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I Done Talked And Sniffled! DIY Days

Well that was rad. Thanks to Lance and everyone at DIY Days for inviting me to speak about LOVELAND with y’all. I was sick as a dog (of course that happened!) but it was great and I’ll post the video when it comes up. You’ll have to give me my two seconds to enjoy this tweet that happened during the night:

@travisarcher: at #diydays listening to many interesting seminars about trans-media storytelling and my favorite art project, makeloveland.com. genius

1… 2… OK.

I met some great people and saw some interesting work I will have to report on later. Observe and report, observe and report.

all photos from diydays.com/conference

Another LOVELAND Premonition: Augmented Reality "Inchvisible Houses", Moon Land-ing

Check it out:

LOVELAND Premonition: Inchvisible Houses, Moon Land-ing from Jerry Paffendorf on Vimeo.

Here’s what was on my mind with this video. This is an interpretive sketch of how you might look through a camera at a little marker on one of the LOVELAND properties to see absolutely anything pop up there through the magic of augmented reality. Rita King is working on a design for the first “inchvisible house” that can be overlaid on a vacant lot using this technique. This allows for fantastic things to be “built” on tiny lots in Detroit without disturbing the neighbors. :)

The house you see stretching up to the sky in this video is an actual house in Detroit that I saw for sale for $30, on top of an actual lot I’m looking at buying for inchvestors. Here it stretches up into the sky to meet the moon where inchvestors also have some property now. Looking at the moon here got me thinking, hmm, you know, it’s possible to layer augmented reality on the moon so that when the camera sees it it can replace it with something else. In this case the moon becomes the Earth and vice verse.

I think it would be nice to see some otherwise impossible virtual architecture popping up around Detroit, and to look up at the night sky and see the Earth so you feel like you’re somewhere else. And no, I don’t think that’s any crazier than a $30 house. :)

Detroit Goes To The Moon: Moon Territory For LOVELAND Inchvestors In The Mayfield Colony

So. I’m getting packed up to fly from Detrot to Los Angeles to talk about LOVELAND at DIY Days on Thursday. And while doing so I just bought an acre of the moon which I’m deeding over to LOVELAND inchvestors. The Motor City meets the Lunar City. Details to follow. 

The name of the LOVELAND, Detroit moon colony is Mayfield, after Mike Mayfield, a friend and our first hire at Wello Horld (our first company, which I plan on writing more about). Mike is an inchvestor who wrote to me earlier tonight suggesting I pull the trigger on some moon land and tie it into his/our property.

This is Mike at a Wello Horld team photo shoot in 2007, pictured with friend and photographer Sara Mayti. Note the similarity in names. Mayfield. Mayti. Conspiracy? Anyway, the moon land is going to be fun. Read more about the controversy over its legality here. I love this stuff.

A True Inchy Cursor

Joe went into his system settings to tweak his cursor size and make the Inchy cursor exactly one square inch. Now that’s dedication, folks. :)

Yes, And: 10 Colonies In 10 Clusters? Taking A Cue From Mario Brothers And Expanding The Board

What to do, what to do…

Well, we’re at the 5,000 inch mark, and I’m trying to think what’s best to do next with not only so much to do, but so much you *can* do. There’s lots of specific things I’m working through, and then there’s broader strategy stuff, the bigger shape of things that’s fuzzy but important. Last week I got inspired to expand the LOVELAND colonies. Now, as is not uncommon, I don’t know exactly what I’m doing or what they’ll be yet, but here’s what’s on my mind.

Looking at property in the city, Detroit has 10 neighborhood “clusters”. The first inchvestor property (Recovery: 8887 E Vernor Hwy) is in cluster 3. I’ve been researching small vacant lots of land in all 10 clusters and it’s quite possible to get a little land in each of them, which would give a nice spread across the entire city.

Ultimately I want all the clusters and colonies to be as interactive as a game, where people can jump around between them on the internet to see and incheract with the real space. I’m thinking it could be cool and create a nice goal if each of the properties/colonies essentially had 10,000 shares/inches. They could each have their own creative theme to them that ties into the area in some way and use the inchvestment money to transform each space differently, like different levels and areas in a game. God bless you, Mario:

So beyond stores and deeds and site work and the craft fair and cat wrangling and and and I’ll be trying to pick up some more affordable lots in these different clusters. They’ll be sort of random based on what I see is available, but no one can accuse LOVELAND of being anything but “yes, and” as we improvise and figure things out as we go along.

