radarboy /Projects

Available from Skreened.

I came across this yesterday – Capsule 02 – a project Gareth and I did ages ago which tells you about Cape Town Transport and other such stuff.

The content was distributed on a 1.44mb disk (mainly because they were cheap and deemed completely “unsuitable” for a magazine) and won numerous awards. I shudder at the navigation, but the content is still quite fun.

The Big Cup is coming to South Africa. Dress for success. Dress to impress.

Now available from the very fine MySoti Store

(* Headline translates roughly as: Hurry guys! The Big Cup is coming)

Tired of meaningless BNE stickers plastered all over your hood? Time to localize…
Give them some local relevance by just adding a letter, whether you’re in NY, London, Paris or Cape Town.

Helvetica Neue Bold Condensed at 85% horizontal scaling.

I’ve always been fascinated by the flickering light a TV gives off. I am also concerned with my art being experiential – to create a place for visitors to interact with, hang out and make their own. Thus the idea of The Living Room was born.

A TV remote control could be used to control the “channels” on the TV and hence the lighting of the room. The channels were actually various sound reactive applications running off a laptop. The computer was connected to an Arduino with an infra-red sensor to communicated with the remote control.

Featured was also a knitting channel which showed visitors how to knit, with wool and knitting needles provided.

The installation was part of the Mind The Box launch event held at the amazing Mind Pirates building in Kreuzberg Berlin.

But fear not. We will clothe you.
We’re happy to announce T-ShirtMaker Ver. 4 – the Berlin edition. Design your own custom pixel tee goodness.

http://www.radarboy.com/tshirtmaker/

My current work, Look to the Sky, is a contemplation of our thoughts as a broadcast medium across the sky and beyond. , is on display this week at Fabbrica del Vapore as part of Salone del Mobile 2010.

Look to the Sky was made possible through the kind assistance of Mind The Box, a Berlin association that promotes cultural inter-city exchange, and Process 4 Labs.

I have always been fascinated by space as a representation of the future and the hope that it inspires. Look to the Sky is a physical representation of our imagination and of our thoughts as they are broadcast across the sky and beyond.

Inspired by German abstract sculptor Norbert Krick and his Raumplastik series. 30m x 8m. Plastic wire, fishing line, light.

Pics courtesy of Mind The Box

I’ve decided to start release some of the stuff I’ve been working on lately, building up towards my show. I have so many experiments sitting on my hard drive that never see the light of day.

So here we have Sound Reactive Circle 1.

I wanted it to be able to play in the browser, but for some reason couldn’t get it to work, event though I signed the applet. Next time….

A video is here. For more of my work see the radarboy FLickr page.

Here’s the code. Build in Processing. It includes a Mac, PC and Linux application.

You may know that South African Mark Shuttleworth was the first African in space. But what I’m sure you didn’t know, is that the Afronaut is also the first space smuggler. Radarboy gives you the low down on how he did it and what contraband was taken:

A small love story. Click here to view.

These screengrabs are part of a vast pool of sound reactive stuff I’ve been working on over the past year, which is finally getting into a presentable form.

After a long haitus, I completely rebuild the old award winning RBVJ in Processing – but it wasn’t as simple as I anticipated, and it’s still not 100% stable. Once it is I will release the code.

I’m not a programmer, I’m a designer/artist, whatever. However I do enjoy quite a few aspects of programatic design – the fact that code can lead you to unexpected places and taking on a life of it’s own can really surprise you.

I am really most inspired by the visuals of Raster Norton and Ali Demirel, which are pretty close to my own work in both style and substance. I’ve also been thinking plenty about space and I think, along with minimalism, these theme play out a lot in my work. I think the graphics also reflect the way my music production is moving.

I have always believed that club graphics should simple – there is too much noise in the world already – and the simplicity of the graphics allows us to go with the music and find meaning on our own, rather than being shoved down a visual mishmash. Not that these kind of graphics should necessarily be just shown in a club context, but that’s another whole conversation.

The plan is to combine the visuals with my live music/DJ sets – eventually controlling both light and sound through Ableton/OSC/Max.

Soon on a wall/dancefloor in Berlin. And beyond.

Project Links:
Gallery: Here’s the first of a three part set of screengrabs from my work:
http://radarboy.com/george/visuals1.html
Video: (Coming Soon – next week hopefully)

Some technical stuff:
I’ve decided to totally ditch Flash – it is just too verbose, annoying and slow. I actually considered moving completely over to Open Frameworks for speed, but eventually decided Processing was the best bet. Given the strides being made in ProcessingJS – the JavaScript port of Processing, the recent launch of Processing for Andoid and news that Processing 2 will be even better friends with OpenGL. Open Frameworks’ inability to publish on the web was also a clincher. Anyway, I digress.