Ode to 2009.

Octomom. Balloon Boy. Phelps bong. If there's one thing for sure in this world, it's that as long as people are acting reckless, insane and just plain stupid (i.e. like people), there will always be plenty of material available for JibJab's annual "Year in Review" videos!

Upular

A track composed using chords, bass notes and vocal samples from the Disney Pixar film 'Up'.

Alma

Alma from Rodrigo Blaas on Vimeo.

Written and Directed by: Rodrigo Blaas
Produced by: Cecile Hokes
Music: Mastretta
Art Director: Alfonso Blaas
Lighting Supervisor: Jonatan Catalán
Character Technical Supervisor: Jaime Maestro
Character Design: Bolhem Bouchiba, Carlos Grangel,
Sergio Pablos, Santi Agustí
Animation: Daniel Peixe, ManueBover, Remi Hueso
Sound Design: Tom Myers and David Hughes
Post Production Coordinator: David Heras
Special Thanks: Keytoon, Next Limit, UserT38

Tron Tennis

Inspired from the movie Tron, but truly inspirational stuff.

Techno Jeep

All sounds are actual sounds from the Jeep.

Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton

Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton. Our Hell, Directed by Jaron Albertin from Cgunit on Vimeo.

Eko Stoplight

The Eko Stoplight by Damjan Stanković is a buffering light that tells you how more time will your green signal take to download. He promotes it as an eco solution; his belief being that if you know how long you are going to be there at the light, you may want to shut your engine off, wait, be calm, and turn it back on again when the time is almost up. This not only lessens the amount of gas you use sitting still, but it lessens the amount of crazy madness you have wondering if the stoplight is stuck, or just really, really long. Well if only cars came custom-fitted with a driver's conscience. A small step, but definitely in the right direction.
Why would it score over a simple time counter next to the light, the kind that you see in India? For starters, the light and the buffer is operated using the same light source. Hence less electricity. And secondly 2 minutes left at the light, may seem too little a time to switch one's engine off. While two minutes on the Eko stoplight may seem to be a bit longer.

The EyeWriter

The EyeWriter is a low-cost eye-tracking apparatus & custom software that allows graffiti writers and artists with paralysis resulting from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to draw using only their eyes. In 2009, the GRL, openFrameworks, TEG and the FAT Lab collaborated with TEMPT One, legendary LA graf writer and ALS suffer to make the first prototype of the EyeWriter.

A Hundred Options in One Dress

The Galaxy Dress is the center piece of the "Fast Forward: Inventing the Future" exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. The museum is celebrating its 75 years and has commissioned the GalaxyDress for their permanent collection.
The GalaxyDress provides a spectacular and mesmerizing effect being embroidered with 24000 color LEDs, it is the largest wearable display in the world. Constructed using the smallest full-color LEDs that are flat like paper and measuring only 2 by 2 mm.

iDrive

An Oldsmobile Delta '88 converted into a remote control car in just 4 weeks. The control systems were built using a few motors, potentiometers, a Compact RIO embedded controller, and LabVIEW. Then a wi-fi communication was set up so that one could drive the car from an iPhone as well as from a modified Power Wheels truck.

Football Hero

An experiment to create a giant (three stories high!) guitar game controlled with footballs. Football Hero is played by a team of insanely gifted young freestyle footballers. The game is programmed with the Kasabian track Underdog.

Augmented Esquire

Virtual Rapist. Or Virtually a Rapist

Japanese Rape Games invade the Indian market.
I was spooning through my morning bowlful of news, when I ended with a mouthful of this one. And boy has it left a revolting taste in the mouth.
WTF.
Rapelay. A virtual reality rape game.
So what's the objective? To be the tog-dog rapist?
Can you imagine the conversations the kids would be having? "Dude I killed it last night on Rapelay, I hit 13 rapes." "Hey how do you rape the woman in the park, I just can't seem to crack that one?" "It's easy, You got to wait till she walks into the shadows and then hit her on the head"
In times, when the sexual violation doesn't seem to take a day off, a virtual reality training ground is the last thing we need.
And when one does become a pro at the game, what stops him from dropping the virtual bit? After all, he's already aced all the ways to do it.
Morality? Conscience? One might say. Well, would he be playing it if he had any?
And whether the players have any conscience or not, the company that makes such games certainly has NONE.
Illusion (the Japanese Firm that created Rapelay) must be the single largest congregation of sick minds. I suspect, it must be part of their recruitment policy. "Candidates need only apply if they nurse frequent urges to violently violate women (rape isn't a corporate word, you see). Experience in the same would be seen as an advantage."
It's Rapelay today, what stops them from coming up with a Pedophile or an Incest game next? Maybe we can.
I'm hoping that this blog entry has grossed you out enough to throw-up and then to sign this online petition against Illusion and their games. If you still feel sick after singing it, forward the petition to as many as you can. Hopefully we can spread this feeling of sickness far enough for something to be done about it.
As for the petition, it shall be forwarded to the Information & Broadcast Ministry/Interior Ministry of as many countries as possible. You may think it's been a little too optimistic. But the way I see it is, let us be optimistic about the game and the developer being banned, instead of some young kids being optimistic about being able to get away with rape. Just like in the game.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN

