After their very groovy and a little bit crazy set at Coachella this past weekend, Ivan Landau‘s video for Oakland band Beats Antique is well worth a check out. The vid uses some very cool motion graphics and is put together with a slickness lacking in a lot of this sort of work. Check it out above.
While I didn’t actually attend Coachella this year, I was blown away by the badass streaming site the concert put together. Dozens of acts had their entire shows live online for free. Now I’ve been to Coachella more times than I’ve missed it in the last decade, but as the hassles of a three day music fest begin to scare down the benefits, the rise of this sort of festival experience gets me super excited. It was so cool to watch the Dre and Snoop set and get to be part of the fun of the guest stars and banter — without the hassle. Never feeling like your missing out is just a click away.
Another incredible benefit of the streaming festival is the potential for new music discovery. There is always a give and take at Coachella (and the like) between seeing bands you dig, taking chances on new bands, and spending your time drinking by the pool to just arrive later. I had barely heard the name of We Were Promised Jetpacks when I tuned in on Friday afternoon. The chance I’d have been on site by then woulda been slim. But they absolutely killed it! (This year’s Tame Impala? I’ve included a couple videos after the jump.) I was so impressed I immediately bought tickets to their show at the Echo on Tuesday (a show which quickly sold out after that performance). Sure you could go out and watch videos for each of the 200+ acts, but jumping around a live festival is a way more interactive way of experiencing it.
The Coachella Site already has some highlights from Day 1 up. I imagine Day 2 and 3 acts will be showing up shortly. The At The Drive-In show is not to be missed. I can’t tell you how many times I watched that shitty cell phone vid from Cut Copy last summer. If only that show had been archived online. But the coolest part about Streaming Coachella 2012? It all happens again next weekend.
UK clever folks THIS IS IT Collective‘s amazingly hilarious short Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared is playing in front of the Zellner Brothers’ feature Kid-Thing at Sundance next week — but you can see it right now, here, for free!! Enjoy! And check out their other awesome videos.
Check out the very cool street art style of Portuguese artist Vhils (aka Alexandre Farto). This is the first I’ve seen of this style of plaster removal to create the image. The portrait on the left above was part of an LA collaboration with JR called Scratching the Surface.
Everything from Game of Thrones to Marvel superhero art (I guess that isn’t the widest of ranges) is on display on the Tumblr home of very talented artist Phil Noto. I particularly like his series of drawings masquerading as candid celebrity photos of superheroes from different decades. Some very cool stuff over there.
Check out Google’s awesome new 3D globe chart. The project is part of an open API that you could potentially use to show any sort of world data. Lovin it.
A little good ol human pixilation – with a few very ingenuitive twists – and executed to perfection. This video by Greg Jardin won the Jury Prize for Best Music Video at last month’s SXSW.
Not sure if this awesome tilt-shifted vid has been floating around a while, but G.voice is killing it by putting this front and center on the Coachella page. How can you watch this and not want to go to the festival right away? Layaway plans are available now.
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.
