Festival of the Arts at the Narrows

We're still throwing things at the wall here at Aerial Vr, just to see what will stick. It's one way to start a business. It's not that scientific but it's a lot of fun and a lot smarter than it sounds at first reading. Think about it. It means cooking up a variety of ideas like different forms of pasta and seeing what seems to work by observing first hand how people respond. It means getting in there with one's sleeves rolled up. It means cooking. It means throwing pasta at the wall which is always fun. Then there's the last step, talk the people and observe their reaction.

We combined Chris' growing fascination with and mastery of a group of Adobe Photoshop plug-ins and my contacts in the local arts community into a fun weekend recently throwing pasta and generally having a good time. First ... the plug-ins. Plug-ins are software add-ons created by one company and meant to work within another company's software package. In this case, a company created a group of plug-ins for use within the well known Adobe Photoshop. How well known is Adobe Photoshop? It's so well known that "photoshopping" has become a verb meaning "to alter a photographic image digitally using computer software." You know you've really arrived when you become a verb.

So what sort of photoshopping has Chris been up to? He starts with one of our panoramas. The Panoramas are the result of stitching together 8 standard images in another software program. They are long strange looking rectangular arrays of pixels which look like this:


They contain imagery of virtually everything that can be seen from a given point in space ... the point where we placed our camera. They remind me of those funny looking world maps that we all looked at in grade school. They looked so funny because .... well, think of an orange. You can't peel the skin off an orange and flatten it out, at least not exactly. If you make a few clever cuts in it you can almost flatten it out. You can also stretch it using the mathematics of mapping. That's how we arrived at the image above, not by doing mathematics, we're not that clever. We used a stitching program. The people who designed the stitching program did the math.

But back to Chris and his photoshopping. He's been using tools that remap every pixel in our rectangular arrays to a new location. We call "little planet view", "tunnel view". They're quite similar but think "inny" and "outy." That is to say that in the little planet view the sky ends up wrapped around the outside and the ground and the buildings on it end up on looking like a ball or little planet on the inside. In the tunnel view the sky ends up in a ball on the inside and the ground or floor ends up wrapped around the outside. They're strange. They're Alice and Wonderland meets Pink Floyd. They're a lot of fun to look at as well.

So we went looking for people to look at them. We found them at the Festival of the Arts that the Narrows Center of Fall River puts on every year. I set up on Anawan Street with 30 or so other artists and craftsmen. We'd printed out 10 of our favorites and hung them on easels. I sat and spoke to people as they strolled by. We drew a lot of comments. We drew a lot of interest. I handed out close to 100 business cards. We didn't sell a single photograph but it didn't seem to matter. The pasta was sticking.

An example: a graduate of Durfee High came by and inquired about the possibility of getting a large quantity of prints of that building perched precariously on its little planet for his upcoming class reunion. He went through High School in the 60's. He may still think Durfee High looks like that. I don't know but he loved the image and he thought a lot of his classmates might also like them. Another young fellow took the little planet concept and ran with it ... to a line of clothing. He saw his teenaged pals wearing t-shirts with strange distorted insects on them, things like scorpions with large drops of poison hanging from their tails ... and in the poison .... a little planet. My imagination doesn't run to scorpions but I can work with T-shirt. We may stay in touch.

Another fellow referred to our photographs as "fine art." I'm not sure how fine it is but the point is that the pasta appears to be sticking and we'll try our luck at "Arts Around the Block," which takes place September 20th, from 12-4pm on Purchase St. in Fall River. Maybe we'll see you there.

Fair Journey,

Brian Shriver

Aerial Vr - "Your location in high definition virtual reality." email us with your comments and ideas at btshriver@aerialvr.com & cblake@aerialvr.com For more about our services see our website at www.aerialvr.com

Welcome to Westport - Now go home!

Paquachuck 2 in USA

There's a bumper sticker that's current in Westport, Massachusetts that reads "Welcome to Westport - Now go Home." It was quoted to us by a friendly couple made curious by the oversized tripod we'd set up in front of the Harbormaster's shack at Westport Point. They smiled as they said it. They probably smile as they say it to the people who come to visit them in their summer cottage. It's not exactly a friendly thing to say but it is humorous and not entirely unfriendly depending on how it's delivered. Mostly it speaks to the truth of Westport's great natural (and for the most part) uncrowded beauty and the fact that people who've learned to enjoy it hope against hope to keep it that way. This couple had the look of summer residents. Let's hope that year round residents smile as they say it to couples like this one who come to stay during the summer. We like to think of people smiling.

There's quite a few strata in Westportian society. They don't always smile at eachother. They don't often mix at all except at town meetings and then they're sharing space and not really mixing. There are the full time working residents of Westport. They fish and farm and serve you food in restaurants which is not to say there aren't a few lawyers, doctors and financiers among them. Mostly, they build their nests for year 'round residence and send their kids to school.

Then there are the summer residents that keep second homes there and those who've even retired and decided to make it their first home. They have lots of money by local standards and generally don't have kids to put through local schools. Their kids are off at Andover or Princeton or Geneva International Boarding School for Children of the Rich and Well Monied.

