Close on the heels of the announcement that filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki may be preparing a sequel to his 1992 animated film Porco Rosso, Roger Ebert posts some well-deserved, effusive praise of Miyazaki and his first masterpiece, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind:
Much of anime in the past 20 years has concentrated on a utopian future, filled with technological wizardry and innovation, which is abundant in Japanese culture. But Miyazaki tends to look back instead of looking forward, inward instead of outward, looking at treasures of futures past that might have been. Like most of his films, his timeline here isn’t technological, but pastoral, with people relying more on each other and the Earth. He favors gorgeous green panoramas usually near blue bodies of water. He is in love with flight with his heroes soaring through the sky, representing our dreams of breaking through our limitations. We sense his hope in women more than men, believing them to be the key to humanity’s progress as opposed to man’s history of violence. These creeds and themes are held dearly and instinctively by the young and hopeful, and its Miyazaki’s ability to convey these naturalistic ideas through his visual imagination, which makes him unique.
Only Pixar has been able to rival Miyazaki’s creative energies in forming entirely new sights, sounds, and stories with each subsequent film. But Pixar is a collection of talent (all of whom pretty much worship him), while Miyazaki is a singular force. While even the greatest of directors have to rely on cast and crew to carry out their visions, Miyazaki pretty much IS the film. He might be the closest thing to the idea of an “auteur” which filmdom has.
Ebert has pointed his readership in the direction of Google Video to watch Nausicaa for free –and apparently guilt free– online. Hooray!
Chiranjeevi’s Tollywood is a marvelous, magical, moustachioed realm that we’ve explored briefly on Coilhouse before. This morning, let us reopen the Telugian floodgates! We’ll start off with a particularly choice Chiru clip (via Dogmeat, thanks) and continue on with several more rip-roaring performances spanning the Megastar‘s illustrious career, featuring Chiranjeevi in cahoots with various gorgeous female co-stars… and a horse.*
A collaboration between Interpretive Arson, False Profit Labs, Gray Area Foundation For The Arts (GAFFTA), and Illutron, this 2.5-ton, 60-foot sculpture will act as a giant electronic musical instrument. Designed as a traveling installation, Syzygryd will debut at Burning Man in under a month. The Syzygryd user experience, as explained by Interpretive Arson’s Morley John, will be as follows: “Three strangers [will] come together and visually compose a unique piece of music. The beauty of Syzygryd is that the entire sculpture responds to what you’re creating in sequenced light and fire. Each touchscreen controller has a grid of buttons which allow you to input musical patterns.” The initial Syzygryd proposal elaborates further:
Syzygryd is a collaborative musical instrument for three non-professional players. We are not naive. We’re not shoving guitars into the hands of novices and expecting symphonies. This is a very carefully designed canvas that guides beginners to harmony (in fact, discordant notes are literally impossible.) The interface is rhythmic, visual, and dead simple. We’ve been meticulously developing the software for months, playing with iPhone prototypes on busses, tweaking sounds, testing it out on our friends. We knew we were getting warmer the first time that three people, with no formal training in music, got bystanders grooving involuntarily…
Though most of the heavy lifting takes place Oakland, people from around the world are invited to contribute to the build.
How can you help build Syzygryd? By submitting sound sets. You’re basically submitting 3 (or more) types of sounds that mesh well together, and people will make music with them. For Syzygryd’s sound palette is not limited to the three electronic tones you hear in the software demo above. You can make it play anything: chirping bird noises, breathing, machine/factory sounds… the more creative the combination, the better. To submit a set, all you need to do is have Ableton Live, download Syzygryd’s MDK (Musician Developer Kit), and consult this handy video tutorial for extra help as needed. There’s also a forum where you can ask questions and get advice. All submitted sets will be reviewed by Syzygryd’s Music Team, and a selection of the top sets will played by the sculpture.
Having observed and participated in the Syzygryd project build, it’s clear that everyone involved is deeply invested in crafting an experiential zone that will be the first of its kind. As the proposal states, “[Syzygryd is] the most beautiful expression we can imagine of the joy we take in community, music, technology, fire, sculpture and architecture. We have assembled an international team of artists with extraordinary talent and experience. All of us are in love. Every day we see things that no one has yet imagined, and it’s been our delight to work within a community to make them real. We’d like to create a space in our city where others — people who don’t normally do this sort of thing — can feel at least a little of that.” That’s a wonderful thing to be part of on any level, and in Syzygryd’s case, people from around the world can get involved.
The deadline for submitting sounds sets to Syzygryd is Tuesday, August 24th. More info on the sculpture and music submission process, after the jump!
Every year, the the North American Hairstyling Awards competition brings forth a new crop of rainbow-colored, architectural, retro-inspired, hair-spirational eye candy. This year’s recently-announced winners and nominees pushed the envelope more than ever before. There are multiple images form each nominee in each category, so click on each entrant’s name below if you want to see more images from that particular series. Be sure to check out the before-and-after images in the Haircolor category – it’s amazing what professional lighting and a great styling team can do. An array of sci-fi heroines, snow queens, robots and circus starlets, after the jump. [Via amazing hairstylist Holly Jones, who’s been providing hair help to Coilhouse editorials since Issue 01].
