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.

2010.1 from Kenneth A. Huff on Vimeo. If you can, watch it full-screen, HD on and Scaling off.

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.

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).

So, I have decided that 2007.3 goes very well with strings…

(That’s Mr. Sean watching from the front row.)

An exhibition of my prints, Kenneth A. Huff: Organic Constructions, is on display at the Telfair Museum of Art’s Jepson Center through 22 February 2010, in Savannah, Georgia. Nine prints from 2000–2005 are being exhibited. Shown above is 2001.1, part of an ongoing series of works based on mathematical knot theory.

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:

Get the Flash Player to see this player.