Voting, Interactive Art, Web3, and other things this week

Voting

November already! It’s voting season again, and a big thanks to the Washington State vote by mail system this week, it is really wonderful. Hard to understand why every state doesn’t learn from, it has certainly driven up my participation and engagement level. It’s no surprise Washington is in the top 5 states by participation rate — and I hope we learn from the top 4 and improve.

Interactive Art Installations

I took a spin thru software for interactive art installs this week. I used to do some large scale halloween decorating and used DMX control software at that time, software has improved a lot sicne then. I am particularly interested in video projection mapping, gosh there are a lof of nice choices. I could just roll something by hand but using one of these seems smart, they all seem to handle multiple projectors mapping onto arbitrary geometries:

• madmapper. Lots of features, lots of guides, nice UI, seems to be reasonably active.
• qlab. Looks very on point, nice iOS companion app
• millumin. UI maybe not as slick, but still looks pretty complete
• isadora. A little more techie maybe.
• Touchdesigner. Seems to have a very strong pro community around it
• resolume. Really nice VJ features
• visution: UI not so polished but still looks complete

I intend to try a small experiment with one of these.

These additional projects may have promise but they seem limited in some substantial way

• heavym. only supports 1 output at the moment.
• mapmap. open source but abandoned.
• lightform creator. cool but limited to their out of stock hardware.

Web3 this week

I largely stayed away from web3 this week, but I did read a few things. Haseeb is a bit more rational than some of the adherents — for example Why decentralization is a bit of a red herring. And then Packy McCormick on sc3nius, worth reading.

And then there is this primer on DAOs. I want to like DAOs, there is something interesting about software for new organizational models. But when you have to understand 87 new concepts and 123 projects to wrap your head around the simplest DAO – well, radical transparency loses its meaning when it is wrapped up in obtuse complexity.

Random

I’d like to build out an astrophotography pc and setup. tho living amidst the light pollution and mirk of seattle is not really conducive to great astrophotography.

And a macrophotography setup — adaptalux.

Tough tech investing landscape 2021 – kind of the antidote to web3.

Pixar rules for story telling.

May December collaboration – nice to see new artists embracing great work of the past, and older artists embracing the art of today. Enriching for all.