Why do you have projector in scare quotes? And what makes you think they don't screen the movie? Exhibitors have a contractual obligation to show movies a certain number of times a week, and the media players that run them show receipts to the studios ... it would be surprising if they didn't actually do that simply because nobody bought a ticket.
Probably just showing that it's not a film projector, but in actuality, it is still a projector. It may be assumed that digital movies are shown on a giant display, but that's cost prohibitive at that size; it's still a blank screen with light projected onto it.
Technically you could lump Ford in this category as well. But the meaningful delta IMO is time and direct ownership. None of those three are currently owned/operated by openly Nazi-aligned individuals / groups, which is not something I think you can claim about Tesla.
I like this writeup but I feel like the title doesn't really tell you what it's about ... to me it's about creativity within constraints.
The author finds, as many do, that naive or first-approximation approaches fail within certain constraints and that more complex methods are necessary to achieve simplicity. He finds, as I have, that perceptual and spectral domains are a better space to work in for things that are perceptual and spectral than in the raw data.
What I don't see him get to (might be the next blog post, IDK), is getting into constraints in the use of color - everything is in 'rainbow town' as we say, and it's there that things get chewy.
I'm personally not a fan of emissive green LED light in social spaces. I think it looks terrible and makes people look terrible. Just a personal thing, but putting it into practice with these sorts of systems is challenging as it results in spectral discontinuities and immediately requires the use of more sophisticated color systems.
I'm also about maximum restraint in these systems - if they have flashy tricks, I feel they should do them very very rarely and instead have durational and/or stochastic behavior that keeps a lot in reserve and rewards closer inspection.
I didn't go into much detail about it but there's a whole rabbit hole of color theory and color models. For example, the spectrum effect assigns different colors to different frequency bins, but also adjusts the assignment over time to avoid a static looking effect. It does this by rotating a "color angle" kind of like the HSL model.
I really like your LED installation in Rosetta Hall, it looks beautiful!
Kinda funny but I am a fan of green LED light to supplement natural light on hot summer days. I can feel the radiant heat from LED lights on my bare skin and since the human eye is most sensitive to green light I feel the most comfortable with my LED strip set to (0,255,0)
I'd actually argue it has some wicked problem characteristics. The input space is enormous (all possible audio), perception is subjective and nonlinear, and there's no objective function to optimize against, only "does this feel right?". Every solution you try reframes what "good" means. It's not as hard as social planning but is way harder than it sounds, no pun intended.
fta: The biggest unsolved problem is making it work well on all kinds of music.
The wickedness comes from wanting something that works just as well for John Summit as the Grateful Dead as Mozart and Bad Bunny.
But it seems like you could cheat for installations where the type of music is known and go from there. The other cheat is to have a "tap" button, and to pull that data and go from there.
mental note: the thought "it can't be that hard" when obviously it is sent me down a rabbit hole for a couple of hours
isn't it the exact same problem than "making a good movie" or "making a good book" ? this is just thoroughly subjective.
When the author says:
> Every commercial audio reactive LED strip I've seen does this badly. They use simple volume detection or naive FFTs and call it a day. They don't model human perception on either side, which is why they all look the same.
well no, if they sell, then they are doing just fine until someone comes up with the $next $thing
I believe it's not a "problem." It's expression, like a painting. Every work of audio reactive LEDs is a reflection of the designer's intent, constraints, biases, imagination, and the context in which it was designed. Like painting, there are technical chops, the craft, like the first half of the article, the lag, the mapping of frequency and amplitude, etc. But once those are mastered the road becomes wide open. That's the "what makes someone tap their foot?" the article asks.
I’ve worked on these terms or similar ones on every job I’ve ever done, for 20 years. They’re the norm. How do I know? I’ve been in this industry for 20 years. I’ve been on both sides of freelance contracts in that time. I moderate a discord of 8000 of my peers. I speak at industry events. We compare notes. We all work ahead of payment, and honestly nothing about the fact that this was a rescue job was particularly out of the ordinary either. This is the case in which I wasn’t paid. If you’re suggesting we as a labor force attempt to change things en masse, it’s an interesting idea. If you’re suggesting I personally could have succeeded at getting payment up front in this case, you may be right, although I didn’t know how desperate they were until ~2.5 weeks into the run. If you’re suggesting I should demand payment in full before every job, you are suggesting I should win zero jobs.
Edit to note: I took the contract’s enforceability on faith. That was not what I thought it was. Had I known the contract gets you jack shit in the way of justice, I’d have taken more seriously the possibility that these guys would rip me off, which they did.
The difference between armchair pricing advice (and the advice of literature on the subject) vs the actual experience of trying to action said advice has lead me to question my sanity more than once.
I agree with you on all points, but I'm surprised you come with that much experience but also faith that contracts are enforceable, especially when dealing with PRC clients. I understand you had a California based entity you were dealing with but even then, I've experienced first hand the worth of a contract in California very early in my career and it's the same as in the PRC: toilet paper. I guess maybe you've just been lucky to go this long without finding that out?
I think you're prob right that I've been lucky? Also almost all my contracts are NY state. Also almost all my work comes word of mouth in what 10 years ago was still a small industry ... folks are less likely to rip you off when you know dozens of people in common.
Didn’t realize it needed saying but I left the child and did the work in exchange for money I needed (still need) to feed the child.
Many people do this every day. I do it when it makes sense or the conditions require, which is to say I am a WFH contractor who sometimes works on site occasionally.
Thanks for confirming. I was confident the first time because many websites are hostile to users. Seeing it again within a short window made my spidey-sense tingle.
Not saying I know better but this contradicts what I heard from multiple collections companies with in-house legal - they all said suing would not be worth the ~$2,500 upfront fees and that the debtor would just vanish. The debt still exists so I'd love to think otherwise! Feel free to HMU if you have a specific lawyer/practice in mind ;
The debtor can't "vanish", they are either an individual or an entity with registered individuals attached to it. Obviously, their structure matters a little bit along with where they are incorporated. But if they are incorporated in California, their debt is 95% recoverable if they want to continue doing business in any way. As an individual you can go after garnishment and other relief. As an entity, it's similar but to their company/corporate holdings.
If they try to dissolve and create another business that operates in the same sphere/as a successor or with the same management team; the debt doesn't disappear, you just prosecute the new entity. With an added cherry of potential criminal prosecution, if they're particularly egregious about it.
People can 100% get around paying, that happens. But the judgement will remain on their record. This will make reincorporation difficult as well as just acting as a warning to future partners that do basic due diligence.
No one's saying it's easy to get the money back, but rolling over probably is the least desirable outcome (and probably why they've acted this way with so many people).
As to your collection firms, I can't speak to it. Maybe your situation is more complicated (e.g. registered entity out of state, unclear contract terms, etc) or they just don't want to go through with the hassle of doing more than they were hired to do (send nag letters and hope for easy turnover).
In the future, you can use it as a learning experience. Keep your deliverables under the small claims limit, do metered payouts, etc.
These types of situations are endemic to my industry, for better or worse. I wasn't intending to complain about the working conditions by way of making it seem as though any of those things were unusual — I was providing that context by way of saying I conducted myself as a professional does in these situations. I've been in this (immersive, interactive, creative tech) industry for 20 years and those conditions are absolutely expected onsite when commissioning, installing, or preparing for a live event. Refusing to work beyond say an 8-10 hour day would leave the project unfinished and we work on a 'show must go on basis'. With that said, doing this for 20+ days without a break is unusually grueling, even for this industry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Designers_Republic
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