Saturday, March 20, 2010

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Imagining a World Without Money

[Not as hippieish as it sounds. Has more to do with robots.]

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Time Magazine's recently published The Dropout Economy is a stunningly accurate picture of where middle class America's mindset is headed. People on the ground are suffering because the old systems don't work anymore. It's frustrating to see so many resources - physical, financial and intellectual - being used to keep crooked, antediluvian institutions on life-support in a vain attempt to hold on to an unsustainable and idealized image of late 20th Century "prosperity".

This conservative way of thinking and fear of real change prevents us from putting resources into energetic and relevant new ideas and enterprises, and worst of all, stagnates evolution toward a more civilized and sustainable society.

While trying to imagine how a stateless, jobless, decentralized society might actually thrive (rather than turn into primitive feudal suburban favelas - at least hopefully with Philippe Starck-designed wind turbines,) I came across this video on Rob Walker's excellent Unconsumption blog:



So how the heck have I never heard of Jacque Fresco? It's kinda out there, but this is the kind of big picture thinking we ought to be putting our energy into. This is all classic technocracy futurist utopia stuff, but it is refreshing and quite timely to think about.

The Venus Project blog

Monday, March 08, 2010

Connected

I've been curiously following the making of Danish sci-fi short Connected for some months. The wonderful little morally-loaded dystopian film is now complete and available on the official site to view. Definitely watch full-screen with the sound up, as suggested.

Connected still 3

Set in the distant future, Connected is a story about survival and greed with a post apocalyptic wasteland as its backdrop. Survivors of an unknown disaster shuffle through a desolate landscape, as it quickly becomes clear that not everybody has the strength to survive.

Shot in deserted Faxe Kalkbrud, Denmark, and directed by Jens Raunkjær Christensen and Jonas Drotner Mouritsen, Connected is a unique short film, a sci-fi western with a tiny budget, but huge ambitions. A relatively small, but very enthusiastic and talented crew helped bring this bleak vision of the future to the screen. The film is produced with support from The Film Workshop / The Danish Film Institute.

Connected poster

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

High quality live Skinny Puppy video from 1986 surfaces

Our friend Greg [one of the super-humans we're fortunate enough to breathe the same air with... dude works at NASA JPL and "was there" well before James Murphy] sent this video our way last night.

Swiss dark electronic music community & magazine Sanctuary has an exceptionally high quality [by VHS standards of the time] recording of Skinny Puppy performing at Dolce Vita Club in Lausanne, Switzerland Halloween night 1986.

So far they've uploaded the clip of "Assimilate" below, and just a couple days ago, this clip of "Smothered Hope".

I don't know how many times I watched this today. Not only is it the best quality recording of an old Puppy show I've seen, Ogre's movements are possessed and his genius for theatricality really shines through - especially around the seven minute mark...


Skinny Puppy - Assimilate [live in Switzerland, 10/31/1986]

Tears in Rain (in LEGO)

Blade Runner - Tears in Rain (in LEGO) from Zach Macias on Vimeo.



[via the always awesome Awl]

Still my favorite LEGO movie remake: Silence of the Lambs: the musical [NSFW, I suppose.]

TuneGlue



While there are plenty of music maps out there, TuneGlue takes the idea to the next level by using Amazon and LastFM data wrapped up in a gorgeous, simple UI to allow for nearly endless exploration of musical relationships.

Monday, March 01, 2010

Tour des Convoyeurs

Some beautiful industrial architecture projection mapping at MUTEK 10, by the talented folks at AntiVJ. More on the project here.

AntiVJ - MUTEK 2009 from AntiVJ / Joanie on Vimeo.

Think you've got signal to noise problems?

This clip by Masters of Architecture candidate Keiichi Matsuda in Nic Clear's Unit 15 at the Bartlett School of Architecture is like wandering the Gibraltar Trade Center on bathtub psychedelics.

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.



[thanks Andrew Sliwinski]