Yes, this video is a little bit like the legendary “Charly goes to Candy Mountain” even if it’s not that funny. It is more like… strange. If you ever wished to got your pencil make every dream come true (and that is what we like), still be careful with your dreams. Or do you have any other interpretations? Thanks to Nerdcore.

Me like better the good old techno-video aesthetic, that I am really hooked up at the moment. Just to give you some reminder: Stakker – Stakker Humanoid. An insanely brilliant classic! Yay, it’s 1988! Note: this track makes usage of some really classic videogame samples.

Finally the day has come, where we can buy tap-water in bottles! BoingBoing reports, there is a new company from New York, that sells “Tap’dNY“. Now here comes the logic, so be attentive: The tapped Water in bottles is somehow a counterproduct to all this fancy waters, that are over the place, try to sells us water, that comes from far away, causing damages to environment, while taking long travels etc. We don’t really need this, the water from the tap is far enough, but now you can buy it even in bottles. The official manifesto goes like this:

“Year after year, bottled water companies have told us that their water was somehow healthier or better for us than our own water. They spent billions of dollars on marketing to make us believe that we needed exotic water, in sleek packaging, from far away Arctic glaciers, tropical islands, and European volcanoes.”

To complete the logic, I want to quote one of the commenters at BoingBoing:

“There’s a theory that NYC pizza, bagels, etc. have their unique, flavorful, airy kickass-ness because of the NYC tap water. Guess we can use these bottles to test that theory out.”

Circle closed. So please can we import this water to Europe?

The second part of our small series on low-budget, but highly effective production methods. This time we will review a videoclip from beloved Utada Hikaru.

The whole magic comes from the synchronization of the music with events on the scene. The camera perspective is really “static” and also the scene, that has been filmed can be considered “daily life”. The only things, that makes the clip special and suspending are the surprises that emerge of the connection between the music and the picture. The water-tap for example seems to trigger the beats, while other elements have mini-narratives. Hey, I mean.. at least there are parts, where the singer leaves the picture and you sort of see nothing. And it is still interesting to keep on watching.

Everyone is talking of Spore at the moment, right? Big thanks go to PostSpectacular, because they discovered this bonus-material. On the Spore-Website you can download a bunch of experimental prototypes, simulation and gameplay studies of Spore, that were made during the development (or should I better say during the evolution?) of the game.

Collect them all!

As you can read on the website:

Usually these prototypes are never seen by the public, but we thought some of the more intrepid players out there might enjoy playing around with a few of our early Spore prototypes. Keep in mind these are not tested, supported or even easily explained.

Well, yeah. We’d like to see, explore and play with this prototypes! Even if they are completely unsupported. In the end this studies may be much more interesting than the finished game itself.

You can download them for free and experiment with simulated systems till you “Eureka!” on them.

Beautiful illustration and videoworks from Aubo Lessi. The Polish artist began with illustration and selfmade videoclips for music, i.e. inofficial works for Autechre. With matured skills he is now responsible for some very skilled videoworks he does for indietronic and post-rock bands. Some of them you can watch here.

Stwory – Hoss (Video: Aubo Lessi)

Aubo Lessi uses various techniques like blurred and post-processed videomaterial or computer-generated animations. The works have a unique visual quality with a good sense for form, composition and dramaturgy. The videomaterial can be considered abstract but uniquely fitting with the sound. A fine tradition in making videoclips, with Aubo Lessi at a high plateau.

C.H. District – Contrust (Video: Aubo Lessi)

Who has said, that Lego-bricks are only suitable for indoor-use? Jan Vormann used the bricks to fill-out gaps in old historic walls in Bocchignano, Italy, a village near Rome. One of the most inspiring uses I’ve seen with the Lego-bricks. The visual effect is incredible. Not only by the material and the perplexing color-patterns, but mostly because of surprise. “Hey, what’s this there inside the wall?”

On Processingblogs I found the link to this library, called SMSLib. It is a SMS-library originally build for Java, but it seems that Bryan Chung ported it to Processing. In the example of Bryan he uses Bluetooth to connect to the PC, enabling remote communication between mobile phones and the application. Extending Processing into the world of mobile(s) communication is a neat thing.

Go to Bryan’s site to review the implementation code.