The Adventures of the Original Hamster

Back Home

2007-08-21T03:52:00.000+03:00

Last time I wrote anything here we were leaving Providence. After that we went to Denver and Washington DC. I'm not really in the mood for writing anything about that, but let's just say that all kinds of things happened and it was all coolio. I got back in Finland on Thursday after almost 30 hours of traveling. I didn't really sleep on the plane except from London to Helsinki and when I got to my bed here in Pilkanmaa I slept for 20 hours non-stop.

I just got all my film developed from this summer and started organizing my pictures. Tons of digital pictures, 10 rolls of View Master photos (that's roughly 700 pictures) and a couple of super8 reels. I'll Flickr all the interesting pictures next week when I get on a faster internet connection. Then I need to find a lot more empty View-Master reels to fit all my pictures. I'll scan and upload all the good stuff when I get them done.

Thanks to my adventures in the Land of the Free I got some buyers for my shirts in the USA also, so I opened a USA store. I don't have much for offer yet, but look how happy my first US customers are!

You can be happy too! Just buy buy buy! I'll add more stuff to the store later this week. All you Europeans get some goodness too. I'm getting some new designs and I'll revamp the whole product selection with new shirts and new colors.

Today I got back from Helsinki where I was checking out the Flow Festival. Good music, smiling people, some friends I hadn't seen for a long time and Bebel Gilberto. Niceness. I took some VM-pictures there also. Will upload them when I get my hands on a scanner.

Next semester is looking pretty busy even though I had decided to take it easy. I already got myself involved in a bunch of projects and I got shitloads of ideas for my personal projects. I don't want to get into details just yet, because I know myself and only half of them will ever even get started.

Now I'm chilling here with my mum and sisters for a while before I go to Rovaniemi. Kind of makes me sad when I think back and realize that the summer is almost over. A lot of good memories from this summer though. Thanks to all the people involved in those memories. You know who you are.

Trippin' #3

2007-07-31T05:35:00.000+03:00

The official Fusion Arts update #3.

My trusty iBook died on me two weeks ago so I haven't been updating anything for a while, but now I finally got it back after sending it two times to get repaired. It came back a little crippled, with only 512mb of RAM, but at least I can use it now.

A lot has happened since I last wrote anything here. The first weekend we went to Boston where we visited ICA, MIT and some galleries. Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to explore the city on my own, the schedule was so tight. This pic is from the ICA.

The next weekend we spent two days in New York City and visited New York Times, Eyebeam, Guggenheim, Ground Zero, Glowlab and a bunch of galleries. For me, the most interesting thing was seeing Eyebeam and getting a glimpse of what's going on behind the scenes at Graffiti Research Lab.

Also, I finally caved into this digital djing business. I went to Turntable Lab and got some records and the M-Audio Conectiv digital DJ thingy. I've had my Ms. Pinky vinyls for a few years, but I haven't had a good audio interface for my laptop so I haven't really used them that much. Now I might actually take this thing to gigs also. I'm not giving up on vinyl though! No way! This is just a way to add some new possibilities to my sets. I'm also pretty excited to test using this baby as an effects unit, because I can route the signal from my turntables to Ableton Live and get all crazy with looping and effects.

Back in Providence we have done a couple of projects. The most interesting is probably the Call and Response video project. Each of us had to make 20 videos in two days, each 30 seconds long. The first one had to be a call and the others responses to the videos the other people had made. We were supposed to not talk to each other and only communicate through the videos. Here you can watch all the videos. My call is #21 and I finished 13 responses that are scattered all over. Here's the video that I'm most satisfied with.

Flash video:

Quicktime video

And oh, I almost forgot, last Saturday I went to this little festival called Rock The Bells. I'll let the line-up speak for itself.

No pictures. Sorry. I only had a disposable camera with me and I haven't had the chance to scan the pictures in. You just have to take my word for it that it was f**king insane. Just look at that line-up, an overdose of hip hop legends. Wu was there with all the original guys, except ODB of course, and if that wasn't enough, the reunited RATM turned the entire place into a big and sweaty mosh pit. Things got a little interesting when 60 000 people tried to fit into three buses, but I got back to my hostel in Harlem eventually.

