condition: human
In the near future, man has begun to address the economic and environmental issues plaguing the early 21st century. Rapid technological advancements have changed life dramatically, especially the creation of advanced humanoid robots who have begun to play an integral part in everyday life. Takumi Kenji, the reclusive CEO of Kenji Electronics, and father of all things A.I. has announced the first ever 'companion' bots. A model of humanoid whose interactive capabilities are remarkably natural. As robots continue to evolve their place amongst us must evolve as well. And as it does society carries the responsibility of answering the moral questions that come.
Episode 1 and 2 are available on Vimeo and YouTube as I'm writing, check up on any info on the series on Facebook and MySpace.
love is exploration, love is shaders (love is noise)
I wrote almost a year ago about Eskil Steenberg's (not so) massively multiplayer game LOVE - working with the procedural generation approach, gently sloshing your retina with visuals you're not exactly used to in video games. It's indie, it's been done by one guy. And Kotaku's out with a demonstration video.
gathering, breakpoint: kilobytes and neon grids well spent
Younglings, prepare for massif breakdown. Two of the major demoscene events, Gathering and Breakpoint have announced their winners and I'm posting you only two of the many that's really worth checking out. ASD is back with another supreme demo this year with a terrific amount of blue wireframe and statik black (ranked 1st in the Windows demo category at Gathering 2009), whereas RGBA/TBC proves that you can add almost four minutes of gliding camera on photorealistic landscapes synced to music into nothing more than 4 kilobytes of code. Grand Theft Auto IV on dual-layer DVDs? Rockstar, eat your heart out. (ASD - Rupture at pouet.net, RGBA/TBC - Elevated at pouet.net)
allosphere: a gigantic solution of data visu (joann kuchera-morin, ted talks)
Electrons dance and they are music. Tissues form landscapes. Greg EganAllosphere< was presented at TED, the thinktank spawning pool. I spend a moment of awe with the electron flow, a moment of certainty it is not only soundform that thoughts resonate with, it is visu as well. (allosphere)
twitter locates in shibuya, the net as a tokyo subway map
The idea itself is nothing new to data visu big bwai. Rip this idea thoughtfully: photoshop-crop out all the details and make a subway flowchart for your personal life or your searchwords and pin them on the subway system for your country, may just mash it up. Ideal for printing, Flickr has it 6740 x4768, do something similar for your sites. Zoomarama has a zoomable flash version. (via gizmodo)
tron and street fighter inspires futuristic fighter short movie turbo
The short film Turbo doesn't just capture how we imagine playing video games in 10-20 years. It's a piece that could only look this good through modern, inexpensive movie making technologies.
Shot on a Red camera for a USC graduate thesis, Turbo may look more than a little teen melodrama in this trailer (yes, someone's head actually goes through a crane game), but it's also got special effects that appear to rival any 2D-inspired fighter movie we've seen to date.. (via gizmodo)
etienne de crécy, transmusicales and the square cube model test
I'm not much for the French house scene myself, but what Etienne de Crécy does with his Square Cube performance gear is awesome to look at. Doesn't exactly kill Headscan on stage, though. (via digitaldj.jp)
noriko yamaguchi の [携帯GIRL]
Full immerson body suits, you say? After generations of suits that looked like half a ton of cables so thick that could even give a hard-on to a veteran sailor, up-and-coming Kobe artist Noriko Yamaguchi is back (was back in 2008) with a new approach: cell phone keypads, wires and a pair of headphones. During the performances of her project Keitai Girl a phone number was linked to her suit / visitors could dial up the suit and talk to her. All this with Butoh makeup and being a "walkting and talking cellular device". But in all honesty - aren't we already are? (brief parapara video featuring Keitai Girl)
The art world in Japan has already recognized Yamaguchi as an up-and-coming talent: in 2004, she was selected by famed photographer Hosoe Eikoh as a recipient of the Panel of Judges Award at the 21st-Century Asia Design Competition award held by the Kyoto University of Art and Design and again by Morimura Yasumasa as a winner of a young artists’ competition hosted by the Osaka Contemporary Art Center, as said by Eric C. Shiner.
sébastien buisson's oracle
Hardwired (for you non-Hungarians out there, that's basically the best game portal within the .hu range with a good style and a decent reader/contributor community) just posted this French sci-fi short film Oracle, done by Sébastien Buisson (décors & props modeling, animation, rendu, dynamics), Michaël Desnoyelles (UV, skinning, textures, compositing), Tristan Le Granché (scénario, animation, rigging, lightning, rendu, fur), Flavien Lens (character modeling, animation, compositing, clip design) and Mylcis (compositeur).
