From the album "Perennial Favorites" (Mammoth Records). Winner of "Best Animated Music Video" at the 1999 Vancouver Animation Festival. Directed by Raymond Persi and Matthew Nastuk.
Getting hyped up for the SNZ show tomorrow. I can't wait!
An evening of unexpected and obscure nature films. Each short film will be introduced by Jessica Oreck, director of Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, a beautiful documentary on insect collecting in Japan.
The evening will feature the trailer for Oreck’s fascinating film, as well as short films by Jean Painleve, the great french nature documentarian of early avant-garde documentaries on everything from crystals to seahorses to vampire bats.
Then we’ll have a look at The Cameraman’s Revenge, a silent stop-motion film from 1912 by the Polish animator, Wladyslaw Starewicz (1882-1965). The leading players of this short animation are real insects.
Antique Science will also introduce you to a behind-the-scenes film documenting the techniques of Disney’s vintage nature films. The films of insect-life and plant time lapses are beautiful, the early filming techniques awe-inspiring, and the 1950s naturalist couples who made them adorable.
We’ll round the evening off with a outtake reel from one of our favorite nature hosts, plus a few other surprises, time warranting.
UPDATE: The lecture will also be repeated at 9:00 to accommodate demand.
A deck given to his brother by his mother in 1986 sat in Jesse Bransford’s childhood bedroom from the early 90’s until recently, delivering itself into Bransford’s possession at an opportune moment…
The Tarot in general and Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot in particular represent a miasmic confluence of image and thought into a single structure that is both liberating and overwhelming in its scope. In creating the deck, Crowley (in collaboration with painter Lady Frieda Harris) sought to integrate the mythological structures of the major mystical systems of both Western and Eastern occult traditions and to bring them into line with contemporary scientific thinking. The symbolism of the cards blends Kabbalah, Alchemy, Astrology, Egyptian mythology, quantum physics and even the I-Ching in ways that are at the same time clear and utterly confounding.
In an image-soaked personal narration Bransford, whose research-based artwork has delved into many of the territories Crowley sought to unify, will discuss some of the basic concepts of Tarot symbolism, returning to Crowley’s deck as among the most total example of the cards’ syncretism and as the most controversial.
Jesse Bransford is a Brooklyn/Queens-based artist whose work has been exhibited internationally. He received a B.A. from the New School for Social Research, a B.F.A. from Parsons School of Design, both in 1996, and an M.F.A. from Columbia University in 2000. He is currently a Master Teacher with the post of Undergraduate Director at New York University where he has been teaching since 2001, as well as a member of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism. His work is represented by Feature Inc. in New York, Kevin Bruk Gallery in Miami, Galerie Schmidt Maczollek in Köln, and Shaheen Modern and Contemporary Art in Cleveland. Images of his work, a complete bio and related articles can be seen at www.sevenseven.com/, a website he has continuously maintained since 1997.
Both events are at the Observatory event space between the Proteus Gowanus Gallery and Reading Room, the Cabinet Magazine headquarters, and the Morbid Anatomy Library at 543 Union St. in Brooklyn.
World Builder is a blended live action/CGI film by director Bruce Branit. It took one day of filming and two years of post-production work to create this breathtaking work, which details an epic act of creation: in a futuristic holographic environment, a single man builds a fully-realized digital world from the ground up, using a suite of gestural Minority-Report-esqe development tools that should make any designer weep. A labor of love, in more ways than one.
9 is a short computer-animated film by Shane Acker in which a race of diminutive sack-creatures scavenge in the ruins of a post-apocalyptic world and try to evade their greatest enemy, a ruthless mechanical predator. It's an intriguing, well-realized world, and there are plans to expand the concept into a full-length feature. Via io9.
Please Say Something is a mind-blowing short film by animator David O'Reilly. Disjointed and dreamlike, it tells the story of the stormy relationship between a cat and mouse couple. In the future. Amazing.
Five minutes before his big performance, the Maestro and his persistent mechanical assistant are in preparation mode. As the clock ticks, life at the top is not all it seems.
