Extraordinary People: Ari Evans

This section is new to this blog. Every few weeks I plan to create a post that pertains to a specific person that I have randomly met over the last year or so that is 'worth knowing'.

The first person featured on this blog is Ari Evans. I met Ari Evans not too long ago at Webster Hall in NYC. We were both at Webster to see one Justice, a rather large name in the electronic music world. We happened to bump into each other early in the night and began talking. The relationship has held ever since. We have run into each other several other times at various different shows. The biggest question is: What makes Ari so interesting?

Over  the  time  that  I  met  Ari,  he  has  worked  with  several  other friends  to  create  one  of  the  more  successful  electronic  music  blogs found on the Internet today: Less  Than  Three. The  blog  has  been  rapidly  growing  and  gaining  recognition  in  the  electronic  music  world. Being  a  film  student  striving  to  break  into  the  media  world,  Ari's success  intrigued  me  and  I felt  that  everyone  could  learn  from  his experiences.  I  decided  to  ask  Ari  to  answer  several  questions  about his  blog  and  his  life.

What do you do outside of Less Than 3?

Ari: I'm currently attending Stanford University going for a master's in management science and engineering with a concentration in entrepreneurship. Between school and LT3,  most of my time is occupied, but when I do get some free time I travel and enjoy getting to know the world better through unique experiences. I think when you can see the world through other perspectives, you gain the ability to understand it in a whole new way. 

How did Less Than 3 get started?

Ari: The initial conception was back in February of this year, when we first came up with the name. It was actually a good friend of mine who had suggested using LessThan3 as the name for a DJ group. When I heard the name I immediately thought it should be used for something bigger, so I got to brainstorming, and what we have now is at least one or two evolutions on the original concept. The work to get here now has been pretty substantial, but it has been really enjoyable. Mostly due to the team that is behind it. It's truly composed of an all-star group of individuals who share energy and inspiration to push forward and realize our dreams.

What about electronic music caused you to base a blog around it?

Ari: My favorite part of EDM culture are the vibes. A vibe is a difficult thing to describe, but has to do with the feeling and impression you get from an experience and group of people-- the emotions that are invoked by the environment. In my experience, dance music culture attracts a forward-thinking, open minded group of individuals -- The kind of environment where I'm very likely to form strong friendships with people. In fact, many of my best friends were found at these kinds of events. (This is where Ari and I met).

There were several reasons why I started the site, but there is one simple idea that has pushed the whole thing forward. My whole life I have seen how easy it is to avoid being exposed to what is out there. It's not just about music, really--in general, your exposure to various kinds of experiences gives you more chances. More chances to explore and thus more chances to fall in love with something. And aren't we all looking for something to fall in love with? If happiness is what we're all searching for as humans (my personal belief), then we should do what we can to attain it. Sadly; however, humans are lazy. Since entropy rules, and it's too easy to just go about our lives, we just end up getting sucked into routine and monotony. LessThan3 is an opportunity for me and my team to provide a totally simple way for people to get pulled into this incredible life stream of creativity and wonder. So that's really what it's all about--helping people find something to fall in love with, just like I have.


How has Less Than 3 grown since its creation?
The site has been seeing some extremely healthy growth, having grown by 50%+ (traffic-wise) every 30 days. We've redesigned the site once, adding the persistent player at the bottom of the page, and we've added special new articles and features to the site which have provided the community with a way to get more involved as we grow. We're constantly working on new methods to increase our reach and exposure, but the great thing is that since people love our product, they freely and avidly promote it themselves. That's exactly what I wanted to have happen. 

How have you & Less Than 3 found success?

Ari: Finding success is all about networking and determination. I seek advice from colleagues, mentors, and friends all the time. The goal for me is to build something that people really love using. The only way to do that is to talk to the users to tweak things to their liking. The main thing that has separated us from the competition thus far, has been our strong branding, professionalism, and attention to detail. Artists and their PR agencies willingly do business with us because they feel and see the benefits of our collaboration. For example, our interview pages put the spotlight on artists and show to be the perfect piece of media to blast out through social media networks. From there everything is just a huge snowball as more artists see us as an emerging authoritative source for Electronic Dance Music(EDM) in the US.

What do you see for the future of Less Than 3?

Ari: My team and I have evaluated many areas of the music industry that are ripe for entrepreneurial attention. We have some pretty game-changing ideas that are currently in development. Our goal is to build a fun, useful, and engaging tool that can help artists get exposure and help users find new music and connect with each other. To give you a sneak peak, we plan on adding some big personalization features to the site and finding alternate forms of compensation models for artists out there. Stay tuned!

