All posts tagged old school

13 Posts

Early VuJak videos

Sweatin’ to the old school: here are some early VuJak videos which I recently found on Hi-8 tapes in my closet.

The first video is from the Digital Hollywood conference in Beverly Hills, 1994. Some friends at Interactive Light lent us an array of floor mounted infrared controllers, so we hooked them into VuJak and let people do what they wanted during the exhibit. Shown in this video is a dancer who got quicky hooked on it and spent a long time with it. Interactive Light, Inc. created the D Beam Controller, which is now integrated into Roland keyboards.

The next video is just us having fun in the studio one night in 1993. We had just gotten the system working well and there were people over for a party, so we turned on the camera. Fun stuff.

And here’s some raw footage straight out of the system from around the same time. Fun with randomness. Always liked this. Still kinda relevant. Bill was so much more fun than GW…

There’s another post about VuJak here

Magritte

Magritte, a film by Mark Blank, performed by Calvin Thomas & The Special Touch with Mike Oatman. 1984.

Risd Tap Room Mural, 1987

Tap Room

In the spring of 1987, a group of friends and i created a mural for the RISD Tap Room. This was entirely created with spraypaint and stencil.

I don’t remember everyone who worked on this, but I do remember that Alexandra Rohleder, Nicole Eisenman, Josh Pearson and Ben Carlson were involved.

This was a beautiful piece, and it remained up for 17 years. I believe that the school left a piece of it remaining when they refinished the tap room 2 years ago.

Good for the soul, bad for the lungs.

Rikki Rikki Rappr

Straight outta’ kinkos

Found in the moldy old noteboks from the 80′s. Here’s a sketch I did one day for a kid’s toy concept. Rikki Rikki Rapp’r.

Idea was to have a physical scratching device inside a bright colored plastic housing – kid safe 2 years old and up. Sort of like the way we used to put baseball cards on our bike wheels to make a clicking sound. There’s a dirth of “hip hop” toys out there now, but this seemed pretty silly back in 1988. Now it’s mainstream.

Instant Classics

Instant Classics

Instant Clasics, 1995

This was an early website – very web 1.0. Instant Classics started its life as a book, but we decided to publish it instead on this new “world wide web” thing. We’ve gotten lots of great compliments on IC through the years, and it was Yahoo site of the day or some such thing way back.

Some great content, though, from people including Mark Mothersbaugh and Arthur C. Clarke.

instantclassics.com

bk ev-1

General Motors EV-1

In 1996, I was hired to photograph in QuickTime VR the General Motors EV1 Electric Vehicle for gmev.com, and it remained online until a few months ago (2006), when a less than positive film about the EV1 was released. I haven’t seen the film, so I can’t comment.

I also had the good fortune to drive the vehicle. The pickup was amazing, and it was utterly silent. Awesome ride.

Below are links to the QuickTime VR movies of the EV1 which I created. I have the source files, film, and video from the shoot, so someday I may create a higher resolution version of this project.

On a geek note, the QuickTime VR files for this project were assembled into a standalone application which was authored with mTropolis. Unfortunately, the presentation will no longer run on a modern Mac or PC (gotta love progress). So most of the “coolness” for that project is gone forever. But the images and animations still exist…

See EV-1 Interior

See EV-1 Exterior

Full Metal Oxide

bk EBV 1991

EBV 1991, with AK-Hi8 Assault Camera

Gardner Post took this cool 3D picture of me at the Lollapaloozah in 1991

Tazmanian Devil VJ station

TazMok
Now here’s a curiosity …

This is an initial rendering of a Tazmanian Devil VJ Station which we concepted for Warner Brothers in 1994. This was intended to be an in-store device. I dont think this ever went anywhere, but we may have just been 10 – 15 years ahead of our time. This would still be a fun device …

  • michael oatman
  • michael oatman

Michael Oatman, The Leisure Channel, 1987

Here are two images of Michael Oatman from our first taping of The Leisure Channel in 1987. Mike is amazing. And boy, I think we were just way too ahead of our time. Everything we thought was funny then has come true ….

1991 EBN materials

EBN Images from 1991

Here are three of our original EBN images from 1991. These were created for the first Lollapalooza tour. During the tour, we sold the t-shirts and vhs tapes (what’s vhs dad?). And we “toured” in the EBV (emergency broadcast vehicle), shown here. Interestingly, I made the t-shirts with Shepard Fairey of Obey/Giant fame. We made them at his studio in Fall River.

Telepodium Launcher

Original EBN Poster

“Tomorrow’s Defense Entertainment Today”

Here’s a copy of the original EBN poster which I created way back in 1990. This highlighted the Telepodium Launcher (TPL), which was built by Gardner Post and Josh Pearson. This was created for a local show, and unfortunately I don’t remember what it was. If anyone remembers, let me know. There was an extra layer of text on top of this image, but I can no longer open the original quark file on this.

shitty painting

Shitty painting

Here’s a fairly shitty painting I did back in 1986 while at RISD. Well, it’s not that shitty. Ok, it is. But shitty in a good way. I like it. This was sent to me by my friend Mark Blank, who has kept it all these years. That’s a high school picture of his wife Robin in the painting.

bk85

bk85

Here’s a pic that my friend Mark Blank sent me recently from 1985 – back in the RISD days.

open