Besides just being generally entertaining, this vid totally reminds me of the work of one of my fave photographers, Meg Wachter. Check out my interview with her.
Directed by G.J. Echternkamp for Giant Drag (a.k.a. Annie Hardy)’s “Stuff To Live For.”
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Via Stereogum
This probably won’t come as a surprise, but I watch a lot of videos. Sometimes I know from the first instant that I will love it; I’m intellectually gripped and engaged from the jump off. Sometimes I watch for a minute and nothing happens and I watch until the end to make sure I don’t miss anything and immediately forget about it.
Sometimes I start watching and am unsure at first. And as I stare into my laptop my arms and legs feel light, and my cheeks burn, and I no longer know where my skin ends and the air begins as I realize I’ve thought about nothing and four minutes have passed. They come in different styles and forms, but those are the best videos.
Watch this. You’ll know what I mean. Directed by Matt Pitt for New Zealand-based composer and producer Rhian Sheehan‘s “Standing In Silence 3 (Niva’s Tune).”
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Via Antville via No Fat Clips!
Asif Mian is the shit. I first started following him after his killer video for Woodhands’ “I Wasn’t Made For Fighting.” His VFX work is, to put it mildly, stupendously amazing.
In this M.C. Escher/meterological/Victorian mash-up for Emilie Simon’s “Dreamland” he delivers yet again another visually gripping piece of awesomeness, where dreams and nightmares converge and the laws of gravity and dimension become disposable.
Via Motionographer
I just dweebed out on this sumpin’ awful. I feel both shame and exileration, simultaneously. Like the first time I poured vinegar into my baking-soda filled papier maché volcano, I’m about to gush forth with excitement.
Behold one of the best examples in history of how good design can take something technically burdensome and turn it into a thing of illustrative beauty. There are few things that rival the efficient usability, universal clarity, hip factor, epic design goodness, and monumental geek caché of the periodic table of the elements. Seriously. Let’s be honest; chemisty is boring and nobody but chemists would disagree. But somewhere along the line two next level thinkers named Dimitri Mendeleev and Lothar Meyer came along and laid that shit out so sweet that people not only finally understood what a noble gas was but they will proudly wear it on a tee shirt. That’s skillz. With a “z.”
I had to totally wiki who those two guys were, by the way. This is an art blog, after all. I hope you didn’t think I actually knew that. But I like to give credit where credit is due, so there you go.
So, basically the periodic table is rad and now there’s a song to make it even radder. Boosted by nerd darling They Might Be Giants, whose latest DVD/CD “Here Comes Science” features the single “Meet The Elements”, this inescapably adorable video, directed by the killer Oregon-based shop Feel Good Anyway and debuted at Boing Boing, is a super friendly video intro to the elements that’s cute as a puppy and made me want to go pour something into a beaker and set it on fire. In the name of discovery! Slap a face on a little Xenon molecule and suddenly the whole nature of the universe unfolds, Stephen Hawking-style.
I appreciate the work Boing Boing put into helping create this, but skip to 0:20 to avoid the super annoying interstitial they put in after it seemed like the video was already beginning. Bad Boing Boing, Bad.
Via Antville
I’m developing a massive obsession with Fever Ray. She is so unabashedly weird you can’t help but fall in love with her. And each video she steps it up in the obscure and bizarre department: check out her previous vids “When I Grow Up” and “Triangle Walks.” She is so thoroughly esoteric that it makes me feel like I’m the only one who understands her, and that it turn makes me feel special. Like we’re communicating in some sort of fucked up video-code across the countries and oceans. I really, really,… really would like to get a drink with her.
In her latest video for “Seven”, acclaimed video director Johan Renck (professional partner and contemporary of Jonas Åkerlund) created this completely unsettling nightmare-scape of an old woman telling her life story from inside a barn filled with skittish livestock and, obviously, a duo of beard-faced men. What does it all mean? As I’ve said before, usually in reference to Björk or Tori Amos, I have no idea what it means to her. But I know it means something very special to her, and therefore I can extrapolate from that and then interpolate for myself what it means to me. And that amazing exchange, a free flow of interpretation from artist to viewer, is, to me, the highest form of art.
