Quick Update

Gooooood Morning -

I've started to receive comment love from the peoples, thanks very much erryone...
I've also been granted a shout at the ever unstoppable Andropolis.org, so no doubt his massive fan base will be stampeding in here any second to find out what the fuss is about. Details on the fuss are forthcoming!

I've been working in event lighting again, putting up things like this and this. It's a job I fell into when I first moved to Chicago... friends from this period will remember what my schedule was like when I was doing this before, but lets run through it again for those of you just joining us:

• Scheduler guy calls and says "Can you work on (day x) at (venue y) at (time of day n_early) and come back for the takedown at (time of night n_ungodly)?" Let T = the time they say it will take.

• I say "Sure"

• I show up at y on x at n_early, and we work on setting up for the event until T+4 hours (+ or - a 2 hour luck factor).

• I come back to y at n_ungodly and take it all back down again till T + ∞.

• I get paid for my trouble.

So, hence the lack of actual content on this now more than a week old blog. It's actualy pretty cool - I'll take some pictures from jobsites when I can.

Coming up when I get the chance to breathe: the visual side of the project rundown, all my old art from the LJ posted as a flickr set and tossed in a nifty sidebox, and that beat tape just as soon as I figure out how to work an XPSF flash player. Or maybe I'll cop out and put it on imeem. Ether way. Technical people who know more than me are invited to comment with advice! Thanks!

[-ekundayo]

[Project Roundup - SOUNDS]

Ok. Time to start this thing for real.
Here's a rundown of all the projects I'm working on, which will be represented in the coming month or two here in the workflow. This post is for projects you'll be hearing. Check back soon for things you'll be seeing.


[Sound For Film]


"Subject"
What it is:
A short film my crew has been working on for over a year now. It follows a fireman who is taken from the scene of a suspicious accident by forces unknown.
What I'm doing:
Full sound design and mixing for the entire short, cut together from heavily edited and modified sounds from various sound effects libraries, as well as some I recorded and/or synthesized myself. In short: everything you hear but the music.
Why it'll be awesome:
Really impressive production values for a micro-budget student project; fantastic cinematography, tight, highly focused editing, great production design, and the talents of Mr. John Turk as The Fireman.
When? Where? I'm all but finished with my work - we're just waiting on some digital special effects and compositing to get done so I can give it a final layer of polish. You'll see it linked here, and probably in its full lenght at the TMUPictures website.

"Budd"
What it is:
A mockup commercial featuring a giant robot designed to guard a beer warehouse.
What I'm doing:
Lots of robot sounds!
Why it'll be awesome:
Giant Robot!
When? Where?
Again, at the TMUPictures website.


[Music]

"Ekundayo Beat Tape Vol. 2: Hot Winter Jams" (tentative tittle)
What it is:
Some of you may remember this summer I released, to an email list of my musical collaborators and close friends, a 17-track, 25 minute mix of new beats - a way for me to show everybody some of the new styles I was developing, spark of some new projects, but mostly for me to really just put something together, long form, for the first time. My first mini-album, which was supposed to stand as a collection and not just individual tracks. I'm going to try to find a way to put this up on the site in some kind of flash-player form for all of you who didn't get in on the email...
6 months or so later, Vol 2 is shaping up.
What I'm doing:
Following the format I set in Vol 1.: Lots of beats in a short amount of time, a handful of my bootleg remixes of tracks by Mos Def, Nas, and others, and decent amount of sample-free tracks (more sustainable!). What's new will be a better understanding of mixing and other technical stuff, and 6 months of new life, learning, skills and inspiration going into the work.
Why it'll be awesome:
Well hey. At very least it'll be awesome for me.
When? Where? Here, in the next month or so.


"The Zalusta Project"
What it is:
A concept album collaboration with Jordan Streiff, aka Skuzzy. He's an MC from der ATL who recently jumped continents to China, but before he bounced he took the Greyhound up here to crash for a week and work on ideas. The album is 7 or so tracks, and tells a story.
What I'm doing:
The beats - the crazy, sci fi inspired, wildly unusual beats. Jordan's ideas have set the stage for me to get weird with it, which I love.
Why it'll be awesome:
Concept albums can be hit or miss, but nobody can deny the raw, nerdy power they hold over us music fans.
When? Where?:
I'd say sometime this year, probably closer to spring or summer. The kid doesn't get back till then, so recording may be tough before that...

