There are all sorts of Aliens living throughout space.
Johnny is a Space Delivery Man who travels to different planets to deliver packages.
Johnny is lazy and his only desire is to sleep in his autopilot spaceship.
when the spaceship arrives at the destination, all he has to do is simply deliver the box.
However, it never goes as planned. Johnny encounters strange and bizarre planets
and always seems to cause trouble on his delivery route.
Will he be able to finish his mission without trouble?
Each and every tourist group we get here at the south pole has their own personality – some of them are quiet and burnt out after a long ski journey. Some of them are jubilant and exited to be here after a relaxing plane ride. Some of them speak english, some dont. And some like to get tattoos at the south pole.
A few weeks ago, a tourist flight arrived at the south pole carrying American tattoo artist Jarod Powell of Farsyde Tattoo in Koloa, Hawaii. Jarod came prepared with his traditional tattoo kit, and was quick to set up shop right at the geographic south pole. Although his time here was short, he gave a few of his fellow adventurers commemorative tattoos. A few photos of the process…
Jarod’s setup, with the brand new 2013 Geographic South Pole Marker.The pilot of the Basler airplane on which the group flew gets his mark.Another member of the group gets a small mark on her finger
About a half mile grid north of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, there’s a strange, frozen monument: Spoolhenge. Originally these giant spools housed the cables and pipelines that now wind their way through, around, and under the south pole station. When the supplies were offloaded from the spools, these empty monsters were stacked up on the ice to create the Spoolhenge monument.
Cable spools, standing frozen on the polar icecap.
On my way out to the reels…it’s about a 10 minute jog out. Starting from DZ, past the Cryogenics Laboratory, past a few berms, and then out to the frozen giants.
Interestingly, it looks like Annie Noble did a whole art expo on Spoolhenge.
To see the work, “Discovering Columbus,” visitors need only procure a free timed ticket, sign a release, climb six flights of stairs and enter the white windowed box that has been built around the figure. It’s a structure that from the outside looks like a pristine outtake from a mansion, albeit one supported by an elaborate network of construction scaffolding that is itself rather attractive. (An elevator is also available.)
Once inside, they will encounter Columbus’s commanding figure, wearing the usual floppy beret and High Renaissance garb, in a spacious interior larger than many New York apartments (over 800 square feet, with 16-foot ceilings). It is outfitted with hardwood floors, area rugs, cushy couches and armchairs, art reproductions, lots of reading material and a remote-free, 55-inch Samsung television screen. Most of this has been provided by Bloomingdale’s; all of it is bathed in natural light, thanks to four large windows facing in three directions.
The statue, previously visible only from afar, is front and center, and it towers. You can sit down and contemplate Columbus and his legacy, along with the tendency of high-minded public art to fade into the background, while enjoying a reasonable facsimile of someone’s home.
Over labor day weekend I attended the 39th annual Telluride Film Festival. This was the fourth or fifth time that I’ve gone to the festival, and it was a great time, as always. Below is a wrapup of a few of the notable movies I saw:
The day before film festival begins, the town of Telluride uses the Elks Park outdoor space to show one old school movie, just for locals. This year they showed Rock N Roll Highschool, starring The Ramones. It was a fun, weird, trippy throwback, and featured fun music by The Ramones – a band I had never really listened to before. Before the cityfolk rolled into town for the proper film festival, it was fun to hang with the local crowd and watch a strange movie. Trailer:
By far the most fun movie at Film Festival. The music, acting, and scenery in The Sapphires was great. I loved seeing the recreation of the Vietnam War social scene, and it was interesting seeing a different side of the war. Although I don’t listen to a ton of “soul” music, I loved the tracks in this movie, and the energy of the girls was great. Highly recommended for a fun, interesting film. Definitely go see it! Trailer:
This is it. This was my movie for the 39th Telluride Film Festival. By far the best movie I saw – Superstar combines an intersting and complexly surreal storyline with engaging and interesting characters, and is presented with visionary cinematography. I loved the geometric shots, attention to visual detail, and tripped out surrealistic vibe of the film. Sitting through a few hours of subtitles was well worth it for this film, and I’d highly recommend going to see it. As an added bonus, I even got a strangely “meta” photo with star Kad Merad. Trailer:
Direct from Norway’s tourism board, check out this mega 360 degree photo taken hovering in the air above Geirangerfjorden. Click through to check out interactive features, including maps and other views. Created by Making View.