Kunio Kato, a member of the ROBOT Character and Animation team, is a Japanese animator whose quietly surreal films portray a curious world of fantasy and whimsy. This year, his short Tsumiki no Ie ("La maison en petit cubes" or "House of Blocks") won the Annecy Cristal prize at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival and Market.
Dreamy and dreamlike, Aru Tabibito no Nikki ("The Diary of Tortov Roddle" or "A Traveler's Diary") (2003) is a series of unconnected episodes of strange and whimsical happenings in the life of the eponymous hero, a tall traveler in a top hat who wanders the world astride his curiously long-legged pig companion. The film comprises Episodes 1-6. Selected for the 2004 Annecy festival, it was the winner of the Best Prize in the Laputa Animation Festival in 2003 and the Grand Prix in the Hida International Animation Festival of Folktales and Fables.
The adventures of Tortov Roddle continue in the bonus Episode 7, The Red Berry, in which the traveler encounters a garden of hallucinogenic red fruits.
Michaël Dudok de Wit is a Holland-born animator living in London whose charming, spare, Japanese-influenced cartoon animations have won numerous awards, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA, and the Annecy Grand Prix for his 2000 film Father and Daughter.
The Aroma of Tea (2006) is Dudok de Wit's latest film. It is drawn entirely in washes of tea.
Father and Daughter (2000) is a quiet, moving tale about a young girl awating the return of her lost father.
In the ancient tradition of cat-and-mouse cartoons comes Le Moine et Le Poisson ("The Monk and the Fish") (1994), a delightful, minimalist short about a monk's obsessive attempts to catch the fish he spies in the monastery pond.
Tom Sweep (1992) is a humorous little cartoon about the travails of a beleaguered street janitor.
The Art of Mourning is an excellent collection of antiques representing various funeral and mourning mementos and paraphernalia. There are also some articles about mourning art and practices through time. Via Regina Noctis.
There are no tickets and no reductions for this visit to the underworld. A fat, unspiritual, greasy monk just takes the money and throws it into a basket with unexpected abruptness. A guidebook I buy later dresses up the visit and, after a serious discussion of burial customs in different cultures starting in antiquity, talks about all the artworks lining the stairs going down into the catacombs. I don't notice these important paintings. It seems a minimal space, stripped bare of all pretense that what lies ahead is anything but grim.
Games
Ben Leffler is the talented designer behind the spectacular Exmortis series of games (1 and 2; there's also the horror short Purgatorium). I had hoped there would be an Exmortis 3 ready to offer you for Halloweentime this year, but no, it's still in development. There is, however, Goliath the Soothsayer. Rejoice. Play. Walkthrough at Jay Is Games.
Scuttlebuggery is the latest flash oddity from super-stylish gothic design studio My Pet Skeleton. It's sort of like a game of liquid soccer played between beetles with drops of absinthe and formaldehyde. Is that clear?
In Zombie Inglor, you are an ordinary man who has been bitten by a zombie, and you have fifty days to find a cure. Saving the village from the zombie infestation would be nice, too. This is a neat little RPG game with adventure and combat elements, with some nice touches like day/night changes, weather, and fully voiced characters. Via Regina Noctis.
How will you fare when the outbreak occurs and undead roam the streets? Take the Zombie Survival Quiz to test your fitness, wits, temperament, and knowledge.
Video
It's time for the annual pilgrimage to Childrin R Skary for the newest works from this prolific gothic animation studio. Check out the films playing in the theater, or visit author Katy Towell's non-Childrin site, Crookedsixpence.com, where you can find more movies like the gorgeously spooky Never Woke Up.
For a whole pile of Halloween-themed animation, check out Newgrounds Presents Halloween 2008, a Flash film fest and competition from the popular Flash gaming site with ten cash prizes for the best entries. Some notable entries:
The Dark Room is slow, dreamlike, and gory, and features some very nice background locations. Aside from that, it's hard to tell just what happened.
While it may not feature the slickest animation around, Vampiric Wit is a short, humorous entry that wins points for its clever premise.
.Alice. is a moody little piece, short on plot, that aims to recreate the effect of a horror movie haunted highway scene. Very cinematic in style.
