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Hear Christopher Walken’s Wonderful Reading of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (on the Anniversary of Poe’s Death)

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Hear Christopher Walken’s Wonderful Reading of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (on the Anniversary of Poe’s Death)

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Christopher Walken, writes Arifa Akbar in the Independent, is a "sinister-looking man who has made a living from looking - and acting - sinister," but he didn't start out that way. His "career trajectory - starting benignly enough in children's commercials, musicals, and dance - took a darker turn two years after his near-miss with Star Wars," when he'd almost landed the Han Solo role that went to Harrison Ford. Instead he played "the emotionally decimated Vietnam veteran in Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter, and was immortalized in the 'Russian roulette' scene as a gaunt, bug-eyed madman aiming a shaking revolver to his own head. The role won him an Oscar and led to assembly-line casting in an array of deranged, demonic parts."

Of course, when an actor becomes synonymous with a grim but artful intensity, he must sooner or later interpret the work of a writer synonymous with grim but artful intensity: Edgar Allan Poe. And so on this day, the 167th anniversary of Poe's death under still-unexplained circumstances, we give you Walken's performance of "The Raven."

The 1845 poem stands today as Poe's best-known work by far, as he seemed to intend: he wrote it, so he later claimed in a magazine essay, with "the intention of composing a poem that should suit at once the popular and the critical taste" and pack an emotional punch as well.

Walken, for his part, has variously appealed to both popular and critical tastes in the roughly 130 roles he has played over his sixty-year career, somehow earning both respect as a serious dramatic actor and almost instinctive audience laughter as a figure of fun. At his best, Walken's darkness contains a lightness and his lightness a darkness, all of which you can hear in his nine-minute recitation, accompanied by music and sound effects, of the words of this nameless man tormented by a talking bird while pining for his lost love Lenore. If anybody can credibly stare into the abyss Poe's work opens up, Christopher Walken can - after all, he knows what it means not to fear the reaper.
Related Content: The Great Stan Lee Reads Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" Christopher Lee Reads Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," and From "The Fall of the House of Usher" James Earl Jones Reads Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" and Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" Lou Reed Rewrites Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven." See Readings by Reed and Willem Dafoe John Astin, From The Addams Family, Recites "The Raven" as Edgar Allan Poe The Simpsons Present Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," and Teachers Now Use It to Teach Kids the Joys of Literature Hear the 14-Hour "Essential Edgar Allan Poe" Playlist: "The Raven," "The Tell-Tale Heart" & Much More
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. He's at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Angeles Review of Books' . Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on .

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Hear Christopher Walken's Wonderful Reading of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven"

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Christopher Walken, writes Arifa Akbar in the Independent , is a "sinister-looking man who has made a living from looking - and acting - sinister," but he didn't start out that way.

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Black Mirror | Official Trailer - Season 3 [HD] | Netflix

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In this world, it's easy to lose sight of what's real... Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror is now streaming on Netflix. SUBSCRIBE: http://bit.ly/29kBByr About Netflix: Netflix is the world's leading Internet television network with over 83 million members in over 190 countries enjoying more than 125 million hours of TV shows and movies per day, including original series, documentaries and feature films. Members can watch as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, on nearly any Internet-connected screen.

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Kunst und Wissenschaft haben sich immer schon gegenseitig inspiriert, man denke nur an Geometrie und Malerei. Neue Kunstformen allerdings verschmelzen beide Disziplinen und Kunst wird nicht mehr nur technisch reproduziert, sondern vor allem technisch produziert; die Medien für künstlerischen Ausdruck ändern sich. In seinem aktuellen Buch "Colliding Worlds. How Cutting-Edge Science is Redefining Contemporary Art" (W. W. Norton & Company) beschreibt der US-amerikanische Wissenschafter Arthur I. Miller diese aktuellen Entwicklungen vom Blickpunkt der Künstler und Wissenschaftler. Miller war bei der Ars Electronica in Linz zu Gast und erzählt im Interview über die Verschmelzung von Kunst, Wissenschaft und Technik zu einer neuen Kunstform, die er ArtSci (ArtScience) oder einfach Kunst (art) nennt.

"Wiener Zeitung": Wie würden Sie einem Laien das Beispiel des Ohrs, das auf der Hand des Medienkünstlers Stelarc wächst, erklären?

