PRETTY EXTREME INC

Custom Animations for Alt.Oscars

Josh — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:57:14 +0000

This year, as the Kostume Kult prepared for their annual Alt.Oscars party, I was asked to come up with some kind of slideshow to display photos of the event from past years. The venue, the XL Nightclub on 42nd street, has a 30-foot wide LED wall behind their stage. The 5:1 aspect ratio of the [...]

Great Review of the Collection Wall in NYT

Josh — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 17:09:29 +0000

The New York Times publishes a very positive piece about the Collection Wall that I programmed for the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Synplode at Dorkbot

Josh — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:17:45 +0000

For 11 years, Douglas Repetto of the Computer Music Center at Columbia University has run dorkbot NYC, a monthly meeting of geeks and artists at which three speakers present their work for discussion. I have attended the meetings sporadically for the past decade. This February I finally had an opportunity to talk about Synplode and [...]

Teen Design Fair and Discipline Nomenclature

Josh — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 21:51:19 +0000

Yesterday, I attended the NYC Teen Design Fair, produced by the Cooper-Hewitt Museum. A few hundred teenagers showed up to speak to 70 professional designers, myself among them, to learn about different design disciplines and the people working in them. Tim Gunn spoke about what it takes to be a designer and gave advice to [...]

Synplode: Finally Life-Sized

Josh — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 16:31:28 +0000

Recently, we brought Synplode out to the Scharff Weisberg shop in Secaucus NJ to see how some real people interact with the system. The response was very positive, and the dancers reported having a great time. In observing the interactions between the dancers and the system, I learned a lot about the effectiveness of different [...]

Synplode: How It Works

Josh — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 22:53:06 +0000

How It Works: The Synplode system is comprised of two pieces of software: an OpenFramesworks (OF) application and Ableton Live running in Set mode. All real time control is programmed through Live. Simple commands are sent to the OF application encoded as MIDI Note On pitch values. This makes it easy to send synchronized commands [...]

Synplode: Why It Works

Josh — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 22:50:36 +0000

This is the view of the Synplode OpenFrameworks application when it’s time to write musical content and there’s no projector to be found. The characters move randomly across the grid and bounce in time with the music. Obviously. Special thanks to xkcd.com for providing dancers! Basic Idea: At the start of the Synplode demo video, [...]

The Synplode Project

Josh — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 14:01:30 +0000

Synplode: To experience the convergence of time and space, sometimes through sound and light. The Interactive Dance Floor has come of age. Introducing: Synplode. Synplode. It’s something that happens to you at the convergence of time and space. You will hear it when it happens, literally in harmony with the universe. You will bathe in [...]

74 MegaPixel Video Content

Josh — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 14:18:49 +0000

In 2009, Josh Silverman’s company was commissioned to build a custom video playback engine to drive a matrix of 36 47-inch LCD displays. The system was specified to handle native resolution content across the entire system. Including spatial pixels hidden between screen bezels and displays, the system had a total canvas size of approximately 32000 [...]

Dance Floor Step Sequencer Part I

Josh — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 17:38:36 +0000

I have so much to say about this idea that I don’t quite know where to start. If it is unclear what’s going on with the checker board, please check out my previous post about the Checker Board Step Sequencer. This is a proof-of-concept demo video to illustrate the use of a dance floor projection [...]