Does a higher HIT bit get you better camera “resolution”?
The Descriptive Camera works a lot like a regular camera—point it at subject and press the shutter button to capture the scene. However, instead of producing an image, this prototype outputs a text description of the scene. Modern digital cameras capture gobs of parsable metadata about photos such as the camera’s settings, the location of the photo, the date, and time, but they don’t output any information about the content of the photo. The Descriptive Camera only outputs the metadata about the content. … After the shutter button is pressed, the photo is sent to Mechanical Turk for processing and the camera waits for the results. A yellow LED indicates that the results are still “developing” in a nod to film-based photo technology. With a HIT price of $1.25, results are returned typically within 6 minutes and sometimes as fast as 3 minutes. The thermal printer outputs the resulting text in the style of a polaroid print.
French designer Pierre-Stéphane Dumas has put a new spin on camping outdoors with his series of tent-like chambers shaped like igloos, under the name Bubbletree. Each bubble suite is fit to be fully furnished with enough space for a bed and resting chairs. They come in two forms—transparent and half-opaque—for different settings, whether you want to lay back and take in your surroundings or simply have a private lodge outdoors.
Fashion photographer and filmmaker Jacob Sutton swaps the studio for the slopes of Tignes in the Rhône-Alpes region of south-eastern France, with a luminous after hours short starring Artec pro snowboarder William Hughes. The electrifying film sees Hughes light up the snow-covered French hills in a bespoke L.E.D.-enveloped suit courtesy of designer and electronics whizz John Spatcher. “I was really drawn to the idea of a lone character made of light surfing through darkness,” says Sutton of his costume choice. “I’ve always been excited by unusual ways of lighting things, so it seemed like an exciting idea to make the subject of the film the only light source.” Sutton, who has created work for the likes of Hermès, Burberry and The New York Times, spent three nights on a skidoo with his trusty Red Epic camera at temperatures of -25C to snap Hughes carving effortlessly through the deep snow, even enlisting his own father to help maintain the temperamental suit throughout the demanding shoot. “Filming in the suit was the most surreal thing I’ve done in 20 years of snowboarding,” says Hughes of the charged salopettes. “Luckily there was plenty of vin rouge to keep me warm, and Jacob’s enthusiasm kept everyone going through the cold nights.”
It’s been a long long time since I saw a snowboard film with this kind of production value. The Art of Flight is simply amazing, and I’ll let the trailer speak for itself.
A new breed of action sports film comes to life as Red Bull Media House, in association with Brain Farm Digital Cinema, present “The Art of FLIGHT”, a Curt Morgan Film. Two years in the making, “The Art of FLIGHT” gives iconic snowboarder Travis Rice and friends the opportunity to redefine what is possible in the mountains. Experience the highs, as new tricks are landed and new zones opened, alongside the lows, where avalanches, accidents, and wrong-turns strike. Immerse yourself in a cinematic experience as Brain Farm and their arsenal of filmmaking technology capture the culture, wildlife and scenic landscapes the riders take in along the way. Join in the ride as the creators of “That’s It, That’s All” completely rewrite the formula for action sports cinema with “The Art of FLIGHT.”
I usually don’t post direct XKCD comics, despite the fact that they’re all fairly brilliant. But this one really stuck a chord for me, since I love to travel.
So, where do I fall on the chart? I have an inflatable 3D globe at home, and yes, I’m very clever. Aside from that, I also have a couple of nautical charts and topo maps hanging up, which use a different projection method to visualize smaller sections of land and sea.
Looking forward to making it across the entire map. no matter which projection!
Last weekend I went with a friend to check out The Creators Project in DUMBO, Brooklyn. A few shots:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jamfan2/6267249373/ (more…)
At the PEX Summer Festival, almost everybody had their own piece of experimental “art”. One guy took en entire spool of fishing line, and attached helium balloons every few feet. He also attached LED lights to each balloon, so as the sun set, the giant string of balloons stretching into the sky turned into an eerie string of lights, drifting through the night with the wind.
