AFK – Sunset Sessions: August 2010

This edition of Sunset Sessions was mixed in the settings of two planes, three countries, two hemispheres, and varying times of day and night. I started on it on a midnight flight to Houston, flying over lightning storms, clouds flashing silently, and otherwise illuminated by the moon. I picked it back up in Trinidad for a couple evenings, and then spent an evening in Toronto refining it. Finally I returned to Victoria and reworked it until I came up with this mix, which I think you’ll find is a pretty special one now.

The photograph was taken a few weeks ago in San Juan, Trinidad. I ought to mention that my latest remix – of Kenneth Thomas – is a third of the way into the session. This mix went through many iterations and contains a lot of hard work by a lot of very talented artists. If you enjoy this, I encourage you to find and follow them. As always, I have provided the means to do so below.

Tracklisting:

  1. Spooky – What Are We Waiting For (Dub mix) [Stella Polaris Music]
  2. Tone Depth – Rumblefish (Ambient mix) [Bedrock Records]
  3. The Emissary – Synapse (Fretwell remix) [Digital Sensation UK]
  4. Kenneth Thomas – Gunnin’ (AFK remix) [Morphosis Recordings]
  5. Faskil – Blow Up (Original mix) [Silk Digital Records]
  6. Solarity – Essence (Claes Rosen remix) [Silk Digital Records]
  7. Way Out West – Surrender (Eelke Kleijn remix) [Hope Recordings]
  8. Ivan Nikusev and Wave-E – One Day Before (Dynamic Illusion remix) [Mistiquemusic]
  9. Que and Alex Monakhov – Hola (Proff remix) [Anjunadeep]
  10. Max Graham – Dusky 2010 (Does She Know Yet) [Armada Music]
  11. Oceanlab – I Am What I Am (Lange remix) [Ultra]
Download:AFK – Sunset Sessions: August 2010 (mp3)

Right click and Save As, or option-click the link on a Mac to automatically download

Maracas Beach, Trinidad

Maracas Beach, Trinidad

The day started very grey. Pretty much every day started grey – it’s rainy season in Trinidad right now. BC could use some of this at the moment. I don’t recall a day where I was encouraged to trek there, but with only 10 days available to me, I had to go regardless of weather.

Maracas Beach, Trinidad

The drive to Maracas Beach is on a pretty windy and crazy road. If you’ve ever driven from Victoria to Tofino, then you’ll understand what this road is like. The dips, curves, quality and width of the road is quite similar. This is a peek at one of the lookouts along the way. Since I was driving, my shots are somewhat sparse.

Maracas Beach, Trinidad

The beach. Calm day – waves were not very big, but they picked up later. And of course I put the camera down and did some body-surfing. No boogie boards this time around.

Maracas Beach, Trinidad

The beach is a bit of a tourist destination, so there are lots of lifeguards on duty and little restaurants further in-land, across the road.

Maracas Beach, Trinidad

little tree. I made this into a “graphic” over on the Smallbox blog.

Some notes about Maracas Beach:

  • I’ve been there a lot
  • It’s friggin’ awesome
  • I think I want to go there more often and more than anyone else
  • Even with sub-par weather, Maracas is still awesome because you get the wicked sand beach to yourself
  • They sell “Bake and Shark” sandwiches, which are what you think they are
  • I did not have a shark sandwich because I’ve seen Sharkwater
  • Sometimes the waves are 10-12 feet high
  • Tall waves are fun and dangerous!
  • Bodysurfing on 6-7 foot tall waves is fairly predictable and fun
  • Sunscreen is your friend, even on cloudy days
  • Riptides can be very strong at Maracas – we were warned on this day to not go in past our waist – previously we were up to our shoulders
  • I narrowly avoided eating a bucket of sand by putting my palms down, much like a pushup, while a rowdy wave slammed me down
  • I was impressed with myself for avoiding injury with some old beach instincts
  • I imagine that this sense self-impressing is what it must feel like to be Kanye West
  • I would like to return to Maracas very soon

chaguaramas, st. george, trinidad

chaguaramas, st. george, trinidad

chaguaramas, st. george, trinidad

L1011 parked at the beach?!

chaguaramas, st. george, trinidad

Oil rigs everywhere off the coast

chaguaramas, st. george, trinidad

Lighthouse, not sure if it’s real

chaguaramas, st. george, trinidad

Vickram

chaguaramas, st. george, trinidad

Cruisin’

chaguaramas, st. george, trinidad

Local modes of transporation

Chaguaramas is what happens when you drive as far west and north as you can go in Trinidad. If you go too far north, there will be a friendly man with a machine gun with instructions on how to turn around, kind of like in Esquimalt. It took me about a day to learn how to say Chaguaramas properly, also the amount of time it takes a foreigner to correctly pronounce Esquimalt.

concord road, san juan, trinidad

concord road, san juan, trinidad

concord road, san juan, trinidad

last time I was there..

concord road, san juan, trinidad

hand-made bricks

concord road, san juan, trinidad

front of yard

concord road, san juan, trinidad

front of yard

concord road, san juan, trinidad

having a laugh

concord road, san juan, trinidad

cactus fruit. not sure if it was edible.