Arthur I. Miller: Es handelt sich dabei um Performance-Kunst, um Kunst, die von Biologie beeinflusst ist. Beide erforschen den Körper, seine radikalen Veränderungen und was er im 21. Jahrhundert überhaupt bedeutet. Stelarcs Ohr ist aber nicht wirklich ein Ohr, wie das an ihrem Kopf. Er verwendete Stammzellen dafür. In dieser Kunst dient der Körper als Leinwand, auf die gemalt wird, wie die französische Künstlerin Orlon, etwa, die ihr Gesicht permanent durch plastische Chirurgie verändern lässt. Oder wie Christa Ohlig, die Bluttransfusionen von Pferden bekommen hat und damit die Beziehung zwischen Tier und Mensch thematisiert. Organtransplantationen von Tieren gibt es ja auch.
Bei vielen Menschen kommt durch diese Arbeiten aber auch Angst auf.
Die Frage ist, wie man diese Dinge verwendet. Missbrauch wird es immer geben. Tatsache ist, dass der Körper mehr und mehr mechanisiert wird, viele Leute haben heute schon Chips in ihren Körpern. Ich denke in Zukunft wird das einzige, das vom Körper übrig bleibt, das Gehirn sein. Der Rest von uns wird mechanisiert.

Allerdings werden diese ArtSci-Arbeiten vom etablierten Kunstbetrieb kaum angenommen.
Gewiss. Er weist diese neuen Kunstformen zurück, vor allem weil sie die Regeln missachten. Dazu zählen Einmaligkeit, Zugang oder Haltbarkeit. Viele dieser Kunst-Produkte sind auch gefährlich. Doch was jetzt passiert, das ähnelt der Kunst in Frankreich Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts, als zum Beispiel Monet oder Manet vom Establishment abgelehnt wurden. Damals wie heute verabschieden sich Künstler vom Mainstream und schaffen sich ihre eigenen Netzwerke. Das ist die neue Avantgarde!

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Was bleibt, ist das Gehirn? Die Fusion von Wissenschaft, Technik und Kunst auf der Ars Electronica

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Kunst und Wissenschaft haben sich immer schon gegenseitig inspiriert, man denke nur an Geometrie und Malerei. Neue Kunstformen allerdings verschmelzen beide Disziplinen und Kunst wird nicht mehr nur technisch reproduziert, sondern vor allem technisch produziert; die Medien für künstlerischen Ausdruck ändern sich. In seinem aktuellen Buch "Colliding Worlds.

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Mind Frame by Jake Fried 2016. Hand-drawn animation with ink, white-out and coffee. More at www.inkwood.net facebook.com/jakejfried instagram.com/jakejfried society6.com/jakefried

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A short film about making up your mind.

Director/Editor- Andrew Norton
Director of Photography - Scott Pommier
Producer - Veronica Simmonds
Production Assistance - Nick Genova
Additional Interviews - Alex Kapelman

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15+ Pics That Show Photography Is The Biggest Lie Ever

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15+ Pics That Show Photography Is The Biggest Lie Ever

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The internet is full of beautiful and amazing photographs, but do you ever stop and wonder just what went into that perfect shot? I'm not just talking about the digital manipulation side of the process, although there's certainly plenty of that involved. No, I'm talking about the physical hard work combined with the often super-creative approaches that photographers employ in order to ensure that their final shot is the very best it can be.

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10+ Pics That Show Photography Is The Biggest Lie Ever

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The internet is full of beautiful and amazing photographs, but do you ever stop and wonder just what went into that perfect shot? I'm not just talking about the digital manipulation side of the process, although there's certainly plenty of that involved.

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ARTE : chaîne télé culturelle franco-allemande - TV direct & replay

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Emissions TV, direct, vidéos en replay, webdocumentaires, ARTE Journal... Accédez aux programmes de la chaîne culturelle européenne sur arte.tv.

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Who wants to live forever? Eternime preserves your most important thoughts, stories and memories for eternity.

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Who wants to live forever? Eternime preserves your most important thoughts, stories and memories for eternity.

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10,000 Amazing Film Clips Available for Free in a Public Domain Database

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10,000 Amazing Film Clips Available for Free in a Public Domain Database

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President Barack Obama whistles along to the music as he shoots pool with Col, via

For filmmakers, designers, photographers, and just about any kind of creatives, the public domain is an important resource, full of copyright-free materials that can be used and remixed to create new art. The legal intricacies of copyright and public domain, however, can be daunting, and finding specific pieces of footage, for example, from organizations like the US National Archive can be a tedious and user-unfriendly experience. Royalty-free video marketplace Pond5 launched the Public Domain Project in order to solve this problem, opening up to the public a massive, thoroughly-organized treasure trove of about 80,000 copyright-free video clips, photos, sound recordings, and 3D models.

