The Daily Render by Nikolas R. Schiller

Youth poets from around the country pose for a group picture at Lafayette Park

A couple weeks ago I was contacted by my friend who owns a sound system that is frequently used for outdoor demonstrations, rallies, and press conferences. Since he has a couple of businesses that siphon much of his time, he normally contacts me about doing the sound for these events. Over the years I’ve helped a wide array of disparate groups amplify their voices and help facilitate their freedom of speech through my sound engineering skills.

Yesterday’s event was organized by a DC non-profit Sol y Soul in conjunction with Youth Speaks’s 2008 Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam. Throughout last week over 450 different youths between the ages of 13 & 19 from around the world came to DC to compete, learn, and forge new friendships through spoken word poetry. This competition culminated into a final competition tonight in Lincoln Theater that will be recorded by HBO for a future episode of their Def Poetry series.

Friday afternoon’s event was called “Hear the Children Speak” and the theme of the poetry was about No Child Left Behind and America’s educational system. The permits allowed the organizers to construct a stage on the west side of Lafayette Park and have me setup a sound system that allowed each student the ability to recite their poetry on the microphone.

For the first two hours everything went superb, then a National Park Police Officer decided that their poetry, their 1st amendment, was too much and told one of the organizers we need to turn off the sound system.

I have done sound at Lafayette Park (also known as President’s Park, which is located just north of the White House) over a dozen times in the last few years and never before I have been told to turn off the sound system. I’ve been told to turn it down, but never off. After consulting with the organizers, I decided to contact the ACLU about what transpired and below is my initial e-mail which lays out exactly what happened:

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Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: 10 & 405 Quilt, Socio Ditata Labore - Revisited

3/13/2008 || 2:56 pm
White House Peace

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 : White House Peace .

Similar to the Shanghai Map, this map uses Chinese characters as a decorative element. The source aerial photography of the White House was censored by the government before it was released to the public. I documented this about a year ago with my Lost Series project “The White House is off-limits to the public.” Unlike the Shanghai Map, I made a tessellation using the words for PEACE instead of placing the glyphs at the bottom. I was, however, thinking of revisiting this map in the near future and adding more text. As it is now, I think it’s somewhat plain, and deserves something else. I’m not sure what that ‘else’ is yet.

View the Google Map (which shows older imagery) of the White House.

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12/9/2007 || 2:30 am
Within Sight of the White House [Overlay of Hooker's Division]

[image links to .kmz file]
Google Earth Screen Shot of the Antique Overlay

One of the maps I recently downloaded was from a newspaper clipping showing the area near the White House. With 50 Saloons and 109 Bawdy-Houses the map was drawn to highlight business owners who were paying Federal taxes but not DC taxes. Of importance is how nearly all but four of the business owners were female. Were they not paying taxes because they were disenfranchised? Women’s suffrage didn’t come for another 30 years with the passage of the 19th Amendment. By taking the map and importing it into Google Earth, I was able to arrange it so that the buildings line up with minimal distortion. It’s not a perfect map, but it is truly an interesting glimpse into downtown Washington, DC in the 1890’s.

Today most of the buildings are all gone. There are some exceptions, like City Hall (Central Powerhouse) and the Old Post Office, which is written as the “New Post Office” on the map. In the place of the 109 Bawdy-Houses and 50 Saloons was the creation of Federal Triangle. Ohio Ave- gone, DC’s entertainment center, gone as well. Later built, on the year of my birth, was Freedom Plaza which was designed to look like L’Enfant’s map no less. By adjusting the antique map’s transparency you can see a approximately 117 years of development. From brothel to federal, what a strange entity time is.

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1 Comment Rendered || || Posted One Year Ago: Park La Brea Quilt #2

3/26/2007 || 3:32 pm
The White House is Off-Limits to the Public: An Exploration of Censorship’s Perimeter

click the image above to view my latest installment in the Lost Series

LEGEND:
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Nashville Quilt #2

12/13/2005 || 11:50 pm
Blue Marble Beauty

: rendered at 9,000 X 6000 :

Using source imagery from the USGS and the NASA Blue Marble Imagery, I used the first rendering that was modified for my new splash page graphic as the tessellated source imagery for this rendering. I made two differnt version of the tessellation. One using the standard reflection process, and the other I used a 90 degree rotation process. I am going to render that one next. However, this rendering marks a new addition to the janus series and the mother earth series. I’m going to define this creation as…ummmm…a hybrid…. lets see what comes up next

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Star of DC, one year ago today...

10/31/2005 || 8:06 pm
Abstract George W. Bush

: rendered at 10,000 X 7500 :

On Valentines Day I made this for good ‘o GW, and for Halloween I made him something a bit more abstract.

#UPDATE## 2/16/08 — added background

This was the last map I made using the 2002 USGS aerial photography of the area around the White House. By combining a United States Air Force high-resolution publicity photograph of George W. Bush, I created a unique tessellation that I overlaid on to the surface of a complex 3-D object. In the background I used the same tessellation but placed the design into in a kaleidoscopic pattern similar to the More Quilt Projection style. The result is both eerie and visually engaging. Made on Halloween, it could be taken as an abstract Halloween mask, but when viewed as a human interest map, it becomes slightly more twisted. At the center, below the obligatory American flag lapel pins, is a mirrored image of a visually redacted White House. This is the same legacy aerial photography that was used in the wildly popular Inaugural Map I published in January of 2005. This was also the first imagery of Washington, DC used by Google Maps when it was released a couple months later. It was soon updated after people complained that the White House (and the Old Executive Office Building & Treasury Department) should not be censored.

Last year when the USGS released the 2005 Washington, DC aerial photography, the entire area around the White House was completely redacted. Shortly thereafter, I created “The White House Is Off-Limits To The Public,” an interactive geovisual environment, to showcase the egregious amount of censorship that was exercised by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. Google still has not updated their servers with newest public domain imagery of downtown Washington, DC….

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10/24/2005 || 7:13 am
White House Mandala

: rendered at 12,000 X 12,000 :

I fixed the lighting problem that plagued my last two renderings and the result is probably one of my favorite mandalas yet (my favorite is still the Ballwin mandala). I was able to fix the lighting issue by pulling the light source farther away from the imagery and then making the light source brighter. The result is more diffusion of the light without the center being bleached out. If you look at the rendering details below, you can see the the center of the rendering is the Ellipse and without realizing it, I made an circle out of the Ellipse

rendering details:
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10/1/2005 || 9:48 am
Adams Morgan - White House Quilt

Adams Morgan - White House - two fabric Quilt

rendered at 18,000 X 12,000

Sucks… I like the template, but I don’t like the way this came out. The Adams Morgan aerial photography looks a bit bleached out compared to the White House imagery. Yet what is important about this rendering is that I used two different types of spatial resolutions and I used two different types of objects. The White House imagery is mapped on to 4 rotated infinite planes (object one) and on the Adams Morgan imagery is mapped on about 40 pyramids grouped and rotated in a circle (object 2). The first time I used the White House pattern like that was with DC Lenz #4, and this is only the second rendering I’ve used the Adams Morganimagery in. I don’t think I’ll be using them together again.

View the Google Map of the Adams Morgan neighborhood in Washington, DC.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: B.A.D. Day Schedule

9/29/2005 || 9:00 pm
Ball of Destruction

: rendered at 12,000 X 8,000 :

Ball of Destruction

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1 Comment Rendered || || Posted One Year Ago: Ivan from above

8/22/2005 || 8:42 am
DC Stencil

: rendered at 9,000 X 6,000 :

Following up with my “N Prague” rendering, I decided to do the same with Washington, DC. Its not technically special, but I’m glad I made it. I see being used a cover or sign for all of my DC based renderings. I should make my name and the “geospatial art” next. I’d like to make one with different imagery for each letter- it might take a bit longer to setup, but I think it will turn out really nice.

Related White House Entries:

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8/19/2005 || 5:33 pm
White House Warp - geospatial animation

Image Links to Flash Player:

Wow. This is probably my favorite animation yet. Its not technically special, it’s just fun as a hell to watch. Using Quicktime Pro, I can set it loop back & forth and I’ve spent the last few minutes marveling at my latest creation. If you look closely you can see the White House replicating into a perfect circle.

Up next, I’ve got some imagery of Prague, Sioux City, Iowa, a few topographic maps (a new dimension to Geospatial Art!), and even a subway map of Moscow I want to geographically exploit. Fun.

Yeah for the 9 day weekend- I took next week off!

