prosthetic knowledge

OMCOPTER - Ninja shoot with Epic

Short five minute film of ninja encounters in a derelict industrial area is a great proof-of-concept demonstration of using drone quadcopters to maneuver a camera.

The film is silent and black-and-white, but what you see is something usually reserved for big-budget films and modern video games:

We shot this video to demonstrate the capabilities of our OMCOPTER drone.
It showcases its ability to fly into buildings, close to actors and into high altitudes.

Our thanks go out to Christian Pfeil and Ralf Haeger!

Notice: The clip only has two cuts!

RUIN by OddBall Animation 

Short action 3D animation set in a post-apocalyptic universe.

More here: http://www.conceptruin.com/

The Artist And Computer

Important short film for anyone interested in the history of computer graphics and computer art. I’ve previously posted this before, but this is the full version recently uploaded by the artist on her YouTube channel.

Filmed in 1976 for Bell Labs as an educational film. Portland Art describes her best:

As a consultant at Bell Laboratories in the 1970s, Schwartz developed computerized techniques for merging sound, art and video. Her innovative research makes her the grand dame of computer-generated art and computer-aided art analysis… including contemporary film, video, animation, graphics, multimedia, special effects and virtual reality.

“In the traditional of ‘visual music,’ her work from this period features animated computer-based shapes and fields— transformed through color gels and film stock— that synch, pulse, and grow to the equally distinct and complex computer and electronic soundtracks.” 

You can find out more about her from her website, her Wikipedia entry, or her entry from the Artist and Computer book online

Interregnum

Animation by Nick Fox-Gieg about René Carmille, a computer punch-card expert responsible for sabotaging records which would lead to the deaths of many Jews in death camps:

Based on the extraordinary career of Rene Carmille, history’s first known computer hacker. Much of the Vichy bureaucracy, including the operation of the death camps, was automated with punch-card computers. However, the Nazis didn’t understand the technology’s potential vulnerabilities…

Christine Sun Kim (via NOWNESS)

Short portrait of artist born deaf, whose works are experimental performances of making sounds visual using everyday objects. The film is appropriately without verbal dialogue to great effect:

Cult photographer and filmmaker Todd Selby’s latest short is a revealing portrait of performance artist Christine Sun Kim. Deaf from birth, Kim turned to using sound as a medium during an artist residency in Berlin in 2008, and has since developed a practice of lo-fi experimentation that aims to re-appropriate sound by translating it into movement and vision. “It’s a lot more interesting to explore a medium that I don’t have direct access to and yet has the most direct connection to society at large,” says the artist. “Social norms surrounding sound are so deeply ingrained that, in a sense, our identities cannot be complete without it.” Selby filmed an exclusive performance from Kim in a Brooklyn studio as the artist played with field recordings of the street sounds of her Chinatown neighborhood, feedback and helium balloons, and made “seismic calligraphy” drawings from ink- and powder-drenched quills, nails and cogs dancing across paper to the vibrations of subwoofers beneath. Working with sound designer Arrow Kleeman, Selby carefully choreographed the film’s ambient score to reveal the Orange County native’s unique relationship with sound. “Her work deals with reclaiming sound because it’s a foreign world to her and one she’s not comfortable in,” explains Selby. “I wanted the film to act as an artistic conduit for her to tell her story to the world.”

More Here

Internet Story by Adam Butcher

Chaucer’s “The Pardoner’s Tale” retold through Google, A YouTube account of an angry douchebag, and Flash:

Internet Story 9min, 2010
A fast-paced and experimental film told through fragments of internet videos, animations, blogs and news articles.

A series of shocking events unfolds when a young man creates a public treasure hunt for his own amusement and a video blogger decides to pursue the riddles across country.

The Beginning of Infinity by notthisbody

SCIENCE + ART = WONDER

Short 2 minute inspiring video, a visual and philosophical espresso - watch in HD:

This video is inspired, in part, by the ideas explored in David Deutsch’s new book, THE BEGINNING OF INFINITY. We hope it moves you.

More about the background of this video here

Where’s the Octopus? Uploaded by DoUGuruTube

File this under: Damn Interesting + Educational

(Reblogging this in case anyone missed it - I posted this late last night, but is really worth checking out)

Everyone has probably seen the short video on YouTube where, under water, an octopus comes out of camouflage then squirts the cameraman. This short video looks at that footage again by the man who took that video, and explains a little about his work on the octopus camouflage mechanics.

