The magazine has a new form.

A bunch of guys use Auto-tune to remix the news to form music videos.

Navigational device for New Yorkers to show you how long it takes to get everywhere else in the city.

via Cup of Jo

PEPSI: http://www.boardsmag.com/screeningroom/

COKE: http://www.madisonboom.com/article.asp?id=5955

 the original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfBlUQguvyw

Just came back from Sundance, watched a bunch of great indie films but was so inspired to see the festival including a new direction: the intersection of film + art.

Chromedrones is a sound toy in your web browser. You can create sound-resonating attractor pop-up windows by pressing the ‘a’ key. The particles from the main window will feed the attractors energy that allow them to produce sound.

http://www.chromeexperiments.com/detail/chromedrones/

http://aaron-meyers.com/

http://rhizomatiks.com/

japanese flash wizards

http://shanghaiist.com/2010/01/28/googles_shanzhai_sister_goojje_pops.php

Every day the fashion world seems to be getting one step closer to a truly successful digitally based campaign

That day might finally have arrived. The latest Prada menswear campaign is grounded by a nine minute film from established Chinese artist Yang Fudong. The video debuted this week on Prada’s site and the New York Times online, with the view to follow with a print campaign - featuring stills from the film - in February.

While a short film may be nothing out of the ordinary, we reflect on the Audrey Tautou and Chanel campaign of last year and realise that the reason Prada’s latest effort is so stunning is its lack of blatant product placement. The film, set in old world Shanghai quite literally intertwines the collection with traditional Chinese costumes. The reference also nods to the expanding luxury market, both digitally and in particular in China. The film oozes whimsy and beauty and takes viewers on a journey deep into the Miuccia’s psyche when dreaming up the collection.

Sit back and take it in… and designers - take note.

www.prada.com
www.yangfudong.com.cn

via http://www.contagiousmagazine.com/2010/01/prada.php

On September 27, 2007, the world experienced its first virtual strike. In response to a wage dispute, IBM workers in Italy organized a picket outside their company’s “corporate campus” based in the 3-D virtual world of Second Life. According to a report in the Guardian, workers “marched and waved banners, gate-crashed a [virtual] staff meeting and forced the company to close its [virtual] business center to visitors…. The protest, by more than 9,000 workers and 1,850 supporting ‘avatars’ from thirty countries,” included a rowdy collection of pink triangles, “sentient” bananas and other bizarro avatars.

While the strike was playful, it was also buttressed by careful planning and organization. Workers set up a strike task force, developed educational materials in three languages and held more than twenty worker strategy meetings. The hard work paid off. According to Christine Revkin of the UNI Global Union, which was involved in the strike, the online protest led to new negotiations and a better deal for the workers. Twenty days after the initial protest the Italian CEO of IBM, Andrea Pontremoli, resigned. (Here’s a video from the strike.)

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090202/smith_costello_brecher

Graphic Music – sound pictograms

The representation of music in notation form is interesting when composers have developed their own idiosyncratic forms of notation. The resulting scores double as sound pictures, esoteric diagrammatic representations of sound in space and time.

They are like magickal sigils understandable to only those who have the keys to work with them and understand their semiotics. Of course just like magickal sigils these images are interesting in themselves and beckon decipherment. Today my travels have lead me to collect some examples of ‘notation art’.

The blockmuseum has a page devoted to experimental graphical notation where you can zoom into each score and view its details.

Here are some more examples:
Water music – John Cage
Variations – John Cage
Fontana mix – John Cage

Often Cage used methods of randomness to bring about indeterminacy in his music, for example sometimes a piece involved the use of clocks allowing it to change throughout the day. We could call this work generative I think; the random algorithmic generation being controlled by external environmental artefacts.

Edges - Christian Wolff
King of Denmark – Morton Feldman
Tunnel Spiral - Stockhausen

Of course many visual artists have painted music. Paul Klee and Piet Mondrian both spring to mind.

http://dataisnature.com/?p=60

2channel (2ちゃんねる, ni channeru^?, 2ch for short) is a Japanese Internet forum, thought to be the largest Internet forum in the world.^[3][4][5] Launched in 1999, it has gained significant influence in Japanese society, comparable to that of traditional mass media such as television, radio, and magazines.^[

check out the the amazing ASCII art on one of their threads:
http://live24.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/eq/1254224828/

　　　　　 　　                ∧ ∧
　　 　　　　　 　　 < ｀∀´> Kekeke
　　 　　　　　　 　　/ つ¶つ¶
　　　　 　 　 　 ／￣￣￣￣＼
　 　 　 　 　 　 |) ○　○　○ (|
　　　　　　 　／″ 　　韓　 　 ＼
（(　((　(( 　／＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＼　　
　　　　　　￣ ＼＿＼＿_／＿／

Shift_JIS art is artwork created from characters within the Shift_JIS character set, a superset of ASCII intended for Japanese usage. Naturally there are many similarities between Shift_JIS artwork and ASCII art.

