This is the portfolio of the graphic artist Brian Weaver

Reading :Roger Penrose The Road to Reality : A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe , Laurell Hamilton The Harlequin
Playing : Quake Wars: Enemy Territory, Second Life
Working : Areva This site : HTML, DHTML, CSS, JavaScript, RSS
Most Interesting place worked so far: ...
Starting to play with : Processing

 "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim." -- Edsger W. Dijkstra

Listening To: Leonard Bernstein Conducting,  Aaron Copland : Symphony No. 3, New York Philharmonic. Bernstein doing Copeland in a definitive interpretation. ; X-Fusion gothic electro industrial music project by German Musician, Producer & DJ, Jan L. ; Trisomie 21 is a gothic French coldwave group by Philippe and Hervé Lomprez, two brothers from Lille, France. ; Necessary Response gothic industrial from Salzburg Austria. ; Amduscia is an industrial aggrotech band from Mexico.  ; Maneki Neko ambient trance from Austin, Texas. ; Darkroom tight indie trio playing industrial rock from Brooklyn, New York. JC's vocals are a perfect of hard, dark, and whiskey. ; Tree of Life indie psychedelic trance afro beat from Cincinnati, Ohio. ; 10 Years an American alternative metal band, formed in Knoxville, Tennessee. ;  Mnemic is a Danish/French metal band, formed in Aalborg, Denmark.

   Is this a malleable major consensus narrative or disinformation devised by an AI driven Bourbaki math Borg?

Google is planning the creation of a 3D oceanographic map, ostensibly called Google Ocean, that should allow people to visualize underwater topography, locate specific sites or attractions, and use pan and zoom functions to navigate the environment...University of Southern California researchers continue to make improvements to self-reconfigurable superbots. The researchers describe superbots as versatile, self-healing, metamorphic machines that are inexpensive to duplicate...The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is making a sizable investment in reconfigurable robots, such as modular "mesoscale" machines that can assemble themselves into any desired shape...Speakers at a symposium held by the U.S. National Academies warned that the United States has not risen high enough above the gathering storm of global competition in science. "Not much has happened here, but a lot has happened elsewhere,"...From Scientific American, a cover story on Science 2.0: Is open access science the future?... 

   Arnaud Valette digital artist

   Garry's photostream on flickr see his Seaside / Seascape

   Daniel Simon concept design

   The Babbage Engine is at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

   Hulk trailer two 

   The Sound of Love, a short by Lindsay Thompson.

   Steve James artist illustrator

   The teaser for Mathieu Kassovitz’ big budget scifi action film Babylon AD has arrived.

   Honoré Daumier artist

Listening To: L7 pop grunge.; Nevil Marriner Conductor Nicklin, oboe Vaughan Williams : Oboe Concerto in A minor Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields  ;  Muse are an English alternative progressive rock band formed in Teignmouth, Devon under the alias of Rocket Baby Dolls. Afterwards, they changed their name to, wait for it,  Muse. ; Band of Horses, previously known as Horses, is an American indie rock band from Seattle by Ben Bridwell, Mat Brooke, Creighton Barrett and Rob Hampton. ;  Syrian a gothic-electronic rock band, formed by Andylab (Vocals, Synthesizers, Vocoder) and Voyager (Synthesizers, Production, Vocoder). ; Obfusc Ambient electronica from Brooklyn, New York. ; Psyche is a goth synthpop band, now based in Germany. ; Strung Out is a punk rock band from Simi Valley, California. ; The Aquabats  are a humor and satire laced lyric American punk rock band. ; Trapt are a four-piece post-grunge alternative metal band originating from Los Gatos, California. ; Tool is an American alternative metal art rock band.

   Clifton Callender at Florida State University, Ian Quinn at Yale University and Dmitri Tymoczko at Princeton University -- have devised a new way of analyzing and categorizing music that uses the complex mathematics enmeshed in its structure.

   Michael Rubin, interviewing Pixar's Ed Catmull, Alvy Ray Smith, Andrew Stanton and Brad Bird on stage. Pixar has a web page where they make available all the technical papers that their technologists have presented at SIGGRAPH.

   Luxology’s President Brad Peebler interviews John Knoll, an Academy-award winning vfx specialist at ILM.

   A talk with Milton Glaser (Everything), Chip Kidd (Knopff), and Dave Eggers (McSweeney’s) about book design at the 92nd Street Y in New York.

   Angela Fraleigh oil and watercolor

   Mark Rothko painter

   Amy Bennett painter

  ‘Flowers and Trees’, Disney’s first full-color three-strip Technicolor film, July 30, 1932.

