Spray paint bicycle / Dadaist anti-art machine

My bicycle

This is my bicycle that I use to get around. It's an old Norco road bike with a quick release front wheel and an aftermarket cargo attachment rack over the rear tire. I rigged up some bungee cords to hold on an old milk crate for cargo purposes. I also spray painted it tremclad fire red last week.

It was originally painted and ugly red and yellow sunburst colour, so I decided to repaint it. I was inspired by a set of pictures on flickr, called monochrome bikes of Amsterdam. They were all local spray painted bikes in the city used as free transportation. They remind me of a mix of Bohemian transport vehicle and Dadaist artwork. When I park mine, it will resemble rolling public art. It also acts as a theft deterrent because the average thief won't steal such a unique bike.

I wholeheartedly prefer the older road bike styling compared to the modern mountain bike. For one, they're faster, easier to peddle, and light enough to carry up a flight of stairs. They can also ride on other surfaces besides pavement (just watch for obstructions!). They are the superior commuter.

Jarrett

Street panormama: Voyage in inner space

Van disappearing : 3 photos autostitched, added DOF

While taking one of my many voyages in inner space, I snapped three photos of a street in the middle of the meridian. I had to wait to get the approaching van behind me in my shot. I wanted to accomplish a ghost car effect that I've seen achieved before in autostitch. So, being industrious as I am, waited patiently to snap the third and last photo in the sequence.

I was lucky. I had the van positioned in the exact place I had wanted it. So that it's partly disappearing, just partly. Sort of a Back to The Future like thing with the van just starting to fade. Like it's heading into another dimension. And in light of the BP disaster, I think that's where we should banish our oil guzzling minivans. Why can't everyone take voyages in inner space like myself?

Jarrett

Large version here
Created with autostitch

Autostitch basics.

Street in Brandon: 4 photos autostitched, B&W.

Hello out there! It seems I've found a free program that will stitch multiple photos together. It's called Autostitch and it is a blast to work with. It works on a really easy premise. Take a few horizontal or vertically stacked photos, import them into autostitch, and stitch them together!

There are a few flaws in the program though. For example: stitching two different angled photos together won't work. Also, make sure that the next photo you take in your sequence contains an object from the previous photo. Otherwise, the program won't know where to join them. Another thing to watch for is stitching different exposed photos together. It will work, but the panorama will be exposed differently in different areas.

After autostitch does it's magic, you'll have to crop the photo. You'll end up with something like this:

Thunder Bay Ontario: 6 photos autostitched.

You'll have to import it into gimp, or windows photo editor to crop it. Personally, I fiddled with mine in gimp, and added a dramatic black and white effect:

The finished product.

And there's the finished product! Happy stitching!

Jarrett

Project Canadiana #3: Chilly Beach

Chilly Beach was an animated comedy series that aired on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) in 2003. It originally was a flash based website, until the CBC picked it up. The t.v. show ran a total of 65 episodes before being slowly cancelled in 2008. This was my favourite Canadian animated television show of all time. It was a sharp mix of wit and satire of Canadian stereotypes.

The show focuses on Dale MacDonald and his goings on in a failed resort town known as Chilly Beach. The fictional town itself is located on a large ice floe that drifts through the arctic, setting the series up many memorable episodes.

Most notably so, the episode called "Chilly Beachcombers". Wherein, Dale hires a Newfie fisherman to drag the ice floe closer to Iceland, to catch his favourite episode of the Beachcombers in a different timezone. This is the beauty of Chilly Beach; it is a culturally aware television show. Meaning: it mentions past quintessential Canadian shows in an effort to create a cultural mash-up of Canada.

It succeeded. That's the reason I loved this show. Each episode shows what Canadians really do. Drink beer, play hockey, watch hockey fanatically, eat at greasy spoons, play curling, get eaten by bears. The whole shebang. The characters on the show are an interesting bunch as well. They include hippies, Francophones, crazy Scots, Sikh mounties, and beer guzzling hockey lovers! It really represents the diversity of Canada and all of the different people here in a satirical way.

This show definitely had it's moments. In 2008 after three seasons it just disappeared. Which is sad, because it will be greatly missed. Great thing I found most of the episodes here, free to watch.

Jarrett

Project Canadiana #2: Robin's Donuts

Typical Robin's Donuts chain.

Yes, the time has come to talk about Canada's favourite coffee chain. NO, not Tim Horton's. Robin's Donuts. Yes, even though there is a spelling error in their company name, it's great all the same. They are a truly Canadian enterprise, built off hard work. Not to mention they can make a mean cup of coffee.

Robin's started off from a humble beginning in 1975. They owned one retail store in my home town of Thunder Bay Ontario. Through a little hard work they expanded to almost a dozen locations across the city. Robin's was so popular in the eighties to the nineties they amassed 130 stores across Canada!

Unlike Tim Horton, who tried several business ventures before succeeding in coffee, Robin's founders had it right. Offer a fresh baked doughnut, and a great cup of coffee for an affordable price. The main difference between Robin's and Timmies was, that the latter offered re-heated doughnuts. Thus, sealing Robin's market share in fresh foods. This is why Robin's stores are much larger in comparison to Tim Horton's. They have full in-store baking facilities.

Robin's interior.

Most stores offered a full deli selection, numerous different desserts, frozen coffee, cappuccino, and their trademark Robin's Eggs (like timbits).

