MUSIC VIDEO: "This Too Shall Pass" by OK Go - RGM version

I have written about Rube Goldberg in Art and Advertising before so when I came across this video I had to post it before going to sleep. And its been a LONG day of Armory Show events (more on that tomorrow). They did a really nice Rube Goldburg with lots of references to popular versions as well as fun reveals and effects - I wonder how many takes they did to get this? enjoy...

Directed by James Frost, OK Go and Syyn Labs. Produced by Shirley Moyers. The official video for the recorded version of "This Too Shall Pass" off of the album "Of the Blue Colour of the Sky". The video was filmed in a two story warehouse, in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. The "machine" was designed and built by the band, along with members of Syyn Labs over the course of several months.

Logorama

This great animated piece from French design studio, H5 is one of the best examples of fair use of copyrighted matearial I have seen in some time.

Via Amy Stein Photo via Next Nature.

Music Video of the Month: "Silvia" by Miike Snow

I'm loving this newish video from the Swedish band, Miike Snow. Directed by Marcus Söderlund www.marcussoderlund.se Cinematography By Linus Eklund www.linuseklund.se

The Rube Goldberg of Art and Advertising.

Rube Goldberg born in 1883 and lived through December, 1970 and his influence is still being absorbed and celebrated today. A few days ago I came across this advert for Google's Chrome browser made in the UK. I'm really digging their creativity and use of different angles and mediums like mercury to make their Rube Goldburg like effect look great.



Peter Fischli and David Weiss made this piece over 20 years ago based on this principle called the Way Things Go or Der Lauf der Dinge in German.



Some credit Peter Fischli and David Weiss with the inspiration for the advertisers including this famous Honda Cog ad:



There is also this popular Japanese children's show called ピタゴラ装置 pronounced Pitagora Suichi or Pythagoras Switch.



Also fun to watch is this baking of video for Google chrome:

First Openings of the Fall Art Season 2009

I hope that last week's openings are a sign of the upcoming quality of future fall openings because that would make this a exciting art season (f' a recession!).

Last Thursday SoHo was a buzz with three big openings. Davis Rhodes at Team Gallery, Kehinde Wiley at Deitch Projects on Grand Street and Tauba Auerbach at Deitch Projects's Wooster Street space.

I walked into the Davis Rhodes first not really knowing what to expect. The gallery space was fairly crowded but you could still see the artwork. Rhodes minimalist paintings heavily referenced sign advertising production as well as sculpture and minimal painting traditions. Not really very exciting for me. He made solid pain fields on vinyl material with a large shape cut from the center. Each piece was then loosely hung creating a sculptural effect. I feel like I may be the wrong person to really give these painting their fair shake but I left that gallery board - flat color felt exactly that, flat boring. I crave some thread of detail or narrative to get excited with, this just didn't work for me.

The next stop was Kehinde Wiley's new show. Barely a half block down Grand Street at Dietch's smaller space; Wiley was showing a collection of expertly produced photographs and one large painting in the front room of the gallery. These photographs add nicely to Wiley's overture of highly realistic paintings.



Each image fits his aesthetic but exists in photographic space rather then the surface of a additive painted canvas. The poses still heavily borrow from painting but the clarity of the photographic production is striking and I thought the effect created from bringing slices of the background inform of the subject created a nice dimension to the work that reminded me of painting and less of photography.

From the Press Release:

September 03, 2009 - September 26, 2009
76 Grand Street, New York

Deitch Projects is pleased to present Black Light, an exhibition of photographs by Kehinde Wiley that thrusts the black male image, captured by means of light manipulation and digital technology, into focus. This shuffle of Wiley's artistic process reveals an integral component of his studio practice rarely seen while remaining, uniquely, Kehinde Wiley portraiture.

Enlisting the technical tenor of Hype Williams' hip-hop videos from the 90's, Wiley saturates his consummately styled subjects of Fulton Street Mall pedigree- caps flipped backward, wearing gear of New York legend- in "super rapturous light". To transcendental and beatific effect, such illumination proffers a new measure of Wiley's technical abilities, so that the medium of photography propels each figure to the point before paint consumes canvas- the moment when flesh, at its three dimensional, truth-telling, reveals scars long ago enacted. Browned fingernails, questioning red-glazed eyes and voluptuously glossed, cigarette-charred lips heighten what, for some, is no longer visible: a vulnerable microcosm of our metropolis- a black light. Through the 17 photographs on display, Wiley produces an intimate study of embattled psychologies whose adherents are at once flawed and majestic, canonized and misunderstood.