Onward…

Just Like Real Art

Earlier this month I moved across the hall at the Russell to a bigger studio I’m sharing with three friends. I was wrestling with how exactly to move the Plymouth Colony representing the road to the first 10,000 inches of LOVELAND, which is taped to the floor. Well, Mandy, a filmmaker from Los Angeles who moved into my old space appreciates it where it is (for now anyways). So, dear inchvestors, your 5,000 claimed inches currently exist as a sort of art installation being enjoyed by Mandy from LA. It was fun hanging out around it the other night. We had the wine, and all that was missing was the cheese slices or it would have been just like a REAL ART show. ;)

Mandy and Gene:

Jennifer and Mary:

As art works go, it’s not exactly living in a gallery with a wolf:

But living with inchvestor inches has its charms.

Solar Power? (Yet Another Thing That I Am Clueless About But Want To Learn On This Project :))

Update: I am appointing Steve Cherry to the solar team. We need more distinct teams. Teams are good. Thanks to the peops who wrote in with solar tips.

Anyone out there with solar power knowledge or hookups willing to advise me on a few things? I’d really like to get some solar going on the LOVELAND properties in Detroit so we can power internets, cameras, and who knows what else. I know Trevor Smith is incherested in solar on his land. Josh Myer wants to do a wifi “spy robot” inchvestors can drive around live over the internet:

Is this the kind of things we need? $429: Sharp 80 Watt Solar Panel.

As much as solar may be the future, every solar power and solar camera site I find seems to have been designed in the 1920s! They either look dubious, don’t work, or won’t tell you how much stuff costs. ha. If you know, please let me know.

PS I was excited to see “Detroit Solar” turn up in a search, but it looks like they’re a family business in the UK. d’oh! :)

Today Was A Good Day: Prelude To An Inchvisible House, Vending Machines, Deeds, Incheractive Maps

It really was.

So first I found another couple small lots of land in Detroit that we can afford thanks to your Kickstarter inchvestments. One of them, if we get it, is right between two houses which gives me an idea for The Inchvisible House. If we do it, it will be an entirely virtual Augmented Reality house for inchvestors to play with. Basically, I’ll put an AR code on the ground and that’ll be that as far as a physical presence. So it’ll have a root in Detroit, but we won’t have to disturb our neighbors unless they want to play with it too. Here’s a picture of the house. It’s a real pixel-upper. ;)

My friend Joe Krause and I (who I share a studio with at the Russell and who I’ll be moving into a house with in December) have been looking at vending machines recently. I wanted to get some to put inches in and set them up in bars around Detroit. Well, today I thought I was going to buy one off of Craigslist, but when I showed up at the house it was actually not 1, not 2, not 3, but *13* vintage-looking mechanical vending machines that were for sale for the price of what I thought was 1. So I have a baker’s dozen of these to customize now:

I’m still waiting for the package of hundreds of magnifying glasses to arrive, but I made some test prints of the square inch golden deeds tonight. The resolution was off and I cut them jankily by hand, but these are going to be cool:

And lastly but certainly not leastly, I sent my friend Larry Sheradon the inchvestor google spreadsheet and he started making some incheractive visualizations so we can start seeing who all from where has what. The first step creates a grid based on how many inches each inchvestor owns and tells you their name when you mouse over it. This is just a pic of it, but already it’s fun and pretty to move around, and it’s not even on a map yet. 

Joy. She is hard to restrain. 

Don’t listen to The Hater, you can inchvest and get inches in Detroit here.

Onward.

Pritty Griddy

Alan emailed me this video clip with the subject “If LOVELAND were to go 3d, these guys are a long way towards nailing it”. It is pretty! And definitely a sister to some of the things in my head — that colorful glitchy virtual worldness. I can’t wait to have some slicker stuff like this produced, and mix it with rawness. If you do this sort of thing, hit a brotha up.

Parasol Island for the 2009 MTV Europe Music Awards: