College Years on Kyle Anderson

New Mixset - djSquared

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 17:27:26 -0400

A new half hour mix named after the first song in the set and the caring nature through which I made this set, WTFuck starts in electro house and ends in dubstep and is the cumulation of several weekends of work - picking tracks, mixing, and creating the album art. WTFuck is available for listening as a direct download below. Enjoy!

Click here to download WTFuck by djSquared.

Suburbia and its culturally draining impact

Sun, 22 May 2011 15:41:39 -0700

As I was standing in line at the grocery store, a friend I was with started wondering aloud why people would care so much about the endless celebrity drama portrayed on tabloid covers. The gossip industry is a highly competitive and profitable one. Publishers are often willing to pay a photographer tens or even hundreds of thousands to get that one most-desired shot. After giving this some thought, I believe the popularity of tabloids, among many other cultural phenomena, are indirectly connected to the influx of suburban sprawl the United States has seen in recent decades.

Effects of physical community arrangement

Before suburbs became popular with Americans, the three main components of society - residential, commercial, and industrial sectors (thanks for engraining those in my head, SimCity) - were very close together. Sometimes, one could find all three sectors in the same building. But, as societies continued to grow, the urban areas became overcrowded and busy, and as a result, people developed a desire for a blend between rural countryside lifestyles while still maintaining easy access to cities.

The predecessor to today’s suburbs were very much literal cabins in the woods, according to architecture author and novelist James Kunstler in his TED talk in 2004. Once these lone homes became popular in the 1950s, vast tracts of them were constructed and created the types of suburbs many of us live in today. While the original idea of a suburb was to live away from the city, while still close enough to it to commute, commercial and industrial sectors began to move into the suburbs to accommodate the rising number of suburban-dwellers. Demand for commercial and especially industrial sectors in urban environments fell dramatically once significant portions of a city’s population moved away from the city’s center, and the three main societal sectors became segregated.

Suburbs have now furthered the need to commute between locations. Before suburbs, people were naturally brought together in public spaces. When a city’s population is able to live, work and play in close quarters, the need to commute is reduced and can even be eliminated. Suburb-dwellers, though, must travel anywhere from ten to thirty minutes to go anywhere significant beside their homes. A tremendous issue of isolation exists for people living in suburbs.

A vow to never be alone.

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 22:44:16 -0700

When I get home, my roommates are typically talking about such varied topics as ultimate fighting, computer programming, and escapades I can’t particularly disclose in public.

This is something I spent the first 18 years of my life without.

I’m about to graduate from Northern Arizona University. My parents and American society in general told me that I needed a degree to get a good job. That’s probably true, but what I’ve gained the most from this college experience is not an education. It’s social conditioning.

Reminiscing: Middle School Book Drive (2002)

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 20:54:20 -0700

Prior to high school, I was a bona-fide overachiever. This included a duty as president of my middle school’s National Junior Honor Society. During my 8th grade year, we ran a book drive for the elementary school nearest ours, one I believe was deemed an “at-risk” school under the No Child Left Behind Act. Our initial goal of collecting 1,000 children’s books was shattered with a final count somewhere around 4,500 books. Here is the news report highlighting the event, which aired around December 15, 2002. (Warning: My elocution and sweater-belt are completely terrible.)

Sedona Sky Drive

Thu, 30 Dec 2010 21:16:33 -0700


Project Meta Camera: Canon Rebel T2i Editor: Premiere Pro CS5

“Sedona Sky Drive” is a video that I recorded while driving from Sedona to Flagstaff, Ariz. on highway 89A. A rising trend on the internet is taking driving videos like this one and mirroring the top half of the frame on the bottom. This simple transformation eliminates the road, for the most part, and makes the visuals surreal beyond belief. The original inspiration for this video came from “Tokoyo Sky Drive”

Rock-A-Hoola Water Park - Abandoned

Thu, 30 Dec 2010 21:14:47 -0700

I always enjoy exploring abandoned locales, and Rock-A-Hoola is no exception. This abandoned water park is located along the I-15 in southern California. I believe the location (i.e. the middle of nowhere) is the reason why this and the accompanying master-planned resort community went under in less than a decade of operation. As with many abandoned sites, it’s slightly depressing to think about what it was like before it was left to rot - the happy visitors playing in these pools, children splashing and laughing just as I did at Wet-N-Wild in Las Vegas. Be sure to check out the promotional video for the park below.

Click to enter gallery.