According to some Oracle promo here, nowadays any couple can learn the sex of their baby before it’s born. This strange and fascinating French science fiction animations takes this idea many steps further and imagines a device, Oracle, that can predict just what your child will be when they grow up. The moral grey area at the heart of this cool “what-if” premise is that this Oracle works only after the baby is born. (...) While taking its lead from Japanese Manga comics and video game aesthetics, daddy’s little girl looks like she’s going to become quite a little hellcat as she is predicted to become something of a dark messiah.
Although this all sounds intriguing, there are no stream sources for this movie, only download links - checking the previous link would lead you to a copyright infringe and takedown notice initiated by Talantis Films. But then again - no streaming but perfectly working download links?
UPDATE 1: Oh yes. There is a streaming version. Bad Coffee makes me aggravated.
allizee zeva, in mortal danger
Good TV series? Oh yes, haven't written about those in a while. I think it was actually Dawe and his crew who got me hooked with 24 (and in turn I infected him with the Global Frequency ringtone that's always a concentration breaker, because I alert myself with the same), Max Headroom was always something that's been cyberpunk, retro and edgy at the same time - and I haven't seen all the episodes. Charlie Jade - that's a very obscure and very alternate universe kind of series that suffers from the same trouble as Max Headroom - there's no legal DVD release. The mytharc episodes of the X-Files? Sure thing. The Sarah Connor Chronicles? Often better than the first three movies, I think. Lie to Me? Tim Roth becomes a forensic deception detector and he's very masterful at it, that's one real favourite. But if I had to pick one, it would definitely be Fringe, JJ "Lost" Abrams' new series about FBI's fringe science division, a secret conspiracy that doesn't only involve the multibillionaire tech corporations way ahead of our time but also underground sci-tech renegades, perhaps different/alternate universes and we're also guessing aliens. All this, mixed up with psychoactives, waking up potent mind powers - and it's all coming back to the US fans on the 7th of April. Never waited so much for a DVD release before. The freaky girl and the weird message? Well, that's a Massive Dynamics viral video for the series in Germany.
MORTAL DANGER. ESCAPE HELP ME THEY GOT ME. NEARLY. IM HIDING. IM HIDING. THEY GOT MY TRACE. I MUST SURVIVE. MORTAL DANGER. ESCAPE. STAY WITH ME. PROTECT ME SECRET CODE COMING SOON. THEY ARE COMING. (via fringebloggers)
social collider and other chrome experiments
Even though I'm not updating planetdamage and thedosemag as much as I should (and that updating work's in the pipeline as well), don't think I'm not pushing my eyeballs in the vast and intricate depths of the neon wildfire geometrics. The Twitterfeed is quite frequently updated - that's probably because of the 140 character limit and how fast you can rant your mind out from, well, anywhere. (Not the underground stations. That's where you'd really have the ample time to write whatever you want.) Anyway, Twitter's on the up-and-even-more-up-and-coming wagon and any visual experiments connected to it are love material. Here's one, previously reported on grinding, referring back to blogschmog:
A Twitter visualization project using javascript and web browsers is inspired by particle colliders to reveal the hidden connection between tweets.
