Stop Motion Animation

I'm always wishing I could score more video. Animation has always intrigued me, stop motion in particular (think Wallace and Gromit). I got my first hands on taste of creating stop motion working with Eric while volunteering at Camp Bright Feathers. For years I have been looking for artists to create the visuals for me, so I can focus on the sounds. Volunteers are still welcome, but I'm through just waiting.



I've had visitors staying with me 3 of the last 4 weekends. This long weekend I decided to hole up in the house and get creative.

I've got my new camera (Canon T1i) that I bought for a trip to India, but will now be using to photograph where ever in South America you all send us while traveling with The Hostel Life instead. I've got iStop Motion installed on my little mac mini (got this really cheap from the 2007 MacHeist)and I went to the store around the corner and got some clay. I also grabbed a little wire framed fisherman toy that my mother gave me a while back.

I'm studying Latin rhythms a bit to get ready to travel to South America with The Hostel Life. I taught myself how to play the Timbao rhythm on a djembe (don't have congas). I didn't record that though....not there yet. I grabbed some samples of a Samba rhythm and built off of that for the score. I, of course, threw a break beat over the samba to funk it up and then added some individual hits from a kit drum on top of that to give it some heft. Then I recorded some acoustic, electric, classical and bass guitar before layering pads and assorted bits with my new little Micron synth (It's a bit digital for my taste...I need to get my Virus fixed soon) and a few other soft synths.

What ended up on the video is a 30 second edit of the 2.5 minute track that emerged. The edit was taken at an early stage while the song was still fairly empty. The full track starts out fairly organic and beautiful then takes a sudden turn for the darker before it ends back on the samba groove.

The focus of this stop motion test was to learn about how to sync movement with sound. This is fairly easy to plan when the numbers are simple. If the music is 120 beats per minute and the video is shot at 10 frames per second then I know right away which frames will land on a down beat. The music here is at 115 bpm and the video was shot at 14 frames per second. This is not as simple or consistent. I'm figuring out tricks as I go. I did decide to upgrade to the 'Express' version of iStop Motion as this allows soundtracks to be imported and video to be imported for rotoscoping.

What we have here is a 33 second clip comprised of 468 frames made from 431 individual photographs taken while enjoying a glass of red wine (note the drip running down the side of the glass once it is empty).

I'm guessing it'll be 5 years or so before I'm making anything truly impressive to look at. Owen begs to differ pointing out how the mind links different arts such as music and sound. I'd agree, but things will go a lot faster once I get people like him on board to collaborate.

Here's the full track:


Devin Martin - Latin01
right click to download

I've Joined The Hostel Life

I've just joined the cast/crew of The Hostel Life. As I mentioned before, I was scoring some promotional videos to help pitch the show to some networks. I had mentioned to Mehdy, the host of the show, over a few months of working together by phone that in order to write music I need inspiration, so at some point he would have to take me on one of his trips.

I was sitting in my apartment catching up with Benjamin and buying a plane ticket to India. The plan was to fly to Bangalore on Christmas to attend The Art of Living's Yes+ Winter Break meditation and service courses and then backpack around for a few weeks by myself hopefully meeting up with some family who would also be traveling in India at the time. I would fly out of Delhi returning to NYC on January 22nd. Literally as I was pushing the purchase button my phone rang. It was Mehdy. He told me that he was planning his next trip, the first real attempt at the show with networks watching. And he was putting together a new cast/crew. It's going to be a three person team. Mehdy is the host. Luke is the Director of Photography. They needed one more person; a sound guy, second camera, co-writer, editor, photographer, jack-of-all type...and I was his first choice. The travel details will be up to you (the audience), but it is looking like it will be to South America for 5 weeks.

"When do you leave" I asked

"January 22nd" he replied

Interesting right? This was on Monday December 14. I decided that I couldn't leave for over two months without some more prep-time and out of respect for my day job. So, I postponed my trip to India and will be heading where ever people send us with The Hostel Life. We meet up in Tampa on Feb 1st for a couple of days of test shooting and then we will be leaving the country. We're going to be moving fast and covering a lot of ground. We will each have a lot of responsibilities potentially both on and off camera.

