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The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Ophelia, and Life

12-Jan-22

Seven days from now I will turn thirty and in the last hours of my twenties I sit with a few regrets. I wish I didn’t waste my youth not finding my kin. I did not attend university, which left a constant friendless void (I have them but what strong bond do we share?). I never establishing myself with a school of thought. I’ve barely grasped an identity or even form one of my own because the influence of who I am has been limited by fear of what I never experienced. Now, more than ever, I wish to establish a manifesto, find like minded individuals, creature unique art forms, break the rules, write history and most of all be remembered. But who does that at thirty?

As if destiny ridicules my desire to belong, it also has brought to my attention a brotherhood of painters who had their own doctrine and found their own group willing to push an identity. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a small group of painters and writers wanting to dedicate their craft to the abundance of detail, intensity of colors and the complexity of compositions; all in the name of Quattrocento Italian art. By the mid-1850s, Quattrocento was out of fashion and not what the school of arts were teaching.

Yet, I continue to admire not only the artists but their work. So much so that lately I can’t get some of their paintings out of my mind. I desire to travel to Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery in England and view with my own eyes their magnificence and vividness. and I’m not the only one. J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings, wrote mythological scenes portrayed by the Pre-Raphaelites in his own work [source]. Led Zeppelin also attributed inspiration from the brotherhood and for good reason. Take one look any of their painting, Ophelia by Sir John Everett Millais for example, and you can understand why.

Ophelia, by John Everett Millais, 1851–52 Ophelia of course refers to the daughter of the Polonius, the chief counsellor who Hamlet mistakenly murders, in William Shakespeare’s drama, Hamlet. Upon discovering the news of her father’s death, she enters a form of hysteria to the point she drowns herself. In these final moments before she willingly lets the brook whisk her breath away, Sir John Everett Millais depicts her calmly alive waiting for the end.

One will notice her wrists gently raised above the water almost christ like in pose, her eyes open, lost in thought, and her mouth possibly inhaling her last breath. The stillness in the scene depicts a romanic embrace of pure venerability that no other painting of Ophelia has been able to capture.

Pre-Raphaelite Brothers, like Sir Millais, had their own doctrines on what painting should express. The most important being, the truth found in nature herself. In Ophelia, Sir Millais did not imagine the scene nor take creative liberties in the ideal environment but instead trespassed on private land to capture earth as it is. In a letter to Mr. Combe, he writes:

I am threatened with a notice to appear before the magistrate for trespassing in a field and destroying the hay; likewise by the admission of a bull in the same field after the said hay be cut; I am also in danger of being blown by the wind into the water and becoming intimate with the feelings of Ophelia when that lady sank to a muddy death, together with her (less likely) total disappearance through the wrath of the flies.

Quotes from ‘John Everett Millais: Master Painters of the World’ by Arthur Fish, 1923

Emulating nature to the most extreme details was what made the Brotherhood stand on their own accord and separate themselves from classical academic teaching of the arts. This meant that earth, in Gods design, was already perfect and to improve on it was sacrilegious. It was recommended and often times expected one must paint directly in the environment to properly capture a scene. Sir Millais continued to write to saying:

There are two swans who not a little add to my misery by persisting in watching me from the exact spot I wish to paint, occasionally destroying every water-weed within their reach.

Quotes from ‘John Everett Millais: Master Painters of the World’ by Arthur Fish, 1923

I could imagine the frustration of dealing with bugs, swans or even the next days weather when painting the perfection of real life but if one thinks of it, nature is at its truest form when Mother Nature response as she should.

JOHN WILLIAM WATERHOUSE, THE LADY OF SHALOTT, 1888. TATE COLLECTION.

I don’t know what it is about the Pre-Raphaelites and their paintings. There’s an initial draw with the fact that a group of university students said no thanks to academic standards and painted work beyond the dreams of their forefathers. There’s something romanic about twenty something year olds getting together in English pubs and dormitories in the 1800s discussing and criticizing modern art of their time, poems of the week and new painting techniques shared only between them. They lived an artist life, died a human death and a hundred or so years later, the results of their brushes are said to be evaluated into the ten of millions [source]. Who couldn’t admire such accomplishments.

Yet here I am, viewing paintings from a computer screen, day dreaming instead of figuring out where my people are and what my life at the end of the day will be summarize as. Entering thirty scares me, I had so much I wanted to do, and now I’m married with the expectation to have kids soon. I won’t have the free time to explore oil painting to mastery, I might have a chance with writing but with eighteen years of parenthood, I don’t know how I could do it when I couldn’t already in my care-free years. Yet, like Ophelia floating with her last breath mad in thought, one can hope she decides to stand up and continue to live. Losing my twenties is weird but I don’t need to let it defeat me.


