hayashi shigeki's ceramic mecha
Hayashi Shigeki, from Tajimi City, draws inspiration for his ceramic figures from images from science fiction, animated film and Japanese comic books known as manga, all of which have attracted him since he was a child. He comes from a region of Japan famous for the production of porcelain domestic ware. (via grinding via highsnobiety)
your heart and still be calm (creative ad)
Just found this on Tina Roth Eisenberg's swissmiss blog: awesome work by Hugo & Marie, a New York-based collaborative creative agency. (link)
ghost in the shell cosplay selection, sex object motoko
Mopedronin had this small post on twitter about a Ghost in the Shell: Innocence cosplay. A very bad one. Thank heavens and The Maker That Gives Ladies Firm Boobs to Fondle, here's a selection of eyecandy treatism off cosplay.com, all about Koukaku Kidoutai.
Fairydust (member profile, costume profile, photo by Lucifer), United States.
Rin. A (member profile, costume profile, photographer unknown), Japan.
tampopo (member profile, costume profile, photo by divideby0.com), United States.
AYAKAN (member profile, costume profile, photographer unknown), Japan.
Nency (member profile, costume profile, photographer unknown), Russia.
disco boy, vvvv and how i came to love the atomic wireframe
Lok Neville Lee certainly has a few designer tricks up his sleeve (his clock, business card and Björk imitation certainly hit the spot) but the main reason for this post is his DISCO BOY project, what he calls a virtual interactive musical instrument. The definition is misleading, though - if you're expecting something along the lines of, well, anything Maz had to offer, you're on the wrong tracks.
This is a graphically wonderful demonstration for a DirectX-based realtime video synthesis dev environment called VVVV - something VJs and their kin love to use. You basically push qwerty keys to trigger samples and you have some background loops to keep you unbored - whereas the idea is awesome, I'd pretty much love to see this updated. (Did you notice you can unwrap the whole music field from his head?)
tarkovsky's stalker full version on google video
It actually makes sense to start browsing around on Google Video for non-mainstream stuff. You end up with quite a big chance to find full-length movies there, such as Tarkovsky's STALKER (2 hours 35 minutes!) - an elementary piece of science fiction moving picture art and wondrous dystopia. (via warren ellis)
james cameron talks avatar
CPC just published a 15-minutes interview with James Cameron (comes from The Hour on CBC), mentioning his take on Battle Angel Alita comes in 2011. But this interview is much more about his new movie in 2009, Avatar. (via cpc)
top 50 cosplay cleavage shots
Hello, filthy readers. This week triggers a whole lot of stuff (stuff as in personal and secondly, stuff) and a series of new posts, but as we all know, Mondays are different. Mondays need strong, boiling, freshly brewed Mexican concoctions and boobs, such as the Top 50 Cosplay Cleavage Shots. The link that Kotaku leads you to is obviously dead because of your enforced and uberzealous interests in chestmeat. But I fell for it, so you will, too. (via kotaku)
love is an endeavour, love is yours (love is noise)
Procedurality matters a lot these days, started to mean a lot some decades ago in the demoscene and makes some comebacks - sometimes cartoonishly (as in Spore), Introversion plans to use it in their new game and we have a very awesome impressionistic game by Eskil Steenberg that's painfully hard to find. Because it's called Love. (And I link it, because I like you all. And I also need more clicks.)
The world is worth changing, so get on with it. Take your mates and make your planet whatever you want it to be. Some of it is yours, and some is your friends. Some just happens by itself. Sometimes it disappears and makes you sad. But then again, you know that kind of thing can’t last. It’s a balancing act between love and loneliness, is what Eskil sez about his game. If you want more, feel free to check out all the stuff rockpapershotgun has on him (February article, April interview) - basically it's an exploration-based moderately-multiplayer FPS with astounding impressionistic visuals and a procedurally generated universe. And it's just got an in-game pre-alpha tech footage out. (via rockpapershotgun)
pablo valbuena's augmented sculptures (interview, videos)
Grinding's recently published a post about Pablo Valbuena's new augmented sculpture at the TodaysArt festival in Hague. Valbuena's an amazing guy - the post just made me remember that last year at the Ars Electronica festival I not only youtubed his amazing installation entitled Augmented Sculpture 1.2 but also interviewed him. At the moment I cannot find the original English sound recording, I only have the Hungarian translation that I did for HVG Online (read the Hungarian version here, together with the complete article that we did for the online version, we wrote a different one for the weekly print) so here's a brief resumé.
What Valbuena says in the interview about his augmented sculptures is that he first showcased it in the Madrid media lab - the first prototypes were really small. The experience and the impact grows with the size, thus reflecting on architecture.
