After leaving Adelphi, I shifted gears in art-making and quickly abandoned the endless rolls of Tri-X. Two weeks ago, thanks to a lovely give of the Lomo Fisheye 2 from the boy, I started loading film again. The love (and frenzied pace) returned immediately.

These days it’s color film and machine-processed 4×6’s instead of hand-developed black and white film on 11×14 fiber paper. I’m scanning and editing in Photoshop instead of hunching over an enlarger. It’s a matter of convenience: this way, I can my experience in emulsion and pixels.

One of my early New York City photos, taken in 2004, followed by some of my recent Fisheye2 photos from around town.

Since someone posted this already, I figured I better put it up myself. I recommend watching the HD version :)

chaotic.terrain (trailer by vade) from bene on Vimeo.

Trailer for the first-person art-game chaotic.terrain by Mary Ann Benedetto. Compressed from full res in-game footage.

blurb:
chaotic.terrain is a 3D game environment in which a year of the artist’s life is translated into a narrative is conveyed through images and found text which are scattered across three levels. The “mental landscape” manifest in a Dante-esque journey through each level’s distinct environment. It is an exploration of the relationships between ourselves and the spaces we inhabit, both physical and digital.

Today we used the Intensity card to capture full res footage of chaotic.terrain. Hurrah, finally! The first video has been cut, by Anton. He’s asleep, and this video noob can’t compress it to a reasonable web size. So for now, we have screenshots of his work. And ..err.. mine too!

Oh, what photoshop and too much gaming will lead to…

Germans postulate what countless nights of playing Mario Kart DS before going home have made me suspect:
If you’ve been obsessed with PGR or Gran Tourismo lately, German psychologists think you should be extra cautious next time you get behind a real-life wheel.
Study: Racing Games Cause Real Car Crashes, from Wired

It would have been more meaningful to observe actual drivers as part of the study - I for one resist the urge to collide with every glimpse of yellow in the rearview mirror, even though I’m sure it’s that bastard Wario trying to take first place from me.

Some more positive observations - those trigger-finger reflexes can come in handy (ugh, no pun intended):
Neither years of training nor number of surgeries performed would predict performance on the laparoscopy skills test. Past gaming and current skills, in contrast, would. Those who had never gamed took significantly longer to complete the skills test, and had an error rate of roughly 1.5 times that of regular gamers.
Unreal Surgery: Gamers score on laparoscopic surgery tests, from Ars Technica

Playing with the pixel data of one of the photos used in chaotic.terrain (more on that, still forthcoming). Click stillshot to see cropped video, or download the source (bring your own photo!).

I had started this as an in-class demo, and then had fun with it.

After a long hiatus and recent demise, this blog is back up and running on all but IE. Sorry folks, I’ll straighten it out when I get the chance.

Previews and information coming soon!