Intermezzo on the Steam Press : The Music of Diego Stocco

Most likely, Diego Stocco will either inspire you or make you feel like a totally boring and uncreative slug. As a composer/musician, his instruments of choice have included a tree, sand, a piano on fire and the contents of his local drycleaners, as captured in this video, further proving his point that "you can really make music with everything."

Stop-Motion Magic

I can't get enough of stop-motion animation. For me, it taps into that same feeling of creative transformation that comes from art like that by Tara Donovan: the magical payoff of tedious, minute and disciplined repetition. To this end, here's a project helmed by Wieden + Kennedy London called "Gulp" which garnered the record for "World's largest stop-motion animation set" from the Guinness Book. Filmed on location at a beach in Wales and captured with a Nokia camera on a cherry picker, it's a pretty cool feat. 

Sometimes the "Behind the Scenes" are more impressive than the final result:
W+K also won a record for "Smallest stop-motion animated character" with this cute short called Dot.

Oil & Water

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Screen printers out there will appreciate Anthony Burill's poster "Oil and Water Do Not Mix," which is printed from oil gathered from a beach in Louisiana after the Deepwater Horizon explosion. Prints are for sale and proceeds support the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana. 

(photos courtesy of Oil & Water Do Not Mix)

 

Barcelona's La Mercé Festival: Opening Night Projection

During a recent visit to Barcelona I stumbled upon an experience I had admired from afar on my blog almost a year ago: 3D building projections. The evening before the start of the city's annual Mercé Festival we passed through the Placa de Sant Jaume just as technical adjustments were being made to a projection on the facade of the City Council building that anchors the south side of the square. We came back the following night and watched the show in all its glory, which was as entertaining and technically impressive as I had hoped. I haven't been able to confirm that it was the work of the Dutch company NuFormer Digital Media, but it seems highly likely.

Video 1: Sped-up footage of some of the set-up process which consisted of many minute alignment adjustments.
Video 2: What I consider to be the greatest hits of the show.
Video 3 & 4: An almost complete record of the entire show in two parts, which clock in at about 11 minutes, and is recommended for readers with a lot of time on their hands.

Test Driving the Net-a-Porter App for iPad

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Since the iPad appeared in the spring, I've been looking forward to seeing how print media adapts to the digital opportunities presented by the device. There are a bunch of magazines that have made the transition including Sports Illustrated, Wired, National Geographic, People, GQ, Vanity Fair and Time. If you tend to purchase magazines off the newsstand and own an iPad, the digital version will probably be both cheaper and more handy, but for magazine subscribers the deal tends to work the other way. (Wired—one of the first magazines with an iPad app—offers individual digital issues for $3.99 while a full years subscription to the print edition only costs $12.)

Seemingly few fashion magazines have stuck a toe in the iPad app world, which is odd to me considering both the marketing potential and the way this particular medium would flatter the high gloss, photo-heavy genre. I did however discover an app developed not by an established publisher, but by the insanely profitable e-commerce site Net-a-Porter.com. The app is adapted from the online Net-a-Porter magazine—which, considering the purpose of the site, could more aptly be called a catalog—and it takes advantage of the capabilities of the iPad in some interesting ways. 

To that end, I created this app test-drive for your viewing enjoyment. (Please note, this is my first foray into video commentary and though I am married to a film editor, his skills have yet to rub off on me.)

OK GOldberg

It's hard to be bored by videos of Rube Goldberg machines, especially when they're set to music, as is the case in OK Go's latest video for the song "This Too Shall Pass." This particular machine was assembled here in LA in an abandoned building with the help of a team the band found on a "nerd board" according to the equally interesting and funny behind-the-scenes clips.

Making of #1

Making of #2

Making of #3

Making of #4

Final Product!

"Hit 'Em Up Style," Carolina Chocolate Drops Style

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I keep up with music via NPR, but it's hard to beat the free weekly album previews, or this folkish, fiddle-heavy cover of "Hit 'Em Up Style" by the Carolina Chocolate Drops, who were interviewed by Terry Gross today on Fresh Air.

And let me not forget the All Songs Considered archive of live shows, which is also available as a Podcast.