(the garoffice during SPP4 mixing. I’m finishing the mix on the machine I started it on, my laptop. To facilitate multi-tasking, and avoid moving my crappy speakers from machine to machine, the laptop is setup in front of the desktop. I right hand mouse the desktop and left hand mouse the laptop. I keep notes on the desktop, as well. It’s kind of ludicrous. For my upcoming mixes on other records [oRSo9 and orso9rmx, MSP, MD8ME, SleepWalks, Kenton Camerata, Brother X, My Special Porpoise, ect] I am sticking with the desktop. To that end I just re-installed Live on it. I am abandoning ProTools for mixing. I can’t see launching it unless I need Pitch n Time, at this point. Mixing with Ableton is faboo.)

I’m pleased to say that we’re closing in on the final mixes of the fourth Stowe-Pembleton Project record. A few more good days, like I’ve had this past week, will get it in the can. And then it’s off to Soul Note. We’re pretty confident they’ll pick it up for release as our third release on their label.
But the third SPP record, embarrassingly, is still not mixed. D’oh! Heaven only knows if the label it was originally recorded for will still be interested. Rest assured getting SPP3 mixed is high on my spreadsheet of things to do. Well, item 13 of ~59, anyway. But since some activities exist in overlapping states, it’s higher than 13 might seem to suggest.

Research for Vile Dead continues. Which is to say I’m watching zombie related tv and film, as well as horror and supernatural flicks. I’ve been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes. This weekend I watched The Hunger (the first 2/3 is awesome. Then it’s downhill into complete, “quick, wrap it up, we’ve used our allotted 70 minutes! Screw linearity, comprehensibility, plot, characters and everything that’s happened in the film thus far, we need a quick ending. Oh hey, could you throw in a twist! Don’t worry about it making sense, this a vampire movie with David Bowie and lesbians, we can’t lose!”) and Hellboy II (Lots of fun to watch with absolutely no promise or pretension to being anything else.) I must admit, I always love the research phase of projects, but VD is particularly enjoyable.

Yesterday 23E Studios hosted a little tea party in the front courtyard of the garoffice. Our overlords, the Nightmare City City Council, were in town and wanted to check up on us. I think we passed the spot inspection. They declared the garoffice very nice, and expressed a strong faith in our ability to be productive in the 23E complex. While here they picked up their tribute for the year, the Nightmare City arcade from the Disembody installation/set. And their outfits from that film for use in future NC ventures.

(This is the courtyard. In the pic it is setup for mixing SPP4. It looked much nicer for the NC3: no computer paraphernalia, just my blue teapot and white cups and saucers.)

You’ll note from this post that the rebuilt desktop is performing fine thus far. I yanked out two internal drives, and hope to replace them soon with much larger drives for the logging and editing of Disembody. That’s one of the first things that came up in my logging strategy session with my father. The other big thing at this stage is establishing the best possible naming system for the clips. And defining parameters based on future uses of the footage. To that end I’ve begun a catalogue and timeline for the footage.

In other Disembody news, the NC3 think they spotted the dumpster from Disembody still residing in an alley in Chinatown where we filled it. The dumpster company has still not carried it away. Why not?
In sad Disembody news, 20th Century Props, where 23E rented theater seats for the Morgellon, is selling off its props and closing its doors. Oh, if only we could buy those seats for future projects! They’re being auctioned off, but A) I’ll be on tour and B) I have no money. So…

Above is some of the messy Copy Lake/My Daddy Ate My Eyes setup for our coming shows (and hopefully tour) in July. I’m mixing a MD8ME demo today. And rehearsing for the shows every day for the next many weeks. Also working on new material for Forever What?. We hope to rehearse in August in preparation for shows in Fall. With luck we’ll start gigging out semi-reguarly here in LA starting in September.

It was such a quick trip for traveling from Japan, and I wanted to say thank you to Honyo for coming out to create that art for the arcade!! Also, I had fun dancing with Honyo and Jonny for 5 seconds in the street after the premiere.

and the awesome name for the catalog in the form of an arcade game, the arcadalogue! what a wordsmith erin is. i also commend her for her fine choice of nickname for me, sudo. really it says it all. and note my fine stamp/temp-tattoo in the picture below (on me head!). that’s commitment! so really i love the whole arcade thing. i always wanted to build me a mame box into an arcade of my design. now jonny carson is doing just that! and jonny is very hip to the graphic-rich action games and all the professional bits like the joystick and big buttons. it’s just well done. so the arcadalogue was sort of an orphan all along. i’m not sure exactly how it came up because i don’t recall talking to lee about it. jonny says it was on the table since last winter but i can’t tell if it was an offshoot of the arcades or if fitting it into an arcade came along later. either way jonny had enough to do so lee asked if i had ideas about how to go about it. jonny pointed out that big hurdle was in making an elegant and rich interface that media saturated audiences expect. of course we’re all thinking about flash or a web site = too much code to produce in just a few days, at least with everything else going on. leep really wanted this to happen. it definitely fits with the idea of the project with all bits of data hanging out to dry but we didn’t want this to just be a blob of data with a plethora of tools to navigate through it. nor did we want an application that guides you through it. it needed to be randomly accessible. throw in that it could very well be the big ticket item and i was sold. from catch all tech helper and network guy (not to mention exec producer) i turn into a puzzle solver. we had to keep it clean and simple so i thought about a catch all type of media player that plays everything and could be customized (open source of course). but kaffeine and vlc didn’t display stuff like pdfs and spreadsheets. that was part of the mix. lee was happy to forgo those but i wasn’t satisfied. so i looked into kiosk mode for kde so that i might hide the fact that multiple applications were being used. it got better. turns out every single file type i’ve got to deal with there is a player/reader that can be embedded into konqueror, the kde browser. so we’re back to browser based but not a web site. and with a rich interface that feels like a data access tool (well, it is) rather than a multi-media application while being just as comfortable to use and pretty, i didn’t feel i was compromising anything! now about the gun…