The exhibition Black Light will be accompanied by, Black Light, a full-color book published by Powerhouse and will be available at Deitch Projects

Lastly I walked around the corner to the airy Wooster Street space where Tauba Auerbach was showing paintings, photography and a performance on a organ she helped create with her friend Cameron Mesirow of the band Glasser. When you enter the gallery you are greeted with several large abstract photographs. In the center of the space there is a large wood two person custom made organ called the Auerglass. Behind the organ were several lager paintings from different series she has been working on, nicely reflecting the photographic abstractions shown at the entrance of the gallery.

From the Press release:

September 03, 2009 - October 17, 2009
18 Wooster Street, New York

The collapsing of two conflicting states is the central theme of HERE AND NOW/AND NOWHERE, Tauba Auerbach's new exhibition at Deitch Projects. The artist deliberately composed the title as an anagram. The paintings, photographic works, sculpture and the musical instrument that comprise the show are all structured around the threshold between order and randomness. The philosophical conflicts explored in the work include:

The liminality, or intermediate state between two dimensionality and three dimensionality.

The past and the present.

A combination of the two: a past three-dimensional state and a present two-dimensional state.

Being HERE vs. Being THERE, and being both HERE and THERE at once.

Randomness vs. Determinism and the unpredictable order of chaos.

In the marrying of two conflicting states, the work is also about the number 2, a concept that is inherent in the remote interdependence central to the sculptural works in the exhibition.

There are five bodies of work represented in the exhibition:

Crumple Paintings

The next generation of the Crumple paintings previously shown in Deitch Projects' Constraction exhibition last summer and in the New Museum's Younger Than Jesus. These new works have been created for the large space of Deitch's 18 Wooster Street gallery and require that the viewer stand far back from the work to perceive the illusion of a crumpled surface constructed from large Ben Day dots.

Static Photographs

A new series of more representational, but still undecipherable Static photographs. They focus less on the emergence of pattern as in the previous series, also shown in Younger Than Jesus, and more on the emergence of form. They address the question of what makes something "something."

Fold Paintings

A series of incrementally sized fold paintings, painted on raw canvas with an industrial paint sprayer. They explore the merging of a past three-dimensional state with a present two-dimensional state.

A sculpture that is half inside the gallery and half outside of it.

There will be a form resembling a black orb hanging from the gallery facade. It will blow in the breeze. Inside the gallery, there will be a light source dangling from a thin rod, moving around exactly the same way as the form outside. The sculpture is based on the phenomenon of entangled particles, two particles that, when separated from one another, continue to behave identically, even at a great distance. If you stimulate one, the other reacts too. It is as though they are supernaturally connected.

The Auerglass

The Auerglass, which is the central work in the show, is a two-person wooden pump organ designed by the artist with her friend Cameron Mesirow of the band Glasser. The instrument cannot be played alone. It requires two people to play. One player has to pump in order for the other to play and vice versa. There is a four-octave scale that is divided so that each of the two players plays every other note. Auerbach and Mesirow will play a composition written specifically for the instrument. It combines music that Auerbach wrote as a child, songs from Glasser and new material. The Auerglass will be played at the opening on September 3rd, as a prelude to a Glasser performance at 8pm on September 11th, and daily at 5pm from Tuesday through Saturday during the exhibition. Ida Falck Oien, who creates the costumes for Glasser, has created special costumes with shifting states for the Auerglass players to wear.

The highlight of the openings was the Auerglass performance. I highly recommend trying to catch the performance for yourself. It begins is a very amateurish tone. Sounding exactly as it was promised like a child's composition and really reminded me heavily of my own fumblings as a child trying to play piano. The piece then progresses into a crescendo of sound that washed over the audience a great ending. It was as if the artist's composition was also about them learning music and learning to play their invented instrument. The piece was about their very learning of music itself. starting off in the childhood composition of Auerbach and ending in the musical adultness of the new Glasser material.

I found some youtube footage of the concert check it out below. If you look carefully you can se me bopping my head.


Soho, Manhattan, New York City, Thursday, September 3, 2009.
Per New York Times:
"Wear your new statement accessories to Deitch Projects tonight for two big openings. Tara Auerbachs Crumple paintings mimic creased paper with patterns of Benday dots that can be dizzying when seen up close, writes Karen Rosenberg. But most of the focus will be on an The Auerglass, a wooden pump organ that the artist and the band Glasser will play at the reception."

