2 From KORG

The Korg midi controller that I might need.
Below taken from the website: http://www.korg.com/nanoSERIES

Compact USB Controllers

Meet the Korg nanoSERIES - The Most Compact Family of USB-MIDI Controllers Ever!

The Korg nanoSERIES provide a keyboard controller, a pad controller, and a studio controller with dedicated transport controls. Each of these USB-powered, slim-line controllers is designed to make the most of your valuable studio space, and is small enough to take with you on any musical journey. Place one of our keyboard controllers in front of your laptop, rest a pad controller on your music workstation, park a studio controller on your recording console - or anywhere else you need versatile control over your DAW, virtual instrument, effect or DJ software. Although small in size, all three nanoSERIES controllers go HUGE when it comes to functionality, yet their intuitive layouts provide extremely easy operation for any user.

So c'mon; meet the nanoSERIES!
The first on our list is the nanoKEY, keyboard controller, featuring a great-feeling 25-key velocity-sensitive keyboard that's ideal for song production. Each key on this USB-MIDI controller can also be set to send MIDI control data, further expanding its power.

Next up on our list is the nanoPAD, a pad controller featuring 12 highly responsive trigger pads, each one capable of sending up to eight notes - or eight MIDI control messages - simultaneously, in addition to an X-Y touchpad with roll and flam functions for realistic drum programming.

Last, but not least, the nanoKONTROL offers nine faders, nine knobs, 18 switches, plus a full transport section for expansive control; even a flexible note input mode to help you lay down your next big groove!


Feedback on the clips - Friends

Yesterday, My friend mentioned that I probably should play the clips in a way, the more one looks at them, the more elements he/she discovers; as and example, he mentioned the cow scribble in one of the clips, how we can't really perceive it until it starts moving off the whole into the sky.

Today, another friend (tamara), looked at all the clips so far, and she had some interesting comments.

BUTTON CLIP:
- She liked the indoor/outdoor work.
- Found the paper in the background too graphical.
- Suggested to have the pony layered in front of the city.
- Found the edge of the indoor bed side counter too blurred. (maybe I should feather the edge?)
- Again, she would like the button to rotate.

CRANE CLIP:
- Problem with the scribbles (the red one and the grass bit), found them flimsy. (maybe I should try these more thick)

GEFINOR or MARBLE CLIP:
- She also wondered why the marble is not rolling.

HAND AND HEART CLIP:
I told her that there will be an extension between the body and the head so the head doesn't get suspended in the air, she suggested that it doesn't have to be a neck, could be another element that could work with the building.
- Later on, if this element doesn't work with the flower, I could remove the flower.

SLIDE FLOWER CLIP:
- She suggested to repeat either the flower color or any other element (maybe the heart from the hand and heart clip) in the pot on the side, it might create some sort of interesting visual.

WAVE CLIP:
- The top of the blue and white closet might be annoying, either extend the blue or do something else with the top part.
- When I reappear in the building, it's good to see me in more than one location.

WHITE HEELS CLIP:
- Work on the scribbles, how they disappear, maybe when they disappear, turn the lights on?
- The chandelier should disappear sooner around the middle.
- Maybe the chandelier at the end should be bigger and cropped?
- the white heels could just peak in and out, no need to have it go all the way down.

A General comment:
- I should watch the film: "Father and Son" by Alexander Sokurov

Feedback on the clips - Mike and Paul

I showed Mike and Paul the clips and I got their feedbacks, some general and others clips related:
- Modul8 the software is fine, I won't need something more specific at this point.
- The Midi is just there for practical reasons, I could manage to operate directly from the software itself, it's just the buttons on the midi are more comfortable.
- Mike suggested I gather all the clips on one big composition, on some form of a grid and I could move from one clip to another, moving up and down on every other clip while they are playing, probably could zoom in and out of the playing clips as well.
- Paul suggested I dissolve and do some layering work.
- Mike and Paul suggested I cut the clips even further, making every other movement a new clip, in other words, split the clios more.
- Mike suggested I take elements from clips and save them as separate layers as well to enrich the whole performance.
- They both are insisting on the importance of music.
- A VJ could be sitting behind the audience unless he is part of the performance, "you don't want people to look at you, you want them to look at the visuals".
- When you connect the controller or the midi to the computer, you have to map the midi, making the computer key detect the controller.
- Paul suggested I use the ease in and ease out buttons.
- Note to self: Consider projecting on a LED screen?

FINAL - bricks clip indoors

A new clip with my younger sister, a new character that will only show in this clip as part of the project. Actually this clip still needs refining and more editing.

transitional digital objects - bricks clip indoors from maya chami on Vimeo.

Saturday 25 June 2011

draft_sound_1

here are some of the sentences in Ziad's voice, these will be later embedded within the sound.

Final Sentences Sound and Voices

2 weeks ago, I asked a tenor friend Ziad Nehme, to try to read operatically the sentences I would like to embed in the sound layer of the project. I also contacted another friend (who would like to remain anonymous for professional reasons) to compose and edit the sound layer.
There is no one reason why I would like to include an operatic narrator in the project. I love Ziad's voice, and in the drafts he sent me (to be posted in another note) he reminded me of when I used to come up with songs when we were young, a very common boredom related exercise. Do children still do that?
Here are the sentences I asked him to sing, the long ones will be rather read.

