The Spiral: Rob's posts [part 5]
February 15th, 2006: Questions for Rob Sheridan
>^^^
good one becizzle!
This is a lame one (not Rob-specific -sorry!-) but I don't know who to ask, and it never came up in chat last night:
Will fans still be allowed to take pictures at the shows this tour?
It seems to depend on how - for the lack of a better phrase - weird about it each individual venue gets. For example, I noticed a sign in tonight's venue saying that cameras were okay. Some don't mind little digital or disposable cameras, but will stop you if you have a "professional-looking" camera. If you have a small camera, I think you're fine to bring it - you could call the venue to make absolutely sure.
February 15th, 2006: Questions for Rob Sheridan
>What city was the b/w photo taken that is in this book and currently posted on MySpace?
I'm actually not sure. I'd have to dig through all my photos, I don't remember off-hand.
February 15th, 2006: Questions for Rob Sheridan
>Trent/Rob, which do you like more: Katamari Damacy or We Love Katamari?
The original will always have a special place in my heart, because you can never recreate that initial reaction of "What... the fuck... is this game?" Although the sequel is every bit as fun and we've been playing it a lot.
February 15th, 2006: Questions for Rob Sheridan
>What’s up with all the science references? I have a bio/chem. Degree and all I visualize on most of the club lithos are microorganisms, ex. Birmingham_uk resembles what I see under the microscope; with purple die of course….but it’s not just that, it’s a lot of different visuals I notice from nin. From the trio of videos that were presented on this years tour that showed a prime example of natural selection. Is it me or do you and tr watch a lot of the discovery channel? Are your visuals related to science/nature in anyway?
There have been a lot of visual inspirations from the scientific world. I won't get into it too much, because I think the With Teeth book we're working on will touch on all of this. But there are a lot of scientific patterns in the various With Teeth artwork, and Andrea Giaccobe's film for Eraser has a heavy theme of finding patterns in nature, which I think ties in really nicely. The relationship of organic and digital has always been a theme with NIN, and I think a lot of things in science evoke that in really interesting ways.
February 15th, 2006: Questions for Rob Sheridan
>How about San Diego???
Just to clarify something for fans in general - There is a common misconception that Trent and/or the band has anything at all to do with the tour routing. Trent doesn't pick tour dates, it's done by a booking agency that specializing in that sort of thing. I always see questions submitted to Trent like "Hey man, do you have something against (insert city)?? What the fuck, why don't you ever play here??" Picking which cities to go to isn't Trent's job. It's based on routing, venue availabilities, promoters, money, etc - there are a million factors. Trent of course has input in broad strokes (i.e. "I think we should tour South America this year"), but the specific cities are predominately handled by a whole separate entity - which is the way all major bands operate.
February 15th, 2006: Questions for Rob Sheridan
>Your photography skills are fucking amazing. Everytime I look at them I am in awe. So Rob, do you have photo's that are non-nin related? Photos of other bands or any artistic photos you have taken for profit or pleasure? The composition of your photos are great so just wondering if you have any other work you wouldn't mind showing.
Thanks. I don't really have a lot of non-NIN stuff, especially online. The only thing that comes to mind that is fairly recent and already on the internet is a bunch of touristy photos I took when we were in Europe last year: http://www.demonbaby.com/pics/europe/. It's mostly a bunch of spooky religious statues, cuz I'm goth like that.
One of these days I'm going to finish an actual portfolio website for myself. Too bad some asshole with the same name as me owns robsheridan.com and hasn't done shit with it for like five years. Dick.
February 16th, 2006: Questions for Rob Sheridan
>Aside from photos, web work, and generally keeping us updated as well as company here on The Spiral, what else do you do?
Lately I've been working non-stop with the show's lighting director, fine-tuning all of the visual elements for the show. Mostly little things that no one would ever notice, but we notice them. Although, there are a couple major pieces of the set in terms of visuals that still need a good deal of refinement. Usually the lighting director and his video guy put stuff together, and then I help to refine them based on Trent's input. Although in the case of a couple songs - TLBTB and BYIT, for example - it was pretty much put together entirely by Trent and me. In addition to stuff for the live show, I do promos/album art, advertisements, TV commercial shit, whatever video projects might come up, I help with merchandise, I give feedback and ideas on various things, and I head up a number of major projects, like the Closure DVD (no, I don't know what the release status of that is), and some other big things that are in the works. Sometimes there are nice lulls in activity and I have some free time, but when it rains it pours. Like right now.
>Are you going deaf from being so close to the band (meaning speakers) while taking pictures during their shows or do you wear earplugs?
I am really curious to know the answer to the last question because I can't hear properly for days after attending a show and I don't wear earplugs, though I know I probably should.
I think I am going deaf. I never wear earplugs, because somehow the sound never really bothers me. Which is probably a bad sign.