The project includes digital models of NASA tools and satellites, Georges Méliès' 1902 film, A Trip To The Moon, speeches by political figures like Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King, Jr., recordings of performances from composers like Beethoven, and a laid-back picture of President Obama playing pool (below). Since they existed solely in physical form within the National Archives, about 5,000 of the film clips had been nearly impossible to access for most filmmakers. The Public Domain Project directly digitized the footage themselves and combined it with 5,000 more copyright-free clips, making an easy-to-use marketplace that unifies a huge portion of the country's historical resources. Artists can pick and choose from the helpfully labeled and tagged files to find just the right picture or clip to give their work some historical context, or to create a whole new artwork with its own unique meaning.

Alongside the freshly accessible materials, Pond5 produced a handy explanation of the public domain to help artists ensure their ideas fall within the legal realm of each different kind of public domain. While using the free picture of President Obama is fine for an editorial about presidential recreation, f or example, it would not be legal to turn it into an advertisment for billiards tables.

One of the coolest things about this project is that, as with nearly any free resource, people will almost certainly find ways to use the Public Domain Project in ways we can't predict. We'd love to see projects like a supercut of vintage space footage, a film remix in the style of Woody Allen's What's Up, Tiger Lily?, or even a modern take on the nuclear bomb montage from the end of Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. All the clips are embeddable and many are byte-sized, so we may even see them sprout up as new memes and reaction GIFs, and hopefully many more projects we haven't thought of yet.

Below, check out some royalty-free images, courtesy of the Public Domain Project:

Visit the Public Domain Project to scope out the selection for yourself.

Related:
Who Owns The Monkey Selfie? A Lawyer Weighs In Remixed NASA Footage Asks "What if Kubrick Directed The Moon Landing?" The Web's Darkest Found Footage Finds A Place On The Silver Screen

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10,000 Amazing Film Clips Available for Free in a Public Domain Database

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President Barack Obama whistles along to the music as he shoots pool with Col, via For filmmakers, designers, photographers, and just about any kind of creatives, the public domain is an important resource, full of copyright-free materials that can be used and remixed to create new art.

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3d Glitching Notes – Part 4 – Texture Map Glitching…

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3d Glitching Notes – Part 4 – Texture Map Glitching…

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As with the earlier notes, this will make more sense if you have some prior knowledge of 3d modeling and rendering (and, in this case, texture mapping). A knowledge of Blender will be especially useful. Hopefully you can make the necessary adjustments if you use a different 3d modeling and rendering application. It's assumed that you've gone through the previous notes in this series, starting here .

So far I've discussed glitching the 3d vertices of a model described in an .obj file. These vertices define the object's surface in 3d space. However, the file can also contain a list of texture vertices, sometimes referred to as UV vertices. These allow a 2d image to be mapped to a 3d surface in the same way that a Mercator projection map corresponds to a globe, or the way the flattened, peeled skin of an orange can be fitted back onto the orange.

In this note I'll discuss the first of several approaches to "glitching" the way a texture is mapped to a 3d object. This first method hews more closely to the original glitch esthetic in that the results are mostly a matter of chance. We'll open an .obj file, cut and paste, find and replace, and discover afterwards what the effects are.

Something else that will be different about this set of notes: Instead of working with a mesh that is fully rounded - a model of a head, for example - I'll use a flat mesh and show how the final product of this method of glitching can be another 2d image. However, everything I explain here applies equally to the texturing of 3d models of the more usual, fully rounded type.

I won't go into the technical details of the structure of an .obj file or how the texture mapping takes place.. all that is available on the web and has been discussed to some degree in the previous notes. For now, just know that the texture vertices in an object file are on the lines that begin with the characters "vt".

Our first job is to obtain an .obj file with texture vertices. In Blender, we create a 2d grid, set up an orthographic camera, and align it so the camera view is perpendicular to and facing the grid. We then go into "Edit" mode, select all the vertices of the grid, and hit the "u" key on the keyboard (stands for "unwrap"). From the available choices, pick "Project from View". That's it.

Let's look at the image before it is glitched. Assign the image to the grid as a texture. I'll go into a little more detail about the process later, but the following screenshot shows the node setup ( please note.. we are using the Cycles renderer here, not Blender Internal!). Be sure to set the display view of the 3d pane to rendered or textured. Otherwise you'll only see the plain, untextured grid. Mrs. Frankenstein is a little distorted here since she's been mapped to a perfect square.

