I can’t say I’m necessarily a huge fan of the entirety of Hunter Freeman’s portfolio, but I do very much love this series of photos of an astronaut going about his or her day; my favorite being the bored, newspaper reading individual above. It strikes me as the sweet spot of juxtaposition between far out adventure and the everyday.

via Cgunit

Karl-Heinz Stockhausen’s 1956 piece ‘Gesang Der Junglinge’ (Song of the Children) analysed song verses into their elementary phonetic components and deployed electronically generated aperiodic sound – more commonly known as ‘white noise’. The Disabled Avant-Garde also generate white noise in this piece by varying the syne-waves produced by a loudly whistling boiling kettle. As with Stockhausen, a vocalist intones ‘inside’ the white noise (but using a different song – something by Roy Orbison). The total effect produced is to provide the listener with no idea whatsoever of what it must sound like to be profoundly deaf’.

That is the official description for Disabled Avante-Garde’s video “Stockhausen”. I must say, however, nothing may encapsulate the internet better than image of a disabled little person in a wheelchair, plastered in heavy makeup, accompanied by a tiny, confused dog and a conveniently placed broom, giggling gleefully as a man waves his posterior in front of her — all set to the tones of a screeching tea kettle.

Hot and steamy mini-documentary action on today’s FAM in the form of The Return of A Clockwork Orange, Film4’s look at the controversial film 30 years after director Stanley Kubrick banned the film’s showing in the UK. I’m going to assume that if you have any interest in this you are familiar with both the film and the book it was based on, so I’ll not go over them here.

Even with a working knowledge of Clockwork Orange it is difficult, I think, for modern audiences to understand why a film like this would cause such an uproar, saturated as we are with films that go way beyond Kubrick’s film in terms of graphic depictions of violence, both physical and sexual. The Return of A Clockwork Orange does an excellent job, then, of painting a picture of the political and social climate of England in the early 70s, giving a much clearer for the context for the furor over this film. Released in the same year that saw Ken Russell’s beautiful, bloody The Devils and Sam Peckinpah’s shocking Straw Dogs it was the crescendo in an increasingly heated debate on whether films should be allowed to portray such extreme behavior — a debate that continues today mostly concerning those video games the kids seem to love so much.

The end result is a short but well-informed look at a war between a nation and one of film’s greatest visionaries.

Addendum: Apologies for the inferior quality of this video. This version features much clearer visuals but the audio gets completely out of sync by the second part.

Samuel Cockedey’s time-lapse of Tokyo has been making the rounds, and many of you may have already seen it, but it deserves to be enshrined here. Set to “Paradigm Flux” by Paul Frankland, aka Woob, it’s just the right thing for a quick afternoon break.

via Pink Tentacle

Second-hand Tang Poem, Maleonn’s series from 2007, is only a small sample of a portfolio overflowing with surrealistic delights, but it is among my favorites. These black and white dioramas tell the story of a mystical, far off land — a tale both somber and silly. It’s a dichotomy seen throughout his work and he uses this balancing act to great effect. His work isn’t on exhibition in the US at the moment, but he does have a show at Blindspot Gallery in Hong Kong.

“Neverest” is a single of of Star, the debut album from Hey Champ. The song itself is of the electronic variety, the members of Hey Champ playing their instruments from inside the confines of neon tinged pyramids bastardized from Gary Numan’s repertoire. We’re not here for either the song or the set design, however. No, we are here for the beautiful, lithe nymphets gyrating in their underwear, swinging their hips back and forth like seductive pendulums, their sentient dolphin-head breasts swiveling on their chests, eyes glowing with otherworldly light.

Why these women would have cetaceans sprouting from their torsos is a question I am not equipped to answer, nor would I allow myself to pass judgment on those who find the image of the aforementioned cetaceans bound to the human form arousing. I am simply pointing out that it is a thing that exists and we are, all of us, going to have to accept that.

via The Daily What

The Tokyo Up, Down project comprises a series of black & white photographs taken inside and outside of elevators in Tokyo. The project explores vertical transportation in the intimacy of the elevator cabin, a moment of silence suspended in space and time, which nonetheless yields a rich array of subtle interactions between strangers on the shortest ever journey.

A seemingly simple idea that produced some stunning results. Some of them seem as though they are stills from a noir thriller, the figures frozen in lonely contemplation, framed by severe, modern architecture. Inside the elevators, the subjects either confront the camera or studiously avoid it. It calls to mind the sociological experiment of entering a crowded elevator and turning to face the rest of the people in the car instead of the door. When one’s personal space is shrunk down to mere centimeters eye contact becomes even more intimate, almost invasive, something that Xavier Comas uses to great effect.

via lens culture

Bird Box presents one family’s day at the playground in a way that almost resembles a Rube Goldberg invention. At less than a minute long this short more than makes up for its brevity with a spectacular sense of timing.

via DRAWN!

In memory of Satoshi Kon, The FAM presents Katsuhiro Otomo’s Memories (1995), specifically the first episode of three entitled Metallic Rose, directed by Koji Morimoto and written by the late Mr. Kon. Metallic Rose tells the story of a space-faring salvage team who respond to a distress signal (in the form of a recording of Puccinni’s opera Madame Butterfly) emanating from a giant space station in a particularly dangerous area of the galaxy known as Area RZ-3005 or Sargasso. The ship’s two engineers, Heintz and Miguel, are deployed to investigate. Inside they find an opulent, rococo interior and a woman claiming to be an opera singer named Eva Friedal.

The true nature of Eva is something I won’t spoil, but it is safe to say that she is not exactly who she appears to be. Magnetic Rose then, in sci-fi shorthand, is a mash-up of the used, dingy, space-trucker aesthetics of Alien and the psychological mindfuckery of Solaris; and it succeeds admirably. And while it was based on a story by Otomo, it contains many of the themes that would define Kon’s work: the interest in the protagonist’s mental state and subjective reality. Two years later he would go on to write and direct his first feature film, Perfect Blue, and a brilliant career; but the seeds were sown here in the span of 40 minutes. If only that career could have lasted a little longer.

Baths is, apparently, one man: Will Wiesenfeld, whose debut album Cerulean was released on June 22nd of this year. That may or may not be important to you. Above is the video for the single “Lovely Bloodflow” and while I’m not sure I’m a fan of the song, the video is decidedly beautiful — following a mortally wounded samurai through a lush forest. Masked, otherworldly beings and the visions of a dying man abound.

via Pitchfork