Keeping on the music...

This is just a really funny video. The man is a great attention holder!

Awesome music video!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=aeeR4Vnvs8U

Hey guys, sorry the embedding was removed by request so I posted the youtube link. But this video is incredible. I don't know about any of you, but my only experience with a treadmill was that of falling on my face when I was a kid because while at my friend's house and I tried to jump on when it was going 10 miles an hour and ate shit! This has got to be one of the hardest videos to have filmed, especially if it was done using only one take. The song is really great with it too. What do you guys think about it?

elephant art

Apparently, you can now buy paintings made by... elephants.



read on: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/30/elephant-artists.html

what do you think about THAT? how much would YOU pay for a masterpiece of this sort?

Massive Drum Recording (Live)

First of all I would like to say, I personally dont like Blink 182. But Ive always thought Travis Barker (drummer) should be acknowledged as the most talented artist in the band because of his versatility with genres. I like this version more than the original track because he adds so much more energy and live drums into the mix. If youre a musician, You should definitely check this out.

Will a Bic lighter blend in a blender????

Will it Blend?? This is so funny because this one guy has made soo many videos with the same theme. I wonder if this guy is making money off of this.. Its genius though!

Zune ad

I couldn't get enough of the aesthetic of this ad. The battle, music, the cartoonish characters. Its good stuff, click the image for the video.

Metro ad

Interesting perspective from Madrid metro ad. Click the image to get to the video.

WHAT THE F? Really? Really?

Going on with the proposal bit, this is almost too much to wrap your mind around. Why this dude thought this was a good idea is beyond me.

Propsal she can't say no to... or can she?

This isn't deep or anything, I just thought it was interesting. First because it's funny yet disheartening at the same time... But more funny...

the davos question

This is quite an interesting phenomenon. World leaders asking EVERYONE: "What one thing do you think that countries, companies or individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008?" Although this is for the World Economic Forum - an organization known for its attempts to spread neo-liberal ideals throughout the world, generally helping business by imposing free market principles upon "individuals and countries"- perhaps this is an attempt to "open" the political discourse. Can youtube be a space for political conversation which is not dependent or hampered by political hierarchies? At least from my experience with the CNN/Youtube debates, I would be skeptical, but what are your thoughts?

Two great music videos by Justice

Justice, a popular french electro band, is known best for their dirty, distorted synth bass sound and having the video that beat out Kanye West at the MTV Europe Music Awards (Kanye preceded to take the stage and complain about losing). Both of these videos are extremely creative and well executed.

Japanese girl's letter returned 15 years later ... by fish

This is a bizarre story about a fisherman who found a 15 year old letter- originally launched into the air on a balloon by a 6 year old girl - attached to a fish that he caught 1000 feet below the sea. Strange world indeed!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080125/od_afp/japanpostanimaloffbeat_080125183046

Unforgivable

READ THIS BEFORE YOU WATCH!!! Ok so this video will totally make me look like a racist if you don't understand the background. The character in this movie created this and about 3 or four others that are similar. The idea is that he takes on these various sterotypes of black people and is trying to show the world how ridiculous they are. So there is definate foul languse, but if you start watching with an open mind knowing its supposed to be a joke, you'll find it very difficult to keep yourself from laughing the entire time. I just wanna state that I am not affiliated with this video, and I do not support any of the comments said in this movie. Its a JOKE, its only a joke.

Pictures in the Sand

This is amazing. The artistic talent that you would need in order to achieve this sort of efftect is unbelievable. I found myself wanting more at the end and I'm sure many of you have seen this sort of thing before, but it is truly mind blowing.

Great Song and Funny Hand Video

This video apparently only came out on the preloaded videos on the (ipodlike) Zune. The video itself is hilarious and the song has a classic kind of mood. I checked out some other songs by this band (The Format) and wasnt equally amazed. Great video nonetheless check it out.

Etch-A-Sketch Artist

WOw! Salt Art

In this video salt is being poured on a table that is designed to have uniform tension over its entire surface, while a speaker underneath the table plays a progressively higher frequency. The result is some natural beauty.

Liquid Metal !!!