The success of this thing is going to lie heavily on audience participation. This is truly intended as an interactive guide to traveling on a budget. There will be polls on the website and what the audience votes we do within the budget while showing you how. The idea is to show how you can have an amazing adventure while on vacation for $300-400/week. We're not talking about sitting in a little hut on the beach. We're talking about getting off the beaten path a bit and seeing the exotic as well as festivals, fairs, natural wonders, music, doing service in the community and meeting as many unique and interesting people as possible. I think I'm going to document the food that we find in each region as well.

We will be off the grid a fair amount, but are committed to finding the internet every few days and uploading video and other content to the site.

So PLEASE find The Hostel Life on Facebook and become a fan. The page just went up, but we already have over 2,000 fans. A lot of them are from India, which excites me. Maybe they'll vote the show there next. You can also sign up for email updates on the web site. You'll probably hear me petitioning for certain outcomes for the polls, so I may need your help steering the ship to interesting places. I never promised to be impartial.

Check out the photos page on the site. I've just put up some photos of my trip to Brazil.

Practically Ideal

Logan recently reached out to ask me if he could use some of my music for his new podcast called Practically Ideal. Billed as a 'podcast for idealists who like to keep it practical' Logan Beaux and Bob Caswell speak from an intelligent and pragmatic Libertarian perspective. Quite often Libertarians espouse an idealistic, yet completely unrealistic view of how the world 'should be'. These guys keep the hope alive, but look deeply at both the limitations and confusions inherent in many ways this political ideology is often expressed. They offer us a nuanced exploration of how libertarian thinking and action does and does not fit into the lives of intelligent, compassionate, integrally informed and open minded individuals who like playing video games and watching TV as well as being political active; or at least informed.

I, for one, am interested in Libertarianism both for specific reasons related to smaller government, less war, increased liberties (LEGALIZE IT!!) and increased individual trust and responsibility. But, as much as you may or may not support one particular flavor of free market capitalism, who doesn't feel the need for a viable 3rd party in American politics?

Practically Ideal touches upon politics, technology and pop culture....and they play my music. And who doesn't want to hear The Emergence every chance they get?

You can find the podcast at their website: http://practicallyideal.com/ or on iTunes.

Check it out, it's definitely worth a listen.

Chunky Move - Mortal Engine

Just got back from a night out in Brooklyn. Went to the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) to see Chunky Move's Mortal Engine. I could describe, but you should just watch:



Thanks to Kiersten for both turning me on to the performance and for coming with me to see the show.

Baraka

People have been telling me to see this film for quite some time. I think Tony told me first and most often. Baraka is hard to describe. For some reason I was expecting something more music video than story and more psychedelic than linear. It's none of these things and all of them. I'm not going to pretend to be able to describe it in detail here. It needs to be watched and the less specific your expectations are the better I think. But I will try to give you an impression of what the experience was like for me.

If ever I had any doubt about just how weird and wonderful this world is in all of its diversity of manifestation, Baraka put that concern to rest. The cinematography is stunning. The music, the sounds amazing. The sequence of shots tells a story that words would have only muddled and confined.

At times I was reminded of Planet Earth simply because of a sense of awe that someone had managed to film what I was looking at and managed to do so in such an intensely beautiful and powerfully delicate way. Nothing seems contrived or rehearsed or even particularly concerned with the camera. The director Ron Fricke plays with time and scale exploring both the sacred and the mundane.

Through ritual, through design, through creating, moving, praying, working and intensely held stillness the scenes that are shown in this movie weave an image of intense differences at many levels, but left me with a sense of a far deeper and more universal common core. Through 152 locations in 24 countries nature is put on display in all of it's geographical, animal, human and technological forms. I was often left with a sense that there was something at work in all of these scenes, a common drive, a shared want or need, that seems to express itself in the most wonderfully weird and inexplicable ways depending on the environment.

