Only very rarely do music videos make an appearance on this site, so this must have a very special something. The way they play with the environment is nothing but supreme genius. It’s the Official video for ‘We Got More’, taken from the album ‘Eskmo’ on Ninja Tune. The video was directed by the one and only Cyriak Harris. For someone who professes to prefer his studio to the limelight, Deadmau5 sure gets around. This year, the Grammy nominee headlined Coachella, the Olympics, and MTV’s VMAs, where he was house DJ. He cameo’d on Gossip Girl and even appears as a character in DJ Hero. But there have been stumbles along the way: He and dubstep producer Rusko Twitter-beefed after a backstage incident in Denver; then onstage at D.C.’s 9:30 Club, Deadmau5 collapsed from “exhaustion,” while bedecked in his customary costume — an oversized mouse head that serves as his brand and shield against the outside world. 4x4=12 is his third album as an artist-producer, and it’s aimed beyond Electric Daisy Carnival’s forest of fuzzy bras and platform boots. (After Random Album Title and For Lack of a Better Name, it’s easily his most ambitious title.) Punchy progressive house predominates (the Baroque-inspired “Some Chords” and the more linear “I Said”). But “Animal Rights,” a collaboration with DJ-producer Wolfgang Gartner, obviously grabs at Daft Punk’s electro-funk crown, while “One Trick Pony” and “Raise Your Weapon” offer Deadmau5’s approximation of dubstep’s wobble and buzz. “Sofi Needs a Ladder,” with its grating female rap, is like a tweaker version of M.I.A. Hipsters will hate it, but that’s partly the point. Admitting he was “born and raised an Internet hate machine,” Deadmau5 knows the power of provocation. So out of 5 stars, I give this one a 4. The Arctic Circle is a short stop-motion animated film by Kevin Parry. It tells the tale of a solitary man who encounters a mysterious box — one that seems to offer him great wealth. Filmmaker Tim Burton described to it as “a cross between 2001 and Rudolph: The Red-Nosed Reindeer. The Arctic Circle from Kevin Parry on Vimeo. Pahnl: 'Nowhere Near Here' is a stop motion animation that uses a combination of light with stencils and long exposure photography to tell the story of a dog running around the city at night, doing whatever a dog does. The animation was first exhibited at the The Herbert, in Coventry, on the 7th October 2010. With well over 300 hours in the making, more than 200 stencils involved and too many cold nights spent outside on my knees getting the shots, I am very happy (and relieved) to finally share this with you. Through the course of shooting 'Nowhere Near Here', I have dealt with curious drunks, a dog almost peeing on the camera (the irony is not lost on me, haha), the endlessly suspicious police and even someone nearly running off with a tripod. Nowhere Near Here from Pahnl on Vimeo. "Imagine a futuristic transparent touch screen in a club - it is an instant magnet for attention," says Alan Smithson, co-founder and CEO of Smithson Martin Inc., the company that developed the Emulator system exclusively for the professional DJ scene. "At our launch party, everyone wanted to touch and play with it, there were 3 people deep trying to take photos of it." The technology was developed by Pablo Martin, an Argentinean-based DJ with a passion for technology and the CTO of Smithson Martin Inc. He partnered with Alan Smithson, a DJ in Toronto, to create fully functional multi-touch Emulator packages. Their company, Smithson Martin Inc., provides the first and only professional DJ application for multi-touch technology available in the world. And Smithson Martin is the exclusive global distributor of the Emulator Multi-Touch screens for the DJ and Music Production market. Early buzz was created in August when a user released an Emulator YouTube video. DJ's from around the world were amazed and were asking how they could get their hands on this technology. While that video showed only the pre-release software, it generated over 1.3 million views, making it obvious that the DJ community is ready for this technology. Emulator is multi-touch MIDI software that presents everything the DJ needs on a high-resolution transparent multi-touch screen; the only screen accurate enough for professional use that doesn't generate false or ghost touches. The current version of Emulator interfaces with Traktor Pro, but future releases will include compatibility with Virtual DJ, Ableton, and Serato. Emulator currently runs on Windows 7, but Mac OS software is scheduled for release in 2011. www.smithsonmartin.com Öne time I was out at a clients and needed to perform some Photoshop work on an image that we were uploading to their new website. I have used Adobe's "Photoshop Live" at photoshop.com before, but it's pretty basic and we could not get the image cropping to work correctly... so went back to the Google search results for "Photoshop online" and the next item in the search was "Pixlr". Well! This just blew me away, what a great service and free!. The work that must have gone into the development of this online app. Pixlr is a user friendly online image editing application that is essentially designed for non professional users and allows them to effortlessly edit images. Fast, simple and enough features to make this a great find for low- to moderate-level photo editing. You can create a new image, upload an image, or grab one directly from a URL location. The Pixlr Editor has nice features but requires some knowledge of photo imaging software or you will get lost. There is not much user support available (it is free), but the user interface is very easy to navigate and user-friendly. There is a easy version called "Pixlr Express", which is so simple anyone can master it in seconds. You can also grab a Firefox or Chrome extension "Pixlr Grabber" that lets you right click on any image in a webpage and load it into Pixlr for editing. www.pixlr.com The 8 hour workday is one of those things that seems be something in place largely because it’s just the way we have done things for so long. I know there are exceptions to the idea that the 8 hour workday doesn’t make any sense. There are certain industries and certain jobs that are required to operate in the structure of an 8 hour day in order to function. I recognize and respect that. But as we move from industrial age to an age of information, it’s time to realize that the system is kind of an efficient "cluster-mess". Let’s look at the flaws of an 8 hour work day. To read more about this article, click here. If you're an aspiring musician, stop reading now, this will be painful. Japan's Crypton Future Media has unleashed upon the world what may be the future of pop music in the amazingly realistic, holographic singing idol called Hatsune Miku. Hatsune is a product of Japan's popular Vocaloid software scene in which fans can create their own songs for fictional characters to sing. The twist here is that Crypton took things to the next level by making the character into a hologram and actually putting their avatar on tour, playing to huge enthusiastic audiences. The spectacle of a hologram performing on stage, with a live backing band in front of thousands of screaming fans is pure science fiction brought to real life. To really process exactly how amazing (and hauntingly creepy) the Hatsune Miku music tour is, take a look at the HD video below. And just one more thing to add, this definately reminds me from the Manga "Macross Plus" with Sharon Apple! Gobelins is an art school in France that I would personally say has the best animation program in the world. Consistently it turns out talented folks year after year and this animated short is equally impressive. It’s called Le Royaume (The King and the Beaver) and was cretaed in collaboration between Nuno Alves Rodrigues, Oussama Bouachéria, Julien Chheng, Sébastien Hary, Aymeric Kevin, Ulysse Malassagne & Franck Monier with music by Mathieu Alvado. It’s really reminiscent of Japanese animation with lots of interesting character expressions and a real fluidity in the characters move. I also like that the story is a bit dark and mysterious and nature. Where di the King come from? Where did his kingdom go? Le Royaume from Sébastien Hary on Vimeo. Influencers is a short documentary that explores what it means to be an influencer and how trends and creativity become contagious today in music, fashion and entertainment. The film attempts to understand the essence of influence, what makes a person influential without taking a statistical or metric approach. Written and Directed by Paul Rojanathara and Davis Johnson, the film is a Polaroid snapshot of New York influential creatives (advertising, design, fashion and entertainment) who are shaping today’s pop culture. INFLUENCERS FULL VERSION from R+I creative on Vimeo. |
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