My words are not as eloquent or as researched as this explanations from Beth Harris and Steven Zucker of Smarthistory. If you’re as mesmerize by Ophelia as I am, please fill in the gaps of my research with their dedication in the following YouTube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2M7U8eCeHA

Citations:

‘A Book of Visual Signalwave’ my first independent success

13-Mar-20

In December of 2019, I had this idea to take japanese commercials from 1980 to 2001 and turn them into a book. The idea was simple, paint a new story with minimal changes in frame order but sparks a new emotion in a comic book format. A 30 second video might have 720 frames to tell a story. A book of visual signalwave takes a handful to tell a new one.

The initial idea was give this to the Musics the Hang Up Patreon supporters as a thank you for their support. I made the books at a small book printing shop near XiaMeiLing, China. 12 of them and shipped them back to the USA. Christmas came around, I gave away this free book and for another 2 months sat on it.

Then in February, I started getting into the flipping game on ebay but the income wasn’t as fast as I’d like. So it hit me, digital goods are so much easier to maintain, digital goods turned physical without dealing with shipping myself would be even better.

In the vaporwave scene, people love collecting physical media. For example, cassettes and vinyl in the scene are huge. So huge that some people don’t even have the means to play their music but the art and prestige of owning something from a limited release gets everyone off.

I’ve been in the vaporwave scene for over a year trying to figure out my niche as someone who doesn’t exactly produce music. I like the visual side of the scene. I like the smaller sub-genres (signalwave) even more.

So I did what made sense, and signed up with Amazon’s KDP to have them start producing my book. It was a quick process after I figured out all the book conversion stuff and February 28th, I went live with the book.

The first day sales were ok, but on March 4th things exploded. A Japanese blog picked up on the book, wrote a post about it and by the end of the day had over 300 retweets, likes and comments. This would be the first time I’d ever have a new outlet write about anything I’ve created.

The following day, I get an email from Disk Union, a japanese book distributor / store, asking to purchase 100 books. Of course I agreed, made less than 100 USD off the sale, but I was on my way.

Now I write this proudly stating in the first 2 weeks, I’ve sold over 200 copies of the book and a new drive to write more. So I’m starting a new book project I’ve had in the back of my head for a while.

A book on FFMPEG, a video and audio editing terminal software. It’s formatted in a “100 Questions answered” type book. It’ll be a great reference book for anyone interested in taking their social media game up to the next level.

If this is something you’re interested in, please sign up for email alert to start up to date on the progress. The book will be releases in the next month, you’re not going to want to miss it.

Until then, check out my first published book, “A Book of Visual Signalwave” on Amazon:

Hit 250 followers on twitter with 31 episodes

11-Apr-19

Hit 250 followers on twitter with 31 episodes. just a note.

WordPress Meet up in Raleigh for help?

06-Apr-19

I went to a WordPress meet up. Here’s my notes from it.

  • Has to be more than an interest
  • Have to make the community to be goal oriented in the interest
  • Learning community allows failure but coming back to get support each other
  • Accounts for sharing your albums you bought for give away or something.. or make it a portal?
  • Paid groups == selling a solution
  • Mission vision and values
  • What is the purpose of MTHU?

I’m stuck in a hobby scene, how do I provide value for people who are just taking this as a hobby while still making money.

2017 wrap up

29-Dec-17

Quickly, I wanted to outline the major points of my 2017. Although I accomplished a lot this year, I feel like I wasted more time than I want to in the future.

Job Update

The first part of the year I had the opportunity to move to a new country and found a new job that’ll allow me to stay here indefinitely. I’ll be creating a new team here and managing development and staying hands on with manufacturing.

The first 5 months of this journey abroad including going through an accelerator  program learning the ins and out of manufacturing as well as getting our idea to prototype. I had a chance to work with industrial designers and manufacturing personnel.

Film Making Update

While I was so spending all day at this accelerator my nights were taken up by a film project. I spent 5 whole months just about every day behind a camera filming my first feature film. I met a local expat who directed his script with an amazing group of people and was fortunate to be part of the entire process. I hope to see the film out in the US in 2018.

Photography Update

After 6 hard working months, I took my first of many vacations (really weekend trips) in this foreign land. I went to Yangshuo, Foshan, Hong Kong, Macao, and other locations I can’t remember at this time. Traveling hasn’t been one of my biggest interests but I’m grateful for all the moments I’ve create this year because of it.