February 16th, 2006: Tour Photos and Video
Green Bay:
February 16th, 2006: Tour Photos and Video
More Green Bay:
February 17th, 2006: Questions for Rob Sheridan
>I'm not sure if this would involve you at all, Rob, but is there any chance of the preshow music winding up as an iPod playlist? Or even just a "stuff Rob likes" list somewhere?
The pre-show music is all Trent. I think he posted a playlist somewhere here on The Spiral...
>What do you use as source images for the abstractions in the With_Teeth art?
Oh, all sorts of things. It's really more about the process. Broken scanners, compression artifacts, and video interlacing have all been incorporated at some point or another. Some parts of the lyric poster were done by scanning weird MPEG movies (playing in slow motion) off of a PSP screen, which was interesting because the image was changing as it was being scanned.
>When you are messing with lighting setups, how is this done? How much can be designed by computer (maybe simulated?) and how much actually has to be done in physical space?
I don't do any lighting programming, that's all handled by Martin Phillips, our lighting director, and our operator, Alistair Watson. There's an interview with Martin here if you're interested in that sort of stuff. My role is providing Martin with video content to use on the various screens, and ideas for visual themes in the songs. It's all created in the computer, but you can never really tell how well things are going to work until you get them up on those screens and see it live. That's when you realize "fuck, I need to change this, this, and this," and it's back to the drawing board. Makes for a slow process.
>I just thought I'd also mention that the little details ARE noticed. Probably not by everyone, but your work and the tour in general hold up incredibly well to the close scrutiny of fans, a great deal of whom are actually involved in the arts and have pretty high standards. (Think of that the next time you are fucking with some tiny detail for the twentieth time, gnashing teeth and rending garments and wondering if it matters anyway.)
Thanks dude.
February 17th, 2006: Spiral Tour Videos [updated 11_20_05]
I'm going to unstick this thread because when the missing Spiral videos are eventually posted, they'll just go straight to The Spiral's media page. At that point, you can discuss them in this thread if you'd like. If you have video clips of your own you'd like to share, do so in the Tour Pics/Video thread. Thanks.
February 18th, 2006: Tour Photos and Video
Des Moines:
February 18th, 2006: Tour Photos and Video
More Des Moines:
February 18th, 2006: Tour Photos and Video
Fucking great show last night in Lincoln, NE:
February 18th, 2006: Tour Photos and Video
More Lincoln:
February 19th, 2006: [NIN.COM] - New pics, TR posts, other updates, etc.
>What makes that pic awesome is you cant see where hes jumping from....very cool! :)
Yes you can. Amazingly, he's jumping from atop Alessandro's keyboard. That HAS to hurt when he lands!
February 19th, 2006: Questions for Rob Sheridan
>Nope. We have a limit on sub-forums, and we've reached that.
We have a limit on sub-forums? For fuck's sake...
February 22nd, 2006: Tour Photos and Video
Kansas City:
February 22nd, 2006: Tour Photos and Video
More KC:
February 22nd, 2006: Tour Photos and Video
Grand Rapids:
February 22nd, 2006: Rare NIN songs that you have...
Just because I see SO many questions sent to Trent about it, I feel I should chime in with:
"Angel" and "The Last Inch" are NOT NIN at all. I always see them on Limewire and shit labeled as NIN. Incredibly annoying.
I haven't heard "Digital" in years, I can't remember if it's from Quake or if it's complete bullshit. But put it this way - if it's NOT one of the tracks on the Quake soundtrack, then it's not NIN at all (and either way someone made up the name "Digital").
The "Metal" remix is not official. Neither is "My Favorite Dreams Are Nightmares" or the "Drum & Bass" Warm Place remix. Another one I always see on Limewire is labeled "NIN & Enigma - Sadness (Violent Mix)." Whatever the fuck that is, it's not NIN.
I heard that ol' rascal Meathead was responsible for the Zelda theme being credited to NIN - regardless, it's definitely not NIN.
Darjis - where did "One" come from?
February 22nd, 2006: Rare NIN songs that you have...
>I actually own an Italian NIN Import (yeah I know... import) called painful convictions that is a double disk. Disk one containing demos of PHM era tracks and disk two is the entire woodstock 94 set. Some of the PHM demos are actually VERY good. The woodstock set on the other hand sounds like shit. Out of curiosity does anyone else own this? Just trying to gauge how rare it is.
I remember that one - it was a basically a rip-off of the Purest Feeling boot with the Woodstock disc tacked on. I remember it being a popular bootleg back in the day, with decent-looking artwork. It's probably rare these days, though.
February 22nd, 2006: Rare NIN songs that you have...
>let's not talk about option 30....
rob, have you any idea where the song "one" would be from?
What does it sound like? The name is really familiar. I think the only difference on the cassette version is the Please appendage. Might it be one of the bits of music hidden in the Things Falling Apart website?
February 24th, 2006: Tour Photos and Video
Holy Toledo:
February 24th, 2006: Tour Photos and Video
More Toledo:
