Stephen E. Dinehart's IMD Blog

Here are some sketches I did yesterday. It feels so good to put ink to paper. I hope you like 'em!

This one is about a month old but I thought I'd upload it all the same.

I've been brewing up this idea for a little while. It consists of a wearable media device covered in mics and cameras called "The Experience Recorder", a personal area network of sorts, it uses a bluetooth device to control the cameras. The captured media is then stored for later editing and mixed live on a web page, which can be viewed 24/7. I would wear this everywhere for a unspecified period of time and allow total intrusion into my life by anyone that wanted to watch. Anyone that encounters me as I drift though reality can avoid having their image captured by reading the warning printed across the breast of the Experience Recorder jacket "This is being recorded." and simply choosing to stay out of my way. It's my reality after all why can't I record it? It's a sort of multimedia memory of past experience.

I think this could create some very interesting discourse and work.

I've been multitracking myself for years using programs like ProTools (my website w/info and free music iami.tv). The artifacts of my audio creation are the final mix-downs. I realized a year or two that I need a live stage element. Having a bunch of tracks is great but I couldn't figure out how to perform them. I didn't want to be another hip-hoper with a DAT just rhyming on top of some 48k sound I created in my bedroom studio. The dilemma is having multiple tracks of myself; only one can actually be performed live. Ahhh the constraints of the physical being!

Last semester I purchased a G4 PowerBook and a M-Audio Ozone (a small midi/audio controller) finally I could perform my material live, mixing on the fly and spiting lyrics over it. I have preformed live with the system a few times, but it's still allows for just one vocal track. I was hit with this idea the other day, I could create a series of Agents that are aspects of myself and allow the emergence of that system to be my live mix.

At the center is my actual self, mixing and controlling the system, to either side of me there is A/V representations of myself as a screen/speaker combo. Together with my virtual selves I could conduct and compose a symphony of audio and visual sensory.

These are from my sketch book, I drew or should I say painted them over the course of the weekend with a Japanese calligraphy pen. I've aimed many years at coming to the style, which is best embodied by the larger sketch. I'm very excited, I only hope I can continue in the spirit of these sketches. Hope you all enjoy them.

I have been having some interesting experiences as of late wandering the urban landscape of LA ripping data with my Mobile phone. Should I even call it a phone? The Nokia 3650 seems to go way beyond the traditional role of a telephone, or even a cellular phone; with it I can rip audio, video, stills and upload or e-mail them with GMS, GRMS, etc.

As I wander through life I am able to create a database of recorded experience, which I can later remix to create meaning; allowing me to build semi-factual urban narratives. I have loved so many American cities, dwelled in their bellies and called the street my own. Detroit, Chicago, LA, each are my home, I want to honor these cities and their many colors.

This vein of work seems to be becoming of great interest to me. I think mobile lifelogging combined with the story telling theories of structuralist naratology might just make for my thesis work. I will try to put up a series of installments here on the blog that document some of these urban narratives, these city symphonies.

Last night I had an interesting experience at my friend Phil Adkins show @ the Gig. His band Otis performed a great set of pop rock. I attacked the stage with my 3650. Realizing I had broke the mobile ice, a series of hand-held mobile devices popped out of the crowd and began ripping media files. I tried to glean what I could from the situation. Despite the lack of light and the high decibel level of the sound, the phone performed well. I created a one-minute video with the data I ripped, gleaned, gathered from the show.
A small QT version of the file is here (760kb)

Stay tooned for more!

Update:

Sorry all that tried the link, I have fixed the problem, and it should work fine now.

From yesterday the 17th:

It's my 26th B-day and as fate would have it my bike was stolen late last eve. Boo-hoo.

On a more positive note, I had this amazing situationist experience the other day. I took the Metro over to LAX and rented a car. Wandering the city aimlessly I stumbled onto this graffiti park in east LA. There was a hispanic man there with his children, they laughed and played as their father and I spoke of the work. I created a brief montage of the data files I gleaned from the experience, it is available for viewing and download at the link below.
Semi-factual Urban Narrative July 9 2004

I believe that stories can be created from the chaos of experience. All my life I have sought to record my experience of reality as it drifts by. As a child I frantically learned to use a sketchbook and camera whenever possible, to take things down before they disappeared. With the use of mobile data gleaning devices you can make a multimedia record of your experience. This experiential diary could be used for many things; one of primary interest to me is remixing.

I believe that through remixing these fragmented files, from a life-log database, you can create narrative where it was not read previously. That is, you can use life to create emergent narratives, stories that will come forth from the natural polyrhythm of life’s chaos. I want to experiment with life-log remixing systems in three ways to create montage: linear, live (performance based), and interactive non-linear.

Below is a link to a new installment in my semi-factual urban narrative series entitled “Afternoon Train”. I pushed some social boundaries for this one. After engaging in data gleaning performances more regularly I have become used to pushing the strange social boundaries of interaction that are required to gather such data. I find that I tend to encounter one of three responses, 1) my big white phone and I are ignored, 2) laughter, 3) dirty looks. People are so passive and rigid they hardly seem to notice my mobile and me spinning around them grabbing an array of files. The only ones who I’ve really seemed to push over the edge so far are my roommates, they can’t stand that I’m always recording things. I’m really interested in seeing what kind of new sociological issues will be created out of the use of mobile devices, like the 3650.

Download file