And here we take a plunge into the avante-garde “stuff nobody but me gets” world. After November, some people asked what the theme of the video was. And given that it was really just some stuff I liked and threw together, I had no good answer. So I thought, why not try to make a video with a theme?

This one combines “A Christmas Carol” with “The Shining”. Notice the music in the beginning: Wendy Carlos’ “Bolero”, the theme song from Kubrick’s “The Shining”. I think there had also been some discussion about using proprietary software at Noisebridge, so we stuck in one of the BoingBoing parody “You are a pirate!” seals. Next, there are three videos, each representing one of the ghosts from Christmas Carol, and each a dark color overtone representing the seasons in The Shining. We tried to pull in the drum boom, but didn’t really have enough time.

Next, each video has specific importance. The Christmas Past video features Robert Anton Wilson (and others) on Bill Maher, talking about Tim Leary. It’s low quality, but it’s the highest I could find (and man I looked…). The idea here is that Noisebridge has roots both in the hacking scene, as well as the “counter culture” political scene. Bob Wilson and Tim Leary represent (to me, at least) an important part of the history which drives people today. It was sort of a suggestion that we should study our roots if we’re at all concerned that we should adhere to any sort of rule of law. Why is Noisebridge an anarchy, a do-ocracy? Look to these people, and those they knew.

The Christmas Presents video is important for two reasons. First, there was a lot of stupid drama going on at Noisebridge, mostly caused by people kind of jerking off to themselves in the mirror. It was pissing me off, so Ani and I came up with this as a subtle attack/parody of it. Second, it’s porn! Sort of. 5MoF was starting to get really big, and I had been trying to feel out whether I could do stuff as edgy as we did in the beginning. One of those rise and fall of societies things (look up the temporary autonomous zone). It’s still an important question: the more people there are, the higher the chance is that you will piss someone off. Moreover, if you keep doing edgy things, people will get used to it, and will start expecting it, thus it will no longer have the same appeal. But the video went over well, nobody complained, and that opened a few floodgates we’ll get to later.

The final video, Christmas Future, holds a special place for me. First, it was saying “Hey Noisebridge, if you get over this stupid drama, we can do cool shit like this!” Second, it was a video of Blinkenlights Stereoscope, a project that several friends of mine (including Milosch and Brita Meriac) were heavily involved in. I met Mitch Altman doing the RFID badge for The Last HOPE conference in NYC, where I also wound up meeting Milosch and Brita. This project took me over the Berlin for CCC, where I met Tim Pritlove and several other people involved in Blinkenlights. I actually almost helped deploy Stereoscope myself, but I had a date conflict and couldn’t make it. Finally, it was an homage and shoutout to the CCC for 26c3, which a bunch of people from Noisebridge wound up going to a few weeks later.

Also, I need to give Ani mad props. With this video, you can tell she’s starting to get really good with animation stuff.

-aestetix