   Michael Antkowiak painter

   Alex Dodge print maker

   David Spriggs sculpture

   Loredana Sperini hand embroidery

   Alexei Vassiliev photography

 Listening To: Melos Quartet, Franz Schubert : String Quartet No. 9 in G Minor, unfortunatly the Melos is no longer playing but this recording reveals them at their best. ; Lo-Pro is a five-piece hard metal band. ; From Autumn to Ashes are an American melodic hardcore metal band. ; Juno Reactor is a musical and performing act known for the cinematic fusion of electronic, orchestral and global music. ; Meldrum is a multi-national metal band from Bergen Norway formed by ex-Phantom Blue guitarist Michelle Meldrum. ; XM Deep Tracks Theme Time Radio Hour with Bob Dylan 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Take a trip back to the golden age of radio with music hand-selected by Bob Dylan. This week Bob celebrates Baseball and interviews the actor Charley Sheen. Lawrence Ferlinghetti reads his Baseball Canto. ; Glis experimental industrail electro pop from Seattle, Washington. ; X-Fusion is the name of a solo electronic music project by German Musician, Producer & DJ, Jan L. ; Rotersand is a German electronic industrial music act, formed in September of 2002 by Gun and Rascal with producer Krischan J.E. Wesenberg. ; Black Water Rising metal from Brooklyn, New York. ; Hedder  metal from Rockford, Illinois. ; Down Theory  four piece metal outfit straight out of Jacksonville , Florida. ; Destrophy alternative metal from Iowa. ; Pzychobitch trip hop, hard electro and E-Trip-Noise from Germany. ; Disillusion is a German metal band who play a unique combination of black, death, progressive, symphonic, thrash, and  industrial metal. ; C-TEC industrial ambient. ; Madside alternative metal from Redding, California. ; Eighteen Visions alternative metalcore from Orange County, California. ; Haujobb is a German musical project whose music ranges from electro-industrial to IDM and techno. ; Marashino alternate metal from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

   From ZDNet UK : Internet Gridlock to Occur in Just Two Years  " Without significant new investment, the Internet's current network architecture will reach the limits of its capacity by 2010, warned AT&T's Jim Cicconi at the Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 in London."
    Once more another in a long line of the usual unconvincing critiques of how the end of the Internet is near. How we are all doomed to isolated silences as the tubes clog up.
    This kind of prediction has occured with annoying regularity over the last 20 years, with the obvious lack of predictive fulfillment. So the bright lights at Techdirt respond to this sillyness.
    Here's a nice quote from Techdirt: " take a wild guess at the role of the guy making the prediction. Yup, it's the company's vice president of legislative affairs. If it's such a burden, then why does AT&T continue to build out its network? " Oh, well duhhh!

   High Tech Noon. Old westerns will never be the same.

   Ron Crabb of Crabb Digital matte painting, illustration, and concept art

   The latest Alt Text is a handy guide to logical fallacies that will aid you in any argument, ranging from election debates to important stuff like whether Optimus Prime could beat up the Terminator. -- Via Wired
    I know for a fact Optimus Prime can make dog food out of the Terminator. Ron Crabb of Crabb Digital matte painting, illustration, and concept art.

   The 2008 vfx reel of Mathieu Chardonnet.

   Hethe Srodawa Concept Design and Illustration

   Michael Muller Photographer

Listening To:  Front 242 is a pioneering Belgian electronic industrial music group. ;  VNV Nation an electronic music band originally from Wexford and London, now based in Hamburg. ; Suicide Commando is the name of a Belgian musical act combining aggrotech with elements of electro-industrial. ;  Frontline Assembly also known as FLA is a Canadian electro-industrial band. Front Line Assembly on YouTube  ; Drowning Pool is a four-piece alternative metal band from Dallas, Texas. ; Ugly Kid Joe garage rock from Isla Vista, California. ; Mary Beats Jane is a Swedish hardcore thrash metal band from Gothenburg. ; The Retrosic is a German electro-Industrial music project. ; Panzer AG is the name of a power noise aggrotech industrial trance project by Norwegian Andy LaPlegua, the founder of futurepop band Icon of Coil.  ;  Menticide Swedish industrial electro pop. ; Covenant is an electro industrial band from Sweden. ; Novembers Doom is a death and doom metal band from Chicago, Illinois. ; Adham Shaikh is an electro acoustic composer, record producer and sound designer living near Nelson, B.C..