On Saturday, I trekked out to see the Creative Time installations on Governor's Island called PLOT09: This World & Nearer Ones. I was only able to see a few of the shows but their quality was fantastic. Here are some of my highlights from Creative Times' TV:


Lawrence Weiner discuss his work in PLOT/09: This World & Nearer Ones entitled "AT THE SAME MOMENT"


Mark Walling discusses his work in PLOT/09 This World & Nearer Ones, entitled," Ferry".


Krzysztof Wodiczko discusses his work in PLOT/09: This World & Nearer Ones entitled "Veterans' Flame"


Anthony McCall discusses his work in PLOT/09: This World & Nearer Ones entitled "Between You and I"

And lastly, I caught the last showing of the night of The Bruce High Quality Foundation's "Isle of the Dead" Movie. This was the surprise of the afternoon. Really nicely made 18 minute site specific motion picture. With much of the final climax of the film taking place in the theater you are viewing the movie in. The theater is an old relic from when the Island was a Coast Guard base and Used to show first run movies when the base was operational. the haunting effect of watching a chorus of 200 zombies sing "Summer of '69" by Brian Adams was haunting and nostalgic at the same time. I'm still thinking about this movie and the fantastic sound production. If you want to listen to their song you can on The Bruce High Quality Foundation's webpage to the middle right.


The Bruce High Quality Foundation discuss their work in PLOT/09 This World & Nearer Ones entitled "Isle of the Dead"

YACHT - Psychic City (Voodoo City)

I can't stop watching this new video - YACHT, Psychic City (Voodoo City) from Jona Bechtolt on Vimeo.

I'm especially digging the triangle battle.

Thank you Dan Deacon...

One of the things that got me through this tough last semester is the new Dan Deacon Album, Bromst. I Discovered the album had come out through a post on Art Fag City. There is something really inspiring about the new album and when I was feeling down about the was my work was progressing as school listening to this album while walking around the hustle and bustle of New York really put me back on track.

Here is a cool video of Dan producing the new album:



If you don't already know about Dan Deacon here are a few key videos to get to know him:

The first is a great interview and show performance video from XLR8R TV which might be first how I learned about him:


and then there is this gem:


Dan Deacon is well know for his mad interactive shows. Creating a hybrid between performance art and interactive music and summer camp. I have been dying to see this action in person. I wonder how it compares to a de la guarda show where not only is the fourth wall of the proscenium theater is broken but everyone simultaneously becomes a part of the performance.

Sadly, Deacon played in New York recently but the performance was the same day as my graduation. Hopefully, he will post some new dates soon. NY area?

Not much help at the (quote) A really bad, formerly good, Dan Deacon Web Page.

Naturally, I just noticed that Wham City the art collective Dan Deacon is involved with puts on an annual festival, Whartscape and Deacon is apart and playing this year. The festival takes place this coming weekend, July 10-12 and oh course its too late for me to make plans and go. I guess I'll be going to this next year and make do with last years Cool Hunting Video.

"CLOROX BLUE" by Steven Klein

I just came across this mesmerizing video entitles "CLOROX BLUE" by Steven Klein.



via Miss Spiritual Tramp

Phoenix - Lisztomania

I'm digging this newish video for Phoenix's Lisztomania.

Moms on the Net: "Isn't that for techno geeks?"

New Music, Moby - Shot in the Back of the Head

The official music video for Moby's "Shot in the Back of the Head" directed by David Lynch. From Moby's forthcoming album "Wait for Me" (out June 30 on Mute).

Does "The Minnesota Declaration" also apply to still images production?

In this video clip (found via Screenlabs) filmmaker Werner Herzog sits down and discusses his idea of ecstatic truth and the The Minnesota Declaration with Henry Rollins. The key part of the interview begins 1 minute into it when they begin a discussion:

Henry Rollins: Lets talk about your documentary film making, which to me is I've never seen anything like your documentaries. Can you explain the idea of “ecstatic truth”?

Werner Herzog: I think at the moment there is a major tectonic shift going on. We have virtual reality, in the Internet we have reality TV we have got digital effects, we got Photoshop we got everything is pointing towards a redefinition of reality. We have to start seeing and working and explaining and articulating reality in movies in a different way.