I guess that's about it. Today is the last night in Providence. Tomorrow we are flying to Denver so the next update is going to be from there. Now I'll just do my laundry and hit the streets. I'm going to miss this place. I've been kind of lazy with the gallery, but you can check out a lot more pictures from my Flickr site here.

Trippin' #2

2007-07-13T03:28:00.000+03:00

OK, more pictures. I've set up a gallery page where I'll add stuff as I go. The first ones are part of a photography assignment we did today. I don't want to post the assignment, because the way I want to display it doesn't really work on a web page. Actually, I could do it with Flash or something, but I'm just too lazy for that right now.

Also, in other news: I've got some new shirts in the store. The infamous b-boy you might have seen somewhere. And what would the launch of a new shirt be like without a corny ad, so here you go.

Trippin' #1

2007-07-11T04:09:00.000+03:00

In case there's someone wondering what the hell am I doing in the States, I'm participating in an exchange program called Fusion Arts in Digital Media. We are staying in the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. Basically, we have 20 students from all over the world working together to create some amazing artwork that will end all wars, cure cancer and make the world a better place in every way. This website http://www.risd.edu/fusionarts/ might shed some light on what it's like.

I arrived here yesterday, the flight went well and my first impressions of Providence, RISD and the other students are really positive. Providence is a really nice and beautiful city with all these 19th century buildings blending in nicely with newer and taller buildings. Of course, I've been mainly hanging around the College Hill and downtown areas, but so far I really like it. I haven't found any record stores yet, but I can smell that there's some vinyl in this city. RISD itself seems like a really great school, I wouldn't mind studying here. And how could I possibly say any bad things about this place when they give us free housing, three meals a day and a video iPod as a welcoming gift?

I don't really have any pictures yet, because I've been mainly shooting with my trusty View-Master Camera, but here's the view from my bedroom.

I'm too tired to write anything else right now, but I'll be posting pictures and other stuff later on.

Leaving....

2007-07-08T22:31:00.000+03:00

America We Stand As One

For the next five weeks or so this blog is mostly going to be a travel diary for my trip in the USA. Places where I'm going: Providence, New York, Boston, Denver and Washington D.C. If you have in mind any essential places to go to in these cities, please let me know (comment, email). I don't have that much free time, but hopefully I'll be able to see something else besides the campus of RISD.

One thing that I'm definitely going see is the Rock the Bells concert in NYC (RATM, Wu, Mos Def, Public Enemy, Living Legends etc.). The show on the 28th was sold out, but I was able to get tickets from eBay.

I'm leaving you with a picture of my main homie from Kouvola. Damn that guy got some fresh moves.

Now I'll get some sleep. I've got a plane to catch in the morning.

The Wall Project Pt. 2

2007-07-07T18:52:00.000+03:00

A little update. Still not complete. We'll have to finish this when I get back from the USA in August.

Flash video:

Click here for better quality Quicktime video (78,4 Mb)

The Wall Project Pt. 1

2007-07-04T21:13:00.000+03:00

The wall opposite the art museum in Rovaniemi needs a new paint job and me and my friend Mikko are doing a small part of it. This is the first finished piece. Mikko deserves most of the credit for this. The stencil is his design, I just helped to make and paint it.

In this video you'll see the part that we are painting. The Manson/Mickey is not ours though, Samuli did that. The parts with the records and below the street sign are still unfinished. I'll post an update when it's finished.

Flash video:

Click here for better quality Quicktime-video (35,1 MB)

Interactive Propaganda Generator

2007-06-28T19:41:00.001+03:00

Here's some documentation of a project we finished this spring at the university. It's a project for a course in interface design.

Our group (Aku Meriläinen, Danilo Mascarenhas, Marjukka Parkkinen and Matti Niinimäki) decided to create a multi-user interface that would allow a group of people to work together or compete in creating some sort of a moving collage. At some point in the planning process the idea of communism and propaganda came to surface, so we decided to go with that idea. We experimented with different input devices and visual styles, but eventually this is what came out of it.

