Sorayama and Mac. Two great tastes that taste great together! Before you get too excited, these aren’t actual ads, just some design concepts like by Leif Olson – you can see the rest here. But how awesome would it be? Especially if all the ads were directed by Chris Cunningham, in the same style as this video? If I saw that, I bet even I would buy a Mac (full discloure: almost every friend I have, including the Coil-staff, loves the Mac. I love the PC. Too much Oregon Trail in elementary school).
Good morning. Get back to work. Oh, by the way, GIANT UNDERPANTS!
How could even the most veisalgic or seasonal affective disorder-suffering among us remain mopey after viewing this?
As a matter of fact, Paul Reubens always said that Pee-wee’s Playhouse wasn’t written for children so much as for hungover college students. Nonetheless, back in the day I was about as big a Pee-wee fan as any pre-pube could get. That clip’s got to be one of my top ten most cherished all-time TV moments. No, seriously.
We all know what happened to that poor man back in 1991. Got caught in an adult movie theater –apparently with his pants down– was arrested for “indecent exposure” and immediately vilified by the media. Reruns of his recently canceled show were quickly yanked off the air. Overnight, our beloved Pee-wee was reduced to a sniggering punchline. Does anyone else remember Reubens’ first public appearance afterwards on the MTV music awards? His sad-eyed “heard any good jokes lately?” delivery prompted cheers from the supportive crowd, but watching at home, I was in mourning. We all knew a death knell had been sounded.
Today when you visit Coilhouse, you will see a new feature: the ability to register for the site and upload your own avatar! This avatar will appear next to your name every time you post. We are adding this feature for the wonderful commenters who keep coming back, so that you don’t have to re-type your name/email every time you want to make a new comment. My own avatar comes from Dumbledorepride.com, because I just finished reading Book 7. I always knew!
To be more creative is to get closer to childhood.
-Sarah Moon
“Impressionist photographer” Sarah Moon has spent her entire career dancing down the high-wire tension line strung between fine-art and fashion photography. To my knowledge, she has yet to falter or repeat herself.
Her phantasmagoric vision, though often imitated, would be impossible to duplicate. Most anyone with the time and resources can become a darkroom wizard, and Moon certainly is, using capricious techniques like sepia coloring on matte paper, toned silver gelatin printing, solarization, monochrome Polaroid pack, etc. Much of the trendy work made through these means can seem a bit stale or derivative, lacking a certain sense of playfulness, don’t you think? The mischievous gut level allegory found in Moon’s most memorable compositions sets her apart.
Take a stroll through her dreamy fairy tale world beyond the cut.
Every once in a while something so amazing slips past us that we can but weep in mourning of lost time, once the Amazing Thing is discovered at last.
I remember mention of The Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello when it was first released in 2005 but it was tragically lost in the rumbling noise of the Internet, before I could watch it. The IMDB synopsis of this gorgeous silhouette animation is as follows:
“Set in a world of iron dirigibles and steam powered computers, this gothic horror mystery tells the story of Jasper Morello, a disgraced aerial navigator who flees his Plague-ridden home on a desperate voyage to redeem himself. The chance discovery of an abandoned dirigible leads Jasper through unchartered waters to an island on which lives a terrifying creature that may be the cure for the Plague. The journey back to civilization is filled with horrors but in a shocking climax, Jasper discovers that the greatest horror of all lies within man himself. “
Today by pure chance I re-discovered this gem of animation on the ol’ YouTube and am about to buy the DVD to finally put an end to my ignorance. Has anyone here seen this?
I’m working on making it possible to upload a little avatar next to your name when you post a comment. Stay tuned! In the meantime, I bring you one of my favorite modern fashion photographers: Eugenio Recuenco. I chose to post about him now to counterbalance my Decline of Fashion Photography post: see, it’s not all doom and gloom!
There’s just so much to see on his site. I love this noir alien encounter story, and this one about matadors, and this creepy hotel shoot with elements of The Shining. I love his nautical themes: there’s one story about shipwrecked passengers who make it to the shore, and another about Titantic, with a gallery each before and after the collision with the iceberg. There’s a sexy story about fencing (the only sport I ever liked!), and tons more. Visiting his site is like re-reading a good book; every time, you find something new.
Mikhail Vrubel is not particularly well-known in the West but he remains one of the greatest and certainly one of the most unique artists Russia’s ever produced. Most of his best-known work is inspired by fairy tales and poetry, and his own life was a sort dark fable in itself.
The Swan Princess (the artist’s wife)
Born in Siberia, Mikhail lost two of his siblings when he was still a child. Their untimely deaths affected him deeply, but didn’t stop him from developing his talent for drawing, among other widely varying interests. His family encouraged his interest in the arts and languages and in 1864 he began to study in St. Petersburg where he was educated in both law and art.
On the left is an image by Irving Penn shot in 1951 for Vogue. On the right is an image from a recent issue of Paper. What happened? In a compelling, troche easy-to-follow “argument in pictures” on Slate.com, viagra Karen Lehrman delineates the decline of fashion photography through the past half-century, arguing that modern fashion photography forgets to create art in favor of commerce (hence the sterile, cataloge-looking images you see in American Vogue), or alternately forgets commerce in favor of attempts at art (above, right). Walking you through 60 years of fashion photography with compelling examples to support her various points, Lerhman discusses how focus groups, misogyny, the changing role of the fashion photographer and other factors have all done their part in bringing about the downfall of the craft.
Shit, I loved that game! One of my happiest memories growing up was playing it with my dad. My favorite colors to play were black and green together; death and replenishment. I thought that red was for boneheads. I liked blue, but was never able to construct the kind of mindfuck blue decks that won you the game. And white was just… blah. Too pacifist. Green-white decks were for hippies. I remember liking artifacts; Magic was where I learned the word “ornithopter” from. Any time I opened a new pack, I prayed to find the coveted rare card Black Lotus; it would be like winning the lottery and I’d be filthy rich. I loved the artwork, which looks more crude to me now than I remember it being. Phil Foglio and Quinton Hoover were my favorite artists.
While I was a card-flopper, I was never a dice-chucker. I never learned how to play RPG’s because I didn’t know anybody else who played. But at the time, tons of card games were coming out right and left; games inspired by Lovecraft like Call of Cthulhu, the Illuminati card game inspired by Robert Anton Wilson, and the Netrunner game inspired by (ripped off without credit, I heard?) the work of William Gibson. This was my official exposure to all these artists and others, making Magic: The Gathering the official source of What Made Me Weird. My dad got me subscriptions to Scrye and Inquest, which had interviews with people like Clive Barker and Brom. In every issue of Scrye, they printed imaginary cards that readers made up, and I even remember submitting some of my own.
