Photos - Touching Strangers by Richard Renaldi

Richard Renaldi gets two or more people who don't know each other to pose together... But the condition is that they be touching one another. It's really interesting to see the variety of feeling and reactions to this.
Here's a link to the series: click here.

Video - Khoda (Animation made from paintings)

This is an awesome animation made from 6000 paintings by Reza Dolatabadi.
There are 20 paintings per second, and it took him over 2 years to complete this astounding student project!

Photos - Young me Now me

Click here to travel in time.  This is website were people reenact old photos of themselves a certain amount of time later. It sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes touching, sometimes just plain weird... But interesting through and through.

Old news - The Lenski affair

Whenever I hear the word Unicorn I think of E.coli and lemons...
I wasn't originally going to post this because I thought everyone had heard of it... But apparently not, so here it is: click here for everything you ever wanted to know about the Lenski affair.

It's the email exchanges between Andrew Schlafly, right wing nut and founder of the repository for right wing fantasy called conservapedia (the self-styled "trustworthy wiki", which would be funny if it weren't so depressing, or depressing if it weren't so funny), and Richard Lenski, a brilliant scientist who is pushed from polite patience to polite sarcasm and humor.

P.S. Sigh, to end on a depressing note, I just read conservapedia's article on Barack Obama... 

By the talented Etch-A-Sketchist here at blogspot.

Music - candryrat records

Candyrat records features some of the better fingerstyle guitarists of this generation (Don Ross, Andy McKee, Antoine Dufour, etc.), many of which can be found in their youtube channel. I never get tired of listening to these wizards play. So here is a link to a youtube playlist that includes a selection from their acoustic talents.
I'll also embed a video so that you can see/hear what I'm getting you into, just in case you aren't already familiar with fingerstyle guitar.

Video - Close encounter with the octopoid kind

A neat story about an exceptional meeting between a diver and a denizen of the (not so) deep waters.

Video - Doll face (cyberpunk short)

This is a beautiful and depressing CGI short (4.13mn) created by Andy Huang. It's about... I'll let you find out for yourself.

Video - Maya (dark cyberpunk short)

This is a wonderful and rather dark cyberpunk short... It pushes all the right cyberpunk buttons in all the right ways.


Maya (final Cut)

Video - Craziest (the awesome scrabble video)

A dark short story by Liz Dubelman. The truth you didn't know abut the meaning of scrabble.

Audio - Interview of Dali

This is the original interview of Dali by David Bryson (1963) used to make the animation featured in the previous post.
Interesting, fascinating... From the mouth of the man himself. It's like being there.
Dali speaks to us across the years...
Crazy? Possibly, but splendid!

Animation - Interview with Dali

A fun 1.05minute animation made from pieces of the audio from a real Dali interview.
By Alex Butera, whose blog you can find here!

Poetry - Taylor Mali doing his poem "What teachers make"

For those who don't know of him yet, this guy rocks the slam poetry with a vengeance. There is much more on his website.

Music video - Art History

This is so much fun to watch!


70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L'Ogre on Vimeo.

Animation - Cleverman

This made me laugh... A short 7.20min animation piece from studio joho (studiojoho.com) about modern life.
Ridiculously cute but not cutesy at all.

Photos - Watermelon Carving

Takashi Itoh, from japan, does some impressive things with watermelons and other fruit: beautiful delicate sculptures of flowers, people, things, you name it...
Watermelon Carvings, plenty of pics on the website.

                                                                                              

Animation - "Ink" and "brush"

Ok, these two entries echo a sudden and accidental leitmotif in my main blog: ink painting.


CCTV Ink from Troublemakers.tv on Vimeo.
A professionally produced advertisement. I just dig the way this ad takes the process of ink wash and represents scenes that disaggregate, flow, and reform to depict other scenes.


This is Lei Chen's final Masters Project for the 'Masters in 3D Computer Animation' Programme at the NCCA, Bournemouth University, England. Great fun, and representative of how you sometimes need to hit a wall to create.

Animation - Vincent

Tim Burton, back in 82, made a stop-animation short (6 minutes) in tribute to his childhood idol Vincent Price.

Vincent Price does the narration in the short. Worth watching for anybody who appreciates Poe, Burton, Emily Strange, Katie Towell... Or a bit of gently macabre humor with elegant wordplay.

Crafts- glow in the dark circuitry origami

Neat little craft with pretty results.

News - Too much joy royalty statement

You may not have heard of Too much joy, I hadn't.
They're an 80s rock band (think REM, violent femmes, the cure)...
They received a curious royalty statement, and the wrote an interesting text detailing the circumstances.
http://www.toomuchjoy.com/?p=1397
All of their albums can all be heard heard in full on their website.

Music - Rue Royale

This is a phenomenal duo I stumbled onto randomly looking up music on myspace.
They do indie/folk music. Beautiful, soft, with a touch of melancholy.
Rue royale, myspace - they have a number of tracks available
Rue royale, their official website - their shop, and two gift tracks
Their album has been spending a fair amount in my player, totally worth it.

Book - How to be an alien, by Georges Mikes

You don't have to be an alien to appreciate the humor in this but it helps, especially if you have some experience with the UK.

This an online version of George Mikes' very funny how to book, on being an alien in Great-Britain.

Ex. "On the Continent people have good food; in England people have good table manners."

Click below for more:
How to be an alien, Georges Mikes.

Music - Jericho Harp

I have "the album" in my record collection and, for many many years, I have been offhandedly looking for more online... And suddenly there's an uploaded playable version online - glee!
It's very sweet, almost too sweet, but I still dig it just as much! So all you need to do is click on the link to hear what Jericho Harp sounds like.
FYI: it's sweet folk/pop/rock from the United States in the seventies. I recommend starting by "the album".