Finally, there are the tourists that pack the inns and hotels or wrangle a room in a relative's cottage. The groups and their concerns are different. Go figure. They don't always get along and things get heated in the local political arena. You probably don't need to know all of that though if you're packing your bags in preparation for a visit there. It's just a backdrop. Come let the sun warm your skin and buy one of those bumper stickers if it makes you laugh.

Our visit to the working harbor at Westport Point had its genesis years ago. My wife lived there and was at least a temporary member of the local residents tribe though she never got the secret tattoo. I've often suspected her of lifetime membership. I've seen the wistful looks when we visit so I've looked everywhere for the tattoo and failed to find it. It's not there "on the flesh" but it may be buried somewhere deeper. We married at the church up the road from the harbor and had our rehearsal dinner at the Paquachuck Inn which figures quite nicely in the photo. She lived for years in the little apartment in the harbormaster's house just up the road. The tidy little shack in the foreground is where he conducts his business to this day. (www.westport-ma.com/harbormaster)

It's just a shack though, go full screen and spin around to the south. The stars of the show are the fishing boats. You'll find them in every size and shape, tailored to their use and done up in rich shades of red and green. Feel the warm sun on your face. Feel the welcoming breeze on your skin .... and then .... go home!

Fair Journey,

Brian Shriver

Aerial Vr - "Your location in high definition virtual reality." email us with your comments and ideas at btshriver@aerialvr.com & cblake@aerialvr.com For more about our services see our website at www.aerialvr.com

Borden Light

We took a sail last weekend from the beach in Swansea and the wind took us to Fall River and the opportunity to take this series of photographs of the Borden Flats Light. They're arranged in a "photosynth" which will slide you from one photo to another in slideshow fasion. The Borden Flats Lighthouse has been warning ships of underwater hazards where Mount Hope Bay meets the Taunton River since 1875, and doing it well by all accounts. It's not much to look at but hey, it is a lighthouse and I have to tell you that I like living in a town with a lighthouse.

I also like living in a town where I can hear seagulls. Most towns just have pigeons, which is not to denigrate pigeons at all. Pigeons are great. Get in close to a pidgeon some time and admire the way the purple sheen gives way to green and moves on to handsome patterns of gray and black. Better yet, watch a boy pidgeon cuddle up to a girl and do his dance. You have to love a bird that puffs out his chest and goes about the serious business of wooing his mate with a dance. Can you tell I don't have much to say about lighthouses?

Before I forget let me send you somewhere where people have plenty to say about lighthouses, try www.lighthousefriends.com or click here to visit their page about Fall River's very own lighthouse. Those people know lighthouses. Those people have lighthouses as friends. They might do better with something warm and cuddly like a pigeon if you ask me, but they've made their choice and are proud to tell the world that they are "friends of lighthouses." Read their site. You'll know plenty about lighthouses when you're through, enough to pass as an old salt in your average conversation at a bar anyway. You may need to buy your victim a few (say ten) beers first but you'll pass. You may annoy them if they've decided they'd rather befriend a pigeon than a lighthouse but when you're through they'll know more about them than when you started ... ok ... I'm down this road far enough. You'll just have to visit a bar for yourself and see how it goes.

But about the sea gulls. They're almost as good as lighthouses to let you know you're near the sea. Not quite as good though. I mean, you can find a seagull in the parking lot of a McDonalds eating french fries and there's not an ocean in site. But if you see a lighthouse you're going to see water so that makes them a better ocean indicator. But gulls are a close second and their cries are pure poetry. Prove it to yourself. Do a google search on "seagull poetry" and see if you don't get a few hits. Now gulls have their detractors. We all do. Some people call gulls the rats of the sea but they shouldn't. They should take a long slow look at a seagull and see if they've any grounds whatsoever for comparing it to a rat. The seagull is one pretty bird seen up close and that's more than you can say about any rat.

They do like to eat though. I used to take my son down to the waterfront in Fall River to feed the sea gulls. The pigeons would show up too. That was before some tight ass put up a sign about not feeding the birds down at the waterfront. Someone never watched Mary Poppins. Someone needs to feed a pigeon and perhaps fly a kite. I haven't fed them lately. It's not that I'd let some tight ass wearing the thin cloak of civil authority ruin any fun I intended to have feeding sea gulls but I haven't done it lately. But I did ... before the sign.

My son was only two at the time. He was delighted when the first sea gull arrived to eat the bit of popcorn he'd thrown. He loved it when the gulls and the pigeons raced in. He grew alarmed when the pigeons and the gulls swarmed around him like rats ... oops.... not like rats ... more like hungry puppies. That's better. They swarmed around us like hungry puppies and I had to pick him up. We fed them together and let them land on our arms and fan our faces. It was memorable. I don't do it every day but every day I thank my lucky stars that I live in a town where I can see, hear and ... if no one officious is looking .... even feed a sea gull. Now that's living in my book.

Fair Journey,

Brian Shriver

Aerial Vr - "Your location in high definition virtual reality." email us with your comments and ideas at btshriver@aerialvr.com & cblake@aerialvr.com For more about our services see our website at www.aerialvr.com