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Production Notes

I've been making home pages since 1995. In 2000 I began to experiment with digital motion, that is, putting the digital movies I produced onto the Internet. The problem with movies on the net is, that it takes so long to get so little through the pipe. However, with the technology developed by Micromedia called Flash, you seem to get more data for each second spent waiting for the download.

In the last year digital still cameras have become much better. It is now possible to take a decent digital picture in almost any light. But you need a tripod. After I got the tripod, I found that physically touching the camera on the tripod was enough to move camera and spoil the shot. So I starting using a remote control. With that I found I could take ten or thirty pictures of a moving neon sign. Every picture would be exactly like the one before it except for the movement or blinking of the neon. I later sorted those digital pictures to recreate the motion of the sign. Finally I exported those pictures to Adobe Live Motion.

Below you can see the vertical timeline passing through the individual frames of the Nadia sign.

Before seeing the project a Thai friend asked my why I didn't dedicate my efforts to something more socially relevant—the plight of drug addicts, the solution to Bangkok's traffic etc. I'd love to. My resume is on this page and I'm definitely for hire.

I should say a few more words about why I made this project. It wasn't because I'm fascinated by the night life. It was more because Bangkok's kilometer of glittery neon happens to be just a short bus ride from my apartment, I liked the signs, and I thought other people would be interested. The signs themselves, by the way, are the perfect metaphor for the nightlife—attractive from the outside, but by the light of day, covered with soot and pollution.