By the 1990's Canada's per-capita ratio of doughnut shops surpassed those of all other countries. Due to the fact of Tim Horton's rapid expansion, to hopefully kill Robin's. And they almost succeeded.

When Robin's changed hands in the new millennium, the new owners slowly ran the franchise into the ground. They just couldn't compete with the big market hog: Tim Horton's. And in 2006, after permanently closing many stores, the franchise was sold to Coffee Time for an undisclosed amount.

Even though the franchise has changed hands numerous times, they have still managed fulfill a truly Canadian desire. A fresh doughnut, and a delicious cup of coffee free of nicotine. All at a great price.

Jarrett

Gord Downie on Studio Q tonight!

Gordon Downie.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The legendary, enigmatic, Gordon Downie returns to studio Q, for an exclusive interview on his upcoming solo album The Grand Bounce. The interview is starts at 10pm eastern on CBC radio one. You can listen to The Grand Bounce here. His new single "The East Wind" is my personal favourite.

Listening to Gord Downie speak about his albums or the Tragically Hip is poetry. The man always answers questions relating them to his thesis during the interview. He always has a message throughout his interviews. He contemplates his words carefully, to make them flow poetically and have the maximum effect. In his last interview with Jian Ghomeshi, he starts off with a metaphor. When Jian asks him about the smile on his face when he queued "The Exact Feeling", he immediately mentions "It's amazing, I can hear it through my coffin, through six feet of earth,"

This is a lively edition to my exam riddled week. It'll be nice to listen to the poetic words of Gord tonight as celebration of my completion. Then I'll watch the kick-off fireworks for the Brandon Summer Fair at eleven.

Fireworks emulating heaven, temporary towers soar

Yours,

Jarrett

Project Canadiana #1: Voyageur Restaurants

This will be a new segment on the blog called: *Project Canadiana*. It will include useless tidbits on the landscape and lore of Canada. First up is the Canadian phenomenon called Voyageur Restaurants.

Long since gone Voyageur in Brandon Manitoba

The Voyageur Restaurant chain was started in the late sixties by Imperial Oil (Esso). They were all attached to an Esso service station, and were famous for offering cheap good food all along the newly completed Trans-Canada Highway. This was back in the day when oil was dispensable and cheap and the Canadian dollar was stronger than the American.

Every oil company was in the market to give the Canadian travelers a cheap, home style meal. Esso had Voyageur , Texaco, had their Chicken Villas, and Shell had their 1867 restaurants.

The Voyageur Essos were a common sight across Canada, with their trademark red pointy hat. They offered home style, affordable meals. Salads, soups, pasta, sandwiches, hamburgers, steaks, chicken and Canadian beer. All at affordable pricing,

But most Voyageur Restaurants are now vacant, demolished or converted into something else. The one I fondly remember in Ignace Ontario has been converted into a subway. Who would trade a warm meal for a cold sandwich?

Former Voyageur in Ignace Ontario

I've traced down the last Voyageur on Google maps in Schreiber Ontario. I'm pretty sure it's privately owned, since the Voyageur name is long defunct. They have a convenience store, motel and gift shop. I'm glad to see someone revitalize the name Voyageur for the new generation of travelers! The red hat still lives!

Voyageur Esso in Schreiber Ontario

Jarrett

Medium vs. Message

Going back to the phrase "The medium is the message" coined by Marshall McLuhan, I made an experimental video entitled: The Medium vs. The Message. "The medium is the message" represents how a given medium can broadcast a more important message than the content itself. The medium embeds itself within the message, and creates a symbiotic relationship between the two. Therefore, If you don't understand the medium, you can't understand the message.

Example: If you were blind, and watched a television program, you're brain would only process the audio from the television set. Consequently, you would miss out on the visual and not understand the full message.

My video experiment shows how the medium can rebel against the message. The original video I selected shows an angry man smashing his office computer in a cubicle. The original message was comedic. So, I distorted the colours, chopped up the video and added ambient audio. I fucked with the medium to make the video take on a different message.

Original video here

Do the bright colours add happiness to the message? Does the hidden violin add an element of tragedy? Does the firetruck add an element of emergency? Does the repeated smashing make it center violence?

I don't know. That's the beauty of subjective ideas ladies and gentlemen.

Regards,

Jarrett

Vintage photographs and nostalgia.

I've been thinking about all the trips I've taken between Winnipeg and Thunder Bay. I've taken quite a few. I wonder what would the trip have been like twenty years ago?

Being a mixed media artist, this gets me thinking about old media. Nostalgia and old media. Say some one snapped a picture twenty years ago in the Winnipeg airport. Would they think that one day that photograph would be considered nostalgic? I think not. Like today, when we look at our old 35mm photos. At the moment we took them, we never thought that they would have a unique quality to them twenty years later. It sometimes happens that people are so stupefied by nostalgia they try to recreate the effect of old photos. I'm one of those people.

Marshall McLuhan was right when he said "The medium is the message". The medium not only broadcasts a message (the content of a photograph in my case). The medium embeds itself in the message it carries. This is why older photographs look so different. The medium broadcasts it's own technology, which, dates itself. And as time progresses the qualities of the medium changes the message.

What will the photographs twenty years from now look like? What will they think of our puny -- advanced technology? Will our photographs lose out on nostalgia? Will they desperately replicate the effect?

Original photo: Winnipeg Airport (2007)

Same photo: Nostalgiacized in gimp

Jarrett