Collection: Digital Photography and Workflow

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 17:07:18 -0700

Over the summer, I purchased my first digital SLR, a Canon T2i. It was quite the transition for me since most of my photographic career leading up to this semester has been film-based. Overall, I’m happy with the transition. Two classes have forced me to take more pictures; here are some of my favorite shots; not all of which were taken specifically for class.

(Click the image above to launch gallery.)

When Everything Falls Apart

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:09:58 -0700

There’s hardly anything like the emotion of a girl who just heard her father is dead.

Vance White’s eyes. Somewhat related. (One of the few photos I have access to since my computer is out of service.)

What should we hold dear? Some things? Everything? Nothing? Most people won’t live to see the age of 100. Material possessions come and go for a myriad of reasons. And the Earth? Check back in 5 billion years.

Thoughts on Perspective

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 22:22:46 -0700

‘You won’t last six months in this town.’ - Anonymous

If you’re sensible, you take an indirect hint from the broke fuckers who spend half their lives wasting away at the blackjack table, pounding back cigarette after drink after sorrow.

“It’s always like this,” The stranger across the table from me says after yet another losing hand.

I was in the same boat as him, walking away from the cards with 2/3 fewer chips than I started with. Thankfully, the $60 I used to bet with all came from video poker winnings from earlier. No matter what, I told myself, I’m leaving here $20 up.

Greed got the best of me that night. Though ending the night with a profit, it was much less than it could have been. After hitting two four of a kinds on video poker, I had turned my initial $40 into $150 for $110 profit. Half an hour and two more free beers, and that dropped to $60 profit, and I cashed out. It was 4 a.m., and this is when I tried to sleep and couldn’t. So I tried my luck at blackjack at 6 in the morning. On a Sunday. Though I lost winnings, I convinced the pit boss to comp me breakfast.

There are two ways to look at this situation I put myself in. Either I could have won more, got greedy and lost, or I simply won $20, free food and drinks, and a night out. All of this seems to relate back to a concept I recently read about called the anchoring effect.

Mixset - "21"

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 21:39:43 -0700

For the first time in a long while, I’ve recorded a DJ mixset, and named after turning 21 in 2010. The original concept for this mix was to have 21 tracks to represent my 21st birthday, but that seemed a bit overkill. I was also trying to work some hip-hop into it, but that didn’t work either. In the end, I recorded an improvised, electro house set that’s 10 tracks and 40 minutes long. It’s great to dance to, and it includes some of my favorite electro tracks of the past year. (And only two of them are popular tracks, which is lower than average for my mixes.)

BT Spins in Vegas; Ravers _____ in Phoenix

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 04:11:25 -0700

Standing in this massive line was ridiculous, I thought. $45 gets me this? But after a few directions and the flash of a wristband, I was in.

BT, and his vocal accompaniment JES, performed at Rain Nightclub at the Palms Resort and Casino Saturday night, and it was a hell of a show.

You’re gonna have to trust me - this is BT.

Granted, this was my first nightclub experience, so it might as well have been all the same as any other club. But what made this particular venue attractive on this particular night was the man himself, BT.

A crooked hallway plastered in tiny mirrors beings me in to the club. The place is pounding with music. And people.

You have to shove past everyone in a club like this, but they’re all attractive, so I guess it doesn’t matter. Shoving past people for five minutes got me to a relatively uncrowded bar.

“What’s strong and cheap?” I asked the bartender after observing a guy pay $7 for a cheap beer. He gave me a double rum and coke for $13.

Waiting for the first DJ to finish, I stood on the upper balcony next to people I couldn’t hear. I watched as security guards ushered people, cleaned up drinks, etc. The dance floor was packed, and there was no telling where I’d end up if I tried to enter it. Best keep my distance.

Salton City - Environmental, Economical Disaster Remnants

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 20:45:47 -0700

Salton City, Calif. is a failed resort city established in the late 1950s. Roads were constructed, ammenities were built, but no one bought houses in the master-planned community. The death of the city came when the corporation that started the venture, the Holly Sugar Corp., supposedly bailed on the project when it didn’t seem profitable enough. Combined with rising salt levels in the sea and a pair of tropical storms hitting the area, the dream of building a vacation lifestyle community in the stark heat of the Imperial Valley was shattered.

Today, driven to the Sea by low prices and a slumping economy, some have built small trailer homes on land that was supposed to be reserved for pristine vacation houses. The poor condition of the sea water has led to an environmental downfall, which makes the desire to live in such an area questionable.

Several times I read about Salton City, Calif. online and wanted to take a visit. Recently, I was able to. The sights and smells were incredible and disgusting: paltry life and a wasted environment. The sand isn’t made of rocks. It’s made of weathered and broken-down fish skeletons. This environmental damage has been reoccurring for decades.

