blacklog

I recently moved from Massachusetts to California. The process of packing and unpacking all of my belongings has inevitably influenced my digital life, inspiring me to look over and reorganize every corner of my backup drives, updating and consolidating old files and directories. At some point I came across a text file where I write my login information every time I create a new account on a website. I am used to create a different password every time, usually based on combinations of insults in different languages—I find those easy to remember—and special characters when it’s required. Overwhelmed by the clutter of usernames and passwords, I decided to take some time and rewrite the contents of that file in a more readable format.

The following image is a low resolution rasterization of the result, where each line contains my login information for a different web service. Lines are clustered in categories like “social”, “travel”, “banking”, and so on. There are close to three hundred entries. I am only active on around a third of them, and when I reviewed each account in the browser, I realized a number of them didn’t exist anymore as functional websites. Luckily, none of the deceased contained data that I cared about.

I just exposed my last four Kodachrome film canisters. I bought a 50 pack last year when I heard Kodak had finally discontinued the stock. Along with other kinds of film, I have been scanning and posting my Kodachrome pictures on flickr, especially every time I travel back home to Mexico City, an incredibly film sensitive subject, rich in atmosphere, texture and stories to capture.

For a while now, Dwayne’s Photo has been the only lab in the world that develops Kodachrome, but they will stop processing it after the end of this year. I wonder what would have happened if I didn’t manage to finish all my film by then. Would it have been possible to figure out the chemistry and develop the film some other way? Would I be stuck with a bunch of pictures that I would never be able to see?

What is the impact over a medium when a technology becomes obsolete? Many would argue that the disappearance of Kodachrome—or even all film in general—will have little impact on the face of photography. Some even affirm that photography is by nature a digital medium that has been forced to tolerate the shackles of paper and dyes and primitive chemical processes, but I believe a medium is shaped by it’s content, and content is dependent on the tools and materials used to make it. Looking at things this way, one might even think that film and computer photography are two different mediums, and this might not be such a strange thing to think.

Meanwhile, I’ll just start using more Ektachrome, Fuji Velvia, and anything else with a thick photosensitive emulsion that comes my way.

I’ve recently been given the opportunity to conceptualize and direct a video about the future by Chris Caplice of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. Working with his team has been an incredibly rewarding experience, and I was provided with the means to hire wardrobe, art direction, hair and make up, and a cast of eleven actors, including my good friend, Ph.D. zombie superstar Christopher Robichaud. It definitely felt like I was directing a real production. We shot for two days about a week ago, one day in a green screen studio and another one on location at MIT, where I borrowed facilities from the MIT Engineering Systems Division and the MIT School of Architecture and Planning.

The nature of this project needs to remain confidential until it is released, so I can’t say much more about it yet, except that it has been a lot of adventure and fun, and I am grateful with everyone that has helped me with it.

Photo: T. Whitlow as Helen Palmer.

This is update from a previous note. A few months ago I modeled a few cartoon characters using an experimental modeling application developed by Alec Rivers at CSAIL. Working with it is actually a hybrid process between drawing and modeling. After drawing a few views of a cartoon character from a few basic two dimensional shapes—front, side and top for example—the software tries its best generate all other views required to look at the character from any p.o.v. in three dimensions. An iterative process lets you refine the views that don’t look right, rearranging and deforming the original shapes, until you build a two dimensional character that can be looked in three dimensions from any angle. Hence the name of the project: 2.5D. I believe using this software can be significantly less confusing than my explanation. Alec and his collaborators are definitely more clear in the paper that was featured in Siggraph this Summer. If you visit Alec’s project webpage you can actually download the software and play with the models I made—or make your own—provided that you can run Windows 7 or Vista in your machine.

The character featured in the picture combines features from Disney’s Stitch and the little green aliens from the Toy Story series.

I am not sure if a version of this technique will ever become an industry standard. It all depends on how much smarter computers will become in the future, but it’s a good reminder that the creation of new digital tools is an open door to new forms of expression, even within the constraints of traditional forms like cartoon animation.

I just finished this poster illustration for Lucky Gallery’s closing event in Red Hook next weekend. I am sad the gallery is closing. I remember mentioning it was there to stay when I talked about it in this video, but I guess I was wrong.

Form follows function in this year’s National Design Triennial exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum. The densely populated show features a collection of design efforts that range from solar powered energy towers taller than more than two Empire State buildings, the iPhone, a new generation of eco-friendly coffins, Twitter and Etsy, to modular prosthetic limbs and fool-proof condoms. It’s impossible not to feel the futuristic pull while walking through the galleries of the Museum.

After graduating from the Media Lab in 2008, I worked for a year with Jhonatan Rotberg in the Next Billion Network that is featured in the Health section of the show. Along with some time full of wonderful experiences, working with Jhonatan got me inside the opening event of the National Design Triennial as a featured exhibitor last Thursday.

I believe the exhibition itself is the most eloquent answer to the question posed by its own title.

Julián Herbert and my cousin Mabel Garza from Saltillo recently invited me to participate in a collaboration experiment where artists would exchange instructions to produce a series of pieces, all of them measuring 8×10 centimeters.

These are the instructions I received from Orvar in Berlin:

1. No usar colores.
2. Dibújate en grafito con tu playera de Batman recordando cuando querías ser escritor. Well here is a colored version anyway.

I am still puzzled about how he figured out I once wanted to be a writer. Perhaps my cousin tipped him off.

And these are the instructions I sent to Adalberto Montes in Saltillo:

1. Materiales: Puedes usar los materiales que quieras siempre y cuando no haya color ni escalas de grises. Usarás sólamente lineas y plastas.
2. Proceso de simplificación del rostro o cabeza: Una cara se compone principalmente de un contenedor — o cara — de forma variable, en que se colocan los distintos elementos que distinguen un rostro del otro. Ojos, boca, orejas, nariz, etc. Inventar un sistema simplificado que permita dibujar rostros chiquititos conservando la mayor expresividad posible.
3. Diagramación: En la hoja de 8×10 cm caben ochenta cuadritos. Ochenta años. Dibujar una cara — muy simplificada — en cada cuadrito, siguiendo la progresión de la vida. La primera cara será un bebé recién nacido, y la última sea una calavera. Es importante que dibujes en chiquitito, a tamaño real.

I am very amused with the results, and can’t wait to see what all the other people did.