We’ve talked about Russian stereotyping a couple of times in the past, and both instances have been followed [for the most part] by thoughtful, lengthy discussions. Not this time! Here’s a very, very silly and over-the-top commercial for DirecTV featuring a tacky Russian tycoon in a hyper-gaudy, gilded lair surrounded by fur-clad floozies who hand him remotes atop trays loaded with gold bars. This short video is jam-packed with money-LOLs. There are bodyguards, large dogs playing at a poker table, gold busts of the tycoon presented by models, and my favorite: a miniature pet giraffe. And on the topic of LOLs – this character’s manner of speech is straight off the internet, the scene opening with him saying, “Opulence, I has it”. I just can’t bring myself to be offended, it’s too damn funny.
No doubt, if you are Brazilian, have kin from Brazil, or you’re just generally fascinated by the brief, impassioned revolution of Tropicália/post-Tropicálismos, you’re already familiar with Secos & Molhados. Otherwise, all you really need to know before you chug your morning smoothie is this: S&M were a scrumptiously plumed and glittering glam-rock trio fronted by a sexy sopraniño beast named Ney Matogrosso, and they were fuhhuhHIERCE. Enjoy a sampling of their performances –and a few of Matogrosso’s solo clips– below:
Bear in mind, those trio clips are all pre-Rocky Horror, pre-KISS, and pre-Nomi.
Last week, the Coilhouse crew and extended family – Courtney, Mer, Mildred, Stephanie Inagaki and Andy Ristaino – got together with Zo on the roof of the Standard Hotel in LA after Mer and Zo had joined forces to prepare a particularly juicy Coilhouse blog feature that will be revealed at a later date. I couldn’t be there, but the picture from that night filled me with joy. Next month it’ll be three years since we all started working together, and to me, the photo speaks volumes regarding how much we’ve grown together, and all the changes we’ve been through. This is especially true in Zo’s case. An epic wedding, a house move, and a full transition into a freelance career – that’s a lot for anyone to handle, but our co-editor makes it look effortless. So in lieu of being able to wish her a happy birthday in person, I present Zo with the cake above (with a little bit of help from R. Stevens). You are a vital, talented, creative force of nature, and the world is more strangely beautiful with you in it. We luff yoooooo!
Cuddle puddle: Courtney, Zo, Mer and original fourth co-editor Mildred Von.
Ryan Francesconi‘s wonderful music has been lilting around the edges of my life since 1995 when I briefly worked together with him and Dan Cantrell in the Toids, an experimental folk group that riffed off various Eastern European idioms in tandem with Francesconi and Cantrell’s eclectic compositional styles. Back then, Francesconi was one seriously intimidating guitar/tambura/bouzouki shredder! He reveled in playing faster, smarter, better than anybody. He’s a shredder still, and no one can approximate his style… but over the years, wisdom seems to have smoothed over some of the sharper, more Malmsteinish edges of his virtuosity. Lately, the music he makes has deepened into an expression of something more present, and pure.
Nowhere is this more apparent than on a quietly stunning record Francesconi released earlier this year, called Parables. A series of songs for solo acoustic guitar, it reflects his interest in American bluegrass, Bulgarian folk, jazz improvisation and Baroque lute music. Recorded live (no overdubs!), the music is graceful and green with nods of kinship to everyone and everything from Nick Drake to Herman Hesse to the forests of the Pacific Northwest– which is where Francesconi lives when he’s not trotting the globe.
Speaking of– if you’re a fan of Joanna Newsom, the name Ryan Francesconi is probably already familiar to you, since he’s been one of her key players for several years, leading her live touring performers in the Ys Street Band and arranging/playing on just about every song on her new triple album, Have One On Me. They’re kicking off their summer West Coast tour of the States tonight in San Diego, California. Newsom had this to say about Parables:
“Ryan Francesconi is one of the most awe-inspiring musicians I’ve known. On “Parables,” he distills his many realms of artistry […] into a beautifully minimalist, poetic, intricate, emotionally realized study of themes, variations, organic counterpoint, and such devastating forays into fractal-metric out-lands that it is nearly impossible to believe he’s picking those strings with just one hand. This is solo music that sounds like an ensemble, an ecstatic and measured reconciliation of West African / Balkan / Baroque / bluegrass influences, which ultimately resembles nothing I know.”
Pick up Parables on vinyl over at Drag City (they’re currently sold out of the CD), or in Mp3 format from CD Baby or iTunes.
The Lifesize Mousetrap is exactly what it sounds like: an astoundingly cool, “big kid” version of the classic board game. Created by Mark Perez, constructed from leftover metal/nuts/bolts/spare wood over the course of thirteen years, and operated and maintained by a small, scrappy collective of bay-area based engineers, artists and performers, it’s “a colorful assemblage of kinetic sculptures fantastically handcrafted into a giant, 25 TON Rube Goldberg machine.”
The mechanical spectacle is enhanced by a vaudevillian style road show featuring tap-dancing mouse women, live music, and several dapper “clown engineers” who endeavor to “achieve a chain reaction using Newtonian physics and bowling balls! The action culminates with the spectacular dropping of a 2 TON bank safe from a 30-foot crane.”
This 50,000 pound contraption and its stage show must be seen to be believed. Preferably in person, not on a computer screen– which is why they need our help getting to Maker Faire Detroit and Maker Faire World in New York City. They’ve setup a Kickstarter project to help raise funds for the labor-intensive, rather expensive cross-country trip. There are 10 days left on the clock, and they’ve still got a ways to go before they reach their goal of $6,600 — a buck for every mile they travel. If you’re inspired by small, indie, gloriously strange community art and outreach, here’s a chance to express it. You guys know how this works: a buck here, a fiver there, and spread the word. It adds up so quickly.