Dancing in the rain, in the sun, in the snow

Prince of Persia Trailer

Pocketful of light

Pocket Light by Ryan Harc

Racism unites

The Fray - Heartless

The FRAY - Heartless from IE HAGY on Vimeo.

directed by HIRO MURAI
animation by TITMOUSE
edited by ISAAC HAGY
cinematography by IBIS (CLAY JETER & WILL BASANTA)
produced by ROSS GIRARD

Paper Madness

VIDEOGIOCO by Donato Sansone from Enrico Ascoli - Sound Design on Vimeo.

animation and concept by Donato Sansone myspace.com/milkyeyes
sound design by Enrico Ascoli enricoascoli.com

The Snail Circus

Bave Circus from DuDuF on Vimeo.

The Berlin Reunion

20 years back the Berlin Wall gave way to end 27 years of a nation's divide. And to celebrate the reuniting of the families on either side of the erstwhile concrete wall, 1.5 million people filled the streets of Berlin to watch a several-day performance by France's Royal de Luxe street theatre company. Titled "The Berlin Reunion", it featured two massive marionettes, the Big Giant, a deep-sea diver, and his niece, the Little Giantess. The storyline of the performance had the two separated by a wall, thrown up by "land and sea monsters". The Big Giant has just returned from a long and difficult - but successful - expedition to destroy the wall, and now the two are walking the streets of Berlin, seeking each other after many years apart. Brought "Being John Malkovich" to mind.

Royal de Luxe - LE RENDEZ-VOUS DE BERLIN, DAS WIEDERSEHEN VON BERLIN from Nina. on Vimeo.

Sin City chases a ball of wool.

Latest short film by The People's Republic of Animation. Directed by Eddie White & Ari Gibson. Produced by Jessica Brentnall. Narrated by Nick Cave.

The Narration (penned by Eddie White)

Long ago my city’s luminous heart, beat with the song of four thousand cats.
Crooners who shone in the moonlight mimicry of the spotlight.
Jazz singers. Hip cats that went ‘Scat!’
Buskers with open-mouthed hats hungry for a feed.
Parlours paraded purring glamorous songstresses.
Smoky hookahs and smoking hookers.
Strays strummed string and sung a cocktail of cat’s tails.
A decadent party of meowing sound.
A bohemian behemoth, post-midnight soiree.

Amongst the chorale ‘o tuneful ones was one fair queen who drew me from o’er the way.
Her fur, an amorous white and a voice that made all the angels of eternity sound tone deaf.
Blind with love at first sight, touched by the taste of her sound,
I longed to be the microphone she cradled near her breast.

‘Twas our Shang-ri-la of sound,
A paradise found where nothin’ could stop us.
Or so it seemed.

Singers began to vanish like sailors lost at sea.
Snatched from stage alley way
Shanghai’d from behind scarlet curtain.
Into thin air they disappeared without a single cry.
Police study the clues.
Foot-prints from human shoes.

So you’ve heard of every instrument but?
Torn from your history books is this pianola,
This harpsichord of harm.
The cruellest instrument to spawn from man’s grey cerebral soup.
The Cat Piano.

Confined were the cats in a row of cages.
With each note struck upon it’s ivory tusks,
A sharpened nail would pierce each cat’s tail,
Forcing a note from each pitch on the scale.

I ran my cursed writer’s run to tell her beware.
She wasn’t there.
My soul capsized.
Like a fish, paralysed.
On a chopping board, its spinal cord ripped forth from its body,
Her vocals the last the thief had needed,
A rare celestial pitch that would complete his collection.

