Flowers with Tendrils by Don Relyea at Dallas Aurora 2011

Dallas Aurora 2011 was a huge success! “Flowers and Tendrils” as well as “Bombshell” were installed on the roof of the parking garage across from the Winspear on Friday 10/28/2011 as part of the Aurora Dallas 2011 video and art festival. I have been to several similar festivals at this point and Aurora Dallas was the best overall experience I have had so far both from an artist perspective as well as from a spectator perspective!

Bombshell by Don Relyea at Dallas Aurora 2011

The expansive outdoor art experience sprawled across several city blocks along Flora Street in the Downtown Arts district. It featured a hundred artists with a diverse body of work. Everything from simple video projections to highly interactive and sensory immersive experiences. I was very impressed with the thought that went into many of the interactive pieces and the consideration given to kids and their participation in the art. Aurora Dallas was the most fun my family and kids have had at an art festival by far!

Kids interacting with art on Flora St.

Aurora Dallas 2011 was very well organized and came together well mostly due to the hard work and planning of the organizers. Everything down to the power requirements were figured out ahead of time. The Crowds were pleasant and well behaved and the art installations were both thought provoking and family friendly. One of the organizers who put a lot of time in on this event was Joshua King, his installation Transition of Life, was also one of my favorites as well as my kids favorites.

Long line across the lawn of the Winspear to enter Joshua Kings installation, “Transition of Life”.

Scott Horn & Nicole Cullum Horn’s Evolvoscope was very popular with our gaggle of kids that pillaged the event. The Horns write, “Evolvoscope Mixed Media Sculpture 2011 9′x50″ he Evolvoscope animates the evolution of our species through a modern interpretation of the original GIF, the zoetrope. Give it a spin and be mesmerized as eons of our development from monkey to man march before your eyes. Watch as your own reflection is drawn into the endless loop of evolution and devolution in The Evolvoscope.”

Scott Horn & Nicole Cullum Horn’s Evolvoscope

One of my former students was at the festival working Brittany Ransom’s “HOST (Version II) Video Installation”. Ransom’s installation incorporated insects as part of the installation. Passers by were sucked into trying to see the small beetles in the jar on the podium that was part of her piece.

Brittany Ransom’s “HOST (Version II) Video Installation”

I took a lot of pictures and video but it was dark and not all of them turned out very well, however some did turn out and I have put them in a Flickr set you can access below.

Dallas Aurora 2011 Flickr Set

4AM Single Cover

I have just finished a new electronic house track titled “4AM”. It is a very melodic electro house track. The lead synth reminds me of of the old rave sounds of the 90′s. Feel free to let me know what you think and feel free to download it.

(the arrow pointing down is the download button for those unfamiliar with soundcloud).

Enjoy!

Algorithmic Exploration of Squares (132534_1039778917) by Don Relyea

The above Flickr Sideshow (click this link if on iPad) is a batch of selected images from my ongoing Algorithmic Exploration of the Square series. This project consists of a program that creates a new work every day which it then posts to my blog, flickr, twitter and now defunct tumblr page (I think I maxed the number of images).

This series of generative squares is based on my exploration of related points on a Hilbert space filling curve series. It is also highly influenced by color theorist Josef Albers.

John Boehner Wept Illustration/Portrait July 2011

With the 2012 elections around the corner I decided to spend some time this week brushing up on my political portraiture skills. So many clowns in Washington, so little time. I thought to myself… hmmm, who should I pick on for this exercise?

With all the talk of the debt ceiling John Boehner has been in the news quite a bit so I googled him. To my surprise the second suggestion google had for me was “John Boehner crying”. For some reason he cries a lot, perfect!

I interrupt this post for a musical interlude =)

Smokey Robinson – Tears of a Clown (Action Jackson Remix)

Sad John Boehner Illustration/Portrait 2011

I dusted off my Bombshell video code base in openframeworks, tweaked the code a little bit to optimize it for a bigger frame buffer and ran it. In only a few minutes I had a couple good ones. It probably took me longer to hand draw the tears with the mouse than it did re-using my old code. Such is the beauty of using a generative toolset.

