The Baker Street Irregulars Project
Dear friends,
For a very limited time only, I'm going to implement a bit of an experiment in an effort to get Watching Europa into the hands of those who we know should really have it. My proposal is this: you can get yourself a completely FREE COPY of the Watching Europa Bluray on the condition that you forward on - with a personal recommendation - an additional copy to a person of influence who you know, or with whom you are acquainted. In other words, I'll send you two Blurays, one of which you may keep.
The object here is to disseminate the project as widely as possible, with an aim to finding someone who might be interested in exhibiting Watching Europa in either the Maquette or 13 Screen version (preferably the latter, as this is the only way I'll ever get it seen in its originally intended form). This person could be in the arts, the sciences or just a philanthropist who likes cool and inspiring things and wants others to see them.
This offer is open to everyone, including those who participated in the crowdfunder, but I'm not going to run it for a long time, so get in quick. I will point out (in case it's not obvious) that this works entirely on trust, so please, only apply if you sincerely intend to act on your promise.
I would appreciate you letting me know where you send your copy, although that is not necessary.
(Suggested recipients: art gallery curators, science museum curators, planetarium exhibition managers, millionaires, experimental film-festival organizers, exobiologists, astronomers, science fiction festival organizers and so forth)
I know you all know someone who will like it. Send them a copy and make their life more awesome!
(Email me with your mailing address if you wish to participate)
My kindest regards,
Peter.
At Long Last Live!
I am pleased to be able to announce that you can now purchase the gorgeous Watching Europa BluRay. It's been a slow and steady process towards completion, but the final result looks and sounds spectacular.
Swing on over to Scribbletronics, where you can buy it (and lots of other lovely things) right now! And be sure to let me know what you think.
Help Make the Bluray!
The Watching Europa Pozible project has gone live! Now you can help me get it out into the world. Chip in for one of the great Rewards (some are unique to this crowdfunder) or simply spread the word as far and wide as you can!
UPDATE: Well, the response to the campaign has been magnificent. The target has already been met, and we're only halfway through! There are still plenty of Rewards to be had, though, so make sure you get in now for some of the fabulous Europa swag - most of which is only available to crowdfunder supporters.
And as a teaser, here's a little sneak of the packaging artwork for the main event, courtesy of designer Peta Lee. Who wouldn't want one of these beauties - amiright?
Making Things Pozible
I know it's been very quiet here on the Watching Europa site for a bit - but things are just about to get very busy indeed. I'm about to fire off a Pozible project to help me get the final Blurays manufacured and out to all who want them. I had figured on burning them myself, but it's such a time-consuming and mind-numbing process that I think the most sensible course of action is to get a proper duplication run made.
This, of course, is where I'm really going to need your help. The final cost for manufacturing is steeper than I'd like, so when I fire up the Pozible project, I'll need all the support I can get. Pitching in to the project will be greatly appreciated (and there are lots of goodies to be had as Rewards), but I'll also need to get this to the widest possible audience, so, when the time comes, Tweet it, Facebook it and shout it from the rooftops. Anything you can do to get it in front of one more person is going to give me a better chance of reaching my target and having a lovely product to provide for the world to see (and hear!).
There are some interesting things coming down the pipeline for Watching Europa, so get in and be a part of it now!
Watching Europa - The eBook.
In recent weeks I've been spending far too much time on the book version of Watching Europa, only to find that now, just as I have it completed and all ready for publishing, Blurb has changed its pricing policies in such a way as to make an actual print version just prohibitively expensive.
For the moment that's a sum gain for you, though, as I've decided to make the ePub version available for free to anyone who wants a copy for their iPad or other e-reader.
Even on a smaller electronic screen it looks lovely, and if you're fortunate enough to have an iPad with a retina screen, I imagine it will look lovelier still.
This is the full 64 page version of the book, with complete credits, notes and exclusive images that don't feature in the animations. It's an invitation-only deal, so you'll have to email me and ask for the link to the file.
I really hope you enjoy this book - I think it's a beautiful thing in and of itself, and it will of course make a great companion to the Blu-ray Maquette version of Watching Europa, which is coming very very soon.
If I get enough interest I may push ahead with the print version of the book, but for now, it's still digital bits.
Nano Nano
Just for the fun of it, I made a selection of 73 Europa images specially designed to run in a slideshow on the iPod Nano. If you have a Nano, email me, and I'll give you a link for the full set. Install them on your Nano, run them as a slideshow and be the first on your block to have a Watching Europa mini-display that you can take with you wherever you go. Wear it as a wonderful Watching Europa illuminated brooch!
Book!
I received a proof of the book yesterday. It looks great, but I think I need to re-process pretty much every image to get a better result. Annoying, but it will be an expensive item, and I want you all to have the very best.
Work vs Labour
'Work is what we do by the hour. It begins and, if possible, we do it for money. Welding car bodies on an assembly line is work; washing dishes, computing taxes, walking the rounds in a psychiatric ward, picking asparagus — these are work. Labor, on the other hand, sets its own pace. We may get paid for it, but it’s harder to quantify… Writing a poem, raising a child, developing a new calculus, resolving a neurosis, invention in all forms — these are labors.'
~Lewis Hyde 'The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World.'
Nearing Completion!
The Watching Europa project is almost complete.
These 13 Blu-ray disks represent the entire exhibition version of the presentation. Each individual disk contains a looping one hour sequence of four different high definition clips (and one with five) that will play together to form the final work.
The mastering elements alone - that is, the full final resolution edit outputs and their associated animation, audio and compressed files - have consumed over 4 terabytes of data. The building of the project probably chewed up at least that much again. When I started this project in 2008, that was an almost unimaginable amount of drive space, believe it or not. I'm guessing that in another four years time, it will, most likely, seem like chicken feed.
All that remains now is to master the Maquette Version with its 5.1 soundtrack, which I anticipate taking a month or so. And then it's on to finding ways to exhibit the darn thing. I suspect this might entail as much work as the creation of the piece itself. For the multiscreen version, that's not a trivial undertaking - first of all I need to aquire 13 Blu-ray players and 13 high definition screens, and then, a place to put it.
As always, stay tuned for developments.
Oh, and there will be launch of some kind. Working on that too.
Lists
I'm now onto the editing process for the project. From some 130 or so full size renders I've honed my selection down to the 53 clips which will make up the final show. These segments will be allocated to 13 seperate BluRay disks, each running 4 unique sequences (except for one, which will run 5 - as those of you who recognized my penchant for primes will have no doubt discerned).
This process is giving me a speed lesson in compression codecs - and it's about as mind-frazzling as it gets. I can tell you, though, that the end result is already panning out to exceed my expectations, and any of you who are anticipating the BluRay compilation are going to be very pleasantly surprised I think. Much of what I planned to do is not only possible but actually reasonably straightforward, including the full 5.1 soundtrack (which will feature on the compilation release only - the exhibition is designed to work in a different way, with each clip producing its own spatial source from the monitor on which it's played).
Because I need to keep track of so many different files (full rez clips, full rez with stereo sound, full rez with 5.1 sound, proxy editing files etc), I have a studio full of lists like the one above.