Winter project’s finished – now to enjoy the summer!

Last thanksgiving, inspired by both a friend’s adventures and an article featured on Lifehacker (original here) I had a stroke of inspiration. What I was not aware of was that this particular project would ultimately take me just about 6 months to complete, but having finished it recently I thought I’d share.

The idea behind the whole thing is to take a photograph or painting, crank down the resolution, and what you’re left with is a pixelated version, which you can then lay out as coloured tiles – in this case paint chips – and recreate the photo low-res but at large scale and without lifting a paintbrush.

 The inspiration

Perhaps influenced by the above picture and associated nostalgia, I thought a fedora-clad Bogart might do well. Some searching brought me to this:

Which yielded to some mile photoshopping:

 

And then shrunk to a much smaller resolution:

With my design set, it was then a quest to get raw materials. A trip raiding the local hardware stores yielded a wide selection of paint swatches, and then began the many-month-long process of cutting out hundreds upon hundreds of squares of colour for tiles. Montreal is cold in winter. There’s no need to go outside.

Splitting the photo into three colour zones let me partition the chips, and then began the selection of tiles to fit the photo. Splitting it into zones of 10x10 helped. For example, the crown of the hat:

And laying out the patterns:

And after another long amount of time, all that was done. Laying them all out, we got:

Note the TV show on in the background. Simultaneous other activities is highly recommended.

A bit more work, and it was glued down, and the final product complete.

Yes, not every colour matches the template. I think that makes it better. Yes, there are gaps. I had to face the reality that I can’t consistently cut squares with a ruler and utility knife. I accepted it and just tried to make sure the gaps ended up randomly dispersed, which I mostly accomplished. And yes, it looks a little eerie in the camera flash, but under ambient light it really worked out well.

And now that sucker hangs on my wall. To those who say I have no artistic talent, I have this to say: only when I don’t have a template.

TRANSFORMERS!!!!!!

It took some time before I got around to seeing Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I will regret this for years to come. 5 weeks of my life would have been so much richer if I had seen the film on release day. We all make mistakes.

Normally I go for more intellectual films, those that make one think, those that say something profound. But this doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy a good action-fest blockbuster, especially when it turns out to be awesome.

Critics be damned, the new Transformers movie might just be the best film of all time. Forget all those other films that might try to claim the title, this one beats them all. I don’t care what you say, I’m right and if you disagree, you’re wrong. My only problem with the film was that there were only 2 1/2 hours of machine-versus-machine madness, when I know Michael Bay could have fit at least another 2 hours into the plot. If you haven’t seen this film yet, GO NOW BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.

 Awesome

Montreal Photojournal 4: Mes Aïeux at Les Francofolies

There’s been too much science on here recently.

Having been a bit of a homebody recently, I forced myself out into the city. Les Francofolies French-language music festival has been going on, and so I wandered on down to Place-des-Arts. Getting there just in time to sneak through before the gates closed to access the area near the stage, I was able to manage a pretty nice spot beside the main stage, though I still had no idea what act was coming up.

The act was Mes Aïeux, an impressive Quebecois Folk-rock group. As my French has not improved nearly as much as I would have liked this summer, I only got maybe half of the lyrics, but still enjoyed the show. As I found in the past with German, catchy music is a good way to develop an ear for the language, and so I think I may have just found a way to help improve my French.

 

I didn’t catch the reason why, but the encore started off with the previously suited-up band now donning space suits for the next number. Perhaps I don’t want to know why.

Ben Harper’s Drummer is Insane

The Montreal Jazz Festival ended last night, and the final act was Ben Harper and Relentless7. The show, in keeping with the rest of the Jazz Fest, was incredible. Rather than give an overview of the concert as I did for Patrick Watson, I just want to make one comment.

Ben Harper’s drummer (nee Jordan Richardson) is crazy. At one point he drummed by slapping the snare and cymbals with bare hands, and early in the show he used maracas as drumsticks.