Cinema Verité was the answer of the 60s. Today is something else out there and I've always said sure reality has to be seen in a new way but its that is not so much the interesting part of it the interesting side of it is where is truth in all this? Cinema Verité is the accountant's truth. As I keep saying I have insulted many with that but I've always been after what I call an ecstatic truth, an ecstasy of truth.

HR: And so you would say that with all the new technology truth has not changed but now that there's different methods to get to it they should be employed to reach that–that ecstatic truth?

WH: And facts will not create truth. Facts create norms but they do not create an illumination.

HR: Do you think people who are seeking to make documentaries today are somehow limiting themselves by going back to the ideas of cinema Verité and limiting themselves by those confines?

WH: They will find there way themselves but there has to be a major shift in dealing with reality. Its as simple as that and in my documentaries they are always very close to feature films and I often stage and rehearse and repeat like in a feature film. And the feature films that I've made have some sort of a common border line with documentaries anyway when you look at Fitzcarraldo it's a film where I hoisted a steamboat over a mountain a couple of hundred tons heavy. And I keep saying that this is my best documentary.

Is Cinema Verité the equivalent to documentary photography in still image making? I'm starting to think the answer is yes.

Herzog argues for an ecstatic truth for cinema. So far, only some of Jeff Wall's work, maybe the new Stan Douglas' images and possibly Taryn Simon and Paul Graham. They all seem to be approaching an ecstatic truth in photography because of how they approach the documentary image by utilizing the tools of fictional image production.

Anyone have any other artists they can think of?

I am trying to work in this way for my thesis project in school. I hope to be approaching this illusive ecstatic truth as closely as I can. Either way, that moving away from a "photographie verité," which seems to be one of the most popular forms of image making, would be good for the art of contemporary image making. I believe there can be an ecstatic truth in art where art provides a greater illumination than just straight facts or ambiguous images of the world.


Thanks to Ruba Katrib and her curated show now up at Dumbo Arts Center - Jannicke Laker and Julika Rudelius, Ecstatic Truth for pointing me in the direction of the The Minnesota Declaration and the Herzog's idea of ecstatic truth.

Sad Kermit, kind of makes me happy...

Shepard Fairey Copyright Battle

There has been a lot of talk online about the now infamous Shepard Fairey Obama poster that was produced with the help of a picture made by former AP Photographer Mannie Garcia. While I have held back from posting anything on this debate I think Stephen Colbert moderates a debate between David Ross, the former head of the Whitney Museum and founder of Artist Pension Trust and Ed Colbert, Stephen's lawyer brother. I am not sure where the legal case is with this issue I did notice that on Mannie Garcia's Hope Page he states:

In a telephone conversation on the 17th of February, Shepard Fairey acknowledged that my photograph was used and that credit should have been given as such.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Obama Poster Debate - David Ross and Ed Colbert

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor

Rap Battle
Joke of the Day

via wooster collective

Crisis of Credit

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

I have been meaning to post this all weekend but Horses Think who I quoted in my last post, beat me to it. Either way this is a great piece of art coming out when we need it most. Which works hard to make something which is so confusing and huge into something people can begin to understand.

Apparently the inspiration for the designer, Jonathan Jarvis for his video and Crisis of Credit website was the reporting which grew out of NPR's This American Life and the new NPR podcast Planet Money. I have been religiously glued to those podcasts for some time and I comment them for putting is clear english what been happening to the economy.

Jane & Louise Wilson, Unfolding the Aryan Papers

Unfolding the Aryan Papers by Jane and Louise Wilson

Unfolding the Aryan Papers by British artists Jane & Louise Wilson, exploring Stanley Kubrick's unrealized project entitled Aryan Papers.

watch the film here at the animate projects website. Geoffrey Cocks argued in his book The wolf at the door: Stanley Kubrick, history & the Holocaust that Kubrick gave up work on this project because he felt that cinema couldn't accurately depict something so deeply horrible as the holocaust. Instead Cooks believes that Kubrick tried to address this issue indirectly, specifically Cocks believes The shining is Kubrick's Holocaust film. I'm not sure about the validity of this argument but its an interesting theory next time I watch The Shining I'll keep this in mind.