One more thing before we export our grid as an .obj file, let's look at the UV vertices we just created. Go into "Edit" mode, select all the 3d vertices of the grid, then switch one of the panes to the "UV Image Editor". You should see another grid that looks just like the 3d grid. To begin with, each of the UV vertices matches the position of it's corresponding 3d vertex.

Next, export the grid as an .obj file as has been discussed in the earlier notes. Among the export options, be sure to check "Include UVs".

Next, open the resulting .obj file in a text editor or spreadsheet, again as described in the preceding notes. Go to the section with the lines beginning with "vt", cut, paste, find and replace, while making sure that the total number of lines in the section remains the same.

When you're done and have saved your work, go back to Blender, import the glitched .obj file, and assign an image texture using the node system. The root node will be a Texture Coordinate node. Choose the "UV" feed. The next node will be a texture node. Choose "Image Texture" and load the image you want to map. The final node before the output will be a diffuse shader. Here, again, is a screenshot of the basic node setup.. Be sure to set the display mode of the 3d pane to textured or rendered: Notice how different Mrs. Frankenstein looks this time!

Let's look at the UV vertices after the mangling they underwent while in the text editor. Go into Edit mode, select all the 3d vertices of the grid, and again switch one of the panes to the "UV Image Editor"

See how irregular the UV grid is now.. the mapping of the image has been thoroughly disrupted.

Note that the steps outlined above can be repeated until you are satisfied with the image. At that point you can do a final render as you would a normal 3d scene.

We've talked about how we can open the UV Image Editor and see the UVs. What we haven't mentioned is that the UV coordinates can be directly manipulated in that editor, without going through the process of exporting to an .obj file for glitching.. that should give you a clue on how we can push this process further.

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Again, this will go better if you've read part 1 and part 2 of this series!

We're going to combine two techniques here. First, we'll use the "Sort by Selection" method to order the vertices. Second, instead of using a text editor, we'll use a spreadsheet to manipulate the data!!

We'll use Suzanne, once again, as our model. We'll go into "Edit" mode and subdivide the mesh a couple times so we have more vertices to work with.

That accomplished, we'll select a few of the vertices at the top of Suzanne's head, and, after that, we'll go to the "Mesh" menu, choose "Sort Elements", and then sort by "Selection".

Using the "visualize vertices" addon that we introduced in the last set of notes, we can now see that the vertices we selected are in indices 0 through 48 ( a total of 49).

We then export the mesh in our usual fashion as an .obj file, change the extension to .txt, and open it in a spreadsheet! I'm using LibreOffice Calc, so I'm given the option of using spaces to separate the fields, this results in the x,y, and z coordinates being placed correctly in their separate columns.

We're now going to do something that would not have been possible using a text editor. We'll select the first 49 coordinates in the "C" column.. those represents the "y" values for the vertices, which is the "up" direction. ( A note here.. most 3d programs treat the "y" axis as up, but Blender uses the "z" axis for up! When exporting as an .obj file from Blender, in the export options, choose "Y Up" and "Z Forward".)

In this case, sort Column "C" by "Ascending".

We've now "glitched" our file, but we have to take special care when saving it and changing it back into an .obj file. Choose to save as a text ".csv" file. In Calc, you'll need to check the "Edit filter settings" option. You can also uncheck "Automatic file name extension" options, and then change the file extension from ".csv" to ".obj".

Be sure to change the field delimiter to "space":

We'll now take a look at our glitched file in Meshlab:

Look at that strange regular pattern of peaks and valleys on top of Suzanne's head! What is happening here?

Let's look at a comparison of the column containing the values of the "y" coordinates before and after we sorted them:

Note that before we did our sort in the spreadsheet, the vertex at index 0 (on line 5 of the spreadsheet due to the header info above it) would be at the very top of Suzanne's head.. at the highest "y" position. After we sorted the "y" axis in the spreadsheet in ascending order, that 0 index vertex was now at the lowest position on the "y" axis relative to the other vertices we selected. Each of the subsequent vertices we selected would be at the next slightly higher position, and the last vertex at index 48 will now be at the highest relative position.

Let's look again at the picture of the selected vertices with their index positions displayed.. this time with a visualization of the distribution of those indices:

Note how the pattern skips, hopscotch fashion, so the next indexed vertex is never immediately "spatially" adjacent in the mesh to the vertices that are just before and after it in the index order.

