In support of our Company’s goal of increasing quality and quantity of graffiti everywhere, the Fakeproject Corporation of America has issued a coloring book, free of charge,which allows graffiti artists to hone their tagging skills before application in real world situations.

If you, the artist, actually intend to use the book, please download the high-resolution PDF.

FPCoA wishes you good health and not death. Please, take some time to review other things we’ve made available.

Tomorrow night is the L.I.V.E event at the Plains — the Fargo Forum has an article up, featuring an image of my work. [PDF]

I also had the good fortune of being featured in the MSUM College of Arts and Humanities Newsletter.

Times change, but the message doesn’t.

Neither do the post-tragedy trinket sales.

Some updates around the site — check the front page, for example.

The most obvious updates were aesthetic, but the most important updates were making the content around here more easily accessible. No wading through entries to browse pictures, posters, or projects — it’s all there on the front page.

For now, later.

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.

Megh showed up around the time that I completed my lens adapter. It needed testing; we needed food. A morning walk together proved that all the setup was worth it.

One of the problems with current DV cameras is the lack of Depth of Field (DOF). Put very simply, if you want to have a foreground object in focus, and a background blurred, you need a large sensor and a large aperture, neither of which are available on a tiny video camera. Of course, there is a hack, and that hack is to make a 35mm lens adapter.

For lenses, I chose to use the “M42″ mount, which allows me to use some lenses that I acquired while in Russia. To make the thing work, you use the 35mm lens as it was intended to be used — projecting onto a piece of film, or in this case, ground glass. Actually, in my design, I used a diffusing film from an LCD monitor instead of ground glass, but the effect is the same. Finally, you tape the image of the projection using your small sensor and aperture, and get a much more pleasing image.

For the moment, this is just a set of three images of the device. As time permits, I may write up a tutorial and a discussion of LCD film technology.

Don’t miss my show at the Plains Art Museum. Thanks to everyone who has gone, and especially to those who have provided feedback.

A brief celebration of America, courtesy of Fakeproject founding member, Shaun Fort.

Not safe for work, children, or adults.

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.

Following up on my previous post on in-Corporation antenna engineering and Scandinavian cookware, two updates.

One, the PANTENNA. Far beyond mere-napkin-ring WiFi enhancement, I’ve moved on to folding foil pie pans, connecting to access points distant. I learned two important lessons in the process - first, a powered USB hub can give you serious performance gains on these little radios, especially if you overpower the device a little with an adjustable adapter. The other lesson is that it is a bad idea to leave them plugged in and overpowered for more than a few hours, as they overheat and die.

Two, a guest post from longtime fiend and logician Philosophy James, who, inspired by the PANTENNA and other efforts, produced his own wok-based antenna system. Details in his own words:

” I’ve been thinking about a wokfi set-up, but woks are usually pretty heavy and I thought I’d have to drill or weld. But then I found this 14-inch wok at a thrift store for $4 — nice price, big wok, and light weight — so I bought it; but I still thought I’d have to modify it. But it turns out that modification was unnecessary; nor do I need a tripod. The spot where you can plug a cord into it is perfect for mounting it with a screwdriver! So I pulled out my box of screwdrivers and picked out the junkiest one that was thick enough to fit the hole snugly; buried the screwdriver handle in a giant beer glass full of pocket change; and set it on my kitchen table. Now I’ve got a neighbor’s access point coming in at 54 Mbps (non-wavering), but with an eight-inch strainer it wavers between 18 and 36 Mbps, and without a reflecting device it wavers between not registering at all and coming in between 1 and 8 Mbps. Note: I removed the adaptor casing to prevent overheating and to let the antenna dangle a little farther from the chipset. Also: moving the antenna a half inch can decrease the signal quality from 54 Mbps to 24 Mbps. “

Quality work, James! Onward, Forward, Upward! Your contribution to wok-fi science has been duly noted, edited, uploaded, and laid bare for the scrutiny of future generations.