Gestural Music Sequencer
A short documentary on John Keston’s Gestural Music Sequencer. More info at Keston’s weblog.
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DIY Art Kits
IARTISTLONDON provides DIY kits for replicating works by Damien Hirst (above), Marc Quinn, Tracy Emin, Banksy, and more. Here’s the description of the IHURST kit:
For the Love of God is an amazing piece by Damien Hirst that consists of a platinum cast of a human skull encrusted with 8.601 diamonds including a massive pear- shaped one on the forehead. It cost 14 million pounds to produce. This is the ultimate contemporary piece of art that everyone wants to display in their home.
Now, with IHIRST you will be able to create your very own replica. We have included a real size plastic skull and and all the crystals you need to create your copy (Yes! Each one of the 8.601 crystals at an incredible price!). Even the glue and the tweezers are included; patience is the only thing you need. It´s a challenge!! You can even customize your design by adding crystals with different colours if you prefer. Choose your tools. With IHIRST you can create an entirely new design or stick to the original one. Enjoy a piece of art that´s as entirely individual as you are yourself.
CONTENTS: PLASTIC HUMAN SIZE SKULL, CRYSTAL BEADS (8,601 PIECES), GLUE, PAINTBRUSH, TWEEZERS, SILVER PAINT, INSTRUCTIONS.
[via Design Boom]
UP Color Script
Lou Romano has posted the color script he developed for UP. Very cool. (As Drawn! mentions, it’s possibly a spoiler if you haven’t seen the movie since the script includes shots from all major scenes.)
[via Drawn!]
Lebowski Studies
Forthcoming from IU Press, This Year’s Work in Lebowski Studies, edited by Edward P. Comentale and Aaron Jaffe. The Table of Contents includes chapters such as “Holding Out Hope for the Creedence: Music and the Search for the Real Thing in The Big Lebowsk” by Dian Pecknold and “‘Fuck It, Let’s Go Bowling’: The Cultural Connotations of Bowling in The Big Lebowski” by Bradley Clissold.
Looks promising, although I’m guessing that The Dude would prefer that this be listed permanently as “in press” on c.v.s and annual reports.
Philip Glass: Lightning
If you watch only one version of Philip Glass’s “Lightning” performed by fire-headed monks riding Segways on the streets of France this year, this is the version you should watch.
[via metafilter.com]
Why Leaf Trombone is Important
Smule’s Leaf Trombone app for the iPhone is cute (and has some very, very smart interaction design), but Create Digital Music points out why the new collaborative features in Leaf Trombone are important in general: They signal the widespread start of network awareness for a lot of other activities.
I think these sort of networked features will increasingly become not only a game gimmick, but a necessity in music making. Why shouldn’t music devices instantly recognize the proximity of other music devices, automatically connect, and sync and share data, recordings, clock, and control messages? (One answer why not: because they’re reliving 1980s flashbacks by running MIDI. But that’s no reason software and DIY devices can’t lead the way.)
The parts are already sort of here, just not infrastructured and standardized in an open way yet. You can use something like the Comments feature in a weblog to discuss things with other people reading the same posts, or LibraryThing to talk to people in other places who read the same (or similar books). IDK if Kindle lets you know if there are people around you reading the same books, but it could (or, better, leverage Amazon’s or Netflix’s recommendation engine to find people who seem like you, but have interested differences that might benefit you both).
[via createdigitalmusic.com]
Type-Tart Cards Gallery
Wallpaper posts a gallery of entries in the Type-Tart Project they coordinated. Based on sex-worker calling cards in London (”tart cards”), Type-Tart cards remix sex trades, typography, and design. Frederic Brodbek’s Slutvetica entry (above) is one of the more SFW versions.
It’d probably be disingenuous to say they problematized or challenged any of those categories, but you can decide for yourself.
In conjunction with St Bride Library and Type, we asked designers – from students to superstars – to find the tart hiding in every type and create their own graphic numbers. Along with a selection in the magazine, all 450 cards can be viewed here. They will also be on display at KK Outlet, London from 22nd to 29th June.
Type has, to be sure, always played at these boundaries, sometimes in more powerful ways; Stefan Sagmeister’s work (his 1999 AIGA Cranbrook poster below) has frequently and powerfully involved type and body.
Fontfeed has additional info, including a download of the invitation to the show.
[via http://fontfeed.com/]
Content Wants to Be Free
This is where that whole overprivileged whiteboy slogan, “Information wants to be free” thing seemed headed from the start: Illustrators upset over Google’s invitiation to contribute free art [Boing Boing; see also the original NYT article].
Google’s entire model, like that of many information-centered companies today, is based on making profit by moving around free or extremely devalued content. Sure, there’s some money to made in niches and highly publicized special cases (like ghetto kids getting NBA contracts or pensioners winning big at Lotto), but the “revolution,” in a lot of ways, will continue to be the movement around a static center.