During my time in Yangshuo, I had this crazy idea to create a picture book of all the doors that caught my eye. As part of 2017, I’ve added author to my list of.. random things about me. Although I’m not publishing this book in retail, I am publishing the book online. You can find it here for free (PDF):

[DOWNLOAD]

Music Update

I still have 4 days of 2017 and there’s still one more accomplishment I wanted to do. I brought my harmonica abroad and told myself, I’m going to make some kind of album out of using it. I haven’t started but I think I can accomplish it given one day this weekend. We’ll see.

EDIT: I did it, free to listen and download on bandcamp

Final Thoughts

With all the good I accomplished this year, I still feel like I wasted a lot of time. I work late often at past 2pm most nights due to working across different timezones and this causes me to wake up late for my own set schedule. I waste hours in bed that I’ll never get back and I want to change that. So for 2018, I don’t want to waste time that doesn’t need to be wasted laying in bed looking at my phone or oversleeping.

Interesting year.

Doors of Yangshuo – self published book (FREE PDF)

27-Dec-17

August of this year, I had my first overseas vacation in a beautiful land called Yangshuo, China. Through my time their over a couple of a couple weeks, I became interested in all the different doors I saw scattered across the land. This picture books is a collection of the doors found in Yangshuo.

 

[Download]

 

Feel free to use any of the photos for personal use but give me credit. Commercial used? Email me at jdriselvato (at) gmail (dot) com

Summers Brighter now

01-Jul-16

June has been really awesome. Something inside woke up and said this summer take full advantage of it.

To start things off, I was able to pull together a team from Raleigh to film a short film for the Asheville 48 hour film festival. It was literally all of our first time truly going through the steps of creating a film. In the frustration of creating a 4-7 minute film in 48 hours I never thought finding a location to film would be our biggest challenge. Unfortunately getting chain hotels and bars to get the property manager to sign a release form for filming on location is practically impossible with 12 hour notice. We lucked out when the filming location Gods granted us with the ability to film at the bar Ben’s Tune Up. Now the final product is pretty rough around the edges but we went out there and got it done. I’m proud of that. You can view the film here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auvlK_Vy4Nc

In addition to trying film out we have another first, my brother got me into fishing. It’s something I briefly did as a kid but as an adult I really appreciate the meditative aspects of it. Thus far with the season I’ve invested in a tackle box, rod and some how caught 2 “dinky” brims. As of this posts, my brother and I are tied for 2 fish caught.

Finally, and really the reason why I wanted to write this post, I just got home from my first… my kind of music… concert in probably 2-3 years. For some reason after I turned ~21 and got my first high paying job I kind of lost touch with punk/hardcore music. I still listened to the old stuff but stopped really investing in the music. Instead I some how got into folk music. In any case tonight I saw Modern Baseball at the Cats Cradle. I forgot how communal the pushing and shoving of a pit is. Just like fishing, it’s some how therapeutic to be out there with a crowd enjoying the same music you love. High-fiving and saying what a night it was, is something I miss. Being 24 now I some how thought I was too old to be out there any more.

Pokemon Moon & Sun Announced! (at least TMs)

25-Feb-16

Just when everyone was getting super hyped about Pokemon Go and the possible Pokemon Z, Nintendo surprises us all with Pokemon Moon and Pokemon Sun! Both Names that I truly think fits perfectly in the Pokemon world. Looking at both logos I’m actually more excited about this then Pokemon X.

Now all that’s been leaked os far is the trade mark and logos. So lets hope for some screenshots and a demo coming soon!

Man 20 years of Pokemon and I’ve been with you since the first game in 1998. Being six years old getting a clear purple color GB an then Pokemon Blue was amazing. I’m glad I was born in the period of the Gameboy. I’m also glad I can still celebrate such an amazing series. Let’s just hope this release isn’t Nintendo’s going away parting gift for Pokemon. Rumors have been said that the game may feature a tournament like style theme connecting all generations into one game. In any case, can’t wait to see what Nintendo and Game Freak bring us! Whoooo Pokemon MOON AND SUN!

How to install backups from ETH to PS2 (HDL Dump GUI + OPL)

20-Feb-16

As the years go by, it gets harder and harder to use older home-brew tools. This is totally the case for the PS2 scene as most of it’s tools are from 2008. I just bought from japan “Initial D: Special Stage” last week and it finally came in the mail. Well to my surprise, with Free McBoot and all of it’s ELFs you can’t run Japanese games from the disc on an American PS2. So where does that leave us?

If you have a Ps2 specific hard drive + the Ethernet port installed into your PS2 you can use a few tools to rip backup of your legally owned games straight to the hard drive for play with HDLoader. So I’m going to show you how to do that since the data to actually get this working is scattered all over the place. Also, I won’t be hosting any of these files but I will tell you the exact versions I am using. Just google em, they are out there.

