The J. Bargsten/T.Zimmer team is back (and you probably didn’t even know you missed us)! We’ve been revived from the dead (reanimated!) and we’re starting up a Substack site concerned with Bargsten’s and Zimmer’s art projects and writings (and hopefully even a revival of Melancholalaland at some point) with the intention to also feature submissions, opinions, comments of everyone. Follow and subscribe! It’s free!
Get the Ruffle plug-in, install it in your favorite browser (mine’s Chrome), then watch what I did with Flash between 1996 to 2017!
NOTE: These are all working in CHROME, with the Ruffle Plug-in. If you use Safari, or FireFox, or Opera, or Edge, THIS WON’T WORK FOR YOU!
ANATOMY of MELANCHOLY (2002-2007)—my second multimedia opera. Video on Vimeo. Mostly works, has a few quirks (slideshow seems to be at partial opacity—sometimes). • MEME™ Jr (2009-2011)—video jam software for kids. Use this chart to find out what all the keys do; live video background (sorta the reason for doing this in the first place!) does not load. • BEEST OPERA: LIBRETTO GENERATOR (“His Girl Friday” remix). Language offensive? Grow thicker skin. • DETAINER SERIES: “Trialogue” (2012), three dream entries composed against a background of visuals or dance. This lasts about 12 minutes, then the soprano drops out and some phrases repeat. I use it in my classes to exemplify post-modern aesthetic devoid of post-modern theory/criticism. Yeah, like that would every work!
Ok some more projects: SONIC Basics (2008)—how I structure sound • Cake It! interactive hypertext narrative written by Thea Zimmer. This one pretty much does everything the original did, including Easter Eggs!
There’s also EMV Electronic Version (2011)—the visual map of my book (2018)[1] • and, of course,
BadMindTime™ (1995-2003)—Have the dancing butt figures in Advanced Circus™ and the headless nudes of DaveSaga™ aged well, or are they all just casualties in one culture war or another? You decide. There are a bunch of icons linked to Shockwave (.dcr) files that are not yet supported in the Ruffle emulator—let’s get some AI working on that, Rufflers?
Also, this: Ruffle doesn’t know what to do with video, or with Macromedia Shockwave (or .dcr) files. This affects the following modules (five out of 17) in the BadMindTime™ navigation:
One final Flash project that might have a little more life in it: mNotation. Of course, we are talking about five to eight people on this planet who might be interested in this!
________________
[1] Not yet supported in this emulator: there are no images in the explanatory text pop-ups, and there are no videos when you click on the ‘v’ buttons, as there were originally. I’ll put up links to the videos soon.
Click here to view my latest prospectus site, now available.
Glitch Gallery™ Main Floor
Last Saturday (April 28) at the Flamingo Film Festival my Multimedia Practicum students presented 10 Virtual Reality Environments in our ongoing project Glitch Gallery™, assisted by MTEn graduate student Gus DeWinkler.
Tuesday’s class performing my iPhone vocal piece Blue Hammer Ambience #2 (2009)
I invited my students to to work collaboratively in small groups to produce a series of ten virtual reality (VR) experiences, which were arranged in the Glitch Gallery™ main floor, surrounded by glitch art and datamosh videos, also created by the students. Among the experiences: you can play miniature golf, visit a creepy hospital, explore trippy otherworldly places, or get hit by a bus.
Brandon, Hannah, and Taylor demonstrate their VR Scene, Bangerz Maze
Great job, all, and thanks to Gus for making this all work!
A few projects created during my sabbatical will be highlighted here soon.
This meditative (yeah, right!) 3D/VR environment—Meditatio™—features procedural terrain and algorithmic music generated when the four characters collide with the ‘ocean’:
Meditatio : 3D/VR environment with generative terrain and soundtrack
Stand-alone player will be shared soon! (Only available on MacOS right now)
So, SkyRon™ has been buggin’ me for a while, to put a more-or-less definitive version of his performance on Kombo™ (quad-theremin/sample player) online. Here it is!
This can be understood in terms of the little paper I wrote a while ago, which has astonishingly, to date, garnered more than 1,600 views!
![meme_2015_white]](https://badmindtime.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/meme_2015_white.png?w=300)
OK, so it’s been two years since you’ve heard anything about meme™, my little experimental media ensemble project.
The reason is, of course, my multimedia opera project MelanchoLalaland™, which received its premiere in Miami Beach almost two months ago. It was a big project, and it consumed all the oxygen around it!
meme™ is being re-branded as MEME™—MTEn Experimental Media Ensemble—named after the MFA program at FAU I teach in, and which provides me with an opportunity to explore that interesting intersection between digital media and live performance.
So, MEME™ will be performing this Thursday, November 12, 2015, at the Schmidt Gallery Public Space on the Boca Raton campus of Florida Atlantic University, between 6:30pm and 8:30pm, the opening of the tenth Faculty Biennial. (Facebook Event Page).
Enjoy!
Hooray! MelanchoLalaland™ was performed last Sunday, Sept. 13, at Miami Beach Cinematheque! Thanks to all involved, and thanks to all (among them the Knight Foundation and the Miami-Dade Department of Cultural Affairs) who supported this!
Did you attend the performance? If so, please fill out the audience survey!
More info and press on our Facebook page!
OK, yes, it’s been a while since we’ve posted.
We now have a place and time for the fall premiere of our transmedia opera, MelanchoLalaland™:
• Miami Beach Cinematheque
• 3pm-4:30 — Sunday matinee in Miami Beach – what could be more delightful?
• Sunday, September 13, 2015
And for those of you familiar with the venue, you know it to be an intimate space for (mostly) independent cinema, and it is. We are giving a concert performance, with live vocalists against the splendid video background our cherished venue will provide. There are only 75 seats, and each audience member will receive a special edition of “DUH IMMOOTABLE TROOTHZ” print.
We shall have more announcements soon—please check out our spankin’
The BAD MIND TIME™ Experience 