Jane & Louise Wilson's project is more about mood and atmosphere of Kubrick's unfinished project and the act or non-act of film making.

from the press release:

This new commission by Animate Projects and the BFI, focuses on Stanley Kubrick's unfinished project Aryan Papers, a film about the Holocaust based on Louis Begley's book Wartime Lies. Prior to telling the story of a Polish Jewish woman and her nephew, who pretend to be Catholic in order to avoid persecution during the Nazi occupation of their country, Kubrick researched the project for many years and got as far as choosing the actors and the locations, but unfortunately the film was never made.

Researching the material available, Jane & Louise Wilson have focused on wardrobe research stills as well as period stills from the pre-production phase of Aryan Papers. The Gallery installation concentrates on newly-shot footage of Johanna ter Steege, the actress featured in the photographs originally taken by Stanley Kubrick and chosen by him as the female lead of the film. In a statement on this project, they commented on the 'enigmatic quality' of having only fragments of Aryan Papers available, something which they consider 'profoundly cinematic'. It is precisely the fragmentary nature of Aryan Papers which allowed the artists to work freely with the available material, without the constraints of competing with an already existing film. Despite not having been able to appear in the film, the female figure in the Wilsons' work is granted a visibility which was denied to her by the final course of events.

Jane & Louise Wilson are considered to be among the best artists of their generation in using the moving image. They have worked collaboratively for over 20 years on projects which are frequently research-based. Whether dealing with the Bosnian-Herzegovinian refugee community of Derby, decaying World War II bunkers or the dilapidated former Stasi headquarters in Berlin, the artists' sensibility for difficult subjects is expressed by carefully presenting their photographs and technically challenging moving image installations. The controlled nature of their works and the importance of meticulous research provide an interesting link between Kubrick and the Wilsons, which makes this project particularly fascinating. The exhibition also coincides with an extensive Stanley Kubrick season at BFI Southbank, providing an entrancing new context for the artists' work.

A commission by Animate Projects and the BFI with The Stanley Kubrick Archives, University of the Arts London.

If you're in london I'm sure it would be a good show to visit:

The Gallery at BFI Southbank London, SE1

13 February-19 April 2009
Admission free
11am-8pm, Tuesday-Sunday

via e-flux and reminded of via Horses Think

Make Me a Real Man

nice clip on Current tv from by filmmaker Stuart Kershaw.
from the pod info:

What makes a man? How do we come of age in the 21st century? In a world where you can still be a boy at thirty, One young-ish filmmaker sets out on a belated quest for manhood.

With a little internet digging I noticed this history of this quote. Originally written by Wilhelm Stekel who was then quoted in J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye as saying, "The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one" (p.188). This quote is also used in the anime Ghost in the Shell.

I also enjoy the pod's discussion of the roll of war, the warrior and how the military can act as a coming of age. As these topics relate to my final project in school and I am still working them out for myself. Holden Caulfield's musings of what the world means are not that far off from this film maker's. As society moves further away from Caulfield's era will we develop new rites of passage into maturity? Or are these very rites passe and the sequence itself flawed?

Godfrey Reggio - "Evidence"

Check out this clip by "Koyaanisqatsi" Director Godfrey Reggio. It is really erie how your gaze is challenged by the child's looking back. It makes you more conscious of the act of viewing the video and your resulting expressions-like looking at a mirror of your younger self.

via Robbie Cooper's Immersion Blog.

Video Gamers as Subjects

Robbie Cooper for The New York Times, “Name Alexander Kinch Age 12 Location Grimsby, England Game Call of Duty 4”

Last weekend's New York Times Sunday Magazine had a video piece made by Robbie Cooper that captured my attention. I was first drawn into the article through the stark images of the video gamers staring straight back at me. Then I fount the Immersion piece and was struck with the video more then the stills. While the stills are dramatic and leave a fair amount of ambiguity for the viewer to figure out the video adds the sequence of expressions that build into a more interesting piece on video games. I could see a little snippet of the player's personality in a more dramatic, unexpected and natural way then when it was a frozen moment.

The subject and viewer's gaze were a critical component to this project's success. Cooper utilized an Errol Morris technique of filming that Morris' wife termed the Interrotron. This method allows the subject to stare straight into the camera's lens wile being distracted by viewing the interviewer in front of the camera (diagram). In this case, Cooper has placed the video game screen in place of the interviewer.