The "hopscotch" arrangement of the vertices results in the regular "high-low" alternation along the "y" axis that we see saw above. After the sort in the spreadsheet, the vertices reached during the first half of the traverse have all been assigned the lowest "y" values, and the vertices spatially in between them on the mesh, being visited last, have been assigned the highest "y" values. Of course, the order of the indices would have been different if we'd chosen a different method of sorting them back when we were in Blender.

This method of selecting chunks of the 3 columns representing the x, y, and z coordinates, and then sorting them various ways - sometimes ascending, sometimes descending, sometimes sorting one column separately, sometimes sorting more than one column using multiple keys - can produce some interesting results:

There are many other curious things one can do with spreadsheets.. easily cutting and pasting between the columns, applying formulas.. however, sooner or later the limitations of spreadsheets will get in the way. At that point we'll need to use a real scripting language to manipulate the date.. but that will come in a future post.

Before that, though, we'll be looking at glitching the texture coordinates of the .obj file.. these control how a 2d image is mapped to the 3d surface of the mesh.. and now you're ready to move on to the next section!

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If you haven't already.. be sure to read the first part of this series: 3d Glitching Part 1. These notes assume that you already have an understanding of the material presented there, as well as an understanding of 3d modeling and the basic ideas behind "Glitch Art." In addition, some knowledge of the 3d modeling and rendering program "Blender" will be useful, since it will be the tool we'll be using. We'll be dealing with some of the more arcane features of Blender ... I'll sometimes provide a little extra explanation of Blender terminology in hopes that it will make it easier for users of other 3d modeling/rendering programs to follow and to make adjustments for their preferred environments.

This second set of notes provides a way to have some control over which areas of the model are "glitched." As it is, the long list of vertices in an object file provides little information about what part of the model will be effected when we apply any of the techniques mentioned in part 1 - copy and paste or find and replace... If the model was exported from Blender, the x, y, and z axis are likely all on a scale from 0.00000 to 1.00000 or -1.00000. If the information on a line for a particular vertex contains the coordinates -1.000000 -1.000000 1.000000, it might be at the extreme left, front, and top of the object (which coordinates are situated in the "minus" direction and which axes are"up" or "forward" depends on certain options chosen at the time of export.) However, the lines containing the positions of vertices and faces for an .obj file are often sorted in unpredictable or even completely random ways. Usually this is just fine.. it's that unpredictability that makes glitch art so much fun!

However, there are times when you want more control.. you want to limit the "glitch" to a particular subsection of the model...

Blender provides a way to do just that. Within Blender we can choose to sort the vertices using several methods. Once you've sorted the vertices, when you export the model as an .obj file and open it in a text editor, you'll find the vertex you've chosen as the starting point for your sort at the top of the list, with the remaining vertices more or less ordered according to their distance from that first vertex. If you want to "glitch" the area closest to that first vertex, then you copy/paste, etc. near the start of the list. If you want to avoid glitching that area, you perform your manipulations elsewhere in the list.

There are several sorting methods available, but I've found two of them to be the most useful. The first is to sort the vertices according to their distance from the 3d cursor. The second is to sort by the selected vertices. We'll start with the first of the two methods:

After having imported or created a model in Blender, go into "Edit" mode. In Blender terminology that is when we can see and edit the individual vertices of the model. We'll start by positioning the 3d cursor. You can simply place the cursor where you like by left-clicking with the mouse, but if you want it to align precisely with a particular vertex, select that vertex (using right-click) and then follow with the shift-s key combination to bring up the "Snap" menu, and choose "Cursor to Selected." Since we're using Suzanne the Blender monkey for our model, let's align the 3d cursor with the tip of her nose.

Once you've positioned the 3d cursor, select all the vertices, and then go to the "Mesh" menu, select "Sort Elements" and choose "Cursor Distance."

However, it's not clear at all from the normal Blender interface that anything has changed.. normally there is no indication of what the index of a given vertex is. In order to see the indices of vertices, you must install the addon "3D View: Index Visualiser (BMesh)" which is available here: https://developer.blender.org/F11709 (There's also a way to activate this feature by entering Blender into debug mode.. but the addon works better). (edit: there have been reports that this version of the addon no longer works.. if it doesn't work for you, try this alternative:
https://github.com/nutti/Index-Visualizer You'll have to look up the proper way to install third party addons into Blender .. however, I found that I had to extract the .py script. Simply installing from file and targeting the .zip did not seem to work. Once the script is installed, you should find an "Index Visualizer" sub-panel in the "Properties" panel. Just click "Start" .. it automatically displays only the selected vertices...)
Once you've installed and activated the addon, you can go to the "Properties" panel, and then find and press the "Visualize Indices" button. You should then see the index of each vertex. I recommend that you choose the "Selected Only" and "Vertices" options so you can limit the information displayed. Otherwise the screen will be unreadable when dealing with a heavy mesh!

