I’ve spent, I think I can say, an inordinate amount of time browsing through the fetishization of the most mundane activities in order to provide you, dear readers, with interesting material. Yes, it was for you that I watched dozens of Japanese YouTube clips of earwax removal, trapped in a horrific, personal grooming K-hole, desperately trying escape only to do so and realize that most, if not all of the people who would be interested in such a thing are already ensconced in a vast, virtual library of such material. Alas, such is the life of an internet spelunker.
We are not here to talk about earwax removal, however, (though, if you want to I have some videos to show you) no, we’re going to briefly discuss Konapun. Konapun is a Japanese cooking toy that allows the you to create realistic, miniature food with the use of chemicals. It’s like molecular gastronomy — a practice in which people who are bored by food and the idea of it as nourishment torture it into funny shapes and forms with needles and eyedroppers — but without the pretense of being edible.
Asian cities and communities the world over rang in the Chinese New Year today — or yesterday depending on your time zone — ushering in the Year of the Rabbit, 4708 on the Chinese calender. The celebration will go on for 14 more days, making the Western New Year’s tradition of one alcohol fueled night of shame look truly pathetic in comparison. To celebrate the occasion and honor the passing of the Year of the Tiger the duo of Benji Davies and Jim Field, a.k.a. Frater, put together a short, beautifully animated New Year card, almost like a moving woodcut.
Linda Behar constructs intricate, photo-realistic landscapes, mostly marshes so far, with a needle and thread. It’s hard to believe that the image above is not a photograph or a painting, but embroidery, something that strikes me as akin to constructing a quarter scale replica of the Eiffel Tower out of bellybutton lint — a task I would reserve for only the most eccentric shut-in or obsessive compulsive, neither of which Mrs. Behar appears to be. Her work, which can be seen on her Flickr page, is simply astounding and she achieves this visual fidelity by printing photos onto cloth and then going about her meticulous business.
I feel like I’ve seen dozens of videos like this one: images and sound diced and then spliced together in order to form short, musical compositions. This familiarity does little to dampen my enthusiasm for them. I find myself often hypnotized by sounds; transfixed by sounds. Sounds are sexy. I suspect Mr. Zdziebko would probably understand what I mean. His piece “Sampled Room” is, you may be unsurprised to learn, a collection of sounds from some common household objects — a roll of tape, a wine glass, a camera — spliced together to form a short, musical composition. It’s fantastic. Some things, I suppose, just never get old.
Sometimes there is no good reason for doing something other than because one can. Also, prostate because it will produce some incredibly awesome results, as evidenced by the video above. Take a look at what happens when, at an archery range in Korea, someone decides to strap a rear-facing camera to an arrow and send it hurtling 145 meters down range.
As previously noted, The Three are toiling away on the forthcoming issue of Coilhouse’s print incarnation in the lush comforts of their offices above my cell. I have heard that they have all manner of miracles up there: floors adorned with plush carpeting, un-recycled air, food that isn’t gruel, and things called toilets which are like the buckets I have but are not located in the corner of your room and empty themselves (or at all, really). It sounds like a wondrous place.
But all that hard work can be exhausting, regardless of how much your food is not gruel. Indeed, perhaps many of our readers are experiencing a fatigue akin to what my sadistic benevolent mistresses find themselves in the midst of. To them and to you then I present this clip from the short film Amuse Yourself from 1936 starring the Holst Sisters. The benefits of watching two lithe nymphs tap-dance while shackled to one another are, I believe, self-evident.
Anouk Wipprecht creates garments that move, breathe, and react to the environment around them. Wipprecht started with a background of fashion, theater and dance, but a growing interest in interaction design and electrical engineering inspired her to develop clothing that appeals as much to the DIY/tech crowd as it does to fans of haute couture. “Instead of the body having to give a purpose to a design” Wipprecht said in a recent interview with Fashioning Tech, she’s interested in developing “design [that] gives a purpose to the body.”
Wipprecht has crafted projects such as Intimacy, a set of garments that become transparent when in proximity of each other, Fragilis, a dress that evokes the heart and veins through lighting and motion, and Daredroid, a cocktail-making robot dress equipped with IR sensors that administers booze through pneumatic control valves. More projects can be found on her site. Here she is discussing Pseudomorphs, her self-painting dresses:
I have to say: I love me some space. Give me high resolution imagery of some uninhabited sphere out in the cold, merciless void and I’m all over it. Reading the exploits of diminutive robots poking digging into alien soil leaves me tumescent with nerdy excitement. There are those who, of course, do not. There are many who feel that instead of looking up, we should instead be looking down, or forward, or even catty-corner. That the money being shot into the ether would be better off spent here. And like those who would extol the virtues of white chocolate or the musical stylings of the Violent Femmes, I simply allow my eyes to roll into the back of my head and drool profusely when those naysayers begin to pontificate their anti-NASA vitriol until they depart my company, confused and disgusted. It seems the only reasonable reaction. Also, I am exceedingly lazy.
It probably doesn’t help that, as of now, NASA doesn’t have anything as sexy as the moon landing going on at the moment. Smashing things into Jupiter is cool and all, but not as awe inspiring as watching humans traipse about on the surface of an orb hundreds of thousands of miles away. As such, the agency doesn’t have quite the media presence of, say, the armed forces. There are no images of astronauts flying spaceships or scientists doing complex math formulas while Keith David narrates over a pulsing, rap metal track.
This did not sit well with YouTube user damewse, who put together a video entitled “The Frontier is Everywhere” that features “narration” by the late Dr. Carl Sagan comprised of his reflections on the Pale Blue Dot photograph. It’s a stirring piece of video that, as admitted by damewse, borrows heavily from “EARTH: The Pale Blue Dot” by Michael Marantz, (see below), tailored with images of the space shuttle. Whether or not this is effective advertising is up for debate, but it’s certainly beautiful to watch.
This past week I have found myself embroiled in a losing battle with a nameless affliction affecting my corner of the northeast United States. Wracked by a hacking cough, nearly every orifice leaking fluid of various and sundry forms, my brain stewing in hot fetid juices I continue with my daily routine, a zombie with a cold.
As such my judgment, perhaps, should not be trusted. Of this I am well aware. I am also aware that those who would allow me access to their readers in such a state are also undeserving of trust, but that is a different matter entirely. No, I merely offer this as a preamble to the two videos presented here.
Both are no doubt better suited to M.E.R.’s ongoing Better Than Coffee series but, as a cold, unfeeling machine, I’m sure she won’t care though, no doubt, she’ll use it as an excuse to pump Justin Bieber through the speakers in my cell at eardrum-shattering levels. In my current state, however, it seems worth the temporary deafness. Above you will find a delightful video of a tiny penguin, frolicking with nary a care in the world and below you will find the significantly more amusing heavy metal remix in which a tiny penguin stalks his territory, filled with an unspeakable rage.
One of the world’s most dearly loved filmmakers and animators turned 70 today. Otanjou-bi Omedetou Gozaimasu, Hayao Miyazaki-sama! Deep bows, and deep thanks.
