My time as an artist working on educational games made me acutely aware of the need for quality reference materials. As such, whenever I run across something interesting, I take hundreds of pictures. I’ve decided that some of these are useful enough to warrant the pain of uploading and cataloging.

Here is a collection of 153 images of a truck which spontaneously caught fire and burned a delivery van next to it. I am releasing these images into the public domain, you may use them however you see fit. I ask that you not hammer on my server with any download clients, though. These images will be here indefinitely, and if you’re gentle, this can be a free lunch for both of us.

I made two contact sheets so that you can see which images are relevant to your project. I’d like to thank Joe Francis for the initial inspiration, and Hannah Filer for the great conversation that afternoon.

I’ll be slowly releasing a lot more (and hopefully a lot more interesting) content into the public domain over the next few months.

Today You Are Not Dead: A Guide To Modern Living was downloaded from Fakeproject.com for the four-thousandth time.

That number refers to downloads of the zip file; plays with the embedded player have numbered over 22,000 for the first two tracks and decline thereafter.

Unfortunately, I have few stats about the torrent, but on my own machine my upload ratio is well over 100, and I’d guess the total number of torrent downloads to be between 100 and 400 from TPB. I don’t have the latest from Waffles, but it was around 30 last I heard.

Thanks, everyone, for listening, downloading, reading, and commenting so far, and don’t stop there.

Five long years, hundreds of hours, thousands of dollars, and millions of mouse-clicks have gone into the making of You Are Not Dead, A Guide to Modern Living. This album of electronic music is a joint effort between myself and writer Meg Holle, plus piecewise contributions from a half-dozen highly talented artists times the latest in absurdly powerful audio manipulation software. The album consists of twelve audio tracks and one wickedly written, heavily illustrated guidebook.

You Are Not Dead: A Guide to Modern living is available now, free:

http://www.fakeproject.com/you_are_not_dead/

Please tell everyone who might enjoy it.

Your comments are requested and appreciated.
Daniel Reetz

PS. Some pages may be changing a little; pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Any problems with the site, let me know.
PPS. Don’t miss my upcoming all-ages show at the Aquarium in Fargo, April 7th, 7pm.
PPXS. Torrents of very-high-quality MP3s will be posted late Monday night, but not before.

Edit: I’ll be playing alone.

***

I am pleased to announce that Fakeproject will be playing the Aquarium with Why? and The New Instructions.

Information:
The Aquarium (Dempsey’s Upstairs)
April, 7 2008
Why? with Fake Project and The New Instructions (early All-Ages)
226 Broadway, 2nd Floor, Fargo, North Dakota 58102
Cost : $8

Here is a flyer for the show. I hope to see you there.

2007:

Began graduate studies in the CVN at NDSU in Minard Hall.
Bought a mill and taught myself to use it.
Built a “DOF adapter” for M42-mount lenses.
Modified a DV camera for use with the adapter.
Built an Arca-Swiss compatible camera mount.
Cut my own Arca-Swiss plates.
Built a camera rotator.
Built a camera stabilizer.
Built a prototype tactile stimulator for attention research.
Built a GPS hotshoe mount.
Built a laser rack for vision research.
Built a prototype light switching system for bass drum pedals.
Built a parabolic WiFi antenna from an old heater.
Built a crude WiFi antenna from a baking pan (Pantenna!).
Machined a miniature revolver cylinder as a gift.
Wrote my first serious software program. (Results).
Developed a method to preserve difficult-to-photograph varnished architectural paintings.
Developed a site-specific installation for the Plains Art Museum.
Spent the best part of the summer with Meg Holle.
Built a dual-camera hidden camera bag.
Developed and performed an audio/video performance at the Plains Art Museum.
Interviewed for the MSUM Arts and Humanities Newsletter.
Interviewed for NDSU Magazine (thanks Laura!).
Bought a new bike and rode the hell out of it.
Modified my camera bag.
Celebrated Halloween, my favorite holiday.
Spent some time with the first woman I ever loved.
Learned my first Mandarin words.
Caught a bat in the hallway.
Created Fight Christmas With Guns!
Released the Graf Paper coloring book.
Released a collection of Soviet Movie Posters.
Released a collection of Soviet Food Advertisements.
Received 4 stitches, 2L of intravenous saline, and a $1500 bill from MeritCare.
Modified a miniature GPS receiver and:
Built a single-transistor camera-GPS interface.
Planted a garden of weeds, which subsequently reproduced.
Spent a number of evenings photographing with Mr. Fort.
Presented at the Great Plains Tech Expo.
Visited Murphy’s Surplus in El Cajon.
Fixed a PowerShot SD630 and helped a bit with porting CHDK onto it.
Wrote an NSF GRFP Application on HDR Imaging and Vision.
Helped with various translations at IATE.
Drank beer with friends.
Attended numerous conferences, including:
SIGGRAPH 2007 (San Diego).
Vision Sciences Society (Sarasota, Florida).
RADIANCE (Minneapolis).