I'd like you to meet The Interactive Propaganda Generator. It's designed to have two different sides or "teams" - the communists and the capitalists - that you can control with different input devices to produce a collage of the two sides shooting different items and symbols at each other. The scene consists of three layers: a changeable background, two characters (one for each side) and the propaganda-tubes. Here are the controls explained:

Control 1 - ReacTIVision fiducial tracking

The characters are selected and moved around on the screen by using paper dolls on a glass table
You can change the bodies and heads of the characters.
Included are all your favourite capitalist and communist icons from Ronald McDonald to Che Guevara
The paper dolls have fiducial symbols attached to their backside and the camera under the table tracks the ID and the position of the symbol
Tracking is done with ReacTIVision software

Control 2 - PlayStation2 Dance Pad

You can move the capitalist propaganda-tube around the screen with the dance pad
One button turns the tube on/off
Two buttons for changing the ammunition of the tube (missiles, bibles, money)
Two buttons for changing the background image
One button for activating the speech option for the capitalist character

Control 3 - PlayStation2 Dual Shock Controller

Some controls as the dance pad, but for the communist side

Control 4 - Audio Input

A microphone picks up the voices of the users and when the speech option is activated (from the dance pad or dual shock controller) the characters on screen will open and close their mouths based on the sound input

Here's the hardware setup. Click the image for details.
All programming done with Quartz Composer. I could release the .qtz file but it's not really useful to anyone because it depends on a very specific setup. Email me if you're interested in details.

And finally some video. Unfortunately, we don't have any better footage of the system in action but hopefully you'll get some idea.

Summer Mixtape

2007-06-06T02:36:00.000+03:00

I'm leaving Rovaniemi for the summer and I have to leave my turntables here so I wanted to do a little mixtape with some funky and sweaty tunes that would get me on that summer vibe.

Unfortunately, I kind of messed this up, as usual. I don't have a proper sound card for my iBook and I had to use an iMic I borrowed, so there's some really horrible sounding noise in some parts of the recording. Latency issues or something. On top of that, the mixes are not that good. I don't seem to be able to stay on beat anymore. Really annoying.

Anyway, download here. Beware of bad mixing and f*d up sound. There's at least three times when the audio starts clipping. First time occurs around 7:30. Sorry about that.

Track list:

Wicked Lester - Honey (Dr. Rubberfunk Remix)
Yam Who - Here We Go (Stray Remix)
Zeb - Afro Disco
Flamongo Sanomat - Dillinger
Little Big Bee - Calypso Blues
Sabo&Zeb feat. Nappy G - Beat Pharmacy Remix
Zeb - Al Karina
Beatfanatic - ?
Minnie Ripperton - Loving You (K2 edit)
Turelli - Mekano

To get the most out of this mixtape, listen to it close to someone important to you by a lake in the Finnish nightless night. I actually recorded this mixtape during the only time that the sun is below the horizon here in Rovaniemi. That's around 1AM - 2 AM.

Some Beats from the Archives

2007-05-27T23:48:00.000+03:00

I was going through some zip-disks for my MPC 2000XL and found some ok sounding beats so I decided to go and play in the sound studio of our university and mixed a couple of them. They sounded like they need some vocals so I headed to The Beastie Boys website for some acapellas and here's two quick remixes. Nothing fancy.

Body Movin'
3 the Hard Way

I haven't done any beats for a really long time, maybe I should try to do something. I've been planning an instrumental hip hop/turntablism record for who knows how long, but never really got myself to actually doing it. Hiljaa hyvä tulee.

Phidgets Patches for Quartz Composer from fdiv.net

2007-05-25T03:23:00.000+03:00

I wrote a tutorial a while ago for building a cocoa app that will enable you to control Quartz Composer with Phidgets sensors. Now there's a LOT easier way to achieve this. Just use the new QC patches from fdiv.net.

View-Master Photography

2007-05-20T19:15:00.000+03:00

I finally got my View-Master camera working properly. It had destroyed a couple of films earlier because the mechanism would get stuck. Too bad, because there would have been some pretty nice pictures from Japan and other pics from last summer, but I was able to fix it and it's working like a charm. So now I was ready to start making my own reels.

