If there is one thing that will always get a blog post, it is an innovative interactive music video. You gotta seriously hand it to The Arcade Fire for their The Wilderness Downtown vid. A little Chrome + personalized G.Maps + HTML5 = very cool.
The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin is probably the coolest movie theater in the country. Not only do they have the killer food and drink at your seats setup, but their love for cinema is unmatched. This summer, the Alamo is taking their show on the road, bringing 9 classic films in a series titled “We Are All Workers” across the country (including three dates in California). What’s even cooler – the Alamo has commissioned artist Olly Moss to make a new poster for each film in the series. Check out all the posters in hi-res here.
Artist MADSTEEZ has completed one of the sickest mural’s I’ve ever seen and what’s best, it is all soccer! Even better – it’s in LA! I gotta go see this thing with my own eyes.
One of my faves from this year’s Sundance was the street art docu Exit Through the Gift Shop. I pondered in my Twitch review the validity of some of the factual aspects of the film. The film’s premier this week at the Berlin Film Fest finds both IndieWire’s Eugene Hernandez and the NY Times’ Manohla Dargis also pondering the same thing. While I think Dargis is off the mark in suggesting that Banksy and Thierry Guetta (aka Mr. Brainwash) might be one and the same – there is no doubt that some elements comprise more than meets the narrative eye.
…Or maybe not. Maybe every piece of the story is exactly how it is portrayed in the doc. Is it really so hard to believe that Banksy took over the editing duties from the schizotron Guetta and was able to put together this fascinating piece of documentation? Maybe it is simply hard for us to believe that someone as subversive as Banksy would do anything that straight forward. How can we trust a man who won’t even show his face?
Regardless, the real story here is how successful the film is at documenting the movement. Just imagine if cameras were rolling when Cézanne and Pissarro were first experimenting together with impressionist landscapes – or when Duchamp and Man Ray were questioning art’s very definitions. Exit Through the Gift Shop gives us exactly this look at the rise of street art – even if Guetta’s/Banksy’s lens is a bit greased up.
Film site TheAuteurs has posted their Top Movie Posters of the Decade and I gotta say I agree with a lot of the choices. Certainly the Funny Games and The Girlfriend Experience posters are two of my all time faves (The Bank Job was in the also-ran).
Musician John Boswell has come up with an incredible project he calls The Symphony of Science. He remixes and auto-tunes scientific greats rapping about the universe and what results is truly as fantastic as the subjects they discuss. The songs are so great the Jack White has even released the single on 7 inch. Both the track above and the second track are available to download from the SoS site. Can’t wait for more.
Mr. Brainwash is a street artist in the vein of Banksy and Shepard Fairey. Last summer he had a great exhibition (more) at the old CBS studios in H.wood. It took some pics while there and after more than a year of the photos sitting in a folder on my hdd, I have finally gotten around to doin em up and posting them to my flickr.
This projection art has gotta be my favorite thing going on in the art world. So cool.
555 KUBIK
“How it would be, if a house was dreaming”
The conception of this project consistently derives from its underlying architecture – the theoretic conception and visual pattern of the Hamburg Kunsthalle. The Basic idea of narration was to dissolve and break through the strict architecture of O. M. Ungers “Galerie der Gegenwart”. Resultant permeabilty of the solid facade uncovers different interpretations of conception, geometry and aesthetics expressed through graphics and movement. A situation of reflexivity evolves – describing the constitution and spacious perception of this location by means of the building itself.
Wow! Please watch this all the way through. The effects towards the end are really spectacular. It is obviously done with some sort of projection system but if someone who speaks Italian wants to read through the Apparati Effimeri site and give us some more details that would be awesome. Some very cool stuff here.
Alex has got his photoblog up and running and right now it is packed to the gills with great shots like these two from last month’s amazing Sasquatch Festival. Check out the awesome power of the fisheye!
Wow! The interactive video for the Cold War Kids’ great track I’ve Seen Enough just pushed the limits for anything I’ve ever seen as far as videos go. Click the colors on the top to chose from 4 different instrument per band member or click them to mute them altogether. This lets the user remix the song and video on the fly. Incredible! I could play with this thing all day.
Wow – an extremely cool mashup of Tarantino flicks. Fantastic editing of music, sound and video. Worth watching all the way through (how cool is the drumming around 5′?!).
Now that the election is over (congrats, congrats, yes), we can finally get a break from all the emails from MoveOn and the DNC and the Obama campaign asking us for money… right? no? Well at least they have some cool stuff to offer.
MoveOn is offering the above Shepard Fairey print commemorating both the election and the incredibly successful image – for a $20 donation.
Even cooler, they are giving a sticker of the same print away for free!
And the Obama campaign is giving away the Obama Biden T-shirt for $30, though I’m afraid the design seems a little crowded and uninspired. I wonder if the campaign will continue to colelct money into the beginning of the presidency. Obama 2012!!