Dansil

Human experience is weird; it’s full of wonder – and it’s also full of fear. The sounds, for me, should also evoke that.
Jad Abumrad

From reading online, electronic music as a scene seems in a nasty sort of malaise, ranging from existential angst over everything from genre popularity to gender issue crises and pessimistic views of any new technologies. Maybe it’s time to return to why you’d want to make weird noises in the first place.

This is just a teaser for The Pleasure of Sound, a forthcoming documentary that follows Jad Abumrad and Matthew Dear for two days of music making. But the couple of quotes here for me speak to why we’re involved in this field. Jad Abumrad, the Tennessee-born composer and journalist known best for his work on WNYC’s adventurous Radiolab program, says it best, above.

(I may be biased, reviewing Jad’s bio. I was also born in the south – Kentucky – and I’m also of Lebanese-American descent and the son of two doctorates. I even had my first introduction to electronic music at Oberlin College. Funny how these things can go in parallel. I can be a Radiolab fanboy, though.)

I thought back to Abumrad’s quote last night, listening to stellar live shows by NHK’Koyxen, Holly Herndon, and Laurel Halo. Each of these three artists manipulated sounds into the dream worlds Dear and Abumrad describe in the teaser, even against the frame of danceable rhythms and drum machine conventions. Somehow, in those odder and otherworldly timbres and compositions, I hear something that I can’t express any other way – not in words, not even in my head, deeper feelings that only music can turn into sense.

When music and sound give you pleasure in ways that nothing else can, then you know why you’re doing it. I can’t wait to see the film.

The Pleasure of Sound

From WDET Detroit, which also has an amazing-looking series on the connections between Berlin and the Motor City.

my pick for a worthy Google Reader successor  

With a Red Epic 5K Camera, Mark Toia took a flight of nearly three hours in a helicopter to capture incredible images of New Zealand landscapes. Wonderful moments to discover in video after; that lovers of nature and the great outdoors will enjoy.

This is not a Photoshop job. This is the very real toothy smile of sheepshead fish. It lives in North America, writes Becky Crew at the Running Ponies blog. And, like humans, it has both incisors and molars — perfect for masticating an omnivorous diet. Apparently, they also taste good, which should be some consolation. Worse comes to worse, we can always eat them.

Photography by Flickr user: totaviva Title: Peter Kropotkin Atley

gofwd:

Google Reader > Google +

For absolutely no reason at all, here are some links:

Google Plus and how it will change everything
THE GOOGLE INVESTOR: Google+ Will Change Everything
Book: Google+ for Business: How Google’s Social Network Changes Everything

And I’m getting bored but here are some more links:

Google Wave, The Wave of the Future?
Google Wave is the future of email
Google Wave of the Future Revolutionizing the Web

And I’m starting to get really frustrated but here:

Google Buzz: It Will Change The Future
Google’s Buzz Puts Facebook, Twitter on Notice
Google Buzz: Facebook Killer?

I need a nap.

Sometimes I like to bother George while he’s on business trips

tastefullyoffensive:

[jimbenton]

This thought-provoking series is not about whether God exists or not. It explores more challenging questions such as "what happens as we move on and leave religion behind?", "what will guide and inspire us in a world free of all Gods?", "how can an atheist find a meaning in life?", "how can we face death without the comfort after life?" and "how we should think about right and wrong?"

The first episode is about "sin". Even today, most of us still carry around the religious notion of sin to tell right from wrong. Richard Dawkins explores the power, the religious idea of sin has our lives, explains why it's unhealthful and show how can you use reason and science to find a better way to be good.

Watch other episodes: [2] | [3] 


File size: 980 MB
Subtitle: English

Sex.Death.and.the.Meaning.of.Life.S01E01.720p.HDTV.x264-KNiFESHARP [980 MB]
http://www.ulozto.net/xagyXGK/sex-death-and-the-meaning-of-life-s01e01-720p-hdtv-x264-knifesharp-mkv
or
https://www.rapidshare.com/files/2981331098/sex.death.and.the.meaning.of.life.s01e01.720p.hdtv.x264-knifesharp.mkv

Ch4.Sex.Death.and.the.Meaning.of.Life.1of3.PDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org [470 MB]
https://www.rapidshare.com/files/2257037632/Ch4.Sex.Death.and.the.Meaning.of.Life.1of3.PDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.mkv

This is an ad that Domino’s Pizza made to promote a new phone app for customers in Japan. I am not sure if it is really “television-related,” because (a) I do not live in Japan, so I don’t know if it aired on television there, and (b) it is over two minutes long, which is really, really long for a television commercial. To be honest, it’s probably part of some sort of web-based marketing campaign. But I really want to talk about it, so let’s just pretend that this airs on Japanese television, like, all the time.

With that out of the way, here are my favorite parts of this commercial:

- The fact that Domino’s let a high-ranking, middle-aged, white executive named Scott (who looks and sounds a little like David Koechner) star in a two-minute long Japanese ad about a high-tech phone app featuring an anime character named Hatsune Miku. (DOMINO’S MARKETING GUYS: Hey, who can we have star in this commercial? We need to appeal to Japanese kids. SCOTT: Yeah, I’ll just do it. DOMINO’S MARKETING GUYS: Okay, great. Let’s grab lunch.)

- Scott’s pronunciation of “Hatsune Miku,” which he says five (5) times in the first 30 seconds. Remember that video of former Orange County Eyewitness News reporter Gustavo Almodovar? It’s kind of like that, except you can tell someone has drilled this pronunciation into his head so he doesn’t screw it up, and you can see the terror in his eyes every time he says it.