You'll note that the vertex at the center of Suzanne's nose has an index of 0 - That's the vertex we used to position the 3d cursor. Don't be confused by the appearance of index numbers that may seem to be in the "wrong" location, such as the "28" and "25" in the illustration above. the system displays the index numbers of vertices that are actually farther away, even when those vertices are hidden behind nearer polygons.

So we now have the vertices sorted according to their distance from the 3d cursor. At this point, we export the model as an .obj file, and then open the file in a text editor. Take a look at the following illustration:

Note the x coordinate at 0.00000 - the nose was exactly in the center of Suzanne's x axis! By sorting the vertices, the vertex at the tip of the nose, and the vertices closest to it have been brought to the top of the list. Now.. just to illustrate how it works, change that x coordinate to 2.00000, save the file, and then open in MeshLab. You should see the tip of the nose skewed far to the side:

Of course it would be far simpler to just move that vertex manually within Blender. The point of all this is that knowing which vertices are at the top of the list, we can either target or avoid them when it comes to glitching. In the following illustration, the 3d cursor was placed at the tip of Suzanne's right ear, and then the vertices were sorted according to their distance from the cursor. Then, when the exported .obj file was brought into the text editor, only vertices in the bottom half of the list were "glitched." The result is that only the left half of Suzanne's head is affected:

That's it for today.. You are now ready to move on to part 3 of this series!

These notes presume that you have a basic understanding of glitching and of computer 3d modeling.

Instead of using standard 3d modeling tools to modify a shape, we'll be directly manipulating the data in the file. Sometimes glitch artists employ a hex editor to accomplish this, but since the 3d file format we're targeting is in ascii text, an ordinary text editor will do.

We'll be using the Wavefront .obj file format. Models in this format are readily available on the web. However, I recommend that you use the open source modeling and rendering application Blender to either generate your own models or to simplify third party models. Alternately, you can use Meshlab.

In Blender, export the model as an .obj file, but turn off all of the options - UVs, Materials, Normals, etc. etc. In Meshlab you will have similar options when exporting a mesh - we want only the most basic geometric information.

Once you have your file.. use your favorite text editor to open it. I'm currently using Windows, so the editor of choice for me is Notepad++.

In the editor, the file structure becomes easy to parse. The data for a simple cube, created in Blender and exported to .obj looks like this:

# Blender v2.71 (sub 0) OBJ File:
# www.blender.org

v -1.000000 -1.000000 1.000000
v -1.000000 -1.000000 -1.000000
v 1.000000 -1.000000 -1.000000
v 1.000000 -1.000000 1.000000
v -1.000000 1.000000 1.000000
v -1.000000 1.000000 -1.000000
v 1.000000 1.000000 -1.000000
v 1.000000 1.000000 1.000000

f 5 6 2 1
f 6 7 3 2
f 7 8 4 3
f 8 5 1 4
f 1 2 3 4
f 8 7 6 5

There's no real header.. the part at the beginning is made up of notes, indicated by # signs.. the system disregards these. Next comes a list of vertices.. one for each line that begins with a "v". Each of those lines contain three values for the x, y, z position of the vertex relative to the origin. The meaning of the scale may vary depending on the settings of the program you use. Blender typically operates in "Blender Units" . Our example is two Blender units along each edge (the distance from -1 to 0 and from 0 to 1), so a cube half the dimension of our example might have a vertex at position -0.5 -0.5 0.5

Next comes a list of polygons, referred to as "faces", one on each line that begins with an "f". In our example the faces are quads since they have four integer values, each integer indicating a vertex from the first part of the file. The integer corresponds to the index of the vertex. For example, the first quad of our cube is made up of the 5th, 6th, 2nd, and 1st vertices in the list. This structure will have important consequences when we begin to "glitch" the data.