For reasons unknown, I’ve been featured on the latest concert poster for English Kills, who are playing April 21st at Arlene’s Grocery in NYC. Highlighting my recent less-than-great haircut, with mullet added for effect. Designed by Jeff Capossela.
Toronto based artists Brad Blucher and Kyle Clements have created a series of art works that are only viewable through a digital camera. The art consists of a blank canvas with embedded infrared LEDs. Humans can’t normally see the IR light, but most digital cameras can. So, the only way to view these works is by looking at them through your phone or camera. Interesting take on “augmented reality” (via Make: Online via Hack A Day) (more…)
Projectors aimed at large buildings at night have been used for a while now to bring buildings to life. A massive high resolution projector is aimed at a building, and the images it projects are registered with the exact dimentios and features of the building. by projecting onto the dark facade of a building, it can be given a new life, and made to appear any way the designers want. This technique has been used to cool effect by companies like BMW, for captivating, large scale ads.
Now, it seems like this projection technique is coming to your living room. Ever wonder what your place would look like with a new coat of paint, or completely new decor? Now, just aim a projector at it. Projection mapping firm Mr. Beam has done just that. Check out this novel video:
We created a unique physical 3D video-mapping experience by turing a white living room into a spacious 360° projection area.
This technique allowed us to take control of all colors, patterns and textures of the furniture, wallpapers and carpet. All done with 2 projectors.
Music: Free the Robots – Jazzhole
Recently Google Labs released its Julia Map fractal renderer – a neat project that uses the power of HTML5, the simple Google Maps interface, and remote processing to zoom endlessly into fractals. Try it!
Google:
Julia sets are fractals that were studied by the French mathematician Gaston Julia in the early 1920s. Fifty years later, Benoît Mandelbrot studied the set z2 ? c and popularized it by generating the first computer visualisation. Generating these images requires heavy computation resources. Modern browsers have optimized JavaScript execution up to the point where it is now possible to render in a browser fractals like Julia sets almost instantly.
Julia Map uses Google Maps API, and HTML 5 Canvas to render the images. It will let you browse these fractals in an interactive manner. We hope you will enjoy exploring the different Julia sets, and share the URLs of the most artistic images you discovered.
Update 2011-03-11** Ben Beyda just sent over this new fractal rendering engine, Fractal Lab. From Ben: “We could see this project being pushed even further by adding the ability to create animations from these infinite worlds, which could then be exported and integrated into live visuals and other video-based work.”
Fractal Lab is a WebGL based fractal explorer allowing you to explore 2D and 2D fractal. The fractals are rendered using the OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) to enable real-time interactivity.
Toshiba’s new Timesculpture advertisement is definitely cool – they basically took the “bullet time” effect seen in the matrix, and amplified it time 10. I’ve been amazed lately to see how many main stream companies and media outlets are turning to the most cutting edge tech to keep things interesting – first we had CNN with their star wars holograms and election cube, now Toshiba is throwing up mega bullet time. Watch the video, then check out the making of Timesculpture video – in some ways even cooler.
Speaking of cool ads, although I’m not the biggest fan of Sony, the Sony Bravia ads were nifty – especially balls (making of). Honda’s Cog (making of) is another favorite.
Tonight, between the GawkerMedia Meshing situation and dinner, I randomly met up with a friend and checked out sunset from the top of the New Museum in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. I think we got there just at the right time, because the sun was just below the horizon, giving great light. This little panorama is quick and dirty, as you can see, and shot with a 16mm lens. You can see at the edges the distortion is very pronounced, especially where building elements join at the end of one frame into the middle of another frame – the differences in magnification is intense.
Wordle is a service that takes any text or rss feed, and parses the content down into the most important and most used words. It generates all sorts of nifty tag cloud-like graphics. Next step, I wish, would be to get a Wordle wordpress plugin that dynamically generates a real blog tagcloud, but with the cool, randomized Wordle stylings.
Coolest video/cg I’ve seen this week. With a combination of science and 3d Animation, Scientists from NASA’s Space Sciences Laboratory made this nifty movie which brings to life complex magnetic fields. Take a look and read the back story.
Finally, make sure to turn the sound up. In addition to the trippy visuals, the crackle and pop of the animations is worth a listen, and consideration of minimalist sound design. (as is Cloverfield – a whole other blog post in the works…)
