Mixing Genius - Kutiman

This is inspiring and incredible! Unrelated yet interdependent music/youtubing weaved and edited by mix-master Kutiman. "I'm New" is my favorite track off his Thru You project, where what you see is what you hear.

Resource depletion

How Long Will Our World Last?

"Most people get worried about how much energy reserves we have left, but as this graphic shows, that's the least of our problems. The real problem is the materials we use to make things.

Energy could be harnessed from eternal sources, like the sun, the wind, or the seas. But there is only a limited amount of elements in planet Earth and—what's worst—bringing them from other planets will prove impractical with our current technology (and the technology that will be available in the next century).

In the meantime, copper—which is everywhere around you—will be gone in about 61 years; antimony—widely used in medicines—will be depleted in 20 years; while indium, rhodium, platinum, or silver—which are present in many essential consumer electronics—won't last much longer. And those estimations are only valid if we manage to consume half of what we are consuming now.

So, unless we really push technology forward, dramatically increase our recycling rhythm, or something extraordinary happens first—like Apophis obliterating us or the Large Hadron Collider blows us to another dimension, or Nazi zombies getting out of their crypts to make bacon of all of us—we and our children are going to have a really hard time pushing the world forward.

I guess we will have to keep taking life one weekend at a time. "

[via Gizmodo]

Twitter hits the streets

I like this clever graff tweet seen on the streets via Questionmarc.

If that's not a sign of Twitter being top of pop culture mind virtually everywhere right now, then this awesome "Flutter" mocumentary surely is...yep, it's the nano-blogging movement:



via Laughing Squid (great blog from sf)

Twit Universe: To Infinity and Beyond!

This social satire sparked a lot of questions. With the advent of online social networking, are we living from the inside-out or the outside-in, now? How do we give our lives meaning and identity, online? Do we trivialize? Do we constantly seek the approval networks? Do we inflate our sense of self-importance? Or do we simply love sharing more? Have we traded human-to-human relationship building for online, speedy interactions? Are we actually moving forward? But, have we also exchanged monologue for dialogue -- saying goodbye to a pyramid of top-down authority communication and hello to honest conversations between people all over the world?...Or just the privileged, with computers, internet know-how and access, without a great firewall? Sometimes, to quote Pablo Picasso, "computers are useless. They can only give you answers."

Here's Bill Maher this week on our mind-boggling obsessions with twitter, useless iphone aps ("pull my finger", no joke) and even those damn snuggies:


A hilarious addendum via current TV from Super News! on Twitter.

Recycled Goods

Newspaper furniture - your very own "reading butt-y":

Photo: David Stovell Design

Grist via Inhabitat:

"Instances of talking out of your ass are well-documented, but reading out of your ass -- now that's new."

-----

In Jean Shin's interactive sculpture "TEXTile", 22,528 recycled keyboard keys are embedded into a continuous fabric, complete with video projection. Yvonne Oswald on KPFK's The Aware Show recently said that our communication is 7% verbal, 38% tonal and 55% body language. Can you imagine all that gets lost in translation and interpretation in our world of email and texting? A fascinating and labor-intensive piece that investigates our virtual communication culture:

"The project speaks to the pervasiveness of email in our lives while commenting on the fact that, despite the modern technology of virtual communication, our written language is linked to the tactile sensation of moving our fingers over an outmoded typewriter system."

-----

Fridgehenge, a short-lived 21st century take on Stonehenge, just outside Sante Fe, New Mexico:

Earth Ambience and Brian Eno

Here are a few ethereal and simply stunning seasonal time lapse videos inspired by one of the most original and too often overlooked electronic gurus of our time: Brian Eno. These videos have got to be some of the best on YouTube; beautifully capturing earth's work with an impeccable soundtrack that can't be beat...

Brian Eno - This


Brian Eno - How Many Worlds


"All deep things are Song...The primal element of us; of us, and of all things...See deep enough, and you see musically; the heart of Nature being everywhere music." - Thomas Carlyle

Everything is Illuminated

via Lost At E Minor, I came across Orange County artist Kristian Olson today. I love the outer-worldly subjects and mysterious organic themes, the often muted color palette, the detailed ornamentation influenced by cultural motifs and the skillfully crafted combination of mixed-media (designed digital artwork, giclée printing, acrylic paint) with illustration.