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Via Pitchfork
Air is one of those go-to artists that I turn on whenever I’m not sure what I feel like listening to. They’re reliable like that.
There’s nothing too revolutionary going on in their new video for “Sing Sang Sung”, but it’s nicely animated and whimsical and retro and I dig it. And flowers turn into jellyfish. So there. Directed by Petra Mrkyz and Jean-François Moriceau.
Via Stereogum
I realize that I’m a massive dork. But I can’t help it. Following an important day in the life of a large stuffed bear (named “Bear”), Robert Kilman and Safwat Saleem’s “And Everything Was Alright” is one of the most poignant and lovely shorts I’ve ever seen.
There’s a purity of emotion connected to children’s things. Kids live in a universe so fully realized to them yet still nascent to grown-ups. Sometimes we forget how deeply we felt when we were little. Bear is an amalgamation of a memory and a reality; is he young but living in an adult world, or is he old and continues to nurture his dreams despite his life? I think it’s both. Bear is an adult embodiment of our childhood inner-life. We carry those dreams with us no matter how old we grow or how far away they seem.
The sweet simplicity of this short broke my heart and then quietly fixed it again. I have been this bear. I know this bear. And I, too, have searched for my rocket ship…
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Part of an integrated series experiences to totally bring the story to life, “An Everything Was Alright” also shines as a children’s book, online, and an art exhibition.
I frequently find myself wishing that I lived in London, for various reasons. Now another major one is just around the corner…
Onedotzero_adventures in motion is back and showcasing some of the world’s most innovative motion design from Sept. 9-13. The incredible lineup of screenings, installations, and more makes me drool. It’s visual Utopia.
For this year’s visual identity and festival trailer, one of my favourite digital motion artists, the bad ass Karsten Schmidt, teamed up with Wieden+Kennedy London to create sinewy, flowing, fluid tendrils of text that eventually link together to form the festival logo . All of the copy was gleaned from onedotzero’s social media portals or pulled from blogs and Vimeo comments, symbolizing the collaborative nature of the festival and of the viewers’ comments and feelings forming its foundation. I wonder if one of mine is in there somewhere…?
The result is nicely symbolic, pertinent, and deceptively difficult to create.
If anyone would like to fly me to London to blog from onedotzero, I’m totally down. Just putting it out there. Anyone…?
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Call me a pussy, but I just cried like a baby watching this. In a similar vein to Chris Milk’s amazing “Last Day Dream”, Radi0lab and Will Hoffman’s “16: Moments” delivers a bombardment of visual poignancy that’s a bit overwhelming. But in a good way. Like being drawn under by an ocean wave. Or blown out of a cannon. Or eating too much wasabi.
See, I get all emotional because at times like this you realize how universal these glimpses are. People really are very much the same. I had a sort of visual-synaesthesia episode watching this: I tasted parts, I touched others. I was only watching a lap top screen, yet I could smell things.
Powerfully engaging. Like taking your whole life and strolling it past a long hall of mirrors. When I looked I saw things I was, things I am right now, and things I will be…
Via No Zap
I love the video for The Sound Of Arrows’ “M.A.G.I.C.” Now they’re back with this Mattias Johansson-directed vid for “Into the Clouds.”
Want to feel like you’re flying? Want to believe that clouds really are made of cotton candy and that heaven is the place where all your dreams come true? Want to remember what it felt like watching “The Neverending Story” on VHS and drinking Kool-Aid till your teeth turned the colour of your tongue and intergalactic space adventurer and unicorn herder still seemed like a viable career choice?
Then watch this video. It looks like what beautiful feels like.
I need this album to come out. I need it right now.
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shape+colour 