Back in Linz (see the video right above) he only used one projector. If you use only one, he says, you can only cover certain angles, so it's reasonable to put the cubic objects in the corner. If he put his installation into the middle of the room, all free to walk around, he would have needed more projectors to cover all angles and that would require lots of previous experimentations on how light sources overlap. This installation is only about physical geometry, virtual geometry and how these overlap. When the lights are stronger, the audience understands more about the geometry; when it's darker, you can see much better how surfaces reflect the light and you are aware of the smaller changes.
Valbuena says that his installation consists of virtual and physical parts, wherein the physical connects more to traditional architecture. He studied architecture and also drew a lot so he's more interested in construction and the mixture of hard and soft surfaces. He only wants to complement the physical layer with a content layer, especially one with dynamics and sound. He'd love to make an interaction between people and the public space, he says (thus actually taking us towards what's on the Hague videos), because people are getting more and more mistaken about what interaction really is - when you walk into a building and sense the space around you, that's an interaction in itself, a stronger and more direct stimulus than pushing buttons. He is influenced by the works of Zaha Hadid and also Lebbeus Woods.
On using sounds, he says he listened to Spanish netlabels, such as Miga and worked with open-source software to achieve something that's very close to linear composing. He also mentions working with layers that he turned into sound and then backasswards, how to make visual geometry out of sound effects.
He experimented a lot with everyday objects, such as cars, chairs, washing machines, enjoying the fact that the new visions always bring up subconscious meanings. Using people and making an augmented fashion show could be amazing, he adds.
UPDATE 1: Here's a neat video of the Hague event directly from Pablo's site.
haujobb - blue
Whipping moves on keyboards faster than you could follow and that was when something happened to get him totally wired, and that didn't happen often. He had nights when the bugs were at the neon and the air smelled of perfume and fast food. Scanned faces as they passed, looking for the wild card in the private tarot, a new one, anxious for a sign, someone to tell him what his new life would be like. Not very different. More comfortable. Always waiting for that next card to fall. (WG, Burning Chrome)
still - passing (the beauty of traveling alone)
And this was the demo that won the demo compo of Function 2008. A gentle mash-up of the first moments of Metal Gear Solid 2, the ambiance of Natural City and the smell of highway, alone. (via pouet)
asd - lifeforce (one video on the complexity of beauty)
Promised myself to write on the Function 2008 demoscene party that took place here in Budapest. (Writing? EPIC FAIL.) We managed to get there just in time for the 60-minute force break that came just before the demo compo and in the heat of the various EDs we managed to cocktail up in the bowels of doom... slam. Five minutes of awe and silence. Karsten, m1k3y, all of you: watch this. (via pouet)
new angelspit blipvert: fake/cyber hair draft
Angelspit's back with a new blipvertish post on YouTube on how to make some fake hair. Really missing out on the previous, tongue-in-cheeky blipverts!
kulturbrauerei on schmap
I am delighted to let you know that your submitted photo
has been selected for inclusion in the newly released fifth
edition of our Schmap Berlin Guide. (my flickr gallery)
the future of healthcare systems (and stabbing a knife in klikk 4.0)
This Microsoft vision of the future of healthcare systems might be an old one (dated somewhere around March 08, actually), but I'm actually researching the topic and a bit of extra info/touchscreen surfaces cannot hurt us. On a sad sidenote: just been to the Klikk 4.0 press conf in the Millenaire and if you've seen a good and socially responsible exhibition fucked up mile-long in the ass, it's that one. Did you really think that making kids read long pages of text will make them more health-conscious? Or even interested? Making them play Wii is a way better idea but then again please don't feed it to the press that this is one of the most interactive and technically advanced etape of the exhibition series. Even Bodies had a hard time driving the point home about the adverse effects of drinking and/or smoking.
platige teases 'teaching infinity'
Teaching Infinity (Lekcja nieskończoności) trailer from Quiet Earth on Vimeo.
Polish CG arthouse Platige is back with a teaser for their new project TEACHING INFINITY, directed by Jakub Jabłoński and Bartłomiej Kik. We'll be back more info on Platige as they're quite a massive player to deal with - if you remember THE CATHEDRAL (that's their first CG short that made them real famous in the googler crowd, I guess) in 2002 - that's a SIGGRAPH main prize and an Oscar-nomination there. As for the new trailer, that looks like some wicked Escheresque android development myth with a distinct Platige touch. (via quietearth.us)
xbox 360 beats ps3. post is all about japanese girls.
Kotaku writes about how Xbox 360 beat PS3 in September in Japan. The tech background: when you follow up feeds in your reader, big images are always ranked first in the attention priority. So there. (link)