I wasn't sure how much I would be in the mood for Baraka at home alone on this Sunday morning with a slight hang over and a lot on my mind. I anticipated a broken viewing with a lot of pausing and getting up to eat or sleep or play guitar. I was in state for most of it; transfixed by the unexpected and lulled by the sweetness of it all. Even in it's darkness the images are tender and full of life.


In case you can't tell. I highly recommend seeing this film. Find the biggest screen you can and don't be shy with the volume. And if you do see it or have seen it, please hit the comment button below and share a response. I'd love to hear your reactions.

Baraka was released in 1992. A sequel, Samsara, is scheduled for release in 2010. I can't wait to see this in the theater. And apparently in 2007 the original film from Baraka was rescanned in an extremely high end custom manner, the audio remastered, and the whole thing released on Blu-ray disc in what Roger Ebert described as "the finest video disc I have ever viewed or ever imagined." I think it may be time for me to update my DVD player.

The Hostel Life

Owen Beckmann recently put me in touch with an old friend of his named Mehdy Ghannad. Mehdy is a world traveler who has mastered seeing the sites on the cheap and now wants to inspire and educate others to do the same. To that end he is pitching a TV show called The Hostel Life to a number of networks. It's basically a reality show that will follow him on his travels. He will be operating on a limited budget ($300 a week I believe) and the fun part is that there will be a website where the audience can interact with him and even choose where he will be going.

Mehdy has asked me to provide music for the clips, and hopefully for the show if it gets picked up. So check out the two vids I've got here and then head over to The Hostel Life on Facebook and become a fan. The more people show an interest the better the chances of this thing getting picked up. And who knows, I just might get to do some traveling around myself.

Emotional Eating - Integrative Nutrition Graduation

I stumbled upon this image today. It seems fitting on this Monday after graduating from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN) yesterday. I think this is a feeling that we have all experienced, though it is not always so clearly understood. Sometimes we don't recognize it as the absence of another and eat whatever is closest. Sometimes we recognize the loneliness and eat through it regardless, desperate for anything to make us feel full. I think at one time or another we all eat our way through a lack of love in our life. The key is not to punish ourselves, to swear up and down that it will never happen again and then to beat ourselves up when it does. I tend to think that awareness is curative. When it is allowed in on a deep enough level awareness in and of itself manifests change. Simply bringing our awareness to the many ways in which the way that we feel affects the way that we eat and the reciprocal ways that the things that we eat affect the way that we feel is a bold step towards a healthier and happier existence.

Being a holistic health counselor trained at IIN guarantees that one is bringing their awareness to these and many other ways in which food is an integral part of the complex web of our lives. Our relationships, our careers, exercise, spirituality, our environment, society, all of these things must be taken into account if we are to truly understand our cravings and how they can be sated. Rather than being a complication of the already hard to comprehend nutritional theories that we are bombarded with, I think that most who embrace these ideas experience a simplification. There is an immense freedom to be gained by jettisoning the usual confines of yo-yo weight loss and gain that accompanies other, less comprehensive and more prescriptive approaches to health. Once we take into account the many factors that are both in and out of our control we begin to see that it is not massive feats of will and grueling dedication that allows our health to flourish. It is not about attempting to fit our body into a particular mold, or eating within the confines of a particular diet that works for someone else. It is about addressing the situation with an embrace that is open enough to allow for all of the many factors that impact our sense of hunger and emptiness as well as recognizing the many, many ways that we can be full-filled.

"Ain't no sunshine when she's gone, it's not warm when she's away"

A deep breath leaves me feeling centered and grounded. Social awkwardness can leave me cold and jittery. A hug brings warmth and gratefulness into my heart. A paycheck can be empowering, a bill in the mail deflating. I could achieve all of the emotions above and so many more through food or it's absensce. Sometimes, when I don't recognize the emotions that my body is generating for what they are, I can confuse them with hunger and either deny myself or indulge in food as a means to try and control the situation. Times when I can simply pause and recognize what my body/mind/spirit are saying are the times when I can honor these emotions and choose to nurture myself appropriately. Of course, sometimes I'm just really fucking hungry.

