Need You Tonight (INXS Cover) by St. Vincent & Liars, at Beck’s Record Club.

So good.  Amazing voices, and yeah… it just jams.

Okay so this has little to no design-related value, but let me just pass on this little gem if you haven’t seen it before.

I mean, I’m basically at a loss for words to describe the bizarre perfection of this routine.

Who knew they had championships for this?

love this video for WTF? by OK Go.

thought it was great how they used props and patterned objects/clothing to repeatedly paint the frame, really taking full advantage of the graphic potential of the pixel trail glitching.

loving the sense of vast expanse in the photography of New York based Christoph Morlinghaus.

i could use some space like this.

my eyes, brain, and heart just exploded a little bit.

Scintillation by Xavier Chassaing,  is “an experimental film made up of over 35,000 photographs. It combines an innovative mix of stop motion and live projection mapping techniques.”

what that means exactly, i have no idea. but what i do know is that it leaves me speechless and more inspired than ever to pick up a camera and create stuff with light.

beautiful film. flawless execution, sound, etc.
super super cool.

love the new ad for Diesel’s fragrance Only The Brave.

the campaign for the cologne is unique in that they outsourced the promotional spots to independent and acclaimed film makers and video designers who were given complete artistic freedom. not surprisingly, the results are pretty varied, but all really well done.

one standout is the ad by Tom Muller, who mashed up his brother Tim’s abstract digital experiments with the look and atmosphere of the 1971 Apollo 15 mission to investigate the lunar landscape.

the second two images are the ceiling and floor graphics in Tom’s design for the digital “room” in which the video lives on the Diesel site.

you probably know by now how much i love the good old digital-meets-analog contrast. so i just think it’s sort of funny that the one digital-meets-digital example that i’m posting involves old NASA footage aesthetics - technically digital, but in comparison to the abstract stuff, now old enough to approach the flawed quality of analog media…

it got me thinking.

having been so accustomed to perfection in the digital realm we distance our handmade work from that of the computer. but is it possible that glitches in the system, or decaying files and footage, could represent the faulty, imperfect nature of human error? if what we consider man-made, is that which has the capability of the craftsman’s judgement and the evidence of the hand in the finished work, can the same be said of the artifacts of out-of-date, naïve technology?

what i mean is - since we ultimately try to hide our involvement in contemporary computations (by letting the computer do all the work and/or generation) does the older and more rudimentary software offer a closer approximation of digital craft?

everyone would consider Microsoft word very digital compared to a handwritten note. but what about a typewriter? ok, it still has moving metal parts… so somehow it’s still a tool of the hand. fine. but what about an electronic typewriter? what about a handheld calculator? what about the older calculators that print a small slip of real paper? do these basic electronic instruments belong in the same category as a superprocessor computer just because they provide a buffer between our fingers and the finished work?

i do realize the level of control we have today, and i don’t deny the evidence of craft in any modern industrial processes or high end applications, but i just wonder if we’ve come so far as to begin labeling early digital investigations as extensions of the handmade.

anyway, have a look at Tom’s blog post about the project for more info on the video.

via iso50.

Evading capture or definition, Reggie Watts is the spellbinding vocal artist whose improvised songs delight audiences internationally.

I’m impressed.

Radiolab bring us this short film by Will Hoffman. Will was inspired to make it after hearing Radiolab’s program on moments of death.

so he went out and found moments of life. i think it’s beautiful.

Christina showed this to me.

three frames is one of my favorite blogs on tumblr.

three sequencial frames from a classic film are chosen to create these looping gems.
it’s amazing how much spatial depth is created just by catching a few shots microseconds apart in time.

the site is updated with new GIF’s everyday.