there were only enough joysticks and buttons for the 3 arcades we were building. it was late to order more and besides, the joysticks didn’t necessarily map to mouse movements (could be done i guess). i had to find something else, and local. i probably spent more of my time on this part than anything else but it paid off. after initially looking for a trackball we can modify (still need external buttons) i found this cool 3D type large knob-like device that looked super slick, like a video editing jog-wheel. at the same time i was chasing down this old school arcade trackball really ripped out of an arcade (fry’s had it on their site). neither of these panned out. the 3D thing needed drivers (none for linux) and the arcade trackball was no longer available (update your site fry!). so i went to fry’s with lee anyway (checked that little computer store in the hood too) and there were a few smaller trackballs, pads, etc. we could rig up. but lee scored big when he took note of the gamer’s gun. we had to get it. gone was my idea of the click built-in feel of the ball, replaced by the kitsch of an icon. it’s just too cool. you move the gun and click to “shoot” the object you want to explore. i’ve got it working nicely. most everyone is giving it the thumbs up. i get so sick of seeing guns in movies (too easy) but this where it belongs. i’ll be jealous of the person who buys this piece. it will be a full archive of everything that went into the project all in a beautiful arcade enclosure, itself a work of art.

i got a lot other work done tonight like the projector station, the 3rd arcade computer (and set up lee with linux), some network improvements, no go on dynamic dns (don’t know what is up with that), tested projection (thanks, alex), tested sound, helped map out seating placement, poured on that spicy salsa verde, bumped all of lee’s camera data for him… very nice day. i’m cranking. everybody’s cranking.

tomorrow i get to show it off to angela when she arrives. she’s been watching the web cam. it was on me when the scaffold obstructed the room view and i get a flattering txt msg from angela. some txts went on and i blew her a kiss. i had to get back to it to clean up, blog, and get to bed. lee had to take over taping up the seating placement. i didn’t want to mess up david but we just couldn’t stay longer to do it tonight.

Well, my first big foray into excel seems successful. We have a detailed line item budget. And it was surprisingly good news. The show can be pulled off for $23,000, I believe. Which puts us within $8,000, which is very doable. I’m quite confident we can raise that money in the coming months.

As well, I had been concerned about what our maximum budget might be, if everything I dream of comes to fruition. That absolutely can not exceed $40,000, if the investment break-down is to work. The good news is that we are still several thousand dollars under 40K, even when I dream extravagantly.

Okay, so that’s all good news. But now do you want the frickin’ great news?!

It looks like we have ourselves an arcade game designer. Yeah, that’s right, straight up, we are going to have our very own Disembody flash game that is playable online at our website and on a stand-alone arcade machine in the theater.

Oh my heck! Could I be more excited? I don’t think so. This is going to be fabulous.
Our designer is a gentleman named Mitch Cichocki. I hope to have bio info up for him on the site soon.
In the meantime, if I’m not mistaken, his myspace page (if I’m not mistaken that it is indeed his) suggests he’s right up the 23E alley: his musical selection is Xenakis.

What else has happened this week?

The website is growing and getting stronger.
My interior designers gave me a budget for the theater interior and it is very reasonable. Have I mentioned how fabulous they are?

And speaking of fabulous, have I mentioned how fabulous Amy Sampson is? She not only hooked us up with Mitch, but also with her friend Jean who is submitting a trailer for the show. She also has supplied us with a fair amount of clothing. This will be going out to our embroiderer next week to be branded with our logos.
And she has been invaluable in finding investors.
Hence her executive producer status on the project. This could not happen without her enthusiastic assistance.

Jonny and I have also been talking a lot lately about a couple of additional aspects of the project. He suggested an online time clock so that we can actually track the amount of time that goes into a contemporary art work. This is a brilliant idea. And even though I’m a little concerned about where it could lead (jealousy), I think it’s too brilliant an idea not to play around with.
As well, he’s counseling me on making a slight change to the crew payout system. It would be an optional change that people could make. For now, that’s all I’ll say about that.

Finally, this is still in the air, but we have the possibility of bringing a puppeteer onboard for the week of the shoot. Skye and I are super excited by the idea, but still have to work out a lot of details.