I feel blessed to have studied with all of the amazing people in this program and am truly excited to now be sharing these tools with clients. If you are reading this I would love to work with you. If you are ready to feel powerful in your choices and are excited about the possibility of listening to and trusting what your body is saying to you than my program is aimed at you. It does not matter where you are at now (not even geographically, I am in NYC, but so far most of my clients I work with over the phone). Please check out my website and reach out for a free health history consultation. If you recognize that there is room for growth in your life, if you want to send increasing amounts of light into the areas of your life that have been in shadow too long, than let me offer the possibility that working with a health counselor is exactly the type of support that will empower you to live the life that you are capable of, but may have been denying yourself.

The Emergence - Please Rise 2

In November I broke my pinky finger hanging temporary shades with wine. I put one foot up on the radiator and the other on the arm of a reclining chair. The chair tipped over of course, and I caught my fall on the top of the head rest of that chair creating a 'minimaly displaced fracture of the distal fifth phalanx'. When I looked down and saw the tip of my left pinky finger bent back a bit beyond a perfect 90 degrees I immediately grabbed it with my right hand and SNAPPED it back close to straight as I collapsed with a scream down to my knees. It didn't quite make it back into place. My pinky was still curved a little bit backwards at the tip. I sat there for half an hour bending my finger over the back of a spoon trying to get it to pop back into and stay straight; all the while thinking, "this is going to make recording the rest of my guitar parts really f*$k!@& difficult!" Eventually Amy convinced me to go to the E.R. to get it looked at. They looked at it, x-ray'd it, declared it broken, declined to snap it any straighter, put a $0.50 splint on it and told me to go the Drug Store down the street to get a better one. They also sent me to a hand specialist to get a custom splint made. Apparently hospitals don't specialize in splints. Everyone was amazingly nice to me, cut me deals, slowed down and were present with me (who has no health insurance) and honestly seemed concerned about my musical ambitions. I felt somehow blessed to live in this place.

My finger is still crooked............................ but I can play just fine :)

I made the page of 'Nine Fingered Tasks' above listing things that i could accomplish on the album while on the plane ride to London ten days later that only required nine of my fingers (no guitar). I did some pretty intense time correcting, granular editing, mixing, vocal comping and arrangement of parts. All in all, The album ended up taking about a year and a half, from deciding to start writing to CD in hand. Not too bad me thinks.


About a year and a half ago I showed up at David's house in Boston with a contract which we signed with each other stating that we would write and record a CD within a year and then give away 1,000 copies. This included us each writing a song a day for the first 30 days. I live in New York City, David lives in Boston. The plan was to make this a The Postal Service style project sending each other pieces of songs to work on, except instead of the mail we used ftp transfers, email attachments, shared google documents, flash cards, notebooks, skype video chatting and any other means available to communicate. We even got together in person at times to write and play.

Directly upon returning from that initial trip to Boston I found out that my entire building had been vacated. Basically, over 200 people, largely artists living and working in loft spaces we had built out, had been kicked out of our homes and work spaces by the department of buildings. So I found myself suddenly homeless, though my cat Agape was actually padlocked into my aparment. For the next 30 days, while staying with my sister, friends Amy and Logan and in hotels and while at my office I wrote, recorded and sent David a song a day......for well over 20 days. At some point it just became ridiculous (the laptop I was using for recording died). But the time was fruitful for both David and I. Many of the 19 tracks that made it onto the album came out of this time.

David and I met back in 2000. I was DJing at raves and clubs around New England and looking to get back into making my own music as opposed to just playing others. David was making noise in various bands and looking for a more spiritual project to engage. The first time we got together to play the very first thing we did was write a song. I said something to the extent of 'fuck playing covers, let's just write something' and then started strumming chords. David just started singing and within a short while we had written GA, which later appeared as a hidden track on the Hunger Dreams soundtrack. We wrote songs, scored theater, played shows, collaborated on the recording of another project and then went our separate ways for a while. I had moved to North Carolina, dug into my career a bit and recorded some bands on the side. David became a Jewish Studies teacher and later the director of a Jewish school, got married and had a daughter and played in a few musical projects of his own. This album represents us asking the question of whether or not music is still an integral part of our lives and our relationship. I think the answer is a resounding yes.

