I just finished the final rendering of the time-based work that I mentioned at the end of my previous post. I completed much of the work on this piece while in Salina.
The piece is a single-channel, 1920×1080, 24 fps, 25 minutes. Shown above is a 2-minute excerpt.
Here are some stills from the piece. Click on each for a full image.
Update: On the technical side, I used Side Effects Software’s Houdini and Adobe After Effects to create the piece. For the main surface, I used the Houdini Ocean Toolkit by Drew Whitehouse, based on the algorithms of Jerry Tessendorf. A custom shader was applied to the surface and an initial base rendering was created using Houdini’s hardware rendering. The base frames were rendered at 1.5 times final size (2880×1620). Those frames then were finished in After Effects. Total render time for 36,000 frames was approximately 250 hours.
15 June 2010 | Projection installations in Salina, Kansas
This month, I was commissioned by the Salina Arts and Humanities Commission to create projection installations in the downtown area of Salina, Kansas. Under a larger project, “Street Sites”, I installed time-based projections at two sites.
The first, based on 2009.2, was installed in four windows of the offices of the Arts and Humanities Commission, on the second floor, east side of the Smoky Hill Museum, 211 West Iron Avenue.
The four synchronized, proportionally-spaced panels were extracted from a larger image, especially for the site.
The second piece, based on 2007.5, was installed at 107-1/2 Santa Fe Avenue.
In the wee hours of morning on my last day there, I temporarily installed a test of a new work that I started developing while in Salina.
My thanks go out to the staff of the Arts and Humanities Commission for their kind helpfulness and hospitality. Special thanks to Karla Prickett and Josh Morris. Funding for “Street Sites” was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.
The projections will continue to be shown for the next few weeks, starting at around 8 p.m.
A performance by young musicians from public radio's From the Top.
A wonderful way to end my spring break…a Sunday afternoon performance of a movement from Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 25.
Held in the Palm Beach home of one of my collectors (that is 2007.3 showing behind the musicians), the concert was hosted and accompanied by Christopher O’Riley, of public broadcasting’s From the Top. The young musician are Alexandra Switala (violin), John-Henry Crawford (cello) and Robert Switala (viola).
7 September 2009 | Symphony performance at Ars Electronica Festival
A time-based work, 2007.3, shown during the Ars Electronica 2009. The performance-specific, time-based, projection work was created by Kenneth A. Huff at the invitation of the curatorial panel of the festival’s Vom Streben nach ungehörter Musik Große Konzertnacht (Pursuit of the Unheard, The Big Concert Evening). Dennis Russell Davies conducted the Bruckner Orchester Linz in a performance of Alan Havhaness’ Lousadzak (Coming of Light) for piano and strings, Op. 48. Maki Namekawa was the piano soloist. The evening performance took place in the Brucknerhaus, along the Daube River in Linz, Austria on 6 September 2009.
More information on Ken’s participation in the festival can be found in a previous post.
[UPDATE — 11 September 2009]
Here is a short video of the end of the piece from the final rehearsal:
The Ars Electronica Center is a long-standing new media art center in Linz, Austria. The Center is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary this year with the opening of a new facility, also coinciding with Linz being the European Union 2009 Cultural Capital. The center’s annual Ars Electronica Festival is one of the foremost new media art festivals.
Symphony performance
For this year’s festival, I was invited to create time-based work to accompany a symphonic performance of the piano concerto, Lousadzak (Coming of Light), op. 48 by Alan Hovhaness. Dennis Russell Davis will be conducting the Bruckner Orchester Linz with Maki Namekawa on piano. The performance will take place at the Brucknerhaus on Sunday, 6 September.
Since 2 January 2009, twenty of my still images and two site-specific, time-based works are being shown in the new Ars Electronica Center Deep Space projection gallery. The showing is currently slated to last at least through 2009. The two time-based works were recreated to take full advantage of the 4K cinematic projectors of Deep Space. My work is one of the inaugural artist installations in the space.
This showing of the still images is the first time, outside of my studio, that people are able to interactively explore the full detail of these works, all of which are digital renderings, up to 20,000 by 12,000 pixels. The works are projected to wrap around a 16 by 9 meter wall and similarly-sized area of the floor. Viewers are able to zoom into the full detail of the pieces. The works range from 1999 to 2007 and are a broad overview of many of the themes I explore, from mathematical knots to Truchet tilings to the concentric line patterns of fingerprints.
Symposium presentation
In connection with the Deep Space exhibition and as part of the festival’s Pixelspaces symposium, I will be giving a presentation about my work on 4 September. I will be talking about the inspiration and ideas behind the pieces, with particular emphasis on scale and detail.
The Ars Electronica Festival runs 3 through 8 September at the Ars Electronica Center and throughout Linz, Austria.
The Deep Space exhibition will run at least through the end of 2009.
There are some additional photographs of the exhibition in this earlier blog post. I hope to have some photographs and images upon my return from the festival in early September.