   Sensitive military items for sale on eBay Undercover investigators were able to easily purchase items such as spare parts for F-14 fighter jets and military body armour.
    Editors note : No one has discussed this scandal in the light of counterfeit parts or faulty parts.
    Here are a few links to failed body armor as an example : In nearly half of the body-armor contracts given out between January 2004 and December 2006, according to the report, the Army failed to require or perform... The Army and Marine Corps bought hundreds of thousands of sets of body armor -- without the equipment being properly tested,  according to a report by the Defense Department's inspector general...
    What happened to the "failed" body armor, was it destroyed? Recycled? Useless minds want to know. One could imagine they made their way to eBay.
   I was looking in my medicine cabinet and was wondering how much of what was there, almost all contents were made in China, contained actual legitimate ingredients? Welcome to the age of virtual medicine!

   XM Radio has a little promo going for $2.99/month so I signed up for 6 months.

    Video sampled from "One Got Fat" (1963) bicycle safety movie turned mutent. I'm sure it meant the same in 1963 to kids, along with all those duck and cover films from Civil Defense.

    Relive the horror of Beany & Cecil

    Ad Guy another YouTube moment.

   Alberto Cerriteno artist

   Amy Casey artist

   Naoto Hattori artist

   F. Scott Hess at Hackett Freedman

   Robt. Williams artist

Listening To: XM Classics Friday 6:00 AM - 8:00 AM. The Cleveland Orchestra in concert at Severance Hall in Cleveland. Miguel Harth-Bedoya, conductor. Horacio Gutierrez, piano. Featuring...Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture; Falla: Suite from The Three-Cornered Hat; Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1. ; Thrice post hardcore buzzsaw metal from Irvine, California. Thrice on YouTube ;  Fuel is a post screamer metal band formed by guitarist/songwriter Carl Bell and bassist Jeff Abercrombie. ;  Amorphis is a Finnish death metal progressive band started by Jan Rechberger, Tomi Koivusaari and Esa Holopainen. ;  Modern Day Zero is a Hard rock band based in St. Louis, Missouri. ; Shadows Fall an American heavy metal band formed in Springfield, Massachusetts. ; Rammstein German hardcore industrial metal band. Rammstein on YouTube. ; Anberlin an American alternative metal band from Winter Haven, Florida. Anberlin on YouTube. ; Carbon 9 heavy metal from Los Angeles, California. ; Ralphi Rosario is a leading house music deejay. He coined the phrase House Music along with the crew of Chi-Town radio show Hot Mix Five. ; Tikal French hard trance goa, comprised of two brothers, Vincent & Manuel Bernal. ; Martin Denny 1950's-1960's exotica lounge jazz. ; Clan of Xymox are a darkwave gothic rock band founded in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

        "In the gap caused by the failure of punk rock's apocalyptic rhetoric, [the term] 'industrial' seemed like a good idea."--Jon Savage, London 1983
   So I'm listening to a Winamp channel called Real Industrial Radio and I'm enjoying Crüxshadows immensely. They are a goth industrial trance groupoid. Which I have found I like more and more. I guess I should be worried. Will my DNA change because of this? I hope so! Perhaps this music will cause me to mature in my tastes over the hard core metal I usually listen to. Ha! Just kidding.

    For those of you who loved, or love, Star Trek and the dreck that that show was, and that which it spawned, here is a link that typifies in my mind, at least, the drama of this dearly departed dead space opera : He's Dead Jim.

   Over at RopesofSilicone there is a discussion of Sequel, Sequel, Sequel, Sequel, Sequel! Gimme Sequels! The article asks the question : "Has originality left Hollywood to the point that there just aren't any good ideas left, or is the sick need to fill each summer weekend with a rehash of prior years simply dominating? " To which we can only reply, "Er, yes I guess!"

   Meanwhile, Goth: Reality of the Departed World, an exhibit, is on view at the Yokohama Museum of Art.

   Here's the sketch blog of Nick Abadzis.

