Category Archives: Korea

Game of Life

Posted on by
Reply

Music credit: “Game of Life” by Goldtea

About the video: I first met Goldtea hanging out in Itaewon, an area of Seoul where there are about as many ex-pats as there are Koreans. Somehow, the idea came about to do a video together. He brought over an album he’d made before coming to Korea. So, we went with this song for starters. I filmed him dancing against the walls of my one-room apartment, and obviously it would have been easier to edit this footage if I’d come up with a blue or green screen – don’t know what i was thinking filming against beige walls. The editing took quite a bit of time, and it went through a few edits. In the first edit, I mixed up Goldtea’s dancing footage with some scenes of Seoul streets, etc, and it wasn’t quite what he was looking for. He wanted me to add in some scenes of stuff like robberies and crime, and it evolved from there. But, as of 2006, with the resources I had it, it wasn’t easy to just get a bunch of images together to sample from – I rented a couple of movies, a Denzel Washington movie where he holds people in a hospital hostage and the Brazilian movie City of God. I looked up robberies on some online video sites, and that’s where I got the surveillance camera idea for this video.
But eventually, the editing just got to be too much, and so in the video above, I faded the song out early, and just did the first two minutes, just deciding I couldn’t devote any more to it for now. So, I was sorry to Goldtea that I didn’t put together things for the whole song, but hope this holds some value for whatever it is. The last time I checked the whole song was available for listening at Goldtea’s myspace page.
Anyway, I quite like it, but I can see it pushes a lot of my technical abilities to the absolute limit. It’s definitely one of the more creative videos I’ve done.

Share

Han River VJ Demo

Posted on by

This video was done simply as an experiment in syncing together a music keyboard powered by the Logic music software with my Arkaos VJ software. I could load the still images into Arkaos, and then use a midi keyboard to simultaneously trigger the images as well as music notes. Someone complimented me on the music, which is funny, because I essentially just banged away at the piano keys at random since I don’t know how to play.
I have taken literally thousands of pictures along the Han River of Seoul in the past year – granted many of the photos are similar one to the other. I don’t know yet what I’ll do with all these photos, but for sure something more than this eventually.

Share

Rolling With Sam

Posted on by

Sam goes to the science museum and the day gets remixed.
How this came about is my friend Ryan Gerard took the student he was tutoring to a science museum. When he came by my place, I was showing him my VJ software (Arkaos), and we loaded in his photos into the software, then linked the VJ software with a keyboard in the Logic music software, so the sound and the images are pretty much synchronized. See my recent video Han River VJ Demo for another example of this linking between the VJ software and the music keyboard.

Share

Flowfest 2006 – “Irie Days”

Posted on by

Set to the music of Seafran’s (a French DJ/musician living in Seoul: myspace.com/seafran/) “Irie Days,” this is a video recap of Flowfest 2006, a music festival which took place in Gangchon, South Korea in June 2006. The video combines photos and various filming techniques like filming projected images on moving things and underwater filming. Thanks also to the photo contributions from Paul Kotyk: paulkotyk.com

Share

Okjeong Middle School Birdseye

Posted on by

I live on the sixth floor on a building on a hill. From around noon, the shadow of this building casts itself on the playing field of Okjeong Middle School. From my window, I sometimes look over it and observe. It’s easy to see the social dynamics of junior high in South Korea. Girls chatting in small groups. The minority of boys who prefer basketball to soccer. The awkward boys not good at sports, who play-fight with each other at the edge of the field. Notice all the boys wearing the black school uniform. I pity them, wearing those cumbersome clothes all year. The uniforms are expensive. Students can only afford one or two of them, so they start to smell from lack of washing. I can attest to this because I taught at a junior high in Japan for two years, and the classrooms could really start to reek. Some of the rebellious kids in Japan would modify and individualize their school uniforms, in spite of the helpless protests of the teachers — no such modification seems to take place in Korean schools, where even the hair length of both male and female students is still regulated by school rules.

Share

Raddest Bike in Korea Award

Posted on by

I biked past this guy today, then had to slow down, get my camera out, and ask if I could take a picture. Check out this bike! It’s pumping out the “bbong-jjak” (sometimes called Korea’s version of country & western music). He has all these add-ons, statues attached to his bike, mirrors, and what-not. Very cool. I wonder what I can do to make my own bike cooler.

Share

Hazakura in Slow Motion

Posted on by

Yesterday, despite warnings to go outside because of the rain mixed with yellow wind of China, I walked up the small mountain behind my apartment. It disappointed me to realize that all up the mountain there were cherry blossom trees, where the cherries had already blossomed, and were already falling off and scattered across the ground. It is a beautiful to see the cherry blossom petals scattered, like a spring snow — but already they were really scattered, really days past their peak.

I somehow missed it. Japanese obsess over cherry blossoms to the point that you get sick of hearing about them, when you live there. I’ve watched NHK (Japan’s national network) a lot lately, and seen all the reports of the blossoms. I guess they bloom in Seoul and Tokyo at about the same time.

The Japanese word for cherry blossom is “sakura.” There is even a word for a cherry blossom in its later stage, when it has leafed and the blossoms are beginning to fall — that is “hazakura.” There is a certain type of person who prefers the “hazakura” to the “sakura” — it’s like the first glimpse of beauty compared to the last glimpse of beauty — which is better?

(This footage was taken about one year ago in Kamakura, Japan — a very cool little town an hour down the coast from Tokyo. The town is famous as the hometown of director Ozu and for its gigantic outdoor Buddha statue.)

Share

Yellow Wind in Seoul

Posted on by

Set up my camera for a time-lapse from my apartment window, and it turned out to be a pretty epic day for the yellow wind storms from China. Glad I didn’t have to go anywhere that day – I wouldn’t want to be one of those people down there on a day like this.
“Yellow Wind” refers to the wind which comes from China bearing sand of the Gobi desert mixed with toxic particles. Every year around March, this wind blankets much of South Korea and parts of Japan, along with China’s own cities, like Beijing.
Scientists have detected traces of the wind on the west coast of North America.

Share

Birds in a Harbor

Posted on by

A photo remix by DoAn Forest. My friend Youki Cropas had taken a series of photos of birds in a harbor in Istanbul. The photos hypnotized when played in a slideshow. I asked for permission to remix them and this is the result. My concept was of a lonely merchant sailor watching TV in a Korean harbor, different thoughts going through his head. The music is a distorted remix of Billie Holiday’s “I’m A Fool To Want You.”

Share