In absence of any video online for the concert yet, this appearance on Jimmy Kimmel highlights the insanity pretty well.

Patrick Watson Rocks

Patrick Watson played the Montreal Jazz Festival this evening, and I have to say I was blown away. Shadow puppetry, a parting of the crowd to march through while performing (crazy megaphone-backpacks involved), and a bicycle mounted atop a skyjack all were used as part of this incredible show. While I’m not really one for dissonance and falsetto wailing à la Coldplay, the showmanship more than made  up for it, making for a thoroughly enjoyable show. The Montreal Jazz Festival needs to be commended for bringing the band to the main stage of the festival and working together to put together all of the logistics for what must have been an incredibly difficult show to organize. The concert, a free outdoor concert featured for the 30th anniversary of the Jazz Festival, illustrated that creativity in musical performance doesn’t stop with the music.

I’m sorry to say I have no pictures to present as my camera batteries died. I’ll see what pops up on teh netz in the next few days and report back. Check out the band for yourself though, they’re brilliant.

Check here for music videos, the show was supposedly broadcast live there, though either the window has passed or I’m to stupid to find out how to see it. There were definitely serious filming going on, so the video is out there somewhere.

As for the show, it opened up with crew flapping 5-foot sheets of metal on all sides around the crowd to build to a thunderous roar, at which the curtain was drawn and the band began. Images were projected onto adjacent buildings, creating stunning visual imagery to accompany the music. The song Beijing included a bicycle running in place, far above the crowd atop a 50-foot platform. Perhaps escaping the notice of some listeners, the musicians kept perfect time with the ticking of the bicycle wheels. That sort of thing takes incredible talent.

Some time later, following a duet with Lhasa de Sela, the band strapped on insane-looking backpacks with audio equipment and megaphones to broadcast as they slowly wended their way through the crowd to a small stage set up in the middle of the audience. There they handed out kazoos and encouraged us in the crowd to play along. A drum solo by Montreal drummer Guy Nadon let the band get back to the stage, where they joined him in performing the next song, punctuated by a particularly memorable tin can drum solo.

A song written inspired by the book Where the Wild Things Are was accompanied by a world-class shadow puppeteer, who produced a remarkable shadow-likeness of Patrick as he opened and closed the song. Also notable was the image of a fox (wolf?) running, the pace of which followed the music, and monsters of various sorts, to go along with the song’s theme. The last piece of the main set, written for Patrick’s son, featured silhouettes of boys jumping on trampolines projected on the walls and ended with a bundle of huge white balloons rising above the stage. All came together for stunning imagery to enhance the music.

The show finished with the obligatory encore, which Patrick specifically commented was a little silly, as we’ve all come to expect them at any show of this scale. After the big finish, including fireworks along the length of the crowd, and everyone was about to leave, they came out again for not one, but two more encores before the lights finally died and they sent us home. The trickster - his comment about encores wasn’t really expressing cynicism, but setting us up to be actually surprised by the real encores. Fantastic showmanship.

All through, I couldn’t help thinking that while the crowd was in the high thousands, it seemed as if the performance were just for a few people. With all of the expensive effects, security, and the like, he maintained a personal setting with the crowd through casual banter, being unafraid to laugh at himself or technical issues, and a general attitude of earnestness. Perhaps this was best highlighted when the shadow puppet projector died. Patrick stopped the show, restarted the band, and continued the song with the projector working again. This comfort and casual attitude on stage makes Patrick Watson the person and the entire band fantastic performers and as (in my mind, at least) performing ability tends to dictate longevity in music, I have the feeling they’ll keep amazing, innovative shows coming for years in the future.

Update 12.07.09: As promised, here’s some of what has hit the webz over the last week since the show:

The Montreal Gazette: Patrick Watson in his Elemental

Montreal Jazz Festival: Day Five at Nyani Quarmyne Photography
and Photos of the Show

Patrick with his speaker-backpack on Flickr via Kipourax

Photos from the Jazz Fest site itself

And here at urb.com

Oh, and the live stream of the concert is up now where I mentioned it above.