   I've neglected this web site for too long. So I'm going to go back to what I like doing and that's updating it on a regular basis. With that in mind here's what I'm listening to lately...
   Listening To: Testing Tomorrow 4 man alternative metal out of Los Angeles/San Diego, California. ; Trapt are a four-piece post-grunge alternative metal band originating from Los Gatos, California and currently based in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada. ; Machina is the successor project to Future Leaders of the World, founded by vocalist Phil Taylor, which features former members of Evanescence. The music is hard-driving metal with an ethereal, electronica edge. ; Matthias Bamert Conductor, Vaclav Pichl : Symphony in B-Flat, London Mozart Players. ; Aaron Copeland : Piano Quartet played by Jules Eskin, Malcolm Lowe, Burton Fine, Gilbert Kalish. ; Soundtrack - John Williams E.T. The Extra - Terrestrial " the musical touchstone is early-20th-century Russian romanticism, a link that becomes even clearer with the restoration of three fragile, largely atmospheric cues ("Main Titles," "Meeting E.T.," and "E.T.'s New Home"). While Williams has often suffered odd accusations of emotional manipulation--which is, after all, precisely the job of a film composer--his E.T. music is still some of his most compelling, recalling Herrmann's delicate, pastoral touch on The Magnificent Ambersons in its first half, then steadily ratcheting up the tension as the score's insistent brass motif intrudes ever more ominously." -- Amazon notes By Jerry McCulley ; 3 Inches Of Blood is a Canadian hard core metal goth thrash band formed in Vancouver, British Columbia. Think Scorpions mated with Motorhead. ; Bombay Dub Orchestra ambient classical electronica. Bombay on YouTube ; Armen Chakmakian experimental indie Armenian and Arabic nu-jazz. ; PUSH! post punk electronica from Athens, Georgia. ; Yat-Kha Throat singing inner Asian neo punk from Tuva. On YouTube . ; Nonpoint is a four-piece nu-metal group originating from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. ; Rachid Taha is a French-Algerian musician. His music is influenced by many different styles such as raï, techno, rock and punk. ;  Nathan Milstein Violin,  J.S. Bach : Partita No. 1 in B Minor, Magnificent achievement of recorded musicianship and interpretation, brilliant! ; Billie Holiday Nicknamed Lady Day by her sometime collaborator Lester Young, Holiday was a seminal influence on jazz, and pop singers' critic John Bush wrote that she "changed the art of American pop vocals forever." Her vocal style — strongly inspired by instrumentalists — pioneered a new way of manipulating wording and tempo, and also popularized a more personal and intimate approach to singing. Must have RealAudio installed, Sorry! ; The Clay People are an Industrial Rock band based in Albany, New York. ; Ditchwater Heavy metal from Chicago, Illinois.
   So there's that. Also I need to update all my art links to other sites, do reviews of artists I like.
   Speaking of playing with things,  Processing is an open source project initiated by C.E.B Reas and Benjamin Fry, formerly of the Aesthetics and Computation Group at the MIT Media Lab. It is "a programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) built for the electronic arts and visual design communities."
    I've become interested in it because of its use by artists and musicians. It is a language that builds on the graphical side of the Java programming language, simplifying features and creating a few new ones.
    Processing doesn't have a complete IDE so the beginner has to be secure in the knowledge that they will make plenty of errors and have to identify them on their own. A number of books on Processing are available. They are :  Processing: A Programming Handbook
for Visual Designers and Artists by Casey Reas and Ben Fry,  Processing: Creative Coding and Computational Art (Foundation) by Ira Greenberg, and Visualizing Data by Ben Fry.
    Aesthetic computing attempts to explore the way art and aesthetics can play a new role in computer science. One of its goals is to modify computer science by the application of a wide range of definitions and categories normally associated with making art. 
    " As our culture gives way to increasingly affordable methods for creating physical and virtual objects, with rapid prototyping machines and 3D hardware, we are forced to reconsider how we create representations for mathematics, science and engineering. Older languages began with clay tokens, and progressed toward flatter typographically-oriented forms for reasons of economy. It was cheaper to mix inks on papyrus or press a stylus to clay than to use sculptured tokens. The gradual shift toward flatter and more stylized, standard representations has tended to place less importance on the artistic product in favor of efficiency. As a collective culture, we have defined progress as technical efficiency, and this has, indeed, led to great discoveries and more productive lives. Ironically, the very technology that has gradually eroded the role of art in technics is the basis for a rebirth in formal representation. With increased efficiency for creating both virtual and physical customized products, we have an opportunity to re-phrase, re-present, and re-mediate formal representations found in arithmetic, algebra, and software. " -- Paul Fishwick, University of Florida from Aesthetic Computing an Introduction

Listening To: Rachid Taha is a French-Algerian musician. His music is experimental Indian Afro-beat influenced by many different styles such as raï, techno, rock and punk. Based in Paris, France where he began his solo career after his beginnings as the leader of the French rock band "Carte de Séjour", he usually sings in Arabic.; Yat-Kha is a band from Kyzyl, Russian Republic of  Mongolia Tuva, led by vocalist/guitarist Albert Kuvezin. Their music is a mixture of Tuvinian traditional music and rock, featuring Kuvezin's distinctive kargyraa throat singing style, the kanzat kargyraa. ; Natacha Atlas  a Belgian singer known for her fusion of Arabic and North African music with Western electronic music. She once termed her music "cha'abi moderne" (an updated form of Egyptian pop music). Her music has been influenced by many styles including Arabesque music, drum 'n' bass and reggae. ; Pop Will Eat Itself alternative electronica punk English band formed in Stourbridge, with band members from Birmingham, Coventry and the Black Country. ; Adema is five-member alternative heavy metal band from Bakersfield, California. ; Missy Higgins  is an award-winning Australian singer-songwriter, best known for her hit singles "Scar" and "The Special Two" off her debut album The Sound of White. Her second album, On a Clear Night was released in April 2007