"Kristian Olson’s illustrations look like Magic Eye posters that have come to life as marauding, fractal-shooting creatures from Technicolor hell."

-----

The photo below captures a new interactive Dobpler LED wall in Sandnes Sentrum, Norway that transforms shadows into light as people walk through a pedestrian subway tunnel. Perhaps this is the kind of multifunctional ingenuity we need here to encourage more public transit riders.

via Inhabitat:

"The Strømer is an interactive wall that weaves a wonderful mixture of art, energy-efficiency and play into the fabric of daily existence."

Watercolours, the project website for the installation in Sandnes states:

Sandnes’ city centre is split in two parts by the railway line. A new, creative illumination of our railway station subways will give us safer traffic and walkways. The subways become lighted portals, pleasant to use, mirroring the users who can observe themselves and others as active elements of the township.

-----

A less useful but rather amusing LED tech gadget is USB powered Tengu, who's facial expressions and mouth lip-syncs with the sounds in the room - whether it be you or your music. This little buddy keeps you company when you're on the comp and he even sings Seu Jorge in the video below! Awesome.

-----

WTF?! Disgusting full-blown desperation...

A West Plains, Missouri billboard via SLOG

"I've been thinking about this McCain-Palin Obama "palling around with terrorist" idea more lately. The saddest thing about many Republicans isn't just that they disagree with liberals on race--it's they are largely ignorant on race. When the McCain campaign cast the spell of diabolical jingoism, they have no idea of the forces they are toying with. We remember Martin Luther King's murder as a sad and tragic event. Less remembered is the fact that ground-work for King's murder was seeded, not simply by rank white supremacy, but by people who slandered King as a communist."
-Ta-Nehisi Coates

This gotcha clip reveals how McCain's "straight talk" is going hate talk express. The Nation's Ari Melber on pathetically injecting baseless hate:

Banksy's Village Pet Store and Grill

"This revolution is for display purposes only"
-Banksy

Graffiti genius Banksy just opened his "Village Pet Store and Grill" a few days ago in NYC, at 89 West 7th Avenue. You may not recognize his work though because there's no writing on the wall here...

Using animatronics for his first time, Banksy has created an eye-opening and chilling world where "there are no puppies or kittens in the windows". Instead, "McDonald's Chicken McNuggets sip barbecue sauce. A rabbit puts on her makeup. A CCTV camera nurtures its young." Banksy's groundbreaking social commentary confronting the way we live and intelligently raising questions about where animals go, runs through Halloween and might be recreated elsewhere later. Hopefully, the West Coast!

via Wooster Collective:

Lifeless leopard coat

Hot dogs trapped

Nuggets in a coop

Bunny testing make-up

Fishsticks in a fish bowl

Live sneak peak:

From Banksy:

“New Yorkers don’t care about art, they care about pets. So I’m exhibiting them instead. I wanted to make art that questioned our relationship with animals and the ethics and sustainability of factory farming, but it ended up as chicken nuggets singing. I took all the money I made exploiting an animal in my last show and used it to fund a new show about the exploitation of animals. If its art and you can see it from the street, I guess it could still be considered street art."

Oh, so Appropro Song of the Year

Beautiful Judy Collins sings "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" (my favorite version)...or $850 billion sounds about right.


And a great version of the song from the prolific Tom Waits...


Talking Heads offered a sign before the times. Say goodbye to "Once in a Lifetime" Reaganomics. This is also the theme song to W., the new Oliver Stone flick on the Bush legacy.


-----

Counting down doomcracy in style? I love these amazing new time pieces from Tokyoflash ("the home of unique Japanese watches") that combine innovative LED displays with edgy, futuristic design.

-----

And on new tech, there's the hope phone! The Obama iPhone application was launched today -- a new political campaigning tool for 21st century. While McCain is still learning to use the internet, Obama continues to successfully mobilize and energize voters by utilizing social networking and new media tech. He's also a staunch supporter of net neutrality. The iPhone application is a free download for iPhone and iPod Touch users. Team Obama is running a brilliant campaign.


-----

As we so eagerly await the Biden vs. Palin debate tonight, here's Letterman yesterday on the "top 10 things overheard at the Palin debate camp":



-----