The city in unrest.
Fights broke out in its sleep.
I couldn’t dream anymore.
There was a hole in my heart and everything fell out of it.
All music forbidden.
Keep your lullabies hidden.
And your A and E minors off the street after dark.

My town grew cold and bitter.
In icy hibernation was the once thumping heart.
Now seizing up.
Freezing up.

Katzenklavier.
The torturous worm of sound burrowed deep into my ears.
Le Piano du chat
I thought of Van Gogh.
Neko Piano.
I’d put an end to this incessant, inescapable drone.
Mao Gang Qin

I enlisted an army of the brave and I their general declared war.
Poised with tooth and fire in paw.
We would finally settle this musical score.
Eyes with fierce intent that glowed.
Through tempestuous waters we rowed.
Storming the shores,
Swarming in scores,
Scaling its walls with well-sharpened claws,
We invaded the tower through all its doors.

Up the winding stairs,
To meet him with blinding stares.
There he sat.
The organ grinder.

He turned, we pounced, we scratched and bit.
He stumbled.
Fell through the window.
Screaming into the indigo waters below.

We freed the chain gang from their jail.
Cremated the piano.
And for home we set sail.

The city had reclaimed its vestal muse.
It would live again.
Beat again.
Cats would sing in the street again.
And I in anonymity as I had been long before this soliloquy,
Could sit and listen from afar.
The Cat Piano, now a healed over wound.
And this ode its fading scar.

JumpTrumpRumpBump

JumpTrumpRumpBump from Molasses Murphy on Vimeo.

Like the sound of it. love the look of t. Nice experimental animation.

Would you like a croissant with your expresso Hemmingway?

It sure elicits a WOW. And is surely another feather in Google's innovator cap.

But I asked myself these.
Why would I want to print an e-book?
Wouldn't it go against the whole principle of it?

Yes, yes I do agree, one would want to carry a book along to places far removed from civilisation and broadband. I, for one, love reading on beaches and in trains.

But isn't that why someone spent millions of dollars and hours to invent the e-book reader for?

Yes, yes, yes, I know the feel, the smell and the character of the written word on paper is something else. One can't cozy up in front of a warm fire with a e-book reader.

But what about the paper you save? If everyone goes about printing their e-books to read it, would every story end with the death of a tree? And would something like this Expresso Book Machine mean genocide for trees?

Is buying a book today a blatant display of our disregard for the scantily clad Mother Nature?

When we are consuming so much of our entertainment and information off backlit screens today, do we really need a bookshelf?

Just questions that I asked myself.
Quite like the one about why does one need that warm fire to read the book?

Doodling goes bananas

Beer shots

Shoot your friends dead drunk with the Beer Blaster. And if you're one of those suicidal drunks, just point it to your own mouth and pull the trigger. Available without a cooling period on thinkgeek for just 22.99. Ammunition not included.

Luv Deluxe - Cinnamon Chasers

Cinnamon Chasers - Luv Deluxe (Official Music Video) from Saman Keshavarz on Vimeo.

Just because you change your pov, does the world follow suit?
Album: A Million Miles From Home
Modus Records / Koch Entertainment
Directed by: Saman Keshavarz

A beautiful shade of green

While being eco-friendly surely contributed to making the planet a prettier place, but for the longest time being environmentally conscious meant being aesthetically unconscious.
The non-vogue jute bags that would only be seen on the vegetable market runways. That too in the hands of your domestic help. The ugly solar panels that seem to fit better into your socially environmental conversations, but never on the roof of your Spanish cottage in the middle of New Friends' Colony (maybe if they were called El Solar Panels). Or electric cars in which you can go about saving the planet at a snail's pace. And look like one too. (actually this one makes sense, since traffic crawls anyways these days).
Not any more. Fortunately.
Designers. Companies. Artists. Are all climbing onto the green bandwagon. Creatively, commercially, at times even conscientiously. But whatever they're in it for doesn't matter, as long as there's something in it for the planet. Do I care if protecting the ice-caps makes someone a millionaire? I would give them my green thumbs up.
Slowly, but steadily, green is becoming the in-colour. In red, blue, pink and whatever-is-the-shade-of-the-season.

