As Seen on TV - a tribute to doing it wrong:
Whenever a TV product commercial plays I bust a gut during the parts where they show us what we’re doing wrong and why we need the product.
This is my tribute to the hilarious work the actors in these infomercials do.
(via marco)
H.M., 2009, by Kerry Tribe
double projection of a single 16mm film, 18:30 minutes
H.M. is a two-channel presentation of a single film based on the true story of an anonymous, memory-impaired man, the famous amnesiac known in scientific literature only as “Patient H.M.” In 1953, when he was 27 years old, H.M. underwent experimental brain surgery intended to alleviate his epilepsy. The unintended result was a radical and persistent amnesia. Though he was no longer able to make lasting memories, his short-term recall, lasting about 20 seconds, remained intact. He lived anonymously in this condition for more than half a century until his death on December 2, 2008, in a Connecticut nursing home. His case is widely credited with revolutionizing our understanding of the organization of human memory.
H.M. consists of a single 16mm film that plays through two adjacent synchronized projectors with a 20 second delay between them, so the viewer sees two simultaneous side-by-side projections of two different parts of the same reel of film. The structure of the installation and the nature of the material together produce a sensation of mnemonic dissonance much like that experienced by Patient H.M.
The roughly 18-minute loop weaves together reenacted, documentary, found and animated elements and lies somewhere between an experimental documentary and an independent narrative film.
Just listened to Alissa Walker’s interview on Humble Pied about “ignoring your job title.”
It’s the same idea that had me all excited about Gabriel Orozco’s show at the MoMA.* He doesn’t feel constrained by the collective consciousness definition of what an artist can be, or I, at least, don’t get the feeling that he’s trying too hard to create capital A-R-T. Either way, the joy is evident and in the breadth of the work there is clarity.
Like Alissa says, whatever you do becomes your body of work!
* and now that I think about it, this is the same reason that I get excited about anything. Maybe it’s also why I like reading writing about writing, I can’t find the quote, but somebody said that the business of a writer is living life, if that connection makes sense at all.
My opinion of the olympics is generally in line with @joehewitt, who tweeted: “All hail the power of marketing convincing people they need to suddenly care about these obscure, dull sports once every 2 years.”
But, at the closing ceremony of the winter olympics, 20 giant “Zygote” touch-responsive glowing bouncy balls—based on open-source software—were released into the crowd. How cool is that?
I knew I liked this William Wegman fella. I feel I have been remiss in not reminding 20x200 collectors that he directed New Order’s video for Blue Monday.
This is so rad. Probably my second favorite* music video ever.
* First favorite being this gem by Queen Latifah.
American Express: Don’t Take Chances. Take Charge. (via AmericanExpressCo)
See also: Steven Heller writes about it.
Like Powers of Ten, except astronomically accurate. It’s not a dramatization, it’s a map; the positioning data was pulled from Hayden Planetarium’s Digital Universe Atlas, which is available for free download.
(via Kottke)
The Complex of All of These (via januarypress)
A little while back I posted Abigal Uhteg’s amazing printmaking process photographs but I didn’t realize that there was also an amazing video set to Ratatat. Excellent!
This (inexplicably rude!) guy gives a cool breakdown of how Philip Glass’s music is constructed.
(via Kottke)
Beautiful animated short on procrasination, except that it’s clearly not a result of procrastination in any way shape of form.
(via zefrank)