This is what the camera looks like:
I was also able to get the filmcutter needed for making my own view-master reels from eBay for a decent price last winter.
Now I have my first six-pack of reels ready and they are officially the coolest pictures I have ever taken. They aren't exactly masterpieces photographically but View-Master is the greatest way to view pictures. There's something magical about it.
Here's some scanned pictures of the reels. You need to freeview them to see the 3d-effect. It's not same feeling as looking through a View-Master viewer but at least you'll see them in 3d. Click the picture to see the whole set. I'll add more when I have time.

1st Draft of a New Animation

2007-05-04T20:12:00.000+03:00

Here's the start for a project that has been in my head for a long time. I'd like to make an animation series with many episodes. Here's the beginning of the first episode. I'll try to finish it during this month.

The first and last frames are like that because I did this as an assignment for one animation course. All the students decided before actually animating anything what their last frame is going to be like and that frame was given to some other student who used it as his/her first frame. That way all the individual animations would make one big animation.

I didn't have the time to actually work on the sound so I used one track from DJ Bhakta. Really gifted guy. His tracks need a lot more exposure.

Quicktime:

Flash video:

Black Gold of the Arctic

2007-04-27T21:09:00.000+03:00

Arktikum, a museum and a science center in Rovaniemi ordered a small animation from me for their new permanent exhibition in the Arctic Center. My instructions were that I need to do an animation of a map that shows the transportation of oil from the Yamal peninsula to Europe and the animation should also contain four slideshows that show the different ways how the transportation affects the people and the enviroment. Especially how the oil industry affects the lives of the Nenets people living in the Yamal-Nenets autonomous district.

Here it is. Done on a pretty tight schedule because Arktikum sent me half of the pictures I needed for this only few days before the opening of the exhibition. So, I'm not 100% happy with the result (I never am with the stuff I do) but I'll improve this a little bit once I have time. Namely the movement of the ship and I also need to add some ambience sound. The sound is not really that essential part of this because of the space where this is displayed but I will add the sound later on.

I'll post a picture later from the Arctic Center so that you'll see how it's being used in the exhibition.

100% Organic T-shirts From the Store

2007-04-21T21:07:00.000+03:00

Spreadshirt is finally offering 100% organic cotton t-shirts from American Apparel and Continental Clothing. As of today, I'm selling only these shirts in the store. Maybe I'll add some other American Apparel shirts a little bit later, but for now I'm going 100% organic.

This decision means that the colour selection isn't going to as wide anymore and these shirts are also a lot more expensive, but I'll keep my provision as low as I can. I'm not selling these shirts hoping that I would get rich.

Hopefully Spreadshirt will continue to expand the product line with more sustainable and sweatshopfree products. I for one will support that.

There's a special campaign running from now to the 16th May. From every shirt sold there is going to be a donation of 3 euros to the Earth Day Network

Get yours from the online store.

Radio Säteily 11.4.-24.4.2007

2007-04-09T14:41:00.000+03:00

Once again it's on. Radio Säteily brought to you by the University of Lapland. FM 104.4 in Rovaniemi and www.sateily.com everywhere else.

I'm doing two shows:

Måndag Rytmer
MON 19-21 (Finnish time)
Alfons Åberg och Vaxtastisk
Funky music and lessons in Swedish language.

Kostox
SUN 16-18 (Finnish time)
Hesher & Waxtastic + special guests
Beats, Breaks and Bullshit. Some exclusive material from Finnish artists.

Old Mix Out For Download

2007-04-07T19:19:00.000+03:00

Here's an old mixtape from 2003(?). Mainly hip-hop, some blends that turned out pretty nice and a little bit of amateurish beat juggling. The idea was to make like a guide book for all the wannabe-djs out there. You know, just to show how this mixing-business should be done. This is what turned out of it. Listen and download here.

I should make more mixes, but I'm just not happy if don't come up with a really good idea like Jamaikasetti was. I don't want to make any mediocre mixes. I promise that I'll release a new mixtape in the summer and it's going to be something fresh.

Shit I'm Diggin' #2

2007-04-07T18:13:00.001+03:00

Some more inspiring stuff. In case you're interested in what I like.