A Philadelphia company has developed solar panels shaped like clay roof tiles. Called Solé Power Tiles, (just realised, it sounds Spanish as well) it'll give your green home a quaint touch. Or the jute bag that announced that it's not a plastic bag and went from being an environment statement to a fashion one.
Even electric cars promise to go from 40-140km/hr in the next two years. And look just as fast as well. Courtesy Renault & Audi.
And with designers making it to exhibitions with their environment bit, the future does look quite pretty indeed. For instance this rain barrel by Bas van der Veer that makes it easy for you to harvest rain water. Symbolically, and very aptly called, 'A drop of water'

While the environment has always been a cause. Today it needs to become a trend to find more followers. And efforts like these are small steps towards just that. Which is why we need social influencers to join the designers, companies and artists on that band-wagon. For starters, Hollywood and Bollywood.
With one look from under his cowboy hat, with a cigarette glowing in one corner of his mouth, Client Eastwood single-handedly rode up the share price of Stetsuns by 3 points. And brought down the age of smokers by about 6 years.
Closer home, Shah Rukh Khan wandered through the Italian country-side with a backpack slung over his shoulder in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, and suddenly the youth of Delhi was backpacking their way from Sarojini Nagar to Connaught Place with it.
Why can't the movies set this tribe of apes onto something more environmentally responsible? It could be that jute bag if nothing else.

Nearness

Nearness from timo on Vimeo.

It's the same ol' domino effect that we have seen in many youtube videos and created, recreated and further recreated by many ads. Just that in this one there is no touching involved.

Sweet temptation

Oh, The Temptation from Steve V on Vimeo.

That's one helluva cruel test of patience.

Electric Car

Honda Grrr meets the opening track of Jamie and the Magic Torch. Directed by Tiny Inventions. Features vocals by Robin Goldwasser and horn arrangement by Dan "The Machine" Levine. From TMBGs new DVD/CD set Here Comes Science.

Play Monopoly on your city street

Monopoly City Streets. It's a live game of Monopoly using Google Maps as the gaming board. So you can buy the street you live on, your neighbourhood, your neighbour's house and so on. I used to fight over properties like Mayfair and Oxford Street, imagine what I would do for places like Greater Kailash and Connaught Place.

Loyalty points? Or pointless?

http://www.mumbaicommunitycard.com/

An article in the newspaper made me look these guys up on the net. It's a rather interesting social model that these guys are running here. A credit card that allows you to contribute to the society every time you spend. Because like with every credit card, you get loyalty points on every transaction. But here the loyalty is not to the deep pockets of the Armani jackets of the credit card companies, rather to the society. Because these point can be forwarded as a donation to the charity of your choice. But for the some who need a more compelling reason to use the card, it also gets you discounts at select merchants.
An initiative by former IIT-ians, the card is modelled on the 'Boston Community Change' Programme where a percentage of each transaction is towards the users' favourite cause. What I found most striking about the card is that it makes you socially responsible by going through life exactly the way you always did. You could be spending on the most frivolous of things but somewhere your conscience is being redeemed.
Made me wonder about all the loyalty points I have racked up on my rather athletic credit card. I don't think I even know how many there are on it. I don't think any of us really knows. We probably don't even realise when they accumulate. And when the credit card co. sweeps it off like the annual clean-ups of roadside garbage heaps. So that we can start the accumulation all over again; again like the roadside garbage heaps.
I checked the credit card website and saw a neat catalogue of what all I can redeem it for. And looking at the the exhilarating list of things I don't need, I realised it's so easy for them to add 'Charity" to the many categories of what you can redeem. Even found a place for it. You could have "Charity" right before "Glamour & Skincare". Fits in rather appropriately; both alphabetically and conscientiously.
Or if one wants to make it more philosophical and symbolic; you could put it under the heading "Soul". And pray that some poor damsel, crushed under the weight of her perfume and her socialite obligations of attending page3 parties, doesn't click on it to get a spa voucher.
But coming back to the loyalty points, why doesn't every bank give you the option of donating these unused points? Why can't defaulting on redeeming them mean that they will be automatically donated to charity?
They could. But would they?
So if anyone reading this knows anyone in a bank, can you please ask them? Maybe they never thought of it. But hey, it's not too late.
My apologies to the Mumbai Community Card founders, if this is encroaching on their concept. But if it's truly for the community, they should be ecstatic if some credit card does let you redeem your soul.

Give this a moment

A world of paper

SCRIBE MUNDO DE PAPEL from ladies on Vimeo.

a story in sand

Banksy vs Bristol Museum

The social artist is at it again. This time he speaks his mind at the Bristol Musuem.