This is one of my first trashy electro house tracks, I also have several new melodic electro tracks in the works that should be ready to share soon.  I think I got a little heavy handed in some parts of this one but it has its moments. The sample is from one of my favorite Rancid tracks. The cover is a finger monkey, which I discovered courtesy of LDFD in one my classes. Enjoy the free download!

In case you are not familiar with Soundcloud, to download just click on the black down arrow on the right of the player.

Late last year I decided to revisit my old Hilbert with Helipads and Ladders prototype. I was easily able to get it up and running and generating decent resolution output. I will be periodically posting the new works to my blog in the category Helipads with Ladders.

I have created a flickr set so you can check out some of the older ones.

This particular piece has proven to be pretty popular on Tumblr so I am planning to do a series of prints in the Fall.

“401_06″ by Don Relyea at photo from JMM 2010 Moscone Center, San Francisco

“Meret Oppenheim” at LAL Nude 2010, Lexington Art League galllery, Lexington Kentucky

I received a lot of questions about the Meret Oppenheim piece from LAL and I thought I would share my commentary on the piece here as well.

The Meret Oppenheim piece was developed in C++ using Openframeworks. It employs a particle fx engine to draw the hair.

Meret Oppenheim was the the artist loosely associated with the Dada movement who made the very famous fur lined teacup. The photo this image is sampled from was taken in 1937 by Man Ray. I thought Meret Oppenheim would be a great subject for a hair particle drawing project.

Flowers with Tendrils Final from Don Relyea on Vimeo.

Sharon Tate from Bomshell video art by Don Relyea

Bombshell accepted in the New Media Caucus CAA video showcase at CAA: NYC 2011.

Music: “If we live our lives the right way” by Don Relyea, “If we live our lives the right way”(Bombshell Mix) ( 192khz MP3) Right Click to Download MP3

Bombshell from Don Relyea on Vimeo.

Agendas Under Fire
I have modified my particle drawing program to do a bunch of new particle types as well as respond to mouse or touch screen input for drawing. This allows me to bring the “hand of the artist” back into my computational works.

This series was done in c++ in openframeworks 0.06 using the code blocks IDE.

The complete set of sketches is on Flickr at my Agendas under fire set.

Most of my regular site visitors know by now I am politically independent with a general disdain for politicians, pretty much all politicans. I do enjoy keeping up with politics for entertainment. Politcs today has so many larger than life characters and it is interesting to watch them battle over how to best spend my tax money.

This series is intended to mark somewhat of a sea change in the direction of US politics this year. If you had asked me whether I though Obama would have any trouble getting the majority of his agenda items through the legislature this time last year I would have said no. I just assumed my tax money would have gone to health care, cap n’ trade and energy initiatives by now.

But US politics is a seemingly never ending comedy of errors and never ceases to amaze me. Clearly Obama’s agenda is now under fire.

Harry Reid Agenda Under Fire January 2010

Now with Scott Brown entering the senate, Harry Reid no longer has the super majority. It seems as though the Reid has squandered his advantage and will need to pass legislation with at least some compromise now or the “no” party will be able to get away with saying no. Or I suppose he can buy votes with pork.

Nancy Pelosi Agenda Under Fire January 2010

I love this picture of Pelosi screaming. Pelosi, one of the most powerful women in politics now has to worry about a bunch of congressional representatives that are mortified about about voter backlash in the elections later this year. This will make it much more difficult to get her items though Congress without significant compromise. I do have to give her credit for bringing up the Congressional approval rating to 25% from its lowest of all time around a year ago.

Al Gore Agenda Under Fire January 2010

I really like Al Gore, mostly because he invented the internet allowing me to have this fantastic platform to communicate my ideas=)

The flawed prediction that Himalayan glaciers are likely to disappear by 2035 ( Guradian Report, 21 January), after the leaked emails from UEA have not helped the credibility of climate science nor have they helped our good buddy Al Gore.

Al Gore is also the most visible face of the global warming movement and the global warming agenda is under attack.