This is really cool not only aesthetically but conceptually and a very dangerous project-playing with liquid metals. They must of used a massive magnet and different types mercury metals. I dont know if the sounds are added by the video artist but I like the effect. Apparently noises make the metals move. So there is a sense of cooperation by the viewer. Very interesting.

Salad Fingers

I think this is absurd, and very creepy.

You suck at photoshop

So Bad That It's Good

This is so bad that it's good. Seriously. I love things that go so far south that they wind up in the north. The song has a lot of energy too. Check it out.

Pencil Sculptures

Check out what you can do with a pencil. These are amazingly delicate pencil carvings.

http://www.weirdomatic.com/carved-pencils.html

Here is a completely different style of pencil sculpture using many pencil tips.

Bat For Lashes - "What's a Girl To Do"

This video is one of my favorites from last year. It's so well thought up, and appears to be shot all in one take. Not sure if that's really how it was done, but all the same it's a fantastic piece of work.

Excellent Simple Treatment of 2004 Debate Footage

This is a smartly looped moment of one of George Bush's awkward moments from the 2004 presidential debates.  What I like about this is it is not merely funny.  The melancholy Shins music helps bring this into something richer than just humor. 

Circul'aire

This is an amazing example of the performance art of isolation. When one "isolates" an object, the one creates the illusion that the object is suspended in mid air. This performer, Nicolas Longuechaud, is exploring the possibilities of ring isolation. He uses rings of various sizes as well as circular sculptures which connect multiple rings.

Love Letter - Scott Tebeau

Scott Tabeau is a video artist out of Prortland, OR. His videos are interesting and almost always feature elements of the bizarre.

Conic Juggling

Greg Kennedy is an innovative juggler who pushes the bounds of juggling prop innovation. He has built a variety of structures in order to explore different spaces and possibilities through juggling. In this one he builds a cone around himself and uses a rolling style of juggling that can only occur in that environment.

Is it their image, or their music?

The Horrors are a UK band that seem to have been getting a lot of coverage recently. Some criticize them for being more concerned about their "look" with their big hair and tight, black skinny jeans than their music, described by these critics as random noise. Others claim that they are the next Sex Pistols. The band members themselves claim that they are about making the music they want to listen to and have no aspirations to ever become so big that they are ever caught playing in a stadium full of people. They allow the audience to do as they please at their shows- apparently one fan even stuck his/her hand down the back of the lead singer's pants while the band was performing. His comment on this was simply that he would prefer that not happen, because it is "kind of gross," while at the same time he is not going to stop one from doing it.

So is it their image or their music that has had the most influence on their growing popularity? 

Another music video of The Horrors, "Sheena Is A Parasite," was allegedly banned from MTV- I could not find a clear reason as to why. I did not post it because I found this one much more interesting, but if you're curious you can check it out yourself.

There are many grafitti time lapse videos on youtube and google where they show graffiti artists tagging on a single surface. Those are amazing.
Time lapse animates the process a tag or painting goes through before and after completion. This video is done by a crew of graffiti artists (called Rinpa) that use time lapse video techniques to show the progression of their graffiti on all walls of a room but also adding sculptural and installation art elements incorporating clay, paper, and furniture.
It is aesthetically beautiful and deserves more credit than its mere 1638 views so far.
I love watching the process before completion. The process itself is something many artists hide from the viewer, and allow the viewer to imagine the process for themselves. Imagine Wassily Kandinsky showing you the steps to paint Composition VIII. The process itself becomes part of the art.

Julian Beever's amazing chalk drawings

Julian Beever is an English chalk artist who has been creating trompe-l'œil chalk drawings on pavement surfaces since the mid-1990s. His works are created using a projection called anamorphosis, and create the illusion of three dimensions when viewed from the correct angle.

Smashing Magazine's list of music videos

Smashing magazine is an excellent online publication that puts together lists of awesome design content on a daily-ish basis. They recently published a post entitled "29 Brilliant Music Videos" that is rich with inspiration. I posted the first video in the list, simply because I haven't had time to digest the other 28. I wish there was more time in the day, but check this one out, its worth the 5 minutes.

Memory Game

Wild!