Photo Blog: Southern California, Summer 2010

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 23:43:53 -0700

After finishing work with the NHTV Breda workshops, I traveled from Flagstaff to Las Vegas, and then, after a week, to southern California to see my dad, who moved to the city of Brea for a new job. The following pictures were taking along this trip. After my visit in California, I’ll be traveling to Phoenix to see a few friends.

A rollover accident on the I-15 on the way to California. This was before first responders arrived, and there were people on top of the car trying to get people out of the overturned car.

Things I'm Doing

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 11:05:33 -0700

Spreading myself too thin.

But that’s OK, because I take pride and joy in all of the work I do. Sometimes, I feel like I’m not doing enough work, to which my close friends call me insane for thinking. Here’s what I’ve been doing with my time aside from blogging here.

(Note: I normally don’t do this whole ‘‘Sorry for all the lack of updating omglol" because I know no one cares about how infrequently I update or every little thing I’m doing with my life, but I felt compelled.)

Low clouds and remnant snow define this winter landscape of NAU’s central campus.

HD Video: Starflex Brownie w/ Flash Bulb

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 19:45:36 -0700


Project Meta Cameras: Canon XH-A1 (x2) Editor: Final Cut 7

For years, my family had this camera in their repertoire of antiques for years, and, for a while, I thought it was obsolete. Some might consider it so, but you can still buy the 127 film it accepts, load it, and shoot with it.

At a thrift store in Flagstaff, I found a giant flash pack and reflector that resembled the smaller one that came with the camera. The pack also included 7 flash bulbs, ones that I had never found or seen before. For $2, I had to have it.

This is an HD video of the flash bulb going off. They’re one time use only, so I figured documenting the technology was more worthwhile than using it for its intended purpose.

You can find these GE #5 flash-type bulbs online for about a buck a piece on eBay.

Starflex Brownie w/ Flash Bulb from Kyle Anderson on Vimeo.

NAU Donates $30K to Spike Lee's Checking Account

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:55:30 -0700

Promo poster for NAU’s Spike Lee event.

Who was this Spike Lee guy, anyway?

I had no idea who this famous black film director was until NAU decided to hire him to speak on January 27th. The university was aflutter, and everyone was waiting in anticipation for his appearance, one the university reportedly spent $30 thousand to make happen. A Spike Lee film festival was scheduled for the weekend before his Wednesday night talk, but excessive snow on the library’s roof canceled the screenings. One of my classes required me to view at least two of those screenings, so instead of watching “Do the Right Thing” (1989) and “She’s Gotta Have It” (1986), I was forced into watching both parts (four acts) of “When the Levees Broke,” (2006) the only Spike Lee film that was screened before his talk.

Let's Make A Reality - TV Game Show Experience

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 18:24:32 -0700

In the rotting carcass that is the Tropicana Hotel and Casino’s convention center, a television studio was constructed, and in the last two and a half months, 98 episodes of TV’s newest game show have been taped in it.

The locale for CBS’s debut game show, “Let’s Make A Deal” with Wayne Brady, happens to be a 15 minute drive from my house. I invited my mother, who had been on the original “Let’s Make A Deal” in the ’70s, and my grandmother to a taping, one this writer, costumed in a size 18W purple dress and a necktie made of fake pearls, couldn’t take pictures of. Regardless, I figured it’d be a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon while I’m home for winter break.

Cultural Project: Found Bookmarks

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:54:20 -0700

About 150 things people left in donated books, scanned and sorted: bookmarks, receipts, photos, tickets, handwriting.

Raking the Leaves

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:44:18 -0700

There was something nostalgic, even romantic, about raking the leaves. Maybe it was the fact that I hadn’t done it in years. It being raking leaves.

This was not a romance story. It was an everyday chore prescribed to me by my mother to be completed after she returned from shopping.

Leaves of this size and structure were easy to rake. I can remember raking so much and gathering so little. That was when I was much younger; a time before college.

Have a Good Summer

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 23:50:17 -0700

The cover of my 8th grade yearbook. Soooooo 2000s.

Last night, I ran into two girls who both went to my middle school, and we started talking about teachers and weird people we remember from 8th grade. Today, I had a peek at the yearbook from that grade, and the signatures I had accrued 7 years ago popped out at me. Many girls wrote as if I was their lover (some meant it), a lot of guys wrote lame jokes and weird stuff, and some had nothing better to say than, “Have a great summer.”

Why Lie?

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 00:18:38 -0700

During our rompings in Vegas, Tekel and I encountered a man with a sign that read, “Why Lie? Need Beer!!!”

