24 May 2012 | Collected words
Over the years, I have amassed a collection of quotations, quips, aphorisms, turns of phrase, etc. that inspire me, remind me of the path I want to follow or just make me think. After each blog entry, there is a random selection from this collection.
Many of the quotations are related to creativity (any creative process). These often resonate deeply with me in my personal creative practice. Others are related to my/our place in this big, complicated world/universe.
If the words strike a chord in your noggin, I suggest that you do what I do — write them down somewhere, then and there. The same quotation won’t be in the same place for long…
You have been warned…
[Insert slightly-maniacal laughter here — along the lines of “Wah-ha-HA!”]
To left of the quotations, you will find wee little thumbnails of photographs, currently from my 2006 Fallen forms, found series. Click on the thumbnail to see a larger version. Like the quotations, these images will move around…
Kenneth A. Huff;Fallen forms, found series; 2006; photography.
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To teach is to learn twice.
— Isocrates
22 May 2012 | A third helping of brain kibble
Here is the final large serving of brain kibble…
Ze Frank on ideas and brain crack. I miss The Show. UPDATE: He’s back! — An invocation for beginnings
APOD has a lovely sequence of photographs of recent aurora activity.
I want these and these to breed.
I have been thinking that I should write a manifesto. Found some instructions.
Relief of gastrointestinal obstruction of a green turtle. “Someday, perhaps, humanity might quit throwing away plastic altogether.”
If I had a fortune, this is how I would lose it.
A nice example of forced perspective.
“Take a deep breath. Even if the air looks clear, it’s nearly certain that you’ll inhale tens of millions of solid particles and liquid droplets.” (link)
Information visualization — so many interesting possibilities. The information aesthetics blog is an excellent resource. See also this assignment from a programming class I have taught.
Macroscopic, sound-manipulated, fluid dynamic sculptures.
Unbelievable flying objects. Things were so much more interesting before we really knew how to do it.
Best bubble reference ever. (Thank you, Sam.)
Improv Everywhere always makes me smile.
POP!Tech — You cannot beat Vanessa German’s way of opening a presentation
Radio Lab — Must listen with headphones.
The news release archive of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment — 16,412 17,467 17,929 22,943 ultra-high resolution images of Mars. — It is much too easy for me to get lost in these images. — Can you find Opportunity in this recent image? Answer.
Never miss another eclipse. Let’s just say I missed one and I was not happy about it.
Bill Rankin’s Chicago Boundries and Eric Fischer’s continuation of the idea.
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You must create your own world. I’m responsible for my world.
— Louise Nevelson
21 May 2012 | Brain kibble, seconds, please
Here is a second big helping of brain kibble. One more big serving to go before switching to amuse-bouche mode…
Bubbles and ferrofluids! At the same time! And macro!
Enjoying being part of the 3.15%.
Best rapid-prototyping set-up ever.
“He was pretty good, that guy. It was the first time I didn’t call the police.”
Hot bodies have less drag. (Made you look.)
This has all colors of trouble printed all over it.
Nine glorious minutes of starlings flocking.
Roiling clouds and spinning stars.
If you are going to start an avalanche(!), you should have a means of escape. (Hunter, don’t try this.)
I must say that I prefer 06902 33797 30026 07243 90700 18295 81471 45296 66417 46047 to 10097 32533 76520 13586 34673 54876 80959 09117 39292 74945. But that may just be me. (via)
A journey into the competitive world of free flight duration aeronautics.
Magnetic resonance images of veg and fruits.
Mommy, where do candy bars come from? Powered Belt Chicanes and Aligners/Partial Product Rejectors. (But what I don’t understand is why two different kinds of candy bars are going into the same wrappers. What, you don’t have a machine for that problem?)
A lovely visualization of water usage in the United States.
I feel like someone is watching me.
So, if this thing is around twice the size of Earth, I want to see detailed close-ups.
I love that I live in a world where things like this are created.
Back in outer space…amateur astrophotographers unwittingly help scientists track comet.
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We do not remember days, we remember moments.
— Cesare Pavese
20 May 2012 | Moving brain kibble from one container to another
Food for the brain. Feed the brain. Here is a heaping helping of kibble. (I am moving this from my teaching notes; future kibble will be posted here on the blog.)
See also Visual resources in my teaching notes for a few major image repositories that I enjoy.
And now, on with the show…
Make good art. — Yeah. What he said.
Nice to see a girl putting handles on cups instead of knocking them off and the rabbit is a fur-coated, warm-blooded animal. Dated gems of instructional filmmaking.
He’s back! — An invocation for beginnings
OMG! A giant bubble machine! by Nicholas Hanna
Air and water. Earth and fire, anyone?
A lovely meditation on the work of an artist creating ceramic vessels and sculptures.
I am smaller than a tiny speck.
Now I know why I never can find a tape measure when I need one.
Expérimentations enflammées — painting with fire (light) and more here.
Well worth a watch (for creatives and presenters).
This is my kind of rigid body dynamics with fracturing. More here.
Looking and seeing differently.
“The marvels of daily life are exciting; no movie director can arrange the unexpected that you find in the street.” — Robert Doisneau
“A good theory or idea is one where you don’t assume more than you have to.”
— John Kostick (Here is a lovely video about one of his bodies of work.)
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Excuse me, I’m making perfect sense, you’re just not keeping up.
— The Doctor
26 June 2010 | 2010.1, a new time-based work
I just finished the final rendering of the time-based work that I mentioned at the end of a previous post. I completed much of the work on this piece while in Salina.
2010.1 from Kenneth A. Huff on Vimeo. If you can, watch it full-screen, HD on and Scaling off.
The piece is a single-channel, 1920x1080, 24 fps, 25 minutes. Shown above is a 2-minute excerpt.
Here are some stills from the piece. Click on each for a full image.
Update: On the technical side, I used Side Effects Software’s Houdini and Adobe After Effects to create the piece. For the main surface, I used the Houdini Ocean Toolkit by Drew Whitehouse, based on the algorithms of Jerry Tessendorf. A custom shader was applied to the surface and an initial base rendering was created using Houdini’s hardware rendering. The base frames were rendered at 1.5 times final size (2880x1620). Those frames then were finished in After Effects. Total render time for 36,000 frames was approximately 250 hours.
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Love is not surrender. Love does not ask you to surrender. Love does not ask for anything. Love simply gives. And the miracle is, that when you give out of love the whole existence returns it a thousandfold, as if, from all over around you, roses start showering on you. You cannot imagine, cannot conceive of it, unless you experience it. But give it a try. You will not be losing anything.
— Osho