This isn’t everything, by any means. These are the things I’ve finished, or that didn’t need finishing. Much remains ongoing.

I am satisfied with what I’ve done, but it’s crystal clear to me that I’m tool-making. By that, I mean developing the means to do things. This is a good list, but it’s a list of potential, of gearing up for more and better bigger plans than tooling. I haven’t wasted any time, and I’m not yet dead. The next step is to shift my focus from the instruments to the task at hand. 2008 will be the year of wrestling hard problems.

Be patient with me as I may not be very talkative.

Dear Friend of the Corporation,

I am writing you today to announce the birth of a new Project: “Fight Christmas With Guns!”. Previously, the War On Christmas was merely a fiction fondly dreamed by far-right flunkies. But I’m no faker — I just can’t stand living in an unreality of their construction. So I had to make it real. And give it a web-shop.

http://www.fightchristmaswithguns.com/

Regards,
Daniel Reetz
The Fakeproject Corporation of America.
http://www.fakeproject.com
http://www.danreetz.com
http://www.fightchristmaswithguns.com/

I recently posted about a Sputnik music box. Unfortunately, I got some of it wrong. Fortunately, I have great friends with keen eyes and quick brains. Женя says:

I just wandered on your blog today and heard the wonderful tinkling of the Sputnik music box.
I just wanted to let you know though that the melody it’s playing is not “The Internationale”.
It’s a song called Широка страна моя родная, или Песня о Родине.

Вот тут можешь послушатъ одну версию…

А Интернационал звучит вот как.

Женя.

Thanks for that, Женя. Miss you.

Update: I’ll be playing at 10pm, sharp.

Update: Better link to more information about the show.

You may have seen the previous notice or two about my show in the Plains Art Museum. I’m lucky enough to have another one coming up, this time an audio-video show much like the Winter Carnivale performances I’ve done in years past.

This will be the first public musical performance I’ve done in over two years.

I’ll be on in the middle of the evening, I’m guessing around 10, but don’t know exactly. I’ll be performing a 25 minute set of live music, accompanied by video.

Very little more information here.

I’ve long been silent in official art channels, bucking galleries for websites, museums for street art. However, an offer for an exhibition in the Plains Art Museum’s Café Muse was too good to turn down. I have a show there — “Photographs by Dan Reetz“[PDF], which is on display from today, July 2nd, until September 28th. It is all-new work, created with the Museum in mind and as subject. Using today’s technology — digital cameras, 3D modeling, and compositing tools, I’ve put the Museum in a state of distress that even the staff can’t remember.

The official description:

Photographs by Dan Reetz

July 2 - September 28

Café Muse by Mosaic Foods

Photographers like Brian Walski, Adnan Hajj, Yevgeny Khaldei and Hwang Woo-Suk have set the 21st Century standards in journalistic photography. Following their lead, ex-Museum janitor Dan Reetz presents a series of photographs that sell a story about the Museum. The former sculptor, video game artist, and current graduate student of Visual Neuroscience at NDSU, utilizes the latest digital capture and image production technology to show the Museum as no one has ever seen it.

The Soviets had a long and productive run with film, producing hundreds of movies, some absolutely stunning. While in Russia, I had the opportunity to copy a large number of posters, as well as fifty or more films.

I had intended to mark each poster with an English translation/transliteration, IMDB reference, and the name of the poster artist where available, but while I am studying Visual Neuroscience the likelihood of this work actually getting done is extremely low. My time is spoken for.

As such, I feel it is a better idea to release the un-annotated collection of Soviet movie posters to the public now. Enjoy, and if you’d like to work with me to annotate the posters, I would be very glad to hear from you.

Daniel Reetz, in collusion with the Fakeproject Corporation of America,
presents a selection of Soviet Movie posters from 1921-1973.