concord road, san juan, trinidad

man on the street

concord road, san juan, trinidad

krishen with all the good tiles

concord road, san juan, trinidad

water chalice

concord road, san juan, trinidad

vickram reading

concord road, san juan, trinidad

after a small storm

concord road, san juan, trinidad

towards the end of concord road

concord road, san juan, trinidad

water used to drip on a potted plant that would sit here

concord road, san juan, trinidad

the house

This house on Concord Road was where my mom grew up, and is the place where we went for some of our most fortunate summers in our youth. It’s a pretty special place that has seen a lot over the years. There used to be a store in the front where the neighbours would shop and my mother and her siblings would work, as well as my grandparents. This house was a local hub for small business and family alike. Currently my Auntie Bahn and Uncle Dinesh live there, with their two sons Adi and Vikram. We stayed there for the first several nights.
Perhaps the most surreal thing, other than being there, was being there and talking to my friends over Adium via wireless broadband internet and my laptop. A mixing of two worlds that had not previously co-existed for me. I will admit that I was pretty excited to be there with new technology – what can I say? I am a nerd. A lot has progressed in Trinidad, including the tech, so that was cool to see. Also I had been pining to go to Trinidad with a dSLR for several years, as those closest to me can attest.
San Juan is in the outskirts of Port of Spain – close but not exactly the same town, though well connected by roads. To the north is the beautiful Maracas Beach and the mountain ranges. To the south is San Fernando.

traveling to trinidad

trinidad_01.jpg

YVR – Vancouver International Airport

trinidad_02.jpg

Mom in YVR

trinidad_03.jpg

Dad in YVR

trinidad_04.jpg

Krishen in POS (Port of Spain)

trinidad_05.jpg

POS – Port of Spain International Airport

victoria, vancouver, houston, port of spain.
some notes:

  • travel time: 20 hours
  • “random” searches: 1 (houston)
  • compliments on penguin + polar bear shirt: 1 (from the random search officer in houston)
  • lady gaga impersonators: 1
  • bret michaels impersonators: 1
  • dinner in vancouver: good
  • breakfast in houston: terrible
  • fire alarms: 1 (houston)
  • gate switch: 1 (houston)
  • baggage lost: all (houston)
  • baggage recovered: all – 2 day wait
  • vancouver to houston airline: continental – bad service
  • houston to trinidad airline: continental – great service

Cameron Sinclair at Design Currency

This week I wrote a post about Cameron Sinclair and Architecture for Humanity.

In and amongst all the discussion at and about Design Currency – now a week and a half ago – there is one talk that stands out for me. And it is not to do with the way it was said, or its value to business, or its philosophical implications, or its parallel struggles with marketing in the corporate decision making process. It had to do with Cameron Sinclair’s talk on architecture for humanity, an organization that he founded:
“Architecture for Humanity is a nonprofit design services firm founded in 1999. We are building a more sustainable future through the power of professional design.”

Sounds good. But what does that mean in practice? The most recent (and current) example illustrates this well…
It would be hard not to notice the massive earthquakes in the news lately – in particular Haiti’s 7.0, and Chile’s 8.8. If one were to continue to follow the stories, it would also be hard not to note the difference in casualties:

  • Chile 8.8: 486 fatalities, 79 missing
  • Haiti 7.0: 92,000 – 230,000 fatalities

Cameron was pretty quick to point out that earthquakes don’t generally kill people – buildings do. And poorly designed buildings at that. Since Chile experienced the incomprehensibly large 9.5 Valdivia earthquake in 1960, they had re-examined how they design buildings – requirements for seismic response changed in response to the environment. The building codes are stricter than a place such as Haiti. And so now we have a case where difference in design policy means a completely massive difference in how a country survives an earthquake. Chile was rocked by the 8.8 earthquake and ensuing tsunamis – any country would be – but Haiti’s buildings were annihilated, and they came down on the people inside.

This is not a trite design discussion. Here we have an extreme example of design currency being equal to human life itself. As was pointed out at Design Week, Haiti is not waiting to rebuild. They’re doing it right now. They have to.

My hat is off to Cameron Sinclair (pictured above) and those at Architecture for Humanity and the Open Architecture Network – an organization which is making better building plans accessible to everyone who is building – or in Haiti’s case – rebuilding.

Find out more about the Haiti rebuilding project on the Earthquake Reconstruction in Haiti page.


Some notes on how I made the image above:

  • I took the original shot during Design Currency on a Canon 30D with a 50mm lens at F1.4
  • Image was resized and refinished in Photoshop and imported to Illustrator
  • Spent some time tracing edges in Illustrator, adjusting palette and curve threshhold until his finger and his head looked the way I wanted, as well as the Design Currency logo
  • Exported back into Photoshop for the radial gradient linear burn, texture overlay with a soft-light blending mode, and a colourized resaturation to get the blues “just-so.”

Look at the large version to see more of the details (the largest version is over 3000 pixels wide, a bit too large for webbiness.) Some would say the above look is played out, but I think it’s the lack of care in using presets and effects that is played out, and the process itself can still yield pleasing results if done with care.