We'll first consider glitching the vertex data. One way to do this is to cut and paste. This changes the index of each vertex. The result is that some of the faces in the second part of the file no longer refer to the same vertices they did originally. Usually this means that the "glitched" form stays fairly close to the general outline of the original object.. we have all the same vertices - there are no vertices that have moved to new positions outside of the original object.. but the faces may be scrambled in curious ways. Note the following progression:

We're using the famous Blender "Suzanne" monkey head as our model. Successive versions represents more drastic applications of cut and paste. At the beginning we use smaller snippets and paste them at positions that are closer to their original location. Later in the series we cut bigger chunks and paste them much farther away from their original location.

Another option is to use "Find and Replace" within the list of vertices. For example, one could search for all instances of "1" and replace it with "8". This may result in more dramatic reshaping of the model. For example, a vertex that was originally at x axis -1.0000 would now be at x axis -8.0000 . That would mean that the vertex is now eight times further from the origin than its original position. Also, one might replace negatives with positives and vice versa. This would result in a displacement of the vertex in a direction opposite of its original position relative to the origin. See the following examples... again there is a progression from smaller changes to more dramatic ones.. starting out with find and replace over small subsets of the vertices and smaller differences between the number being replaced and the number replacing it. Toward the end, search and replace occurs over a wider span of the vertices and there are greater differences between the originals and the replacements:

Note that replacing a larger number with a smaller number generally results in a vertex that is inset.. that moves closer to the origin (assuming that the origin is at the center of the object.) For example, if we replace "8" with "2", a vertex that was at Y axis -0.8 is now at -0.2, and a vertex that was at Y axis 0.8 will now be at 0.2 - in both the negative and the positive case the vertex ends up closer to the origin. Conversely, replacing a smaller number with a larger results in vertices that are farther away from the origin.

Another option is to change the part of the list that contains data for the faces. Cutting and pasting whole lines for each face will not have any effect.. it doesn't matter what order the faces are in! If they refer to the same vertices they did before they will look exactly the same.

Finding and replacing integers within the lines will have an effect.. but you must be careful! This is where you are more likely to make the file unreadable... be sure that the result of your "find and replace" is not a reference to a vertex that does not exist. Recall that the vertices are indicated by their index number. If you have 1000 vertices and you replace "1" with "9", you'll end up with a reference to a non-existent vertex at position 9000. You should be safe if you always replace a larger number with a smaller number. (This is an area where a more intelligent script would be useful.. but that's a topic for another day..) Here's an example of finding and replacing the data in the "faces" section of the file.. as before, there's a progression from fairly limited to more drastic replacements.

Obviously, one can combine all three of these techniques when "glitching" the file.

There are more advanced methods. In Blender one can specify a vertex that will be the starting point for sorting the vertices. Thus one could force the vertices at the tip of Suzanne's nose to come at the start of the list. This allows some control of where the glitching will take place. If one knows that the nose of the figure is at the beginning of the list, one could avoid changing data in that area if the object was to preserve the original form of the nose.

Now that you've finished this first section, move on the the second set of notes, here.

After years of neglect, I've revived my ancient website. I've given in to convenience.. no more hand coding.. just standard blog software.. so, hopefully, the ease of it all will result in more frequent updating..

For now, all I have to point out are the galleries that are either on the right or below... my various 3d art works...

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As with the earlier notes, this will make more sense if you have some prior knowledge of 3d modeling and rendering (and, in this case, texture mapping). A knowledge of Blender will be especially useful. Hopefully you can make the necessary adjustments if you use a different 3d modeling and rendering application.

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Mark Klink is a member of Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

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Mark Klink (@markaklink) * Instagram photos and videos

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4,126 Followers, 3,560 Following, 203 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Mark Klink (@markaklink)

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Digital artist Mark Klink makes arresting images by exploiting the features of our design and 3D software programs in unexpected ways. His images of faces and figures are sometime called "Glitch Art" because he deliberately modifies objects and their rendering to create effects that look like accidents. In this interview he talks about his background, his process, and some of the artists who inspire him.
I became an expert in scripting Hypercard and taught myself C programming so I could write Hypercard code extensions called XCMDs and XFCNs. Some of those proved quite useful to people creating multimedia projects during that era. Since this was before the public Internet, games and such had to be distributed via CD-ROM disk. Code I wrote became part of over a hundred CDROM and other software projects. During this time I created a fairly popular shareware game called "The Haunted House." Aside from the programming, I created all the graphics and sounds.. Since then I've tried to keep up with the latest advancements in tech and media. You might say that I'm one of the few people who've made the leap from cutting-edge 15th-century tech (intaglio) to 21st-century tech 😉

These days I am especially interested in artists who use technology to create works that reveal some larger imaginative structure. I've found that it is not all that difficult to create new visual effects.. current technology is so rich and powerful, there are so many possible permutations and combinations of the parameters.. all one has to do is "play around" with the tools and new things - effects no one has ever seen before - will inevitably emerge.. so we're drowning in visual novelties. What is much more difficult is to construct/reveal some larger, a more complex imaginative whole.

