tom geraedts: eros.

My fascination with colour theory has led me into studying not just the science of colours but also their associated anomalies: colour blindness, synesthesia, and to total blindness itself. Make no mistake: blind people see… just not with their eyes.

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“Eros” is an incredible short by Tom Geraedts that explores this idea. Our senses are all indelibly connected to our thoughts, emotions, feelings, and all over senses. The lack of one actually augments all the others. So what does a blind person see through their mind’s eye when their brain starts to feel; the part of the brain that creates “sight” is still active, it’s the connection to the eyes that’s decided not to co-operate. With its normal route cut off, where does it detour to to visualize the world that’s being sensed around it?

ian stevenson + luke seomore: stare into the sun.

I’m always into exploring the sort of cruel paradox of hiding brutal life lessons inside the guise of children’s things. There’s always a witch heating up an oven just around the corner…

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Directed by Ian Stevenson and Luke Seomore, with audio by Graffiti 6, “Stare Into The Sun” delicately walks the fine line between absurdist children’s animation and inside joke. There’s just something about the hero character’s face that lets you know that, unicorn riding and rainbow hoping aside, this shit ain’t gonna end well. Be sure to watch it to the very end.

martin böttger: foliage shoal.

Staccato leaves and angry chlorophyll. Like plants calling out through static: “Foliage Shoal” is stunning, jarring work from Berlin-based animator and artist Martin Böttger.

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Via Ventilate.

terri timely + pact: the office of eden.

You’re about to watch the greatest underwear ad ever. Yes, you are…

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There are some directors who, in my opinion, simply can’t do wrong and Terri Timely is one of them. “Synesthesia” is one of my favourite shorts ever and then they recently backed it up with their vid for St. Vincent’s “Marrow.”

In “The Office Of Eden”, a new spot for socially responsible organic underwear company PACT, they’ve nailed that sort of  carefully-coloured, hyper-real aesthetic that I can’t get enough of. It’s like motion-Helvetica. Simple, but perfectly so. Sparse, but exactly what you need.

Co-conceived by Ian Kibbey’s brother, Jason, the whole philosophy behind PACT impressed me: they’re social responsible throughout their entire supply chain, they allow you to shop for undies based on which cause you’d like a portion of the price donated to (one of them being one of my favourite charities in the world, Dave Eggers’ amazing non-profit literacy and creative writing organization 826 National), and they’ve wrapped it up one enlightened, easily navigated, beautifully designed package. Evidenced by the hotness of the ad created by Terri Timely, they all totally understand social responsibiltiy and design aesthetic are part of an experience that encourage people to do good: See good, look good, feel good… do good. Makes perfect sense to me.

gwen vanhee: flightpattern.

This basically blows my mind. A “handdrawn videoresponsive video exploration” (fuck yes!) by Belgian animator Gwen Vanhee.

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joe lea + laurel collective: fax of death.

This reminds me of Lite Brite. And basically anything that reminds me of Lite Brite is guaranteed win. Animate by Joe Lea for Laurel Collective’s “Fax of Death.”

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Via Motionographer

the decemberists: here come the waves.

I just got hard. Anything involving the visual interpretation of music is pretty exciting. Not just a music video, per se. A lot of the time, music videos are just a literal translation or version of a video. Song bumps, it’s in a club, booties shake, the end. Song is slow, singer holds someone, they gaze at each other, the end. These aren’t interpretations, they’re more like regurgitations.

So, when a band like The Decemberists employs four young film-makers to create animations interpreting their tracks, I get jumpy. For “Here Come The Waves: The Hazards Of Love Visualized” animations were created by Guilherme Marcondes, Julia Pott, Peter Sluszka and Santa Maria. On Oct. 19th, The Decemberists are playing a live show at UCLA synched entirely with the hour-long animation on screen. Which, clearly, would be fucking incredible. If anyone has tickets and feels like flying me to L.A., I would be more than up for it. Kthnx.

merman: dedicated to matthew shepard.

11 years ago tonight, a beautiful young wisp of a man lay comatose and bleeding to death in a hospital in Wyoming. 10 years and 364 days ago, I realized for the first time that there were people in the world whose hearts were so black they would want to kill me simply for being gay.

