Film, Video & Music
bioephemera | December 30, 2008
I've been a big fan of mashups ever since Freelance Hellraiser superposed Christina Aguilera's "Genie in a Bottle" on the Strokes' "Hard to Explain." But what happens when the pop music monoculture becomes so homogenous, you can mash just about anything together? In this track/video, DJ Earworm remixes twenty-five pop hits into a concoction that makes just as much melodic sense as most hits do. Frightening.
When music is this interchangeable, you know you've got a dangerous genephonic bottleneck on your hands. . . and that's a recipe for extinction, baby. Just sayin'.
bioephemera | December 19, 2008This Indonesian mimic octopus pretends to be other creatures in order to avoid predators:
bioephemera | December 15, 2008Recently I've been lamenting that none of my friends, including my boyfriend, will listen to the Icelandic band Sigur Ros - an eclectic, idiosyncratic group I adore. Although I've noticed Sigur Ros' music infiltrating the mainstream recently, routinely appearing in commercials and soundtracks, surprisingly few Americans seem to know who they are. It's a shame - especially because their videos are incredible. This is what music video should be, but (as far as I'm concerned) never really was. Glosoli and Hoppipolla are so perfectly crafted of universal human emotions - daring, triumph, love,…
bioephemera | December 15, 2008Some Monday randomness: a living kaleidoscope of domestic animals.
Seriously, why does everyone like that corner so much?
I laughed, then felt a little bad about laughing - given the repeated collisions with the walls, other animals, etc. Hopefully they took everyone out for a nice pile of grain afterward.
Via a pretty cool typeface blog, monoscope. (I see they also liked the Studley toolchest!)
bioephemera | December 9, 2008Bravo to the Brits' Channel 4 for coming up with this series of videos, which addresses kids' inevitable questions about whether their bodies (breasts, acne, periods, sex, penises, etc.) are normal. The take-home message of these educational videos? Almost certainly you are normal, so don't be ashamed of your body. And don't let embarrassment stop you from being honest with your doctor or asking questions.
It's refreshing to see internet videos depicting genitalia that AREN'T porn. Who knew they even existed? I just hope enough people eventually link to them that they'll show up in a Google…
bioephemera | December 8, 2008Are your kids bouncing around on a holiday sugar high? Send them off to brainstorm names for NASA's new Mars Rover. Winners can send a "special message to the future to be placed on a chip" on the Rover, so when they finish with the name, they can start working on their message, and who knows - they might be distracted for a full hour! The contest runs through Jan 25.
NASA's Name That Rover Contest
PS. It's co-sponsored by Disney, so be prepared for your kids to return convinced that Wall-E is the best thing evah.
PPS. It's open to kids in grades K-12 only (sorry, 30-something geeks)
bioephemera | December 6, 2008
How much do you love your significant other? Enough to crack your chest open? "True Love Tattoos offer you the ultimate way to express your love for that special someone, they open you up and ink your loved one's name on your heart."
Then, since it's not exactly the type of tattoo you can easily show off, you get a Polaroid and a romantic video of the procedure to give your SO. Nice!
Thankfully, this is just a faux advertising campaign for band Vikunja (myspace). The True Love Tattoos website and video are nicely done, although the band members themselves don't look nearly Goth/emo enough…
bioephemera | December 5, 2008How much do I love this mashed up, remixed version of the standby "Did You Know"? So much that I couldn't help rocking out to it a little during the talk I gave today at work on Web 2.0. I heart fatboy slim.
I'm not getting into the question of how reliable these stats are - while many of them (especially the computing power ones) are obviously speculative, the demographic stats in the original presentation by Karl Fisch were sourced. Of course, it's been through several iterations since then. C'mon, just enjoy the music.
I really do never get tired of watching this.
PS. And it's way…
bioephemera | November 13, 2008My friend Kiki created this awesome choreography to represent her PhD thesis on sea turtle conservation. Kiki explains,
The dance opens with aerial dancers. The suspended fluidity of their movements embodies swimming in the ocean. The swinging and dancing couples are sea turtles mating. In the wild sea turtles breed and nest in the same time and place that shrimpers fish and so the sea turtles can get caught in the nets and drown. This is depicted by the dancing trio as well as the aerial dancer. As the female sea turtle dancer leaves her mate to swim ashore and nest she is caught by the…
bioephemera | November 2, 2008Very cool:
These rock sculptures are pure ephemera, lasting only hours or days before the surf knocks them down. But sculptor Kent Avery doesn't see it as futile - even when the nascent sculptures fall on him, or onlookers object to their "unnatural" state.