TOOLS/Apps will need:

  •  HDL Dump GUI V2.3 – Window/Linux Application
  • Ethernet cable to connect PS2 to PC
  • Open PS2 Loader 0.93 Beta
  • Window or Linux OS (I used windows 10)
  • Free MCBoot or some way to load the PS2 apps
  • HDLoader – for after you install the game you can play it.

PART 1: Setting up Open PS2 Loader (OPL)

I won’t go into details about how to install Open PS2 Loader or how to run it, it’s expected you have that figured out.

First boot up OPL and go to settings. Make sure your settings look like this:

OPL Settings

Specifically:

  • Enable Delete and Rename actions – ON
  • ETH device start mode – Manual

Next we’ll set up the Network Configuration. Make your Network Settings look like this (we are still in OPL):

For PS2 Network Settings:

  • PS2 IP: 192.168.10.10
  • PS2 Netmask: 255.255.255.0
  • PS2_Gateway: 192.168.10.64

For PC Network Settings:

  • PC IP:  192. 168.10.64

After this, select “Save changes”, this is important. Now if you saved, you should see Run HDL Server under “Save Changes”. Select it and the PS2 will now start the server. You know the server is working because it’ll show this screen (HDL SERVER Running.. Press [O] to stop):

Open Ps2 Loader Server Loading
Open Ps2 Loader Server Loading

Part 2: Setting up your PC (Windows 10)

Connect your Ethernet cable to the PS2 Ethernet port and to your PC. Next turn off your computers Wi-Fi and make sure it’s only connection is to the PS2.

Next we’ll need to config your computer’s IP. This is important because without this step the PS2 won’t talk to the Computer. So to do that load your Network connections, right click “Local Area Connection” and Select “Properties“.

Next find in the “Networking” tab the item “Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)” select it. Then select “Properties“. A screen with various fields should be seen (below):

IMG_8685
IMG_8686

Now select “Use the following IP Address” button and enter the following:

  • IP Address: 192. 168.10.64
  • Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
  • Default Gateway: 19.168.10.10

Then press OK to save it. This is important that these numbers are exact.

IMPORTANT: Now after you do this, you’re computer should ask you if you’d like to “Make This PC discoverable”, you want to enable this. Without this your firewall will never let you talk to the PS2. That’s it for configuring the PC

PART3: Setting up HDL Dump GUI 2.3

Now that we’ve configured both the PS2 and PC we can load up HDL Dump on your PC.

IMPORTANT: Make sure the HDL Server is running on your PS2 at this point.

Now set your PS2 Ip in HDL Dump to: 192.168.10.10 and press connect. If you’ve done all the above steps correctly you should be able to connect to your PS2 and see this screen:

HDL Dump
HDL Dump

You also can see your hard-drive’s total space at this point. That’s how you know you’ve connected!

Now under the “actions” section, select your CD drive with the PS2 game you want to copy to the hard-drive. Name it if you want and press “Install” at the bottom. This install might take a few minutes as most games are about 3-4Gigs.

Here’s the screen you’ll see while it installs.

HDL Dump Installing
HDL Dump Installing

After it installs, tell HDL Dump to disconnect and then your PS2 will turn off.

IMG_8689

To play your new installed game use HD Loader and your game should be seen in the HDLoader list if it installed correctly!

HDLoader List OF Games
HDLoader List OF Games

Finished!

Hopefully everything worked out for you! I’m off to play Initial D now 😛

GT Racer is not based on Lucas Ordonez but it validates the idea!

18-Feb-16

To help inspire scenes for my screenplay, GT Racer, I play a lot of Gran Turismo 3 on the Playstation 2. The bulk of the plot is about a character, Alex, and his journey from Simulator racing to Driving professional Rally. It helps me to get into the mood of writing this screenplay by taking a few races every day. Well today I was getting really frustrated at my inability race at the professional level. So I googled “How to Drive properly in GT3” and came upon an article about how Gran Turismo Experts are not allow to race in real life because… Well they are too fast. Crazy huh?

So in that article I also found out about Lucas Ordonez, a spanish GT expert who actually went from gamer to professional racer for Nismo! What are the chances someone actually experienced what I thought would make an amazing plot for a short film. In any case I think if anything it helps validate my idea as a plausible story.

In any case, turns out keeping your hands at 9 and 3 and keeping both break and peddle as smooth as possible is how you can increase your skill. So I put it to the test and I actually finished a race in the fastest time yet. So any hand over hand motions are really not making my turns any better. I need to learn how to gage both speed, breaking distance and turning better. If your interested in more here’s the video I watched to learn this… from Lucas himself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1MQFchpmuc

I don’t know when GT Racer will be finished because I’m now working on Earth X but stick around for more details about both screenplays soon!