Fear.net is a horror-themed video site that offers a mix of full movies, clips and excerpts, shows, shorts, and other videos. It's a slasher/thriller/horror lover's playground. Try the Halloween FEAR Fest for some seasonal fun. Via Regina Noctis.
ADDENDUM: io9 has just posted a great list of several places to find free horror movies online in addition to Fear.net.
For more, check the "Halloween" label for past years' offerings.
Tomorrow is the official inauguration of CERN's breakthrough particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC. It actually went online weeks ago. I missed it — while the fate of the world hung in the balance (not really), I was off in Alaska, peacefully enjoying the continued existence of the planet Earth. While that was cause for celebration (and if you want to celebrate, io9 has got you covered), just over a week later the LHC was shut down again due to mechanical issues, and will stay down for winterization. Still, it'll be expanding the boundaries of human knowledge and imperiling the Earth again next spring.
So, the point of this post: in order to explain the mysterious, sometimes feared, and much-misunderstood workings of the LHC, a bunch of clever folks bravely stepped up to demystify the project and give the world the reassurances it needed in the form of the brilliant, beautiful Large Hadron Rap. Because science is best popularized through rap, as MC Hawking well knows. If you want to memorize every word and sing along, check here for lyrics and other info.
Don't forget that on the day the LHC went live, Torchwood was there, to make sure the Earth was safe. On "Big Bang Day", BBC's Radio 4 broadcast "Lost Souls", a Torchwood radio play commemorating the activation of the LHC. It's no longer available freely (again, sorry for the lateness — Alaska), but it can be purchased for download, and there's also an audio cd.
And just because the song made me think of it: They Might Be Giants - Particle Man. As dramatized by Tiny Toon Adventures. That was my first introduction to the song, and it's good enough for you, too.
I actually screened several different Particle Man music videos on YouTube, until some peculiar live-action renditions (is that the real TMBG video?) and what appeared to be a slew of similarly-executed entries from some beginning animation class project began to turn my brain to mush, and I simply fell back on what was oldest and most familiar. So enjoy this musical and animation classic on, roughly speaking, the subject of particles. Sort of.
I think what this post needs to finish it off is some MC Hawking. MC Hawking - Entropy.
And now I promise I'm all geeked out. It'll be something classy next time.
Last month saw the release of the new Futurama direct-to-dvd movie, The Beast with a Billion Backs. (This is the second such dvd -- in case you missed it, Futurama's previous last gasp from beyond the grave was Bender's Big Score, and shame on you for missing it!) It's a rare reprieve for a canceled series, and here's to many more.
To sort of celebrate the occasion, and mostly because I just discovered this and think it's cool, I have a brief selection of videos showing the origins of Futurama's theme song, which was composed by Christopher Tyng and inspired by "Psyché Rock", a song off the 1967 album Messe pour le temps présent by French electronic music composer Pierre Henry.
There's even a great retro-futuristic animated music video (from a 2000 release of the compiled remixes, I believe) to accompany the now-familiar, spacey tune. I just love it. Here's Pierre Henry - Psyché Rock:
The song has been covered and remixed many times (for a full list of artists and versions, see here). This is just one of the remixes by Fatboy Slim (also with some nice animation):
Now you probably want to see the Futurama opening sequence, straight up. You don't want to know how long I spent searching YouTube for a suitable version -- none exists. I couldn't even find a good video for the cool new version from the opening credits of Bender's Big Score. What's going on, Internet? As a substitute, the best I could find was this extended version of the song, which includes all of the various comic subtitles from the opening sequence. (The volume's pretty weak, so be prepared to crank it up.)
Amanita Design (creator of Samorost) does it all -- I haven't yet had the opportunity to link to the absolutely beautiful music video they created for Under Byen - "Plantage". The visual style will feel very familiar to fans of Samorost.
I adore this video. The song is "Remind Me/So Easy" by Norwegian duo Röyksopp, and the animation is a strange and wonderful video by French design studio H5 showing a day in the life of a London office worker as told entirely through infographics, from the features of the alarm clock that wakes her up and where her sewage goes after she flushes to dancing pie charts and stock quotes at the office to stats on pints of beer consumed across the country at the end of the workday. Though the style is deceptively simple, the system is bogglingly complex, revealing the amazingly intricate workings of modern life as we move through it in almost total oblivion. Via Le territoire des sens.