Check out these intense images of a group of Nigerian street performers - who call themselves "Hyena Men" - that travel with 3 domestic Hyenas, along with assorted monkeys and snakes.

http://www.coolhunting.com/archives/2007/12/pieter_hugo.php

These are all simply wowing to see.
I've never realized just how big is a hyena. I've posted a little bit about the photographer, Pieter Hugo (a South African with Dutch origins), below:

"Pieter Hugo is a South African photographer who has set out to photograph groups of people that have a distinct presence across Africa. His images of traditional healers, wild honey collectors, taxi washers, and albinos are strong and beautiful, but my favorite series is The Hyena Men which opened last week at Yossi Milo Gallery in New York." by Jonah Samson

Surgeons Improve Their Skills Using Nintendo Wii

This is a fascinating article from the Wall Street Journal about a study that was done on a group surgical residents--8 of whom used a specially designed wii controller to practice delicate motor skills, and 8 of whom did not. The results showed that the ones who practiced on the wii improved their surgical skills. It sounds silly perhaps,but really it makes total sense and is a great idea.

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/01/17/surgeons-hone-skills-on-nintendo-wii/

NYC Waterfalls, yo

The ultimate juxtaposition of nature in the big apple, check out the story. It seems like there's a general distaste with local attempts to allow nature to reclaim urban environments, too cliche and obvious for some, I guess. Danish artist Olafur Eliasson's designs call for an extreme contrast that, in my opinion, should be more successful. Two elements overflowing with frenetic energy, streaming water and bustling bridges, coming together in an unlikely pairing should create beautiful tension.

AMAZING ART.

So I was browsing the Internet and I happened upon the Web site of an ex-Whitman student who happens to be very close to my heart and I COULDN'T BELIEVE how incredible his work has become. You can check out his self-designed Web site here:

http://www.mackenzie-schubert.com/

Go to the "Art" section listed in the bottom left corner and click around. He's really challenging the notion of What Art Is in a way that I think is really provocative and interesting. There's a major installation in there that simulates the extreme devastation of a natural disaster inside a crowded room, and a set of eight 6 x 6 drawings presented in such a way that only one part of an incomplete narrative can be seen at a time. He also made THESE paintings (I'm putting one below) which have tabs you can pull and the image changes as you interact with the piece. It's all very exciting to me, especially because he used to go to Whitman. I thought I'd pass it along.

hybrids

The British government has approved an experiment which will create the first animal/human hybrid embryo. Scientists will study the embryo, which will be 99.9% human, and .01% cow, to gain a better understanding of debilitating conditions like Parkinson's disease (and presumably, mad cow disease):

Read about it.

In the future, this will surely be new genre art. Like... rather than Duschamp-esque installations, we'll be combining the DNA of human beings and muskrats or something like that.

All the way to Hong Kong!

Watch This. From Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

I can't help but find this entertaining and even kinda poignant.

Old Greg

This video is hilarious. "I'm Old Greg!"

Welcome Back!

I'd like to start off this semester by having each of you view and respond to this video. I was pretty affected when I saw this, and I believe a lot of the problems it points to in today's education system (especially as it functions in relation to student responsibilities and habits) are very very real, even at high ranking schools like Whitman. I think this video is a good jumping off point from which to begin my new genre art classes this Spring semester. In some sense, it is a call for a "new genre" of information delivery and of information sharing; one that begets new and stronger types of critical thinking. As many of you know, I have long been a proponent of youtube.com and the internet in general as a source of knowledge and a sharing tool for members of a class. So now I ask you: is it time we moved over more fully into new formats? Should we leave behind more traditional classroom traditions such as the written essay, the one way lecture, the expensive, hardly read textbook. Or, are we losing critical skills regarding the focus required to take in information and distill it or put it together? How do you manage your own multi-tasking needs? Are you comfortable with how you work and what you work on, or do you wish/feel that you were naturally more engaged? In the spirit of these changes, one of the primary requirements for this class is going to be regular use--posting and responding to posts-- on this blog. But before I explain all of what I will be asking you to do on it, let me know what you think. How does this video strike you? And also, what do you see as some ways to move ahead to find yourself more actively engaged--both with your peers and your professors--and less distracted and/or bored? I'll be very interested to read your candid responses.