Jorg Colberg has almost the complete opposite view, arguing this is a case where photography is superior to video. This depends upon the intentions of the artist. Ultimately the success of the project depends on the right selection of media, an interesting expression and a skilled and appropriate technical application. In this case I am more interested in the moving images of the video gamers as opposed to the static images made from the video. I appreciate ambiguity in the stack images in this case but I'm more drawn to the emotion (or lack thereof) expressed in the moving images.


Shauna Frischkorn“Robert (Playing Smuggler's Run 2: Hostile Territory),” C-Print, 40x30 inches

Jorg also pointed out that Shauna Frischkorn deals this the same subject–video games–but due to her use of stills, he preferred her images. I took a long look at her images of gamers. They didn't work for me. Maybe it’s the was they are reprinted on the internet. I am trying to imaging what they would look like at 30x40 sized on the wall, assuming they will hold up to the enlargement. Maybe this is a situation where the print is vastly better then the net? Still, the subject's gaze above the viewer isn't as strong as the direct gaze of Cooper's images.


Phillip Toledano, “Video Gamers”

While I was researching Shauna Frischkorn's work, I noticed she was a Fall 2007 Hey Hot Shot Winner. In the comments section of the announcement post I was pointed to Phil Toledano Gamers series, which have the opposite gaze of Frishkorn's subjects. Toledano's Gamers are looking downward toward the screen with extremely expressive faces subtly shifting the gaze and the viewer’s reaction to them.

All of the photographers mentioned above have taken slightly different topological approaches to the same subject of video gamers. Which brings me to the work of Todd Deutsch.


Todd Deutsch, “Gamers”

Deutsch's approach builds a story of gamers. The image above also fits into a similar category as the other images do, but he also takes a variety of other images: Landscapes of computer chaos, still life images of gamer trash and portraits from varying distances. I'm still digesting which approach is the best one here but its really interesting to see one contemporary subject from four (any more out there?) perspectives.

In the end who wins? The artist who first thinks of the project, the artist who executes it the best or something else I am not thinking of?

Happy Thanksgiving!

May your holiday be filled with celebration for not having to call Palin, Vice President.

John Berger's groundbreaking TV documentary WAYS OF SEEING (first episode)

Watch along with me...

I found these great BBC documentaries by John Berger via Brian Ulrich's blog - NOTIFBUTWHEN.

WAYS OF SEEING (first episode) 1/4


WAYS OF SEEING (first episode) 2/4


WAYS OF SEEING (first episode) 3/4


WAYS OF SEEING (first episode) 4/4



One of Berger's points that i find particularly interesting (at least right now) is how images get modified by what's around them - weather its music, noise or other images. This gets me thinking about comparing the art fair experience with the museum experience. I feel as though to some extent it is an argument for a curated art experience but at the same time I feel the Art fair uncurated experience can have a valid experience of a chaos curated landscape of the art.

its amazing how at an art fair you not only loose your experience of order between the images but you loose your direction and bearings very often. What effect does this have on our art experience? And what does it have when you introduce an untrained eye to this experience as their first form of viewing an artwork rather then a contemplative curated experience in a cold Chelsea Gallery or large important museum? What does John Berger think of the Art Fair experience of viewing art?

And finally where has the smart TV gone? This documentary was made in the early 1970s and it seems just as fresh today. Could a program like this ever be aired in America? Its funny to think about a show like this with ads around the segments.if there were would you look at the ads differently?

Music Video of the Month: "Toe Jam" by Fatboy Slim featuring David Byrne & Dizzee Rascal

Definitely the hottest video I have seen in a long time. It's the return of Fatboy Slim collaboration with (what!) David Byrne and Dizzee Rascal.

Link via Miss Jessy Nite. Yo, looks like Sao Paulo is fun!


"Toe Jam" by Fatboy Slim FEAT. David Byrne & Dizzee Rascal

Harajuku Lovers Fragrance Spot by Friends With You

Harajuku Lovers Fragrance Spot Directed by Friends with you

Check out this new spot for Gwen Stefani's Harajuku Lovers Fragrance Directed my my Miami mates, Friends with you. The beginning of last Summer they were down up here in New York filming and now its finally out in all its hyper cute glory.