Lyapis Trubetskoy - Kapital

The YouTube version is pretty crappy so watch the quicktime from http://www.cosmosfilm.tv/

Run Wrake - Rabbit

http://www.runwrake.com/

Bloody Good Ideas®

2007-03-28T20:02:00.001+03:00

I've caught a nasty cold, so recently I have spent most of my time at home in the bed perfecting my ninja senses and thinking of new ways to rule the earth. At times like these I come up with my infamous Bloody Good Ideas® (Helvetin Hyvät Ideat®). Usually these ideas involve controlling music or video in some unorthodox ways. Most of them never get done because I'm just too lazy to ever finish what I've started or because the ideas are just insanely stupid. Newest additions to this collection of Bloody Good Ideas® are:

Bloody Good Idea® #347

The Human Turntables - People are the vinyls and the faders on a mixer. Every person represents a different song and by working together they can actually mix the songs and even scratch or beat juggle. I'm not telling any details about how I'm actually going to do this because I know that the bad guys are reading this and just waiting to steal my ideas, but I got this planned.

Bloody Good Idea® #348

God Is a DJ - I've had my MsPinky vinyls lying around for a couple of years, but I've never done anything useful with them. So I came up with an idea of controlling a miniature world with the pretty and pink MsPinkstah. I have no idea how I'm actually going to pull it off, but step #1 is to learn how to use Max/Msp.

technorati tags:randomness, dj

Fashion Show Afterparty

2007-03-21T18:51:00.000+02:00

@ Kellari, Rovaniemi

New Site

2007-03-12T17:16:00.000+02:00

The new site is alive and kicking!
originalhamsters.com/blog

Shit I'm Diggin' #1

2007-03-12T01:29:00.000+02:00

Three posts in one night. I guess I'm pretty bored or something. Anyway, here's some links for your pleasure.

PSST! 2

Face2Face by JR & Marco

Tower of Grantville by Buck

Mad Money Flowing My Way

2007-03-12T00:36:00.000+02:00

This blog has been pretty quiet for a while. That's because I haven't had anything to say. Or actually I've been just lazy. Nobody reads this anyway.

Anyway, here's a little summary of what's going on: Pretty busy at the uni, did some projections for a play (I might post some video later), working on a couple of animations and also some shit happened.

Oh, one more thing. I realised that I have to start doing things properly and get something for my portfolio so I've started my own company. http://www.originalhamsters.com/ There's nothing at the website yet. Check back in a few days. I'll probably integrate a blog to the site so this blog might die in the near future.

So what is this company all about? The same thing that I'm about: DJing, VJing, motion graphics, design and a lot of bullshit. That's right, DJing. I'm getting back to the DJ game. I've been seriously thinking about totally quitting but maybe I'll give it one more go.

Speaking of DJing, check out djanonymous.fi and educate yourself. I'm listening to this mixtape on repeat. Mad respect to Sampo for uploading old mixes for the good people of the interweb-land.

There's Power Everywhere

2007-03-11T23:58:00.000+02:00

I've been thinking of doing some more guerilla projections around the city, but the problem is how to power up my shit. I don't have a car so I can't use this method.

The answer hit me one day while I was walking around the town. In Finland it's ballfreezing cold around 10 months of the year so all the parking lots are filled with these little mysterious boxes that make it possible to start up your Lada in the winter.

Of course, most of these suckas are locked, but every now and then you can find one that's open. Or I could just use my mad ninja skills to pick the locks. So, problem solved. Once it gets a little bit warmer and all the polar bears have migrated to Sweden I'll start my projection crusade.

Free Berdovsky!

2007-02-03T10:01:00.000+02:00

The fear of terrorism is getting out of hands in the States.

This suspicious device here caused a panic in Boston.

I just couldn't believe it when I read about this on Wooster and GRL.

So who is considered responsible for this?

"An arrest has been made in the Boston Terror Advert Mind Shred of 2007. No it’s not a VP at Turner Broadcasting, the president of the ad agency or CEO Sam Travis Ewen of the marketing company. It’s the 27 year-old artist who was hired to stick the ads up. Turns out the corporation is real sorry about all this and had a cartoon say so on the TV. Probably not as sorry as the guy being hauled-off in cuffs."

From GRL

Read some more here.