- Transitional Digital Objects: Fluidity in compositing an autobiography or a failure to create a portrait of the whole?
- Look at me not falling apart.
- Look at my sister.
- Look at my mother.
- Look at me, randomizing the course of my events.
- Autocorrecting my autobiography.
- My arbitrary decisions are random.
- How can I embed meaning in my random life?
- At the age of 5 I was like a black and white film, silent until further notice.
- My communication consisted of muttering few words intermittently.
- My memories are abundant there’s a jungle in my head.
- I whistle in the vacuum to retrieve a memory.
- It is all so connected like threads woven with threads.
- It is all so connected like a contour of an amorphous form.
- In a football game, the player reads and anticipates the action of the other.
- In this game, I can read and anticipate the action of you, the other.
- The idea of restoration of dialogue is omnipresent.
- We were two kids, my older sister and I, living with our parents. Our entertainment was to watch the plants grow and the flowers blossom. My mother’s efforts in providing us amusement included, one day, an outing to watch a football game at the only playing field in the village. Upon our arrival, one of the players kicks the ball and the ball hits me squarely in the face. As my nose starts bleeding, my mom quickly takes me into her lap and places my head on her shoulder. She runs back with me towards our house to nurse my injury. That day, my nose bled so much it ruined the removable collar of my mother’s dress.
- The removal or reduction of the ‘bread and circuses’ from mass culture will threaten the continued operation of the market and society, as well as higher philosophical truth.
- Beirut had become a potential ‘winning’ project; the mere existence of the country on the map is a victory.
- The citizens reclaim symbols of the republic, the flag and the national anthem which otherwise are usually confiscated as the property of right wing nationalists.
- The delirious crowd, the intellectuals glued to their television screens, and the public literally colonized by magical passes or punches.
- “Voluntarism of imagination” on a small screen.
- The simulacrum of the field is a field in reduction, a micro-field.
- On ultra big screens: the ability to imagine is reduced to zero.
- The screen enlarges players, giving back to the audience, as in their early days of movie theaters, their childhood perceptions… a period where all adults appeared as giants.
- The relation between the public and the television screen is revealed at the end of the match; suddenly the event is no longer inside the screen, but totally outside it.
- The screen is reduced to its modest role as witness, or substitute with the mere task of giving older and sick people a reflection of what is happening elsewhere.
- The urge instantly felt by each viewer to meet the crowd. There’s something to share, something that does not exist outside the sharing process; and that is the object that the screen cannot contain. It is at the same time the victory and the limits of the media… the moment when television screens become abandoned by all those who rush to the streets to congratulate each other.
- It is not by accident that, twenty years later, I still recall the football hitting my face that day in my parent’s village. It has become the alarm that wakes me up every morning.
- A marble / A crane / My white heels key holder / A button / the Sun / Plastic purple heart / Ladder / Flower / Wave / Me / My sister / My mother.

Wednesday 15 June 2011

FINAL - white heels clip indoors

A new clip introducing one more object, my white heel key holder which was very spread at a certain point in Beirut.

transitional digital objects - white heels clip indoors from maya chami on Vimeo.

Monday 13 June 2011

FINAL - button clip indoors

Two earlier clips which weren't quite convincing, I reworked them both and integrated them within a next context, and both clips are now merged into one. It is the following:

transitional digital objects - button clip indoors from maya chami on Vimeo.

Saturday 11 June 2011

Last years show invites

Claire emailed me the examples of last years "postcards for the show which were on hand to be picked up by show visitors, thus a post-show self-promotion system as opposed to a pre-show generic invite."



Wednesday 8 June 2011

Chris Milk and the Johnny Cash Project

More storytelling forms, Chris Milk's project initiated before his Arcade Fire/Wilderness Downtown project, he had started brewing a web-based video, a memorial to Johnny Cash.

The project is on the following link:
http://www.thejohnnycashproject.com/

And everyone could submit drawings for the clip on the following link:

And the link to the Guardian article:

storytelling: Matthew Herbert: How I made a concert out of the Guardian

"Something that appears quite temporary, quite disposable and turn it into a story."

"Matthew Herbert talks through the ideas behind One Day, a composition inspired by the content - and production - of the 25 September edition of the Guardian"

* The piece was performed by the London Sinfonietta on Saturday November 20 2010 at the Royal Festival Hall

Japan's cat's ear headset that matches your mood


read the article on the following link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13694911

Intel Museum of Me

Intel Launched the Museum of Me, an application that asks the user to connect to his Facebook account. Once Museum of Me accesses the user's profile information, basic information, wall, post items, photos, videos, friends' information, the application creates a visualization of the user's social self, under the form of a museum. Of course, this visualization, again, could be shared on Facebook.



The application does not store the information it accesses, also "Intel makes no representation that materials found in the Application are appropriate or available for use in other locations, and access to them from territories where their content is illegal is prohibited."

The outcome becomes a video tour of the virtual museum (that I couldn't save for a reason, not sure it is an option) and a photo gallery of the virtual visit that you could share on your Facebook page:


To create your own Museum of Me, visit the following link: http://www.intel.com/museumofme/l/index.htm


Monday 6 June 2011

FINAL - gefinor clip indoors

After playing this loop for over a month now, i think i am convinced that i am going to keep the elements as i first created them, i did some minor tweaking and i imported the clip on another background from my grandmother's house interior.

transitional digital objects: earlier loop on grandmother's interior from maya chami on Vimeo.

FINAL - hand and heart clip indoors

transitional digital objects - hand and heart at grandmother's house from maya chami on Vimeo.