This was not one of the usual demons I’d read about: parents who’d renounce you or kids whimpering “faggot” in the hallway. This was a real monster. There were people in the world who would beat you until your bones broke so you could not run and your face bled so badly you would not be recognized. They’d strip your humanity away until you didn’t even look human anymore. And they’d tie you to a fence with your own shoelaces and leave you there to die.

When I think of Matthew Shepard I hurt. There is very little separating me from him other than the random elemental geography of where I happened to be born. We were both born close to the same time and both in the vast middles of our respective countries. We lived in small towns in long, wide, flat, open places where the sun sets for days and the sky never ends. And we were both gay. There but for the grace of God go I…

His legacy to us is both a freedom and a burden. His murder unlocked a societal door and in the last 11 years, for all of our turning, we have not opened it. We do not always carry this weight well. We get lazy, we let shit slide. And each time we don’t stand up for ourselves, we let Matthew bleed a little longer. We let Lawrence King’s wound rip deeper. We let Sean Kennedy fall to the pavement and break a little harder.

We owe the dead an absolution. It’s no longer enough to just remember them. We need to fight for the rights that their deaths have paved for us. If we are more free now, it’s because we walk on their backs. If we are less free, it’s because our apathy and stasis will dig our own graves.

Remember, there are people in the world who’d be only too happy to help us slide into them.

I promised myself that if I ever developed any kind of voice I would use it to encourage and gather the kinds of decent, humane, forward-thinking people that have always been the ones to find their own personal strength before they can fight for a social one. Caustic, divisive, violent people have no inner-voice; they are hollow and so their emptiness leads them easily, thoughtlessly, and rapidly to attack and decay. Their hatred is so fast.

The kind, the good-hearted, the caretakers of humanity – our first reaction is shock. Dismay. Disbelief. Though we are filled with love we wait too long. We are gilded with the will to create, not to destroy, and we look inward first. We are slow to respond because our deeds are imbued with thought. We move forward with grace and vision. But while we take our time some of us are killed, more of us are beaten, and all of us are denied the rights we deserve. For no matter which country we live in, and the laws and protections some of us are lucky enough to have, when one person, anywhere, is denied their equality we are all fundamentally less equal. Our humanity wanes.

So we must move faster. And as we do we will gather and we will take a step forward, along the path that all decent people have tread before us, towards making things solidly, purposefully, permanently better.

It’s no longer acceptable to let a muttered “faggot” slip by. It’s no longer acceptable to leave our boyfriends and girlfriends at home while we sit at the Thanksgiving table with our families. It’s no longer acceptable to pass for straight when it’s convenient for us. For if we do so then we will sit and wilt and erode while our rights are slowly, secretly denied by our own governments and our love becomes locked inside our homes and is never allowed to shine.

If you’re anywhere near Washington this weekend you need to go there to scream, shout, and march with all the vigour and passion you feel when someone hates you for nothing more than the person the universe crafted you into. Turn their hatred into your rallying cry.

We are whole. We are right. We deserve to love openly. We belong here. We’ve done nothing wrong except, perhaps, to let our innate goodness lead us to not be vehement in our own defense.

So now, for Matthew and all of those gay men and women who cannot, we must fight.

Please visit The Matthew Shepard Foundation. Please read “Losing Matt Shepard” by Beth Loffreda.

In honour of Matthew, I want to end with a moment of beauty. In October 1998 my favourite musician, Tori Amos, was touring and started playing a B-side called “Merman.” Though the song wasn’t written about Matthew, she began to dedicate it to him during her live shows. She told Attitude Magazine in 1999 that “A lot of guys were asking me to sing it for him and it just kinda took a life on of its own.”

It’s not hard to see why:

go to bed
dream instead
and you will find him
he’s a merman to the knee
doesn’t need something you’re not willing to give
he’s a merman
doesn’t need your voice to cross his lands of ice…

…let it out
who could ever say you’re not simply wonderful
who could ever harm you
sleep now

daniel franke + ryoji ikeda: one minute soundsculpture.

This kicks serious ass. It’s a chromatic hovering expanding blossom of goodness. Created by Daniel Franke to “One Minute” by Ryoji Ikeda.

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lusine + britta johnson: two dots.

A magical video for Ghostly International artist Lusine’s “Two Dots.” Directed by Britta Johnson, it lives at the geometric intersection of mathematics and emotion. Where love and passion follow concisely laid out scientific laws and there’s a theorum to neatly explain the trajectory of desire.

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