"(Untitled Badi & Ekundayo EP)"
What it is:
The genesis of this idea dates back almost exactly year ago, when Badi hit me up like "Lets do an EP for Neby Fest". Ultimately that didn't happen, but the title track of this proposed project, "The Departure" which we banged out back and forth over the internets in the space of a short, productive week, would eventually evolve into the new title track for his full length album, which JUST THIS WEEKEND premiered at Neby Fest 08. Those who where there know it rocks.
Well now, having cannibalized our first EP's title and main hotness for his album, dude owes me an EP.
What I'm doing:
Conceptualizing, consulting, and building on ideas, and of course producing the whole thing, hopefully wid out any samples this time, so we can bring it to YOU, the people, minus any copywrite politiks.
Why it'll be awesome:
Cus Badi is awsome, and cus MC-Producer duos are the best.
When? Where?:
Stay Tuned.

Thats that. Look for samples of some, any, all of this stuff up here soon.
Check back in a few days for updates on graphic art, animation, & photography.

[-ekundayo]

[post 002] St. Valentine's Day

It's been my tradition to mark the occasion of valentines day with some kind of cartoonish piece that depicts violence against a hapless, heart shaped personification of the day itself. In keeping with the new spirit of this blog, I thought I'd share some history of this ancient observation of romantic love with you instead!

Via Wikipedia

"Saint Valentine (in Latin, Valentinus) is the name of several martyred saints of ancient Rome. Of the Saint Valentine whose feast is on February 14, nothing is known except his name and that he was buried at the Via Flaminia north of Rome on February 14"

Oh. Uh. Hmm. Well...

"The feast of St. Valentine was first established in 496 by Pope Gelasius I, who included Valentine among those "... whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to God." As Gelasius implied, nothing was known, even then, about the lives of any of these martyrs."

I see. Surely, then...

The first recorded association of Valentine's Day with romantic love is in Parlement of Foules (1382) by Geoffrey Chaucer:^[5]

For this was on seynt Volantynys day

Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese [choose] his make [mate].

This poem was written to honor the first anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia^[6]. A treaty providing for a marriage was signed on May 2, 1381.^[7] (When they were married eight months later, he was 13 or 14. She was 14.)"

Woah, woah woah, ok. Ok. Let's... lets not give up just yet.
Ok, lets see, uh french courts, no, imprisoned in the tower of london, ok ok, referenced by Ophelia in Hamlet, no definitely not, Removed from Roman Catholic calendar in 1969, damn this isn't going well. Umm... Ah! Here we go:


"In the United States, the first mass-produced valentines of embossed paper lace were produced and sold shortly after 1847 by Esther Howland (1828-1904) of Worcester, Massachusetts... In the 1980s, the diamond industry began to promote Valentine's Day as an occasion for giving jewelry."

There! I knew if we dug long enough we'd find the long standing traditional and ancient roots of this wonderful celebration!

[-ekundayo]

[INTRO]

What's good?

Welcome to [open workflow]

While my LiveJournal was a mix of rants, irregular art posts, cryptic, incomplete thoughts, and the occasional barely contained personal crisis, I want this new space to be something else. Don't get me wrong - I loved doing what I did there, and a lot of what I wrote and created still feels true to me, but it's time is over. [open workflow] will be more focused, more accessible, cleaner, more consistent, more fun - a flow of what I'm doing rather than an inscrutable machine that spits out college aged emo jabber and strange half explained theme projects.

I'll be posting new work here - beats I'm working on, info & samples of films and shorts that I've done sound work on, graphic art, animation experiments, and attempts to mix any/or/all of the above. And I'll be writing about process, writing about what I've watched/heard/read/seen lately - anything that effects me.

When I started writing and throwing up images holy crap what are the odds EXACTLY 4 Years & a month ago, I was restless, I was kind of needy, I was completely aimless about how and why I was creating. I just wanted a place to put things. [open workflow] is a channel through which I can measure just how much I've changed since then. An open flow of what's going in and what's coming out of my efforts to express. But it's also about moving toward producing art and media that not only is shaped by where I'm at, but actively shapes where I'm at - creating in a way that creates around me , letting that which creates in the world create through me. It will also, where possible, be hilarious.

All this is why I went with a simple, almost literal name, to say directly what I want to do, then do it. That and I was out of Grosse Point Blank quotes.

more soon.
[-ekundayo]

workflow], [open

[workflow begins soon]