NOTE: At 2 minutes 10, you see an extreme close-up of octopus skin, and it is the coolest piece of biology science you will see today

When marine biologist Roger Hanlon captured the first scene in this video he started screaming.
Hanlon, senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, studies camouflage in cephalopods—squid, cuttlefish and octopus. They are masters of optical illusion. These are some of Hanlon’s top video picks of sea creatures going in and out of hiding.
Source: Science Friday (http://www.sciencefriday.com/videos/watch/10397 )

Where’s the Octopus? Uploaded by DoUGuruTube

File this under: Damn Interesting + Educational

Everyone has probably seen the short video on YouTube where, under water, an octopus comes out of camouflage then squirts the cameraman. This short video looks at that footage again by the man who took that video, and explains a little about his work on the octopus camouflage mechanics.

NOTE: At 2 minutes 10, you see an extreme close-up of octopus skin, and it is the coolest piece of biology science you will see today

When marine biologist Roger Hanlon captured the first scene in this video he started screaming.
Hanlon, senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, studies camouflage in cephalopods—squid, cuttlefish and octopus. They are masters of optical illusion. These are some of Hanlon’s top video picks of sea creatures going in and out of hiding.
Source: Science Friday (http://www.sciencefriday.com/videos/watch/10397 )

Off Book: Visual Culture Online | PBS Arts

A good primer on online visual culture, from memes to gifs and anything else. Worth noting that Tumblr is considered part of the new ‘online avant-garde’, along with 4chan, dump.fm, and reddit:

For decades now, people have joined together online to communicate and collaborate around interesting imagery. In recent years, the pace and intensity of this activity has reached a fever pitch. With countless communities engaging in a constant exchange, building on each others’ work, and producing a prodigious flow of material, we may be experiencing the early stages of a new type of artistic and cultural collaboration. In this episode of Off Book, we’ll speak with a number of Internet experts and artists who’ll give us an introductory look into this intriguing new world.

Featuring:

Chris Menning, Viral Trends Researcher, Buzzfeed
MemeFactory, Internet Researchers
Olivia Gulin, Visual Reporter, Know Your Meme
Ryder Ripps, Artist and Co-Creator, Dump.fm
John Kelly, PH.D., Founder and Chief Scientist, Morningside Analytics

Going To The Store by David Lewandowski

On the humour scale, this is firmly on the threshold between ‘completely absurd’ to … well … I don’t know ….

Imagine Francoise Gamma creating a comedy short in the real world …

normal guy normal walk.

Directed by David Lewandowski
Music is Jean Jacques Perrey’s “Little Ships”

This is a short I made for the final episode of “Everything,” an anthology series at Channel101.

Skaggs: Bullshit & Balls

A short film about media hoax artist Joey Skaggs. Originally produced as a fundraising demo for a long-form documentary.

From his Wikipedia entry:

Joey Skaggs (born 1945) is an American prankster who has organized numerous successful media pranks, hoaxes, and other presentations. He is considered one of the originators of the phenomenon known as culture jamming …

In his youth, Skaggs studied at the High School of Art and Design and School of Visual Arts in New York. Between 1966 and 1968, Skaggs organized crucifixion performances on Easter Sundays.

In 1968, Skaggs noticed that middle-class suburbanites were going on tours of the East Village to observe hippies. Skaggs subsequently organized a sightseeing tour for hippies to observe the suburbs of Queens. On Christmas Day, he created the Vietnamese Christmas Nativity Burning to protest against the Vietnam War.

In 1969, Skaggs tied a 50-foot bra to the front of the U.S. Treasury building on Wall Street, organized a Hells Angels’ wedding procession through the Lower East Side, and made a grotesque Statues of Liberty on 4th of July, again to protest against the Vietnam War.

In 1971, Skaggs bought Earlville Opera House. In the same year, he organized what he called a Fame Exchange during the New York Avant Garde Festival, where he hired a group of admirers to follow him around instead of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. It was a forerunner for his next pranks:

• Cathouse for Dogs (1976): Skaggs published an ad for a dog brothel in The Village Voice and hired actors to present their dogs for the benefit of an ABC news crew. The prank annoyed the ASPCA and the Bureau of Animal Affairs until Skaggs revealed the truth after a subpoena. ABC did not retract the story (the WABC TV producer insisted that Skaggs had said it was a hoax to avoid prosecution), possibly because the piece had been nominated for an Emmy Award. It was subsequently disqualified.
• Celebrity Sperm Bank (1976): Skaggs organized a sperm bank auction in New York; the sperm bank was then robbed and semen was supposedly taken as hostage.

… and the list goes on, which you can see here