You can more of the exhibits at http://www.banksy.co.uk/

The getaway can

The Can from Carlos Lascano on Vimeo.

Now that's a scratch video

Neurosonics Audiomedical Labs Inc. from Chris Cairns on Vimeo.

This Nokia won't slip into your pocket.

With the Booklet 3G, Nokia is all set to till new grounds. Housed in a 2cm thin, aluminium shell, he new Nokia Booklet 3G will be a Windows-based machine, supported by an Intel Atom processor. Other features include a 10.1"HD display, 3G/HSPA, Wi-Fi, onboard assisted-GPS with Ovi Maps, single front-facing camera, built-in SD card reader and blah, blah, blah.

Help! Someone filled my wallet.

TalkTalk launches PutPocketing - the art of putting money INTO people's pockets without them realising, using real ex-pickpockets.
Happening now on London streets until the end of August 2009 - then to be rolled out across the UK. Designed to give Britons something back, no strings attached...

Lego have some fun.

There are some people out there with a lot of Lego bricks. And a lot of time. God Bless them.

This kiss sure made sparks fly

A CD that you can play. Not just on your player.

The Humanthesizer

Humanthesizer, a joint creation between electronic musician Calvin Harris, Sony Music UK, and Bare conductive body ink, which turned 15 bikini-clad ladies into a giant human synthesizer capable of playing Harris's latest single, Ready For The Weekend. The performers stand on the pads, and touch each other on the hands or body to complete a circuit and trigger a sound. Harris, his hands painted with the ink, played the main keyboard line and effects by interacting with a row of eight girls. The rhythmic portions of the track were played by seven dancers performing a carefully choreographed routine.

Shall overcome Wii

For real? Or just for kicks? Anyone?

Can touch this.

A team of researchers at the University of Tokyo led by Hiroyuki Shinoda has developed a display that lets users "touch" objects that appear to float in space in front of them. The virtual objects appear in mid-air thanks to an LCD and a concave mirror. The sensation of touching the objects is created using an ultrasound device positioned below the LCD and mirror. The airborne ultrasound tactile device used to produce the sensation of touch was demoed at SIGGRAPH in 2008.

courtesy: TechReview 2009

Silent Love

Cracking up between two ferns.

Between Two Ferns With Zach Galifianakis from Between Two Ferns

Don't worry, be baa BAA

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

Bobby McFerrin demonstrates the power of the pentatonic scale, using audience participation, at the event "Notes & Neurons: In Search of the Common Chorus", from the 2009 World Science Festival, June 12, 2009.

alien vs alien

Blip from Sean Mullen on Vimeo.

Muzorama from Muzorama Team on Vimeo.

Food for thought. And drink for art.

Hannes Broecker has brilliantly invited the cultural elite to grab a glass at an exhibition in Dresden, Germany, and drink away the art. Broecker has aroused our sense of taste (not to mention eliminated the need of elbowing our way to the bar) by hanging flat, glass containers with a variety of cocktails in the exhibition space. As the night progressed, the levels of the multi-coloured infusions diminished. By the end of the event, the art, itself, ran dry, and empty drinking glasses were returned to where they were originally placed.

Reality further augmented

What does your business card say about you?

AR Business Card from James Alliban on Vimeo.

Everything. Provided you know a thing of two (er..actually a whole lot more) about Augmented Reality. Augmented Reality or AR, as it's more fondly known in the cyber circles, is where computer generated data (images, voice, graphics) are embedded into reality. But you can only see the data through the Cyclopian eye of your webcam. A close cousin of AR is Quick Respose or QR codes (ah, am already sounding less of an Ignoramus). Just that the eye is that of your mobile phone. Simply put, what you get is a lot more than what you see.

Build your own video game

8-bit games made bit by bit by bit.

Dial a video.

Music Video Shot on iPhone from Kenny Mosher on Vimeo.

Now this is a case of a phone being well and truly engaged.

IAM1 x INSA from Protein® TV on Vimeo.

In 7 days London-based artist INSA ran the city of east London, painting 35 pieces on route of Charlie Dark's map for celebrating the launch of the Nike Air Maxim.
"Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places is the new solo installation and exhibition by London-based artist INSA, and opens on 17th July in association with the Nike Sportswear IAM1 launch of the 2009 Air Maxim.