Must be funny to create a product that causes reviews like this:



and

Microsoft Surface vs. Perspective Pixel

Last week one of my professors sent the class this video of Jeff Han's Perspective Pixel technology presentation at the TED conference (wiki):



While I was already familiar with this video, re-watching it reminded me that I had just seen a similar presentation on a table computer by Microsoft called Surface. The technology seems quite similar check out the video below for a closer look:  



It seems like some of this technology is now being integrated into network TV. I'm not so sure if the resulting effect does anything for journalism other then providing wow factor for the audience at home. Here is CNN using Jeff Han's Perceptive Pixel display technology:



And I just noticed tonight that another network, MSNBC seems to be using Microsoft's Surface in their video segments.



The Ubuntu on the Campus Wire blog has an interesting overview post of this discussion - Microsoft Surface vs. Perspective Pixel’s Multi-touch (Jeff Han). In another post by this blog they point us to yet another multi-touch technology, Reatrix. They had a Reatrix set up installed where I used to work at CP+B. I never really thought of Reatrix being anything that interesting much close to a marketing gimmick then anything like a transcendent technology.

It is for this reason that I think Microsoft Surface was named a Top 10 Tech Videos of 2007 by Popular Mechanics

Here is another well thought out article from the blog solids smack: Is Jeff Han’s multi-touch in cahoots with Microsoft Surface?

and then my jaw really dropped when I saw this TED video:





Photosynth is a jaw dropping technology that seems to (I can run it on my laptop) collide the real world with the internet's vast collection of images. The ending result is a new immersive space where the 2d picture becomes 3d in an entirely new way. One site that shows a bit of what this future technology will look like is Photo Tourism which lets you explore the Trevi Fountain and Notre Dame in this new Photosynth space.

What if anything does this do to Photography? I have seen several examples where photographers make a panoramic picture of something and call it art. This new technology seems to negate the standard panoramic and make it look quaint. Maybe there is room to produce new emissive environments that could be called art.

Ryan Trecartin vs Lucas Cruikshank aka Fred Figglehorn

Last year one of the most memorable shows was Ryan Trecartin's "I-BE AREA" solo show at Elizabeth Dee Gallery. One of my professors made it a required assignment to see that show and watch the entire 1 hour 48 minute video. I don't think many students in the class would have noticed the show or given the video much of their time with out the professor's encouragement. I have to say I am glad to have experienced it in the gallery and it obviously had some affect on me because I am still contemplating the videos over a year later.

Trecartin deploys an onslaught high paced editing, colorful "public access" style effects, mashed up story-lines and a slew of references to convey an experience that sticks with you. I remember leaving the gallery feeling really strange and a bit freaked. Later that term I was able to sneak into his talk at the New Museum and got a slightly clearer understanding of some of those references. Particularly interesting was the discussion of identities with in the works and how people have several identities, online, real, imagined and on line imagined identities like Avatars.

Recently, I stumbled upon a weekly YouTube series called "Fred". Created by a 15 year old Nebraskan Lucas Cruikshank (IMDB) Fred follows a 6 year old hyper active kid in mini web episodes doing thinks like sneaking into his crush's trailer home.

I like to think of "Fred" as the G rated version of a NC-17 Ryan Trecartin video. you can check out them both below.

enjoy.


Ryan Trecartin, "I-BE AREA (A SAlly Man Now)" (clip) 2007



Lucas Cruikshank, "Fred" YouTube series above "Fred Loses His Meds" 2008

NPR Music Interview: Jandek: The Man from Corwood

Fascinating interview or rather article with/on the illusive Jandek.

“Many people are famous just for being famous. But singer-songwriter Jandek has shunned recognition to such a degree that, intentionally or not, he's developed a kind of celebrity all his own.

Jandek's music isn't for everyone. It's what New York Times and Rolling Stone music critic and author Douglas Wolk calls “very dark, half-decomposed blues.”

this is his first recorded concert.

Jonathan Glazer vs. David Lynch

Jonathan Glazer's clip for Rabbit in your Headlights has some parallels with this David Lynch Clip for PS2.

TED TALKS, James Howard Kunstler

Anyone who is interested in city design should find this TED talk by James Howard Kunstler quite interesting. James Howard Kunstler is is the author of several noted books on the built enviorment including a book I own "The Geography of Nowhere."

The talk runs for about 20 minutes and not only was it interesting but I was laughing out loud in my photo studio. just view the video below or click on this direct link to the talk.

Cat Power - "Lived in Bars" w/ William Eggleston

Looks like YouTube's video for this is down but it is also here.




I'm loving this Cat Power video and then after the second watching I noticed one of my favorite photographers, William Eggleston appears in about 30 seconds into it.