Shift_JIS has become very popular on web-based bulletin boards, notably 2channel, and has even made its way into mainstream media and commercial advertising in Japan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_(ASCII_art)#Mon.C4.81

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shift_JIS_art

The Aquaduct vehicle seeks to address the two main challenges with water in the developing world: sanitation and transportation. Water-related diseases kill thousands of people each day. Moreover, water sources in developing areas can be miles from home, requiring women to walk these distances daily carrying heavy water vessels.

The Aquaduct is designed to enable a person to sanitize and transport water simultaneously, potentially lessening the physical strain of the task and freeing up more time for work, education, or family.

As the rider pedals, a pump attached to the pedal crank draws water from a large holding tank, through a filter, to a smaller, clean tank. A clutch engages and disengages the drive belt from the pedal crank, enabling the rider to filter the water while traveling or while stationary. The clean tank is removable and closed for contamination-free home storage and use.

In its current state, the Aquaduct is a prototype aimed squarely at demonstrating a concept and raising awareness around the issues of clean water in developing countries. The Aquaduct team plans to continue the concept’s development into an economically and technologically viable solution that addresses challenges such as cost, suitable purification technologies, and the logistics of addressing an issue that billions.

http://www.ideo.com/work/item/aquaduct/

What if doorbells used smell instead of sound? What if watches told time more slowly on weekends? Designers at the ground-breaking firm IDEO—the most innovative design company in the world—push themselves to ask seemingly outrageous questions like these daily as they work to construct the products that shape our lives. Following 12 design experiments conceived by designers at IDEO, I Miss My Pencil takes a voyeuristic look at what designers do daily, might get to do once, and sometimes only hope to do. Each experiment is made real through collaboration, sketching, prototyping, fabrication, and photographing to go beyond the conceptual to the curiously concrete.

Touch My Body is a conceptual miracle. Take Mariah Carey’s video, cut out every sound and image except for Maria and fill the rest with fluorescent green. Then publish it on YouTube and wait for the people to fill in the void. Insubordinate art for the masses, republished on his own site HERE. We curate a second chef-d’oeuvre by Laric: AIRCONDITION. You’ll love it.

http://www.unitedvloggers.com/2008/11/15/touch-my-body-green-screen-version/

Super Mario Clouds» is based on the «Super Mario» game for Nintendo’s NES game console. Cory Arcangel hacked the game and modified it so that all that remains of the game are the white clouds on a blue sky. Gone is the main character, Super Mario, who the player had to guide through a labyrinth in the original jump and run game, just like the obstacles, landscapes and opponents that lend the game its narrative structure. Those people who are familiar with the game can imagine them on the empty background, everyone else will just see the cartoon-like display of a sky. The work was created on the basis of a manipulation of the hardware and software. Cory Arcangel had to open the cartridge, on which the game was stored, and replace the Nintendo graphics chip with a chip on which he had burned a program he had written himself. Cory Arcangel is a member of the Beige Programming Ensemble who have focused their artistic programme on the hacking ethic of manipulating existing technology, thereby taking the modification of legacy technology to absurd extremes: the group have published computer programs pressed on records and organise an annual competition for «cassette disk jockeys.»

Coming to theatres on October 16, 2009.
Well….We all love NYC, aren’t we?
This super-project film brings a collaboration of storytelling from some of todays most imaginative filmmakers and featuring an all-star cast. Together they create a kaleidoscope of the spontaneous, surprising, electrifying human connections that pump the citys heartbeat. Sexy, funny, haunting and revealing encounters unfold beneath the Manhattan skyline. From Tribeca to Central Park to Brooklyn the story weaves a tale of love as diverse as the very fabric of New York itself.

To mark the launch of MySpace Music we went behind the scenes with 9 artists to reveal the music they love. Watch the artist films and check out their playlists right here, then get cracking with your own playlists.

http://www.myspace.com/getrealclose?artist=alicia

Ji Lee: The Transformative Power of Personal Projects from 99% on Vimeo.