The Evolution of Remix Culture – a well documented video
Since the most watched Youtube hit “The Evolution of Dance” there have been scores of evolution documenting videos. Apparently you now have evolution videos for all things, even the pop star Beyonce, Homer Simpson and Fist Bump (yes fist bumping wasn’t invented by gangsters).
What you don’t rarely realise from watching these videos is that they are all remixes, and so, in a very coincidental way, someone has also created a video for the Evolution of remix culture, which I have to say is done at a very high standard!
SyncLost – electro music visualisation
Guys at 3Bits have developed a seriously edgy interface for visualised music where users can create new beat sounds from different branches of electro and techno styles. Remotely controlled with a wiimote, the interface sync-plays music in response to users’ own selections, creating endless choice for new mixes through merging of different beats.
Songs about retro technology
I’m creating a playlist for songs that in some way sing about retro technology, i.e everything from vintage household electronics to the gadgets that the cool kids of the 80’s and 90’s had.
My playlist already has the following songs, but I need more to make it a complete 20 track playlist, so help me out plz!
The xx – VCR
Hello Seahorse – Cassette
Vinylistic – Record Player
Lengendary Stardust Cowboy – I Hate CD’s
Anymore for anymore?
3D Matchmoving Animation
I thought I knew a bit of about animation film techniques but when I came across the following fascinating animation video, I just couldn’t figure out how it’s made.
According to the creator of the video Jordan Clarke, the 3D animation was made using matchmoving and compositing techniques and that’s as elaborate as it gets. Nonetheless, it gives a bizarre sense of real world and 3D objects in this instance cubicles mixing together seemlesly and mesmerisingly.
Box Animation from Jordan Clarke on Vimeo.
Get yourself crowdsourced in performance and music
I came to realisation that crowdsourcing is the simplest yet the most prolific way of creating a piece of art or performance. Fortunately, there are plentiful of new generation of artists who can prove it.
It starts with a friend of mine who recently mentioned that she had been crowdsourced to perform a dance in front of a living, and breathing audience thanks to her friend Augusto Corrieri, a performance artist who creates dance performances involving unassuming non-professionals.
Interestingly, not only does he find his performers on the internet but he also trains them via youtube videos. What his Dance Company tries to achieve is fairly simple – he collects 10 willing performers found on the internet and through local call-outs, the collective of performers then watch a series of online instruction videos for rehearsal. The cast then gets assembled on the day before the show for a single rehearsal and the next day and a crowdsourced performance like this comes alive on a real theatre stage.
In a similar fashion, the production team behind C-Mon & Kypski has taken the crowdsourcing to making a music video for the band’s newest album and the song More is Less. So for those who’d like to earn One Frame of Fame, then there’s an opportunity for you to appear on the video, like right NOW!. All you need is apparently to copy some poses on your webcam.
The Internet in the words of Cassetteboy
Youtube’s muchly appreciated mashup marverick Cassetteboy has teamed up with BBC Digital Revolution to inspire and challenge youtubers and film makers to come up with mashups using BBC’s own rush sequences. As part of BBC’s short film competition , BBC Digital Revolution has opened up some sizeable amount of footage from its own archive for anyone who fancies constructing their own 3 minute madness.
To kick the competition off, Cassetteboy along with equally brilliant stop motion video artist Barry Pilling have come up with below mashups from bunch of talking heads describing the internet, as in the phenomenon.
equilibrium
b-uncut: Liberating Art for the Artists’ Sake
Like any old establishments, the art industry has its wheels oiled by canny art dealers who to this date still profits the most from art, even in the boom and bust of an era. The art itself have become a product of the capitalism.
Any budding art historians would know the Art industry has been centralised around dealers for many centuries leaving artists of real talent earn as low as 20% from art sales.
But somewhere along the way, a revolt started to happen and the business model for art dealership is fast challenged by a group of like minded artists who formed a community presence to demand liberation – a kind of liberation that removes aftists from the pressure to create art for the sake of profit.
I came across such community, when I was invited to the launch of a community art website called b-uncut a couple of weeks ago. Relatively new social web based platform and movement, b-uncut is an establishment that vows to serve the artists only. From what I’ve been told it has some 1,000 non-conformist artists exhibiting and selling their art works directly to buyers, while celebrating a shared experience and community spirit. I’m just glad to think that communities like this are thriving on the web and that the old way of doing things is being replaced by a new way of thinking.
Below slide shows some of the 16.500 works currently on display at b-uncut.
Find more photos like this on b-uncut.net
Repurposing social networks – Flickr’s case
This week I came to notice yet another example of social network users redefining the very purpose of their favourite social media platforms. This time it was on Flickr that I found an intriguing social experiment called Noticin.gs, a social game that involves users finding and tagging photos taken and geotagged by others when they stumble across interesting locations or things.
Flickr is and has been one of the simplest single-purpose community platform for photography enthusiasts and amateurs alike. In fact, it is where people form all sorts of visual communities around photography themes and subjects. However that’s not the only thing Flickr community is about as far as social networking goes. Frequent users of Flickr has re-purposed the platform for social games, documentation, photo journalism and many other things.
Speechbreaker: House of Lords will party overnight with nurses
If you’d like to give the British political monkeys a much needed speech breaks then you can do so by joining in the video mashup campaign from the Liberal Democrats. Yes, thanks to a new Youtube mashup meme called the Speechbreaker you can compose “Politically Incorrect” mock speeches for the current PM incumbent and the Conservative leader Dave.
The best speeches so far are:
Quest for Real Adventure
News reached my ears that my favourite educational broadcaster Discovery Channel has given a birth to a brilliantly original adventure channel called Quest this week. The newly launched channel has the same purpose as its parent channel, which is to educate everyone but my adventure loving cousin on all things wonderful about our planet.
While Quest inherits the same attitude to educating others and documenting some of the world’s rarest things, it has a bit of naughty streak as well. The channel focuses more on exploring the world through real hard adventure, hence offers some true entertainment value to viewers. For example, instead of watching wild grizzly bear skillfully catching leaping salmon in the river, with Quest you’re more likely to watch some dude trying snatch the grizzly bear’s lunch and run off.
In their own words, Quest channel will offer a mix of quality drama, outdoor adventure series, documentary series and user-generated video clip showsh. Here’s a little teaser to start off with.
It’s a pretty sick channel, so seek for your self if you want a bit of heart thumping entertainment. The channel is on Freeview Channel 38 and transmits daily from 10am till midnight. Oh and one thing, make sure you re-tune your TV with Freeview, it takes about 5 mins to figure out and another 5 mins to install, simples!
Thanks to Jed for sharing the info.
