Film, Video & Music
bioephemera | March 2, 2009If you're in New York tonight, head over to the mysterious new "Observatory" between Proteus Gowanus, Cabinet Magazine, and the Morbid Anatomy Library for
(1) a book release party for Confronting Mortality with Art and Science: Scientific and Artistic Impressions on what the Certainty of Death Says About Life;
(2) a film screening of Art:Science = Science x Art;
and (3) conversation with some really, really cool people. I'm jealous that i'm down here in DC - even if I do get to go see Adam Gopnik tonight at Politics and Prose. I'm going to have to pre-order this darn book on Amazon like…
bioephemera | February 24, 2009Update on the burgeoning Jane Austen massacre genre: you knew Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was coming out and generating unforeseen (at least by its publisher) interweb buzz. Subsequently we learned the book is to be followed by a movie produced by Sir Elton John, the amply titled Pride and Predator. Now Entertainment Weekly interviews P&P&Z co-author Seth Grahame-Smith, whose bio may horrify Austenites more than any zombie could ever do:
I'm an aspiring screenwriter living in L.A. At the moment, I'm executive producing a pilot for MTV that I wrote which is a sort of updated Wonder…
bioephemera | February 19, 2009Because I don't think the creators of Guitar Hero World Tour quite get it. . .
bioephemera | February 15, 2009
Lepidus timidus
Erica il Cane, 2007
Erica il Cane (AKA ericailcane AKA "Eric the dog") would be the perfect illustrator for that macabre children's book about vivisection that Edward Gorey should have written. In his etchings and drawings, adorable anthropomorphic creatures interact with labeled skeletons or watch as their own organs are neatly exposed. Disturbing, creepy, amusing, with a dash of pathos. Some of the drawings appear inspired by the European tradition of medical moulage - except instead of langorous, lovely women, these anatomical specimens resemble Teddy Ruxpin and his ilk…
bioephemera | February 12, 2009In this video, the independent publisher of the forthcoming novel "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" expresses confusion and surprise that his acquisition went viral! Look, dude: it's about zombies. Have you even been on the intertubes before?
bioephemera | February 6, 2009
Ready for the weekend? Having trouble focusing? Indulge yourself in this luscious nine-minute film from the National Gallery of Art about Vermeer's masterpiece "The Music Lesson." It leisurely unpacks the painting's geometry and shadows, showing a glimpse of the techniques that let Vermeer make quotidian Delft resemble a gold-drenched daydream.
Vermeers are often described as highly realistic, crisp, even jewel-like. Although the illusion of reality is powerful, Vermeer, like all good artists, made judicious alterations to the scene before him. This video of "The Music Lesson" shows an…
bioephemera | January 30, 2009
The Pigeon of Passage
The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, 1754
Mark Catesby
Unlike Benjamin Button, he's not up for an Oscar, but he's also a film star - several hundred years late. Mark Catesby (1683-1749), a forerunner of Audubon, was the first European scientist/artist to document the flora and fauna of North America. He depicted live specimens in their natural habitats, and made special study of both migration and extinction. You can view Catesby's masterwork, The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, Vol 1 and Vol 2, at the University…
bioephemera | January 29, 2009Weirdest lede ever?
A giant flower beetle with implanted electrodes and a radio receiver on its back can be wirelessly controlled, according to research presented this week.
Go DARPA!
Article (MIT Technology Review) here. Video here.
bioephemera | January 27, 2009
To follow up on my earlier post about Semiconductor's short film "Magnetic Movie," I want to share my favorite Semiconductor film: "Brilliant Noise." It gives me goosebumps every time I watch it.
In daily life, we avoid looking at the sun, but I challenge you to rip your eyes away from this film. In Semiconductor's hands, the sun is dynamic, unpredictable, even ominous. Quite the makeover for an object we take for granted!
More. . .
Brilliant Noise from Semiconductor on Vimeo.
Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt
NASA Space Sciences Laboratory, UC Berkeley, California, USA. 2006
(click the four…
bioephemera | January 26, 2009
My favorite Academy Award nomination: Oktopodi. By Emud Mokhberi and Thierry Marchand. Read an interview with Mokhberi - chock full of storyboard images, video, and other goodies - here.
bioephemera | January 23, 2009Photographer David Bergman created this gigapixel panorama of the Inauguration, which enables you to play "Where's Waldo" with folks like Al Gore and Newt Gingrich, count the snipers deployed around the Capitol, mercilessly mock folks who fell asleep during the ceremony, and generally goggle at the greatness of technology. This is a better view than you'd have had were you actually there!
(Bergman says on his blog, "I've only just started to explore the photo myself, but I found Yo-Yo Ma taking a picture with his iPhone.")
PS. A friend pointed out that users at the gigapan web site are…
bioephemera | January 22, 2009Story from North America from Kirsten Lepore on Vimeo.
"Story from North America"
Garrett Davis and Kristen Lepore
Thanks to reader Claire for finding this strangely poignant yet bizarre short film. I'm not sure what to think of this one.
bioephemera | January 18, 2009
Magnetic Movie
Semiconductor (Ruth Jarman and Joseph Gerhardt)
Last fall I stopped by the Hirshhorn Museum's Black Box theatre to watch a short film by Semiconductor (the artistic team of Ruth Jarman and Joseph Gerhardt). Magnetic Movie is a color-drenched, imaginative tour of Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory. The film is below the fold, but before you watch it, take a moment to consider your expectations when you're watching a film about "lab science". Ultimately, does this film transcend or offend those expectations? And what are your expectations for scientific art in general?…
bioephemera | January 18, 2009
A biology-driven ad for the Oslo Gay Festival, via Sociological Images. Demerits for promulgating the tenacious myth of the sentient sperm, but kudos for production values - those are really nice flagella.
bioephemera | January 16, 2009I hate Battlefield Earth not because it's a bad movie - bad movies can be fun! - but because it's so unrelentingly bad, by the end I was just plain depressed that it existed. The same goes for this truly ghastly ad for Microsoft Songsmith. At first I thought it had to be a spoof. But. . . I'm afraid not (there's a demo here).
If they wanted a musical, they needed to call Joss Whedon. (And make a better product).
Via Stephen Fry's twitterfeed. (Yes, that Stephen Fry).
bioephemera | January 16, 2009Whether you love or hate modern art, you should find this amusing.
Via Eva Amsen at Expression Patterns, I discovered this hilarious TED performance by Ursus Wehrli, author of the rather scarce book Tidying Up Art and its sequel. A deadpan Wehrli rescues modern art masterpieces by Vincent Van Gogh, Keith Haring, Rene Magritte, Jasper Johns and others by restructuring them into clean, happy, sensibly organized graphics. He should start working on government next!
If the embedded video doesn't work, the link is here.
bioephemera | January 11, 2009
"I Want You To Want Me"
Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar
commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art for their "Design and the Elastic Mind" exhibition
Mining data from online dating profiles, Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar have created a romantic, bittersweet peek into the human psyche. This video tour of the "I Want You to Want Me" installation ends on an up note - apparently "intelligence" is the top turn-on for online daters! Still, the sight of all those balloons bumping randomly past each other in the sky serves as a reminder that finding love anywhere, online or in meatspace, is a total…
bioephemera | January 9, 2009
I'm not sure how I feel about this. . . the Doctor should not be younger than I am!