Photo by Mene Tekel

We gave him a dollar and suggested anything but Miller. He said no problem; he was gonna get weed anyway.

First Attempts with Holga 120N, Horseman Accordion & Rusty Rollbox

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:52:41 -0700

Preface: About a month ago, I borrowed a Holga 120N from my roommate on a whim. The assignment for my photo class was to emulate a famous photographer, and the guy I chose had a great set of Holga pictures on his website. I rushed to the local photo store and bought two rolls of black and white 120 film. I asked the clerk, “So, is this film in a canister like 35mm?” The old man behind me chuckled at my inexperience. They patiently explained how 120 worked, and I was instantly fascinated.

Last weekend after Thanksgiving, I decided to pick at the antique cameras my family had acquired over the years and had been sitting on a bookshelf collecting dust. For the longest time, I just assumed that the film for those cameras didn’t exist. But when I inspected them, lo and behold, most of them took 120. The ones that didn’t could be easily modified to fit 120 or 35mm. So I went on a shoot near the airport in Las Vegas. Admittedly, these frames are far from perfect, and I seriously screwed up the Horseman pictures.

Holga:

Unearthed: The 3rd Grade Thank You Card

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 14:32:00 -0700

During my senior year of high school, an organization approached our student council with a community service opportunity which involved teaching students at at-risk elementary schools basic life lessons, like how to take care of pets and be nice to people. The senior class president, Krit, and I were assigned to a 3rd grade class. We had lots of fun driving down the street once a week to basically play with a class of almost 40 kids after our school day ended.

djSquared - Lounge

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:41:58 -0700

During the last month of the summer, I had my new-used speakers set up in my room along with a DJ mixer and EQ/amp rack. For a while, I had been listening to compilations called “After Dark” and each one had a different globally-known city in the title. They were cheap, but worth it. I came to find out the genre was called Deep House, and I suddenly wanted to make a similar mix. What resulted was “Lounge,” a short, 32 minute Deep House mix that’s average but good background music.

Lost Power Means More Fellowship

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:34:43 -0700

I was about to order some delicious Greek food at Taverna grill. Drinks were served, and someone was going to pay for my meal. It was going to be a good night.

The lights got suddenly brighter, flickered, and a bunch of lights I hadn’t even known existed turned on, leaving the once highly-decorated and classy dining room with an eerie glow. Temporary power outage, it seemed. Several minutes pass, and two others join our party. One of them says it’s crazy outside. Half of the town lost power, according to what he saw.

New Photo Book: Film

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:59:55 -0700

Two weeks ago, I received my first photo book. I spent a good chunk of an evening sifting through my film library and selecting the best frames for this class assignment turned personal project. What resulted from that night is a 38 page, 7" by 7" book with my best film shots from the last year and a few paragraphs stolen from blogs about my work.

You can preview the book on Blurb. If you would like to order a copy, and support my nasty habit of buying too much film and photo supplies, cost is $20 plus shipping.

Interview on NAU Insights

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:53:46 -0700

About a month ago, I was interviewed by Patrick Walker for NAU’s EMF 324 and EMF 226 class’ pseudo-real show, NAU Insights. Each interview is conducted by a student learning how to interview, and the studio is run by students learning how to run a studio. Recipe for disaster? Not quite.

In the following video, Patrick interviews me about student media at NAU. Fun fact: I was asked to make the lower third graphic for the program and threw it together during lunch.

Just My Luck

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:35:12 -0700

My Friday was all planned out. Three hours of photo printing and matting in the morning. Lunch. Teaching people how to do stuff. Quizzes and exams. A freelance project in its final stages. It was solid and going to put me ahead of schedule.

But then there’s the idea of covering a funeral for a fallen fire fighter. They ask who can shoot it, no one responds. They look at me, I say “previous plans.” So one of the most emotional stories of the year is slated to go untold by us. Bullshit.

Availble for house parties. On the cheap.

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:40:42 -0700

Want kickin’ tunes at your next house party? Specializing in electronic music, djSquared has been acclaimed to throw down beats that even your mother will dance to.

Rates start as low as fifty bucks.

Lifetime Achievement Award

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 22:41:52 -0600

Courtesy: Nate ‘Igor’ Smith, Photographer.

For some it was a forgotten past-time - the discipline of being able to eat massive amounts of hotdogs in one minute. For me, it was life. There had to be a way to break the current record of 68 dogs per minute. I was determined.

Like anyone, I failed a number of times. No one could eat that much on the first try. So I learned from practice, and though the failures discouraged and depressed me, I kept on trying. That Joey Chestnut has nothing on me.