Intellectual Crap : Well crap is a good term for it. Let's see where to begin? Ah, at the beginning! Odd that, huh? The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture, by Andrew Keen is a book that decries and " laments Internet techno-utopianism, free content, and the rise of citizen journalists, filmmakers, musicians, and critics as cultural arbiters."
    As opposed to "legitimate" decision makers, critics, and aestheticians of the knowledgeable press the Internet is leading to a downfall of all that is good and holy in the media and literature. I have one phrase for him, "National Midnight Inquirer" 'Nuff said.
     From Rolling Stone : The Death of High Fidelity The of mp3, computer sound systems and its impact on recorded sound fidelity in general. How recorded sound has been ruined by the Internet and computers.
    Next stop : How iPod and YouTube will destroy all media making.
    Next : How digital cameras have destroyed all photography.
    Next : How radio destroyed all music. Oh Wait! How pod casts distroyed radio...er  or TV or I'm getting confused now.
    Next : How TV ruined all film. I think I've heard of this one before. I think it's from the 1950's? How rock and roll ruined music?
    Next : Gutenberg and how the printing press ruined the control of thought by the church.
    Remember desk top publishing? Remember when anyone could print anything? They did with wild thoughtless abandon, then people realized that the technology didn't have a button on it marked art, and then they lost interest and hired people who understood this stuff to do it for them.
    Oh wait! Is there a pattern here? It feels familiar. I wonder why that is? You're an intelligent person. You see the pattern. You figure it out. I'm to busy destroying the Western Canon of aesthetics to explain it to you.

Harshdeep Borah character and environment modeling.

Hellboy 2. The Golden Army Directed by Guillermo del Toro. With Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones.

Chris Rahn Illustration.

Generative artworks by Michaella Scarides.

Macon 2007 demo reel.

From VFX World on Weta Digital and The Water Horse

Listening to : Walter Smith III Tenor Saxophonist of jazz fusion ; Trilok Gurtu (born in Bombay on 30 October 1951) is an Indian percussionist and composer who has also "crossed over" into jazz-rock fusion ; Radio Tarifa is a Spanish flamenco band of the Arab-Andalusian variety. They derived their name from the Cape Tarifa region of southern Spain ; Jef Stott navigating the universe of the global remix for over 10 years ; Quinn improvisational jazz funk ; Nothingface a four-piece alternative thrash heavy metal group from Washington, D.C. noted for graphic lyrics and  political themes ; Manzana metal from Finland ; James Sinclair Dir. Charles Ives Symphony No.1 National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. A realization of Ives' early symphonic work prior to his more radical compositions, this piece is a wonderful exciting romp through his early orchestral music ; Blue Cheer primordial late 60's psychedelic heavy metal, when it wasn't really cool, following at the fringes of Hendrix played with the " unselfconcious glee of cavemen discovering fire." --Ben Sisario NYT ; Breaking Benjamin an alternative metal band from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

From Collider : Two video interviews with Brad Bird and John Lasseter about Ratatouille and Pixar's next projects.

From VFX : Refining VFX on Returning TV Series,  looks into vfx upgrades to new seasons of shows like Heroes, Smallville and CSI.

From CG Arena : Secrets of Swimsuit Babe
Putting aside the obvious male engendered adolescent hormonally empowered sexism, and the slightly odd Chinglish,  this is an excellent intro for those interested in modeling in 3D and how it is done. Remember this is only part of the picture when you watch the next big CGI extravaganza.

VES effects career honor for Steven Spielberg. Steve will receive the Visual Effects Society Lifetime Achievement Award at the 6th Annual VES Awards on Feb. 10, 2008 at the Kodak Theatre Grand Ballroom in Hollywood.

From The New Yorker : Special Effects: 2012
Dennis Muren, the senior visual-effects supervisor for Industrial Light & Magic, talks with David Denby about his craft, his sources of inspiration, and how to translate a director’s vision into special effects.

From The Washington  Post : Huge Black Holes May Hold Keys to Galaxy Formation
For years, astronomers speculated that a giant, mysterious force lay at the center of the Milky Way, but it wasn't until four years ago that UCLA astronomer Andrea Ghez definitively showed what it was."
Related : UCLA Galactic Center Group

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