Logo Heist

Purdue Pharmaceuticals logo changed to say Black Tar.  Purdue is responsible for patenting and manufacturing a variety of dangerous opiate-based pain medications such as Oxycontin, Opana, and various fentanyl treatments.  These prescription drugs are now responsible for more annual overdoses than cocaine and heroin combined.  Bad stuff.

Chance Project Instructions

Step 1. First, create a new file in Photoshop or a similar program.  Even a simple one such as MSpaint should work.  The page should be a square, and preferably large.

Step 2: Mentally separate the image into quadrants, numbered one through four like this:

Step 3: Using a random number generator, get 15 random numbers with a range of 1-255.

Step 4: Arrange these random numbers in groups of three, so you will have five groups total.  These will be later used as values on the RGB scale to get five random colors like so.  Use the first random number as the background for your image. 

Step 5: Use the random number generator again to produce four random numbers, ranges 1-4.  These are the quadrants in which you will be drawing.

Step 6: Draw four objects, a square, circle, triangle, and a face in that order.  The shapes should be drawn using the random colors you got in step 4, excluding the first set because that is your background.  You will assign these images to the quadrants you rolled in the previous step.  For instance, if you got 4, 4, 1, 2, both the square and circle will be drawn in quadrant 4, the triangle in quadrant 1, and the face in quadrant 2.

Step 7: Enjoy your randomly generated result.  Here is mine.

And here is another of mine, using different random inputs.

Also this is my creation using Gabe's instructions for the project, which can be found here.

Harry Bertoia's sculptures

This is an art installation created by Harry Bertoia, it's basically a room full of sculptures that are made out of long, straight metal tubes.  When the sculptures are touched the tubes clang together like a chime creating an interesting noise.  During the course of the video he walks around and strikes several of the chimes, each creating vastly different sounds.  The result is what sounds like ambient music, with so many chimes reverberating at once.  He even has a few gong-like structures in the room which create other distinctive noises.

Newcastle Advertisement

This next piece is an ad that was done for Newcastle.  Two shadow artists from New York got together and made a billboard using over 3000 Newcastle bottle caps.  Throughout the video it is unclear what the image is supposed to be, but when the billboard is shown in its completion it forms a very cool image.  I like the idea a lot because I've always wanted to make some kind of sculpture or installation out of bottle caps.  This also reminds me of a shadow art gallery that I saw in Connecticut a few years ago, I haven't really seen much shadow art since then and it's refreshing.

First Blog

For my first entry I will be writing about a performance by the band Sunn O))).  I found videos on youtube of the duo (Stephen O'Malley, Greg Anderson) playing in an old church in Belgium.  Both members of the band play guitar and they play a genre called drone doom metal, in which songs are typically very long, slow and heavy.  The band also utilizes feedback from the amplifiers as part of their music, during the performance you can see them do this.  The video is quite interesting, the church is thick with fog while hundreds of people watch two men in black robes playing guitar on stage: take a look.