Social Collider (description at blogschmog, check out other chrome experiments)
14sec screenshots
We are slowly but surely progressing with our cyberpunk short film 14sec. Until further notice or trailers, we have three screenshots - giving away no spoilers whatsoever.
bruce branit's world builder
Touch-based free-floating neon glow interfaces are the new designer cocaine. Microsoft probably had the most recent hard cock for this but filmmaker Bruce Branit - even dating back to February - blew our minds fair and square with his visions of a VR modeling system, something which can probably trace its origins back to Google SketchUp. Obviously his 9-minute movie World Builder is not merely about how intuitive designer applications can become (and trust me, I'm a tough one when it comes to criticizing things but this is simply gorgeous!) but is also injected with a touch of heart-gripping human drama.
vikki blows: the devil may cry babe
Captain Amorf, now very much lost in the depths of Melbourne (good for all of us, he's undermining the game industry now, paving the way for glorious overtake!) has sent us all links about a babe perfect for a Monday wake-up jack-off in the cubicles all around the world. Look grateful. She's Vikki Blows, previously a model for The Sun and The Daily Star and now she's done a Danteesque shot for Devil May Cry for Front. Good morning y'all, settle for no less.
watchmen: a pre-screening review
Magyarul született meg a HVG Onlinera a Watchmen review első körben, mert ötven helyre nem fogom ötven különböző stílusban és nyelven megírni, úgyhogy kattintsátok meg bőszen, az angol verzió majd a Dosera megy ki, amikor befejeztem a reggeli harmadik kávét.
1985-öt írunk. Amerika és a Szovjetunió között egyre csak élesedik a helyzet, az amerikai média abszurdnak tartja, hogy Ronald Reagan jóképű cowboyként egyenest belovagoljon a Fehér Házba, a nukleáris végveszélyt ábrázoló Doomsday Clock számlapján egyre közelebb kerülünk az atom-apokalipszishoz, a negyvenes években gyökeret vert "maszkos igazságosztó" mozgalom pedig megfáradt nyugdíjasok és az amerikai álomtól ellanyhult követőik esti sörözéseiként él tovább. A vietnami háborút az Őrzők Nixon kérésére egy hét alatt verik le mindenestül, a fegyvereiket eldobó katonák közül sokan személyesen akarják megadni magukat a láthatóan isteni hatalommal bíró szuperhősöknek.
A huszadik század képregényművészetének legjelentősebb alkotásai között tartják számon Alan Moore Watchmenjét. A hidegháborús poszt-paranoiában úszó, szabadságolt amerikai maszkos igazságosztók végnapjait Zack Snyder álmodta filmvászonra. A monstre - csaknem 3 órás - adaptációt Amerikában holnap, Magyarországon ma este mutatják be. Vigyázzon, ha nem ismeri a képregényt - a cikkben spoilerek várják, lelőhetjük a poénokat!
UPDATE 1: Csak a link meg a review hiányzik.
who watches the watchmen? two days earlier
Tonight is Watchmen, Hungarian exclusive pre-screening two days earlier to the US premiere. (As far as the Origo Film Club email tells me, security will be pretty adamant on not allowing anything with video recording capability inside, phones must be switched off.) Expect a late night (or early morning) review (with spoilers!) about the movie. Anyone who wants to join us, do so on Thursday, 2100 Westend. Some Hungarian twitterers already are on the winning team to join us.
lombergar's posthuman cyberpunk exhibition
The entire Posthuman 1.0 exhibition by Domen Lombergar, which was shown in three exhibitions in 2007 and 2008. Check his gallery of twelve images here. Maybe you'll need circuits | wires | motherboards | chips.
xavier chassaing: scintillation
This is an experimental film made up of over 35,000 photographs. It combines an innovative mix of stop motion and live projection mapping techniques, directed by Xavier Chassaing (mail at chassaing [dot] xavier [at] gmail [dot] com), music by myspace/fedaden. (via digitaldj.jp)
zoog of angelspit with the classic buddha tee
Oh yes, this is arch-priest of tree-hugging doom, Zoog of Angelspit working with his Prophet-5 synth, wearing the classic Buddha teeshirt, merch of ld50.hu. Thinking back of all times, I'm still glad I said goodbye to seven years of gore and glory.
If you want other tee shots: we had Meza (on a fucking mountaintop), Soffy and Gabo posing for us.
escape from city 17: 500$ budget quality indie filmmaking
Without further comments, we're all flabberghasted - and we includes the whole gaming news industry in its motherfucking entirety. The Purchase brothers filmed two 5-min episodes of in the Half-Life universe with a budget not exceeding 500 dollars. If you could do something like that for this measley amount, we should all believe: good production value equals dedication and good ideas. Nothing more. (via boingboing)