ryan mcginley + nowness: entrance romance.

I first started following photographer/artist/wunderkind Ryan McGinley more than 2 years ago, when I posted about his gorgeous (and still my favourite) photo exhibition “I Know Where The Summer Goes.” Since then McGinley has blown up huge and deservedly so. Expanding his visual scope from photography, he moved into film last year with a short for fashion house Pringle of Scotland starring Tilda Swinton.

Last weekend, in collaboration with LVMH-branded website Nowness, McGinley released an incredibly hot looking short film (shot partially by a Phantom Camera at 1500 fps) called “Entrance Romance (It Felt Like A Kiss).” I’m a big proponent of art not necessarily needing to be “about” something, so this is right up my alley. In the short, supermodel Carolyn Murphy shoots hairspray at a lighter, makes out with a wet dog, and has a few glass objects thrown against her head. I fucking loved it. What’s it about? Don’t know, don’t care. It seems so gleefully confident in it’s abject weird nothingness that I fully bought it.

Though the whole concept of filming shit being thrown at people isn’t original (the work of New York City-based photographer Meg Wachter comes to mind) the production value is through the roof and, plus, Murphy is simply incredible to look at. The look of serene intensity she maintains while knowing, somewhere, that a bowl full of goldfish is hurtling towards her is somehow completely fascinating. However, it’s the sly wave of sadomasochistic discovery that spreads across her face after being drilled in the head with a bottle of Heineken that really makes this worth the price of admission. Except that it was free… but you get my point.

Via Towleroad.

zoltán lányi: i’ll have the waldorf salad.

Not only did Zoltán Lányi create this futuristic, fragmented, jolting experimental work to a track by Amon Tobin featuring Bonobo, but he did it while still in school at the Eszterházy Károly College in Eger, Hungary.

To me, the twitching, glitchy POV reminds me of a sort of post-apocalyptic, burned world being studied and leading to the discovery of a whole new level of mechanical life underneath the ruin.

Plus, it’s just really fucking cool.

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Via Ventilate

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david o’reilly + jon klassen: black lake.

There are times when you fall in love faster than you thought you were capable of. All your old signals fade and your plans re-arrange without a word. Your stars align in brand new ways and all the nights you had designed become a dream for your days. Your heart expands and for a time your reality is married to the possibility of everything you can envision. Like a message in a bottle, gently nudged from your shore, this vision travels and, if you’re lucky, the person you love picks it up and carries it with you.

Sweetly, without warning, you construct your potential and in this moment your future and your present melt together. Into an instant eventual, an immediate inevitable. A second where  the possibility of love stretches before you like an ocean and you travel through your imagination; vast and epic and filled with hope, the way each wave yearns to curl up and crash back into the same waters it was first pulled away from.

This is that feeling.

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Following their work together on the video for U2’s “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight”, the heart-achingly exquisite “Black Lake” is a collaboration between one of my favourite directors, David O’Reilly, and Jon Klassen and it’s beautiful.

Via Motionographer

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selfburning: field.

An intense and amazing experimental short from Russian animation and experimental motion team Selfburning.

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adam joy: dreamf focus.

Obviously, any exploration into the connection between colour, memory, emotion, and imagination is right up my alley. I could watch this all day long.

“DreamF Focus” is part of an on-going visual investigation into dreams by Adam Joy:

“Color is as much a symbol as is the imagery in a dream. Color appears to represent the emotional conditions that stimulated a dream or dream image. As with any other symbol, color combines with the imagery to form a more complete “meaning” for the dream image.”

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we love our work: revenge + color correcting.

I first started following We Love Our Work (the artistic collaboration of Lernert Engelberts and Sander Plug) after “CDEFGABC”, their colourful, crystal-rubbing rendition of “No Limits” for MTV Europe.

Their latest, “Revenge”, shows a harrowing day in the life of an egg.

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Continuing on the whole colour-obsession tip, their 2008 short “Color Correcting” compiles into a 4-minute short the 9 hours they spent separating a pile of multi-coloured Discodip ice cream sprinkles into it’s individual colours. They scary part is that after 9 hours the original pile basically looks exactly the same…

I’m sure there are arguments as to why I shouldn’t find this so fascinating, but I don’t give a shit. I’m fascinated.

oscar santamaria rojo: materia.

Mega ethereal vid, created in Processing, by Oscar Santamaria Rojo.

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xavier chassaing: scintillation.

Chalk up another one in the more patience and attention to detail than I could muster department. Xavier Chassaing’s experimental short “Scintillation” is a combination of stop-motion and live projection mapping of 35,000 photographs.

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Via Fubiz

michael robinson: girl by firelight + candela latitudes.

“Girl By Firelight” is a beautiful little glimpse into colour and motion by animator and  filmmaker Michael Robinson, who says the piece is a  “color study made entirely with light, entirely in camera. All motion of color elements were created solely with hand movements.”

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After looking through his series of work on Vimeo, I was also mesmerized by “Candela Latitudes”, created by “shooting lasers against different pieces of glass and recording the distortion with a DV camera… The globules of color were made by blasting light through different prisms directly into the lens of the camera. The materials were layered together digitally to create the end result.”

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Via No Fat Clips!

ryan jeffery: fallen + rise.

I just found film-maker Ryan Jeffery’s experimental short “Rise” on one of my fave sites, No Fat Clips! Turns out it’s actually a companion short to “Fallen”, which was released two years ago. Both are exquisite; filled with the languid rise of smoke and the cool flourish of air blown in from across the ocean. At a crossroads between our own bodies, nothing but flesh, and the machines we create, nothing but metal. Poetry in pure motion.

As I’ve always said, the very best art is that which doesn’t hand us its reasons for being but merely exists and forces us to decide for ourselves what its meaning must be. The best art does not acquiesce to our apathy. It refuses, and challenges, and like a jewel pulled deep from the earth reveals its secrets only to those who’ve worked hard enough to earn them . “Fallen” and “Rise” are just that to me…

I know it’s a big bad crazy world out there, but my challenge to you is to take a moment – whenever you’re free for 15 minutes – to watch these shorts. Abandon expectation, think of nothing, click play, and dive in…

“Fallen” (2006)

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“Rise” (2008)

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Jeffery reveals on his site:  “The first chapter Fallen, depicts an Eve-like character’s introduction to technology and the divine consequences of this meeting. The second chapter, Rise, resumes many years later, long after the female character’s first meeting with technology. Here she has transformed from her original Eve-like state of naked innocence into a clothed mysterious being. In place of her original naivety our character now holds a cryptic knowledge of the natural world often feared and marked as witchcraft. As a result of this transformation the two characters of machine and human have switched their roles of protagonist and antagonist.”

Both films’ soundtracks are by Ethan Rose and the scultpure is designed by Kari Merkl.