Over the last year and a half we worked with 25-30 songs exploring themes of love and spirit, of loss and despair, of transcendence and embrace, integration and dissolution; reaching a new level of collaboration between us. This manifested as an amazingly fluid writing process. We co-wrote both the music and the words on this album with an intense openness, vulnerability and clarity often times tearing each others work down only to get together and rebuild it. We recorded in Brooklyn and in Boston and finally had it mastered in Manhattan. We are now in the process of giving away 1,000 CD's. We invite you to find us on Facebook or on MySpace, become a fan or a friend and ask for your free album. You can find David in Boulder, CO this week and in the Boston area after that. I am in and around Brooklyn, NY. We would love to share this music with you. If you go to www.NoAffiliation.com and make a donation of $5 or more to cover shipping I we will send one to you.

This is project NA0018 from my label NoAffiliation. The CD is free, but we are accepting donations to help fund this and future projects.

Hunger Dreams

A number of years back Anthony Schwartzman approached me to write a song or two for a theater piece he was working on for his theatre company Oblivion Productions. When all was said and done I had worked with him and David Wesson to write, record and perform the score for Hunger Dreams. David, who I had been collaborating with on our DaVerse project, worked with me and the cast as a vocal specialist extraordinaire. The cast sang and flew (sometimes simultaneously). Ed Fians banged on junkyard parts as our live percussionist. We performed Hunger Dreams at the Boston Center for the Arts Cyclorama (fucking amazing room) and at the Brooklyn Lyceum. What you see above is a trailer built from live footage of those performances that Tony put together and I scored in anticipation of the second coming of a story which has yet to be fully told. Some of the music is from the original score, some I wrote for the trailer. Something tells me that the journey is not yet complete.

The Emergence - Please Rise

The debut album by my new music project The Emergence is about to be released!

This is a collaboration between David Wesson and I. David is a Boston based singer and an old friend.

Owen Beckmann of http://www.dwell-being.org/ has just handed in the final proofs of the artwork for the eco-wallets. They look amazing. You should definitely check out some of his other work. The man is a talent and you will be hearing more about him in the near future I am sure. The cover is above. Check out the inside of the album when you get one for a little surprise.

I have just given Sarah Register at The Lodge a few very minor notes on the CD reference that she gave me. She should be making these tweaks this week and then I will have the final mastered album in hand and ready to send out for duplication. Thanks again to Sarah and Heba. They have been a pleasure to work with. Sarah has the perfect combination of technical expertise and a truly musical ear that has really helped this album to sound as good as it can (considering that I mixed it ;).

Find The Emergence on Facebook or MySpace and become one of the first to become a fan or a friend. The sites just went up and will be getting filled out with details, photos and information on how to be one of the 1,000 people to receive a free copy of the new album once it is released. We will also begin posting music in the next week.

And go read Shantaram! (link to the right)

Green Business Competition Awards

Last night I attended Green Spaces Green Business Competition awards at Borough Hall in Brooklyn. This competition looked to promote emerging green businesses in New York that have the ability to revolutionize their industry by working with our ecological resources while creating economic opportunities. 70 companies with revenue under $10 million entered this years competition. 5 were chosen to present their business to the panel of judges (and the audience) last night. 3 winners were then selected.

1st place: Gotham Greens

Bringing New Yorkers local, sustainable produce grown in the heart of NYC

Gotham Greens' premium quality, pesticide-free vegetables and herbs will be grown in sterile rooftop greenhouses using clean, renewable energy and captured rainwater.

This company is now building their first 12,000 sq ft rooftop hydroponic garden in NYC. This facility will grow over 30 tons of premium quality, pesticide free vegetables each year for the NYC retail and restaurant market. They will be delivering extremely high quality vegetables the same day that they are picked. We're not talking about genetically modified week old food shipped halfway around the world. We're talking about something picked in your 'back yard' and potentially eaten the same day. They have been running a test site floating out in the river for the past three years and the response has apparently been incredibly enthusiastic, due largely to taste.