Here are some artists who do just that:

Lorna Mills: In addition to her own innovative and highly influential work with animated GIFs, she is the organizer behind the video " Ways of Something ", which I consider to be a seminal new media artwork.. it brilliantly incorporates so many of the key features of contemporary Art.. It is built around creative appropriation.. the re-purposing of the soundtrack of John Berger's documentary series "Ways of Seeing" as well as countless visual quotes and allusions throughout the video. It was created by many artists working collaboratively.. a different artist did the visuals for each minute of the film.. and the artists come from all over the world! This way of working would be unthinkable before the Internet.

Claudia Hart. She has been a pioneer in the use of 3d modelling and rendering tools for experimental art. Her work engages the history of art, issues facing women, particularly in the context of tech.. She's also been extraordinarily influential as an educator.. her program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago was the first to focus on 3d as an experimental art form rather than as vocational training.

Carla Gannis. She also uses current media to engage the history of art and issues affecting women. She explores the notion of the self and the presentation of the self in the context of social media, networked culture, etc. .. often with a humorous twist. She is also influential as an educator, teaching at the Pratt Institute.

Jacolby Satterwhite. Building on his personal and family experiences, he combines dance, green screen techniques, video, computer modelling and animation in an exuberant, dream-like mix.

Morehshin Allahyari. Growing up in Iran, emigrating to the U.S., Moreshin uses video and 3d printing to reflect on issues of censorship, exploitation, and the paradoxes and complications that emerge from her own unique experience.

One thing you'll note.. and it would be true of the many artists working in this area that I would have mentioned if I had the space... four of these are women.

In contrast to most of the "traditional" art world of brick and mortar galleries and museums, and in contrast to the traditional tech game and video industry, women are far more prominent [in the digital arts.] The situation in the tech industry in general and gaming in particular hardly bears mention (think "Gamergate"). When it comes to the traditional "Art World" I suspect that the under-representation of women has to do with the inherent conservatism and the received fantasies of many gallerists, art administrators, and collectors...

There's an irony in that much of the Art World thinks of itself as progressive and experimental.. as producing and appreciating "Modern Art", when, in fact, it is recycling ideas and techniques that are now over a hundred years old.. we're in much the same situation as the late 19th century when a number of movements were beginning to undermine the various forms of moribund academic Art. However, when it comes to contemporary experimental, digital art, the various "gatekeepers" simply don't have the influence they have elsewhere.

That said.. I think there is an anxiety reflected in my work.. we are living in the "Anthropocene".. an era when blind human impulse combined with our fantastic technological advances is placing both we humans and the entire environment under a range of threats. We seem to be on the edge of some sort of post- or extra-human world where artificial intelligence, biological experimentation, and other technological advances put all of our traditional values and sources of meaning under question.

What are some of the tools you use to create your distinct style of artwork?

As much as possible, I use open source tools: Blender 3d, Meshlab, The Gimp. This is only partially an ideological choice. If I were working as a commercial artist or designer I would, of course, work with industry standard software such as Maya and Photoshop. Sometimes I miss the functionality of commercial software. However, I've also had the experience of working with commercial software and then having the owners decide to abandon or neglect it when they calculated that was, for them, the economically advantageous choice.. there's less chance of that happening with open source.
To see more of Mark Klink's work, please visit his websites:
http://www.srcxor.org
http://www.facebook.com/srcxor
http://srcxor.tumblr.com/
http://vimeo.com/srcxor
http://www.instagram.com/markaklink/

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Interview with Digital Artist Mark Klink - Notes on Design

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Digital artist Mark Klink makes arresting images by exploiting the features of our design and 3D software programs in unexpected ways. His images of faces and figures are sometime called "Glitch Art" because he deliberately modifies objects and their rendering to create effects that look like accidents.

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In this video we have tried to show movement and the enormous chromatic beauty of corals, a kind of marine animals that despite being one of the oldest animals on our planet, are mostly unknown. You will discover its stunning beauty, its spectacular colors and the mystery of his movements.