Do you have any advice for those who are trying to break into the media/design world?

Ari:The most important aspect is making sure you define your brand carefully, decide how it is you want to be perceived to your users, and what your core competencies will be--that is, what it is you are really good at. Be prepared to try a variety of promotional techniques and make sure to utilize the social networking edge that we now have to help you get as much exposure as possible. Remember that people are more likely to spread the word about something that they enjoy and think their friends would also enjoy. So before you start promoting anything, make sure your product is as solid as it can be. Or at least solid enough to start spreading it around.

Ari's story is truly great and inspiring. It shows that if you are truly passionate. talented, and determined anything is possible. Ari shared a great amount of knowledge and I thank him for that. Head over to http://lessthan3.com/ and see what Ari has helped create. Keep your eyes and mind open, and continued to strive toward your passion.

Self Presentation

Being a creative person I'm constantly exploring different concepts and ideas about the world around me. Trying to figure out my place in the world and the overall goals of my time here on Earth. From time to time, I turn this idea in on myself, expressing who I am and exploring the the ways I can contort my human figure to create art. Over the past few months I have compiled a few different self portraits, all with different concepts.

Two of the self portraits began with this picture:

Film Still
The concept of my first self portrait was to re-create a film still. This was inspired by the work of Cindy Sherman. For more information on Cindy Sherman's work, refer to my previous blog post. For this film still, I started with an image from Rawshon Marshall Thurber's comedy, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. The image came from the scene where Chuck Norris made his cameo:

My goal for this project was to completely re-create the film still, inserting myself into the scene. The first step was to take to the above picture. After this I needed to make myself resemble Chuck Norris as much as possible. I started by darkening my hair and the overall picture to match that of the film still.
Once this one done, I needed to give myself a beard. Through several brush alterations and color corrections, I was able to create a brush tool that very much resembled facial hair. I further tweaked the beard until I got it the way I wanted.

The next and most difficult step was creating the background. The process consisted of countless hours of scouring the Internet for similar background and foreground images (pepsi cup, people in the background, the other judges shoulder, etc.). Some I was forced to recreate myself in photoshop (the desk and name tag). I couldn't find some of the background materials, so I was forced to recreate the image, take a picture, balance the color levels, and place it into the background (the man on the far right). Finally, after countless hours of photo taking, google searching, and photoshop filters, I came away with a relatively close final product:

EXPERIMENTAL SELF PORTRAIT
For the second portrait, I took the same starting image of myself and altered it in a way that would give the image a completely different emotion than the film still. My film still recreation has a humorous, jovial feel, making it very lighthearted and funny.
I set out to create a very bizarre, unrealistic, and dark photograph. At first, the photograph start as pure experimentation. I played with filters, darkened the image, and attempted to change my facial expression.   This resulted in many failed attempts. My results were not meeting the emotion that I was attempting to create.

I changed my initial approach and began to focus on the parts of the photograph that jumped out the most. These parts were my right arm, eyes, and background. I decided to completely remove the background and replace it with a dark color and texture. In order to give it a darker feeling, I pulled out the bright whites in my eyes. After this, the only thing that drew the viewers eyes straight to it was my hand giving the thumbs up. I chose to copy this piece of the image and recreate it through out the image. This gave the image a surreal, bizarre feeling, while pulling attention away from the one hand since the piece was repeated through the overall image. My final product is below:

OTHER SELF PORTRAITS
Over time I have compiled a descent amount of photographs of myself, many of which I just don't enjoy to look at; however, there are a few that I took recently that I have really enjoyed. These photos hold great composition, great color, and really pull an emotion from the viewer. The two photographs are very different in their use of colors: one very dark, and the other very bright and slightly overexposed. I felt like both photographs were worth sharing.

Sprocket Rocket

Bringing back the old and nostalgic looks of previous years has been a concept that has worked in design for some time. The Lomography Sprocket Rocket is no exception, but goes far behind it's retro body. The camera shoots on 35mm, but in a way that no camera has before. The Sprocket Rocket uses the entire height of the roll, actually using the area of the film where the sprocket holes are. This allows you to take extremely wide photos that you can't accomplish in any other way. The camera also allows you to rewind the film in the camera and take multiple exposures.

The Sprocket Rocket retails at $89 and cann be picked up here. It's a great addition to any photography arsenal.