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ZIRP
(The Zappa Image Resurrection Project)
ZIRP
has its own navigation page now, just click.
.
The original images for Zirp were shot on or about November 4th 1988 in the Zappa home. Almost all of these images were scanned from black and white 35mm negatives shot on Kodak Plus-X 120 Pro film 5062. Another set, now phase 2 of zirp, were shot on 2 1/4" format negatives, Kodak TMX 6052.
Other members of the Zappa family were involved in this session and other sessions that took place between July and November of 1988. Some of this work has yet to be found. The above date is when I scanned the 1st negative--the Birth of Zirp.
Zirp was introduced as an on-line process. It was my intention to make it as interesting a progression for the viewer as it would be for me. There were two sides to this. One is discreetly Photoshop related, the application of the software from the perception of skill and technique. Two, the historical importance of the Zappa images for those people who have an affinity for the work of and the person--Frank Zappa. There is also a philosophical element which I've mentioned before, that's just mine.
Zirp was a project for print and the purpose of the prints is to gain some recognition for my work. The project is also a fond remembrance of a person who was an important influence and inspiration in my life-- he still is. This is another reason for wanting exposure. I want the work of Frank Zappa to be remembered, recognized and, for those who don't know, discovered.
There is a vast difference between what is done on the images with print in mind and with those that appear here. I say this elsewhere but it's worth saying more than once, the web is a pretty poor place for artistic presentation. So it goes.
We're
rolling...
21-jun-03: There's a Frank Speaks section on the Zirp Page.
"I am enough
of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more
important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles
the world."
-Albert Einstein
A Brief Explanation for Some or All of This
Everything
here was created with relative spontaneity. Most of the projects
presented started with a vague idea of an end result. There was nothing
rote, as much comes from experiment as does from experience. Just
random acts of senseless mouse movement--like a small child playing
with spaghetti. By this I'm referring to the process of putting stuff
here. This process is relaxing. A lot of things here are the result
of work I do which I take very seriously, for example, Zirp. The conceptual
origination of these projects had nothing to do with the intent of the
site. They are merely included within to provide shameless self-promotion
while attempting to maintain some semblance of entertainment. 
And Now for Something Completely Different
The
project: From the first season of The Jetson's ('62-barely
an infant, mind you) I've had a fascination with being able to communicate
with computers and machines. Any approach toward computers interacting
with me is intriguing. I ran into this free app WireTap
from Ambrosia Software
which allows one to record any audio playing on a Mac. This was something
I had been wanting to do for various reasons which I may or may not
get into. The intention of the project was to see how fast I could
record and assemble an intelligible dialogue read from TextEdit. To
make it entertaining and because it was a logical choice I used
Scene 1: A swallow carrying a coconut?
from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Details
of the project can be found here.
The first electronic speech synthesizer was developed by AT&T's Bell Labs in 1936 and within a few years the US Department of Defense was funding research on a language translator to be used in the interception and decoding of transmissions from foreign governments.Who thought they where close enough to this technology to allocate funding for such a program? Development went slowly, ref: Dennis Klatt's (1987), "Review of text-to-speech conversion for English," which includes an archive of audio clips from 1939 to the late 1980's.