Questioning Reality

I’ve been captivated by this video and felt the need to share. Captivating because of the work, the music, and the video editing quality. Doesn’t usually work out that way. Cool stuff. Check out more Cena7 at his flickr page. And I wish I had a good link of Emol’s work… it absolutely blows me away.

Just incase you haven’t seen it, check out this relatively new spot for the Discovery Channel. It’s pretty catchy in that whole-world sort of a way. And every time I stumble across it, it makes me smile a bit. Pretty simple, but pretty awesome.

Anyone who knows me well knows of my affinity (a.k.a. problem) for shoes. And many are also aware of my love of art. While I certainly consider many shoes art, they don’t usually go hand-in-hand. But this past week, Nike released a new SB Dunk styled after the work of Piet Mondrian.

It’s cool to see Nike pay homage to great artists (even if it is just to get a cool colorway out of it), and it’s also cool to see people not familiar with the work of Mondrian getting exposed to it via hyped shoes.
There are rumors floating around that the Mondrian Dunk may be the first in a series of artist-inspired Dunks… I can only hope. Either way, it’s uplifting to see De Stijl on a Dunk.

I’m a big Guy Ritchie fan, so it probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise that I’m elated with the newest Nike spot directed by Ritchie, “Take it to the next level.” Despite feeling a bit Prodigy-ish, it’s a cool short film, and it’s definitely carrying Nike in the direction they’re seeming to want to gravitate toward. A high-res version is on the Nike Football site right now. Monumental? maybe. Cool? Definitely.

Do I really need to say anything? Is there even anything I could say?

Just be sure to check out the White Gold website for more amazement and wonder. This is just about the only thing that could eclipse the coolness of Get the Glass. Once again, Goodby shows why they kick ass. Must be all that milk.

So this is probably a few weeks past date, but I’ve been out of town and unplugged for a while, so bear with me. I’m guessing that the majority of people have seen the previous Sony Bravia commercials - the bouncing balls in San Francisco, and the exploding paint in Glasgow. (for those who haven’t seen them, I’ve included ‘em after the jump).

Anyway, I loved the bouncing balls commercial in just about every respect - the videography, the music, etc… Then the second one came out last year, and I was frankly disappointed. I specifically didn’t even make note of it here because I was just genuinely “bleh” towards the spot. I could go into details, but this ain’t the place. But the publicity is hyping up quickly for their next big spot, which apparently involves a ton of Play-doh bunnies in New York City (more info on the bunnies after the jump).

I love the idea of colored rabbits, and really hope that this one might hearken back a bit closer to the feel of the first spot and resonate with the campaign idea of “color. like no other” which I really didn’t get as much from the Glasgow spot. More photos of the set-up can be seen at notcot.org, and the Sony Bravia site has a bunch of high quality downloadable wallpapers of the mayhem. I’m almost feeling a bit giddy.

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I’ve been paying attention, really, I have… but I’ve been struggling to see anything lately that really piques my interest. It may just be that I’m tired and busy with lots of random things, but stuff that has been catching my eye is few and far between. Then I stumbled upon Rosemarie Fiore. Time lapse photography, as kitch as it can often be, is unquestionably cool. Fiore took it a billion steps further by combining time lapse photography with classic video games. Fiore writes:

These photographs are long exposures taken while playing video war games of the 80’s created by Atari, Centuri and Taito. The photographs were shot from video game screens while I played the games. By recording each second of an entire game on one frame of film, I captured complex patterns not normally seen by the eye.

My brain is finally happy again… and a bit confused - which makes my brain even more happy.

Rosemarie Fiore [via Centripital Notion]

So I’ve got a pretty hefty chunk-o-stuff on my plate. I got up a little after 5:00 this mornin’ to start working. I’ve been reading Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions just about all day. And I’ve been listening to WBGH’s Classical Weekend nearly as long. To top it off, I turned on the TV and am watching the Daytona 500 pole qualifiers (with the sound off, of course). It’s bizarre how much the three elements are coming together in my living room. Or maybe it’s just my brain on the verge of a mental shutdown. Either way, it’s pretty cool.

For some cool mashup sites (probably betther than the stuff floating in my brain) check out Mashup Feed.

Saw this on the local news the other night, and it really hit home. The headline reads: Reedsport man accused of shooting snorkeling man. It really doesn’t get much better than that - nor does it get more Oregon than that. Except for the fact that the shooter was later arrested on various charges, including unlawful posession of meth and unlawful posession of marijuana. That’s about as Oregon as it can get. That, and the shooter thought he was shooting a nutria. with a shotgun. from the balcony of a house he was house-sitting.

Nobody has said if the shooter was on anything, and nobody has said what the victim was doing snorkeling in a frigid river. Update: I was reading more stories on this today, and found this article which gives more details, including stating that the snorkeler (who is an avid free diver) was indeed observing wildlife, and got shot in the side of the head. He’s in good condition now, thankfully, so it’s not all bad. and yes, this does paint Oregon in an incredible light… people getting lost in the wilderness, trapped on Mt. Hood, and now shot while snorkeling.

The AP picked this up so it’s all over the web now. How perfect. Let me just say, I love Oregon.

Yahoo is doing some interesting stuff these days with their integrated web apps, making the internet a significantly different place. A few weeks ago, they came out with World Explorer and TagMaps, which I spent way too much time playing with. Not that long ago they came out with their International Remix interface. Their newest release, Pipes, takes all those tubes and puts them in one place. It’s a feed aggregator, a search filter, and a feed manipulator. It basically creates power feeds. I hesitate to say it because of the musical connotations it brings my brain, but it really is a web 2.0 Mashup. Check it out here - playing with it does more than I could ever explain.