Robin Sloan » video

Tales from the N.E.R.D.

robin — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 07:40:27 +0000

So, when you arrived at the Annabel Scheme launch party on Saturday, you were presented with a piece of evidence from Scheme’s collection. They were all dated and tagged in ziploc bags; they were all very strange.

Your mission: come up with the story behind the evidence! There was a Narrative Evidence Research Database collection station set up, off to one side of the party, to capture these stories. Here’s just a taste of what people recorded:

(Note to partygoers: My MacBook seems to have become some kind of unstable quantum computer, because the sound on several of the clips got zapped. So there were some truly excellent stories—well, they looked excellent—that I couldn’t include. Argh!)

Huge thanks to N.E.R.D. collaborator Dan Bouk, who helped gather, prepare, and distribute the evidence.

Music to read by

robin — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 09:19:50 +0000

Aaron’s working on generative music (!) for my book reading on Saturday.

Postmodern dance in Denton, Texas

robin — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 04:48:55 +0000

I’m in Texas this weekend to see my sister’s big dance performance. She and her colleagues spent weeks observing (spying on?) patrons in a popular cafe here; then they used all those bits of language and motion as raw material for choreography and improvisation. It was a forty-five minute show, and way cooler and more complex than any YouTube clip could communicate. Lots of indelible moments and—best of all—lots of laughter.

Yes, every project has to involve a laser somehow

robin — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 00:03:59 +0000

A cover that moves and sings

robin — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:49:42 +0000

Not so much a book trailer as an animated book cover… and a love letter to my Kickstarter backers. (And you can see it even bigger on YouTube.)

I said this over on Kickstarter, too, but for those of you discovering it here first: As you watch it, imagine some future e-book with this animation literally built into the cover, writhing on your bookshelf. I want that.

If you’re new to this: You can still join up! The project closes on October 31.

The soundtrack is Demonic With Horns by Boy Eats Drum Machine, a.k.a. Jon Ragel, who “spins breaks and surgically inserts sounds while juggling vocals, percussion, and saxophone” and is one of my current favorites. Another of his tracks, Ross Island—free to download—has been in heavy rotation during the whole writing process. Here he is on Amazon MP3. Thanks, BEDM!

The visuals were generated in Processing.

Nerd note: after the rush of this book is over, I need to change the way I do Processing projects. Right now it’s totally strung-together, totally dependent on weird system-specific file-paths and variables, which makes it basically impossible to share the code. And I would like to share it! So that’s on the to-do list.

Related posts:

First glimpse of Fog City

robin — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:59:56 +0000

I read a small section from the story-in-progress into the camera over at Kickstarter. Watch closely; there’s a clue.

(Also, I made that sound effect myself, and I’m pretty proud of it!)

Also: Cara Powers writes a nice post about the project.

Related posts:

Simulated luckdragon

robin — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:22:40 +0000

I just had this vision and felt compelled to make it. It’s some recombinant version of this guy, I think. Built and animated with Processing. (Check it out in HD!)

Related posts:

A cover that moves and sings