"The Child" by Alex Gopher is another video created by H5 in 1999. In this one, the entire story is acted out by animated blocks of typography. Very cool.
Welcome to Blue Tea's Third Annual All Hallow's Eve Roundup. It took a while, but I managed to scrape a few things together. I hope you enjoy.
Art
Feeling funereal? Cemeteries, a Flickr photoset by talented photographer Burza-snieta, who has a lot of other very worthwhile galleries not appropriate to our theme today. Via La main gauche.
Mia Mäkilä Lowbrow and Horror Art should give you plenty of dark, lurid stuff to look at as you while away the long Halloween hours. Not much else to say...go and feast.
Kris Kuksi does a lot of different kinds of work, from botanical renderings to fantastic painting to realistic portraiture, but what I'm interested in today are his stunning, outrageously detailed mixed-media sculptural works. You'll find them under the category "the grotesque" in his eclectic gallery, and they will hold you in thrall. These thumbnails don't do them justice. Via Dark Roasted Blend.
Dark, surreal paintings by David Ho. They are technically excellent and wonderfully evocative. If I weren't posting this for Halloween, I'd pick some of the dreamier or more magical pictures, but today I'm plumbing the gallery for the grimmer, hellish, even Boschian scenes. Try especially the "Contemplation" series, which "dwells upon the spectrum of human emotions, desires and needs", or, for a modern fairy tale, the series of "Candace the Ghost". Via The Lumper.
I haven't yet done Ray Caesar, which is a shame. His portraits of wicked, elegant, creaturized women and menacing, haunted-looking girls inhabit their own world of cold, detached, refined grotesquery.
Swan Bones Theater is the gallery of artist Kelly Louise Judd, and features a nice array of paintings as well as illustrations and dolls in a fairy-tale-inspired, pop-surrealist tradition. Gloomy forests, brooding ravens, and pale maidens in pearls and lace and wolf's-skin clothing abound.
Games
It looks like Exmortis 3 isn't ready for Halloween this season, but in the meantime you can enjoy a little slice of spooky with Ben Leffler's macabre minigame, Purgatorium. Only he could make a baby's nursery such a dreadful place. Not for the faint of heart! If you liked that and haven't already played his excellent Exmortis series, make that your next stop.
Project Pravus is a classic haunted house game, a lights-down speakers-up after-dark spookfest. You are a real estate agent investigating a house for sale at a suspiciously low price. The locations are moody sepia-toned photographs, the sounds are low and rumbly, the sights are gore and ghosts and secrets revealed. Short and dark. Walkthrough at Jay Is Games.
Eternal Darkness is a short, goth flash game that's light on substance but scores high marks for style. You play a teen girl who goes to a nightclub, falls in with a bunch of vampires, and has to save the world. As far as gameplay goes, there are only a few decision trees to navigate, but in between you can enjoy the fully-voiced characters, punk soundtrack, slick animation, a nice credits sequence, and even some "outtakes" at the end.
I also hope you enjoy this screencap from the credits, by the way. You don't know how hard it was to get. Incidentally, if you're really bored, I discovered that you can right-click on the flash player about where I took this cap and uncheck "play" -- the action will freeze, but the people keep dancing in the background. But remember I said only if you're bored.
Devil's Triad is described by its author as a "cutesy, evil vs. evil thing", with "multiple endings, an RPG-style battle with Satan, and lots of cute characters to interact with." You can play as a vampire, witch, or ghost, and your task is to unite with the other two characters to defeat Satan. A little longer and with some more depth than the typical casual game offering, this one will take a little time to play through. Quite nicely done.
Video
The music video for Emilie Simon's "Flowers", a wonderful gothic-cute, Burtonesque animated gem.
Nightmarish Boschian imagery remixed and brought to hellish life in this comic-grotesque music video for Buckethead's "Spokes for the Wheels of Torment".
Delightfully dark and super stylish music videos by My Pet Skeleton. Click "music videos" on the menu to the left, or have a look at the 2006 Reel for a quick and tasty sample of their work.