The environmental impact is also not to be ignored. Hydroponic farming consumes far less water than traditional dirt farming, as the water is recirculated continuously. They will also be capturing and utilizing rain water. The facility also uses solar panels for most or all of the energy requirements. Any excess energy generated will be fed back into the grid. Nutritionally, these crops have the potential to be far more nutrient dense than traditional crops, the vast majority of which are being grown in soil that is severely depleted, lacking many of the minerals necessary for a truly healthful crop to be grown.

So we're talking local, organic high quality vegetables all year round. Their presentation was very impressive and everything from their business plan to logistical operations to distribution all intensely researched and ready for production.

2nd place: Environmentally Conscious Organization Inc.

Environmentally friendly pizza boxes! This company has designed, patented and significantly marketed an environmentally friendly pizza box alternative sourced entirely from recycled cardboard. With over 3 billion pizza’s being consumed in this country each year and 70% of those requiring a box that is usually made from 60% recycled material we're talking about a great deal of avoided waste. The utility designed into the box also enables it to easily fit into a recycling bin 8” in diameter or greater, eliminates the need for serving plates and aluminum foil or plastic wrap for storage. Check out the video here:



3rd place: DBA

DBA is a New York based product development company focused on aesthetics, technical innovations and ecologically effective principals. Their first product is an 'eco-pen'. This pen is made from 98% industrially compostable materials. They're basically made out of potatos. We use an astronomical number of disposable pens each year. Their pen is a beautiful option that utilizes a unique ink which, unlike other pens on the market, is not petrochemical based. It is an almost food grade alternative that represents the majority of the innovation in their design.

I was at this event thanks to Sarah Pace of The Rabbit Mafia who catered the event with all locally sourced kickass hors d’œuvres. Good stuff.

Community Acupuncture

I just just got my first ever acupunture treatment from an old friend. Steve Kingsbury was my next door neighbor growing up. I've been friends with his son Brian since a few days after he was born (I was one at the time). Recently Brian was in NYC with his new band The Susan Constant playing a show at Arlene's Grocery. Great show. I recorded an album for Simple Discourse, the band that The Susan Constant grew out of, and Brian and I were in a band together in high school with Jason Rossman, the drummer for both bands . Over a beer before their set we talked about his fathers new business. Steve retired as a Bose exec and went back to school for accupuncture. He has sinced opened up his own practice, Ashland Community Acupuncture, right in downtown Ashland, MA.

I know a number of people who have gotten great results from acupuncture treatments. I have always been interested, but had never really had a reason to lay out $100+ other than curiosity. Here's where the community acupuncture model steps in. From Steve's site:

In our community acupuncture clinic the treatment room has four recliners arranged in a quiet, soothing space. Receiving treatment in a community setting has many benefits: it's easy for friends and family to come in for treatment together; many patients find it comforting; and a collective energy becomes established which actually makes individual treatments more powerful.

The real breakthrough in my mind is the sliding scale pricing:

Our fees are based on a sliding scale where you chose what to pay, anywhere from $15 to $35 per treatment. Research in the United States has shown that acupuncture is most effective when done frequently and regularly. Once a week is usually the minimum required to make progress, and twice weekly early in the treatment process can increase the success rate significantly. The goal of the sliding scale is to keep acupuncture affordable and allow you to come in often enough to get better and stay better.

And it works. I know because I went back a few days later for another treatment. And the second treatment in any week is only $10! This, to me, is the sign of a healer who truly wants to help people. Many acupunturists are hugely succesful treating far less patients for far more money. But here is a model which is designed to facilitate the individuals healing process.

One difference that I am aware of in this type of treatment is that you will largely be treated using the distal points as opposed to the local points. This means that most needles will be placed on your legs below your knees and on your arms below your elbows. These will address the flow of energy through the same meridians that would otherwise be treated, just not necessarily directly at the site of concern.

If you want to find a community acupuncture clinic near you: http://www.communityacupuncturenetwork.org/clinics