Science!

In the spirit of art, science and media from semiconductor films.

Ideologies

Artifacts

photo by Matt Spanglerphoto by Nicky Digital

Dance Plans

Reds

Red Detachment of Women

In the camp of the Red Army beside the Wanquan River, a newly formed Detachment of Women is being trained. Wu tells the Red Army soldiers the enormity of the Tyrant of the South's crimes. She then ceremoniously receives a rifle and is accepted as a member of the Women's Detachment. With determination, they plan to liberate the those under the oppression of the tyrant.

Red Army

I am raising a red army for May 20.
21+

THNKHRD

DNCHRD is an event thrown by LVHRD, part of happycorp-global's family of branding companies. Their respective logos are concatenated below.Their site describes DNCHRD IV as "a dance competition in 6 colors. Six color-coordinated dance crews led by 6 Dance Captains show off their choreography during an interactive rock show."

I have been asked to participate as the red Winger team Dance Captain.

The dance war format is particularly fascinating to me. In the space of dance-culture-technology I crave both a proving ground and a place to create cultural war machines. The lesson here, be careful what you wish for and be clear what you are fighting for.

Some background on the organizing entity LVHRD.

LVHRD's New York chapter opened in October of 2004 to a seed group of 100 diverse individuals. Membership was officially closed in May of 2005. Currently, new members are evaluated on an individual basis involving participation, creative pursuits, and professional diversity. Through this criteria, LVHRD maintains an active and varied network of members.
LVHRD is something of a chimera, part art circle, part drinking club, part secret society and part branding machine. Dewar's is their most visible advertising partner. It supplies alcohol for all of their events and its branding can be seen throughout the LVHRD website, photography and video content.

Events include costumed members of the New York culturati drinking and partaking in competitive silliness like eating the contents of a vending machine or building urban models from cheese. They are fun and exclusive.

an ‘ideological,’ scientific, or artistic movement can be a potential war machine D&G (ATP 422)

For DNCHRD the silliness is the dancing itself. The colors are empty signifiers made to represent nothing of import. It is simply meant to distinguish camps.

I did a video shoot for this project on Sunday in the UNIQLO store. Of all of the other team leaders I seemed to be the only one with a real interest or capacity for dance. The comradery with the other captains was fun and dancing in retail space felt socially transgressive so I got a kick out of it. I got a bit confused when asked to dance with the clothing.I am not sure I know what I am getting into or how I feel about a the confluence of commerce and culture wars. To me red stands for radicalism and an anti-corporate ideology. Red stands for passion and sanguinity. When it comes to spirited beverages red stands for apple cider.

Going to war means fighting for something you believe in, not just doing it for fun. Perhaps I dont know what I am getting into. Perhaps LVHRD doesnt know what they are getting into either. We will see on May 20th. I am looking for a crew. Let me know if you are interested in battling in a dance war.

I am playing your game but I am playing my way. --Otis Houstin Jr aka Black Cherokee

Symmetric Antisymmetric Interpolation

Given two vectors, v and w, we can linearly combine them to yield their symmetric and their antisymmetric combinations using vector addition and subtraction.
The combination (v+w)/2 is invariant to switching v and w and is therefore termed symmetric. Lets call it s so that s=(v+w)/2. Graphically s can be drawn pointing from the origin to the point midway between the terminal points of vectors v and w. We can think of it as the average vector.

The combination (v-w)/2 reverses sign by switching v and w and is therefore termed antisymmetric . Lets call it a so that a=(v-w)/2. Graphically a can be drawn pointing from the terminal point of s to the terminal point of v. Similarly -a is the vector pointing from the terminal point of s to the terminal point of w. We can think of it as the difference vector.

This is a nifty representation since v=s+a and w=s-a. To interpolate between v and w we need only vary the parameter t from -1 to 1 in the expression s+t*a. Of course there is a max patch that demonstrates this. You must save and reopen this patch to get it to initialize properly.
Happy interpolating! Code in the comments section.

Space Cadets

Learning to navigate the force fields of deep space takes practice. A kinesthetic and mathematical understanding of an expressive instrument enhances its creative possibilities.

Music: Cops at the Door by Die Kapitalist Pig
Duck: Jon Kinzel
Biplane: Cavin Moore
Moonbug: Sarah Rosner
Cruiser: Meghan McCoy