The Black and White

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:58:49 -0600

There are an alarming number of people who come to college and become completely disinterested with the amount of resources and information available to them. Going to every class is a chore rather than an experience. Instead of being excited, some choose to be bored. They feel like there is something better they could be doing. Well, I wish to assure them there isn’t.

Imagine life without having obligations to attend class and complete assignments. Most people would probably do what I tended to do over the summer when I had such a schedule: nothing. There was no compelling reason for me to do anything with my time. Despite vowing to not waste this summer, great though it was, I failed in that regard.

Golden Years

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 05:23:08 -0600

I can feel myself aging.

The same slippers go on the same feet every morning. It’s 6:30am, the only time I can wake up anymore.

I pour the same cup of coffee as yesterday and the day before. “Hello, Coffee-mate.”

What was I to do today? The sun was rising. The colorful but boring rays it cast onto the breakfast table didn’t matter. The rose bushes lining my backyard, once perfected by the old woman, didn’t matter. This shitty Folgers didn’t matter.

Montezuma's Well - Fisheye

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 01:35:15 -0700

Preface: During the summer of 2009, I worked as a lab assistant for the Breda Workshops, a couple of three week workshops wherein students from the Netherlands come to NAU to learn how to write, shoot, edit and produce magazine style package pieces and a 20 minute live shows. One week is dedicated to shooting, and one of the shoots I went on was at Montezuma’s Well in the Verde Valley, Ariz. I decided to bring along a friend’s Lomo Fisheye camera.

Non-Abusive Partying Brings Out the Best

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:09:16 -0700

Friday night was adventure night. It involved wandering around Flagstaff south of the tracks, party hopping with Tekel.

First was Karaoke at Granny’s Closet. The DJ has a pedo smile and DSLR camera which he only used to take pictures of the hottest girls (namely the Dutch) singing and dancing to his pirated music, probably for his “website.” The bar kicked everyone under 21 out around 12:15 and I never got to sing “Happy Together,” by The Turtles. Screw it, we said, and headed back to my car to grab another SoBe before going to the next party.

Ass Kicking

Mon, 11 May 2009 12:00:18 -0700

I’m writing this from atop a mound of dirt on the side of the I-215 beltway overlooking the Las Vegas valley, brightly lit as always, and accompanied by a nearly full moon. I’m listening to BT’s This Binary Universe, and remembering the tranquil swim I took at dusk under a purple and orange sky. Tonight is simply beautiful.

By the end of my sophomore year in high school, I was almost ready to leave A-Tech because I was so overwhelmed with work. Retrospectively, that year was the hardest for me in high school. I had yet to make a lot of friends, and school work was excessive.

djSquared - Splatters of Pink

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:14:22 -0600

Splatters of Pink - djSquared Listen to the full set and read about the meaning behind the mix…

Splatters of Pink

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:33:59 -0700

We worked for a consumer electronics store. I hated my job, stocking overpriced cables on perfectly aligned shelves. At least it paid decently. Two co-workers were on their break, wandering the symmetrical aisles in sheer boredom, wishing they could rip off the red polos and tight black pants.

This was all minutes after I left my last world, one of bliss and sensual pleasure.

“Check out these digital cameras,” said one co-worker. “They’re the cheapest I could find, including clearance. Sixty bucks.”

Film Photography - Superior Medium

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:27:42 -0700

Why film is the superior medium: 24 exposures a roll, and every frame has to be worth 20¢.

Ellen Spiro at NAU - Review

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 00:39:04 -0600

Documentary filmmaker Ellen Spiro spoke at NAU’s Cline Library last week on Thursday, succeeding two screenings of her latest film, Body of War, a story about an Iraq veteran who returned home just one week after deployment with a bullet in his back that paralyzed him from the chest down.

Spiro spent the two hour talk letting clips of her other documentaries speak for themselves. The clips and her answers during the Q and A session revealed a lot about her as a person and a documentarian.

Life Changing Music

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 10:16:40 -0700

This last month has had the tallest loops steepest drops ever recorded. Emotionally speaking, my world has never been shaken around so much. Can I sue for whiplash?

Music. It sets moods. I find that when I’m depressed, I’ll listen to something like Sarah McLachlan’s Afterglow or Delirium’s song “Just a Dream.” Maybe I want to rage… I have heavy dance beats mixed together by PJ Produkt called “Release.” Nostalgic trip? Give me any Newsboys album or Intuition by DJ Encore. All of these push specific emotions through me. But no album has ever pulled emotions out like this one.