Archive for October, 2009
We Were Once A Fairytale [Kanye West]
Spike Jonze, director of upcoming movie Where the Wild Things Are, recently teamed up with Kanye West to produce this experimental short film entitled We Were Once A Fairytale. It features a drunk Kanye stumbling about a club making a fool of himself and eventually ending up alone with a knife, which he uses to cut free a rodent-like demon from his stomach. He then passes the rodent a knife to kill itself.
What is interesting about the piece is that it was shot before the Taylor Swift incident at the VMW awards, where he stormed the stage and ruins Taylor’s moment. He does the same thing throughout this film. And what is the meaning behind the creature at the end? Does it represent his acknowledgment of his big ego and his desire to kill it?
The film is very well shot, often shifting in and out of focus which helps establish the drunken mood of the sequence, and the animation style of the rodent works well with the change of background music at the end.
Hunting Wolf by Jose Luis Rodriguez
Posted by Shareef in photography on October 23rd, 2009
This picture of a hunting wolf has won Jose Luis Rodriguez the Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2009 award. The picture took years to plan, and he spent long hours patiently observing the movements of packs of wolves. He even sketched his idea out on paper. Speaking to the BBC, Jose said:
I wanted to capture a photo in which you would see a wolf in an act of hunting – or predation – but without blood. I didn’t want a cruel image.
Sand Animation by Kseniya Simonova
This moving performance is by 24 year old Ukrainian artist Kseniya Simonova, who gives her interpretation of Ukraine’s invasion by Germany during WWII through a mix of music, sound effects and sand art.
This particular performance won her the 2009 Ukraine ’s Got Talent final, and by the end of the piece, many members of the audience were overcome with emotions.
Where the Wild Things Are
Posted by Shareef in documentary, movies on October 20th, 2009
Spike Jonze, director of upcoming novel-to-movie Where the Wild Things Are speaks about Max Records, the young boy who plays Max in the film. With it being Max’s first acting job at the age of nine, Spike had to come up with unique ways for him to bring his emotions to the surface, including having members of the set stage lightsaber fights off screen.
10/GUI – Next Generation Interaction
Posted by Shareef in documentary, technology on October 18th, 2009
Robert Clayton Miller has devised a brand new concept for human-computer interaction with the invention of 10/GUI. He has identified the potential in multi-touch screens and has addressed the health and safety aspects that currently plague users today. This is achieved through separation of the touch surface from the screen itself (01:45), opting for a multi-touch surface on the desk where the fingertips are naturally positioned.
He has also devised new gestures (05:54) that are both local to programs and global to the operating system. This allows the user to performing tasks quickly and seamlessly with no effort.
His con10uum concept attempts to organise program windows into a 1D plane (03:45) in order to facilitate the new gestures, but this might not be everyone’s cup of tea. Power users have often devised their own ways/habits of laying out window tiles to group processes together, so being forced into a rigid workflow might be a turnoff. Robert’s concepts have addressed all the needs of the project, but he must ensure the system is as customisable as possible.
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