1 Comment Rendered || || Posted One Year Ago: the double use of satellite images...

8/2/2005 || 5:12 pm
White House Sunset

: rendered at 15,000 X 10,000 :

A bit off center eh? Although I called this rendering “White House Sunset,” its really the Convention Center sunset. The most noticable building is no more! The white building that’s repitition is a geographic identifier of where there are lines of symmetry, the old DC Convention Center, was demolished over a year ago and now the entire site lies fallow in the Central Business District of DC. But I had use the name “White House Sunset,” because this rendering has another bent White House.

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7/2/2005 || 11:06 pm
Lady Liberty on a quilt of the Pearl River Delta

This is my first “commissioned” piece. I mentioned it a while back, but it took my benefactor a little while to come through with what he wanted me to make. He is from Hong Kong, which is where the Pearl River Delta is, and I used a NASA satellite image of the Pearl River Delta a backdrop. On the body of the model I used the same modified aerial photography I’ve used in most of my DC based renderings (like DC Lenz #4). The contrast between the past and the present is what I like most about this rendering, and I sincerely hope that he likes print on his wall at his home or office!

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5/24/2005 || 5:54 pm
String of DC

: rendered at 15,000X10,000 :

23 hours 47 minutes render time.
600mb TIFF

What I like the most about this rendering is the way the pixels blend over each other. A refraction over a redaction.

String of DC, it’s definitely not made of pearls….

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5/5/2005 || 10:26 am
DC Lenz #4

This is my favorite rendering from the Lenz Project. It is a hybrid of the “Lenz Project” and the newly created “Quilt Project.” The background is almost exactly the same as the DC Memory rendering, and the forground includes the new reflection style from the “Quilt Project,” but what makes it so interesting is that the imagery is magnified by the Lenz. My favorite aspect of this specific rendering is the way, like DC Memory rendering, the White House is bent & reflected around the center of the image. I also really like the way the rendering takes advantage of the visual redaction of the Treasury Department Building & the Old Executive Office Building. I wonder what other important building I could apply this “bending” to? Regardless, I look forward to making more renderings with this new template!

view detail of the center: (more…)

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4/29/2005 || 10:15 am
Bush’s Bitch stands up to be heard

I really don’t like vulgarity of the initial name I’ve given to this rendering, but I think its fitting. The contemplative nude female is textured with an aerial photograph of downtown Washington, DC (including the White House) over her body to give her location, and a name, “Bush’s Bitch.” Her folded arms and her stance produces an evocative signal that she is waiting for others to snap out of the mold and begin to take on the lemmings. It’s like she silently screaming, “Let me vote! I want representation like every other American.”

To make this rendering, I used the same template I used for my Valentines Day present to GWB. I have another version of this graphic that says “Don’t be a Lemming. Vote Green,” but I haven’t put it on my website, instead I uploaded it to DC Indymedia. I am brainstorming ways I can make another version of this rendering with more of a super-human touch.

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4/23/2005 || 8:50 pm
DC Memory

Using the same revised templated used in “GWU Memory,” I made a new rendering of downtown DC. I think the coolest part of the rendering is the “bending” of the White House!

I must thank L’Enfant…

view rendering detail of the White House: (more…)

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3/25/2005 || 11:55 am
The Modern Geographer

This is my first draft of what I am calling “The Modern Geographer.” The background is a painting titled “The Geographer” by one of my favorite painters of all time, Johannes Vermeer. I scanned a picture I had of the painting and modified it in photoshop to give it symmetry. I used a poser from one of my programs and mapped her body with Washington, DC. I ended up rendering it at 8000X6000, but I realized that when I scanned the painting, I scanned it too large so that if you look closely you can actually see the RGB colors dots from the printer. I am going to rescan to the painting so I can downsample it slightly and make the colors a bit more richer. I’m still not sure where I should place the poser, or if I should include more posers, possible give her a globe to gaze at, she is a Modern Geographer afterall…

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1/2/2005 || 10:15 pm
Mother Earth #4

I think she turned out nicely. Next up with be the Europe mandala!

Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Band of Metal

12/13/2004 || 1:01 am
Star of DC

I realized I hadn’t made a “star of..” DC yet! So I used the template and slightly changed the way the image is mapped on to the surface and I kinda like the way it turned out. What’s even better is the new computer I got from work (1.7 mhz w/ 512 RAM laptop) can churn out a rendering in a fraction of the time! This means more posters and faster turnaround. However, I am still figuring out how I am going to port all the files from the laptop to the my iMac…