Via signal vs. noise.
bioephemera | October 17, 2008
"Refitting repasts: a spatial exploration of food processing, sharing, cooking, and disposal at the Dunefield Midden campsite, South Africa."
Brian Stewart and Giulia Saltini-Semerari
Science
If you couldn't stop twitching your pipetman to the crazy Euro-molecule party a couple posts back, or that anthropomorphic Orangina ad, or the Eppendorf boy band, you may have what it takes to win AAAS' Science Dance Contest.
The 2008 contest was a small-scale affair in Vienna, a prelude to a performance by the scientist-DJs Molecular Code. You can watch winner Brian Stewart & the other…
bioephemera | October 15, 2008In the interest of supplying an educational, scientific alternative to the third presidential debate, I give you this:
This video is the creation of those kooky Europeans at Marie Curie Actions, who also gave us this disturbingly throbbing website. It all has something to do with science education and careers, but I can't look away from the video long enough to tell exactly what.
If this is what an EU research career is like, I may have left science too early.
bioephemera | September 28, 2008
The Way Things Go
Peter Fischli and David Weiss, 1987
Hirshhorn Museum
I went by the Hirshhorn a few weeks ago, and this was my favorite piece: a film depicting a slow-moving, low-budget Rube Goldberg apparatus built by artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss out of tires, candles, fuses, ramps, ladders, and random objects. I mean, what's not to like about a flaming tetherball?
The purpose of the apparatus? Nothing, really, except to spin itself out. It's pointlessly meditative. And I liked that - you could start watching the film at any point and stop at any point, as if you were watching…
bioephemera | September 25, 2008
For some reason, Ben Folds has decided to make giant rotating skulls and brains part of his latest tour - this is the scene on stage last night in DC. There was a "brainwashing" theme in the first few songs, and I think that guided the choice of images, but darn, it was kinda weird!
bioephemera | September 6, 2008 This is one of the most bizarre commercials I've ever seen (and yes, I'm including the Bill Gates/Jerry Seinfeld spot in that sample). It's a French ad for Orangina, which I discovered via Stephanie at almostdiamonds. It appears to be an innuendo-drenched Technicolor musical extravaganza set in a baroque painting peopled by anthropomorphized woodland creatures. There's even a cephalopod bartender reminiscent of Carmen Miranda! And a lot of exotic dancing.
What does any of this have to do with my favorite carbonated orange beverage? According to the Independent, "The adverts were said to be…
bioephemera | August 31, 2008My friend mdvlist sent me the link to some rather odd educational materials, called "Lyrical Life Science." They're folk songs set to familiar tunes, but the lyrics are all biology. I realize that folk songs about science have a storied history. But these are kinda weird - like "Sirenians" set to "Drunken Sailor," or "Oh Bacteria" set to "Oh Susanna" ("though lacking any nucleus, you do have a cell wall. . . ")
mdvlist claims that the kids in her party LOVED these CDs, although she was not impressed by the quality of the music. Nor was I - in fact, I couldn't understand half of what they are…
bioephemera | July 22, 2008
Eppendorf's new ad campaign features this inexcusable yet mesmerizingly cheesy boy-band ode to something called "epMotion." Even though they are individually reminiscent of various best-forgotten members of N'Sync and Color Me Badd, the crooners satisfy the needs of a lab-coated blonde graduate student with too many 96-well plates. Girl, it's time to automate!
(Ringtones, mp3s, and screenshots available on demand. . . )
bioephemera | July 17, 2008As I sit here waiting for Al Gore to start speaking, I'd like to note that Scibling Chris Mooney over at the Intersection has really annoyed me. Apparently the fact that I didn't like the film Sizzle is evidence that I, too, am likely a terrible communicator of science who lacks self-awareness. (Since there is no other possible reason for me to fail to LOVE the film!)
Now, Chris, some scientists who dislike Sizzle may dislike it for that reason - but there are a lot of other reasons to dislike the film, some of which I and other Sciblings have mentioned! When you say,
In my view, what's so…
bioephemera | July 15, 2008
This morning, a plethora of Sizzle reviews will saturate Scienceblogs. I've no doubt that the film's science will be thoroughly dissected by more informed reviewers than I. So I'm going to steer clear of temperature trends and timetables, and instead consider how the film pitches its message.
Sizzle is billed as "a global warming comedy"; the official website claims "Sizzle is a novel blend of three genres - mockumentary, documentary, and reality." Personally, I think the film suffers from an identity crisis: it tries to fit all three genres at once, and it gets a little scrambled in the…