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.

I have amassed a collection of photographs numbering in the multiple tens of thousands. A substantial portion of them lack beauty, or at least visual aesthetic quality. But that is more an artifact of purpose than a lack of effort; many of those photos were taken to illustrate an idea, capture an unusual juxtaposition, to pose or perhaps even resolve an empirical question.

I’m going to begin posting them here, observation by observation, plus contextual information.

Sometimes, by observing only the base of something, it is possible to know concretely what is on top of it. Green shingle bits and black tar fragments from the Minard Hall gutters betray a green-shingled roof above.

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.

In 1952 the Soviets published “Kniga o Vkusnoi i Zdorovoi Pishe” (”Book about Tasty and Healthy Food/Eating”).
This book contains many fascinating and beautiful examples of Soviet-era product design.
The FPCoA, having scanned the entire volume, presents the most interesting color plates here, free of charge.

The Corporation wishes to specially thank Dima and Irina Solyanoy for their assistance in locating the book.

God is dead.
Art is dead.
Mr. Rogers is dead.
Lots of things are dead.
Baudrillard is dead now, too.

I don’t think I’d have understood this the way I did, without having read his work. Full resolution, for reflection.

Psychology journal articles, from time to time, yield gems for the careful reader, squelching logical progression for a crunchy hunk of unexpected:

“Recall a scenario described earlier: A child unexpectedly runs in
front of a car while the driver is fiddling with the radio. At least
two different indices can be examined to determine whether the child
has caught the driver’s attention: One is the driver’s awareness of
the child, and the other is the effect of this unexpected event on the
driver’s radio-tuning performance.”

Most, Scholl, Clifford, and Simons, 2005.

Occasionally, too, charts and graphs provide where words fail:

Interest in buying high SPF sunscreen as a function of mortality salience and delay.

Slide five from a presentation by Arndt, from C Routledge, J Arndt, JL Goldenberg - A time to tan: Proximal and distal effects of mortality salience on intentions, 2004