Montreal Photojournal 3: Jazz Festival Opening/Stevie Wonder

The world-famous Montreal International Jazz festival kicked off the other night, with opening act Stevie Wonder. Literally ducking and weaving through the crowds of umbrella-wielding concertgoers got us to about 100m from the stage before we had to stop, not close enough to see the stage all that well, but in good view of one of the large projection screens placed along the length of the venue. While I’m not all that familiar with Stevie’s music, I found out that, as one might imagine, I knew more of his music than I thought I did. And as usually happens in this instance, it has prompted me to now (perhaps too late?) seek out and get to know his music better.

Wet concertgoers

Waiting for the show to start

The crowd of 200,000 people filled the Place-des-Arts concert area and stretched backwards far up the street. Even in intermittent rain, the downtown was filled with people out to see the show.

Projections onto the adjacent buildings

The organizers, veterans now at the 30th annual Jazz festival, know how to put on a good free show. They made use of the adjacent buildings including the somewhat more distant Complex Desjardins tower, to project images on. It made for an event that expanded outward from the site of the concert and into the rest of the city.

  The concert in full swing (full Motown?)

The recent death of Michael Jackson prompted Stevie to address the crowd and to celebrate the art of a gifted musician and performer.  At several points he paused his act to play some of MJ’s songs to the audience. He was visibly distressed at times but nevertheless continued the show, and towards the end played many of his best-known songs, which myself and the crowd really got into. Dampness and constantly getting bumped in the crowd made the experience not the most pleasant, but the opportunity to see a legend of music at his craft certainly made it worth the discomfort.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go listen to “Superstition” again.

Fettes Brot ist toll!

Since getting back home in late August, I've had more reliable internet access than I had over the summer, and so have been able to look into some bands I learned of this summer in Germany. By far my favorites, who I have listened to far too much over the last two months, are a Hamburg Hip-Hop group called Fettes Brot. König Boris, Doktor Renz, and Schiffmeister make up the group, and something about their style harks back to 1980's American Hip-Hop. If you're looking for upbeat stuff with the exotic-ness of being in a nother language, check these guys out. My favorite is a story about the heartbreaker Emanuela:

Was weißt denn du von Liebe? Von Liebe weißt du nichts.
Dich ham deine gefüle mal wieder ausgetrickst.
Du hältst dich für gefärlich, doch siehst nicht nie Gefahr.
Das hier ist die geschichte von Emanuela.

What do you know about love? You know nothing about love.
Your feelings are playing tricks on you again.
You think you're dangerous, but don't see the danger.
This here is the story of Emanuela.

Die Hannoversche musikalischer Kanaldeckel

So a few times returning to Hannover, I happened to notice there appeared to be music coming from underground. No big deal, I thought, probably someone busking in the subway underneath, or something. After a while I became accustomed to it, and it just became part of the scenery. I even started to wonder what in particular was producing the music, as it plays 24 hours a day. All the same, I never really gave it too much thought.

Until a friend visited this weekend and asked why a group of teens were sitting around a sewer grate in the middle of the pedestrian walkway, and then I finally realized that yeah, a sewer grate that plays music is actually pretty odd. The funny thing is that other students in this city had independently come across it and had a similar experience. Apparently it is just one of those things in Hannover that everyone notices but passes off.

Bizarre.

And the craziest thing is the complete and utter lack of explanation. See here. Something a tourist here would never find. I guess I can consider myself at least partly Hannoverian.


"Wer die liebenswerten, augenzwinkernden Besonderheiten von Hannover kennenlernen möchte, sollte sich den Kanaldeckel nicht entgehen lassen."

Whoever wants to get to know the lovable, quirky characteristics of Hannover cannot avoid the Kanaldeckel.

Well said, anonymous graffiti....-er? graffito? graffitartist?