- See the banner picture? That is an ACTUAL PIZZA BOX.

- The weird editing. Cut to Scott’s face. Cut to Scott’s hands. Profile view of Scott’s face. Cut to his tie. QUICK, BACK TO HIS FACE. NOW A SHOT OF SCOTT POSING WITH HATSUNE MIKU. EXTREME CLOSE-UP OF SCOTT’S EYES. FACE. HANDS. PIZZA. TIE. FACE. WIDE SHOT.

- The part at the 0:40 mark where he just starts naming Japanese people who work for Domino’s.

- The things he does with his hands from from 1:36-1:40. So awkward. So painful. I must keep watching.

- The fact that this app even exists. That’s what made all the other things on this list possible. Domino’s Pizza, a company that makes pizza, made an app for phones that allows users to create songs that an anime character will sing back to them. That actually happened. We live in amazing times.

(Via Gawker)

The post Please Watch This Ridiculous Japanese Domino’s Pizza Ad appeared first on UPROXX.

Jason Hatfield

Vo Anh Kiet

Raul Amaru Linares

Colin Hutton

Colleen Pinski

Md. Akhlas Uddin

Giang Hai Hoang

Nathan Carlsen

Neal Piper

Bob Bush

Smithsonian Magazine just announced the finalists in their 10th Annual Photo Contest. This year the competition saw 37,600 photo submissions from photographers in 112 countries and Smithsonian’s editors selected 50 finalists organized into their usual five categories: Altered Images, Americana, The Natural World, People and Travel. Like last year the photos are open to a public vote through March 29, 2013 and a ‘Readers Choice’ award will be announced along with the rest of the winners in June. Here are ten of my favorites by take some time to go see the rest.

what do you get when you cross the road

run over

an image from fukung.net

an image from fukung.net

an image from fukung.net

an image from fukung.net

an image from fukung.net

an image from fukung.net

an image from fukung.net

nocoffeeplease:

(x)

Wikimedia's Wikipedia Zero project will let people look up Wikipedia articles using text-messages. This will bring Wikipedia to billions of people who lack smartphones:

We want to enable access to free knowledge for every last human being. For many readers in developing countries, their primary (and often only) access to the internet is via mobile. However, barriers exist that can prevent users from reading Wikipedia and accessing free knowledge on their mobile devices.

Cost - While handset prices have reduced sharply around the world, data costs are still prohibitively expensive for many users. From the 2010 mobile readers' survey, for example, we saw that 21% of users listed "too much data usage" as a critical barrier to access. That number rises dramatically when we consider people who have capable devices, but are not even yet mobile readers. We need to remove the cost of data as a deterrent to reading Wikipedia.

Speed - The mobile survey also pointed out that speed of connection is the top barrier (44% of users) for using Wikipedia on a mobile phone. Therefore, we need to offset this barrier by offering an experience that loads faster.

There are two outcomes to this. First, new readers will be encouraged to access free knowledge for the first time, knowing that the barriers are low. Second, existing readers will not be obstructed from accessing knowledge when they need and want it.

Wikipedia Zero (via /.)

After his stunning series Take Refuge, American photographer Kevin Cooley returns with “Lights Edge” and pictures where beautiful desert landscapes by night are contrasted by light rays and lines. More in the future.

Yesterday I linked to a video of Baile Zhang's "invisibility cloak," which was demoed at TED2013. The video was hosted by Dropbox, which killed the link (too much traffic). Here's a YouTube version of the same video, courtesy of Ben Kellogg.

When first approaching the artwork of Japanese artist Takahiro Iwasaki it’s entirely possible you might miss it altogether. Not only are his small buildings and electrical towers excruciatingly small and delicate, but they also rest on absurdly mundane objects: rolls of tape, a haphazardly wrinkled towel, or from the bristles of a discarded toothbrush. Only on close inspection do the small details come into focus, faint hints of urbanization sprouting from disorder. My favorite pieces are his topographical maps that have been carefully cut from thick rolls of gray and blue electrical tape. Many of these objects were on view as part of the Constellations show at Cornerhouse in Manchester back in 2011 and at C24 Gallery last year. However Iwasaki currently has a new collection of much larger works at the 7th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at GOMA in Queensland, much of which you can see over at designboom. (via artscharity.org, cornerhouse, c24 gallery, karl steel)

Over the weekend, NASA's Curiosity rover successfully drilled into the surface of Mars and collected its first sample from the interior of a rock. With this incredible interactive panorama, you can stand right beside the rover and see both its ...

This pen can draw in the air!!! The 3Doodler Kickstarter only launched two days ago aiming to raise $30k and has already raise $1.2 million! Watch the video below!

Modern societies attempt to understand and explain the mysteries of nature through various tangible human lenses such as science, technology, painting, literature, photography, etc. But try as we might, our interpretations, theories, reproductions, and commentaries of the natural world will never truly do it justice. Through our various strategies, we impose and accept ‘rules’ of nature as factual knowledge and through these arbitrary conceptual binaries, we deny its’ overwhelming mystery.

Adam Friedman recognizes himself guilty of this as well. He paints symbols and tropes that we comprehend as landscape; mountains, sunsets, etc. But he is also curious what happens when we view nature through a lens that breaks the rules of our understanding. In his work, rules of perspective, distance, and light are bent. Space can become a solid object and places are folded on top of one another. Millions of years are compacted into a single instant and rocks become fluid. Friedman strives to present a moment that defies human intervention in the landscape, and pays homage to the potential in the inexplicable.

All images © Adam Friedman