'Rubin and Ed'

At long last!!! A decent copy of the severely underrated film, 'Rubin and Ed', has finally been posted on youtube! This 1991 film starring Crispin Glover, Howard Hessman and the recently deceased Karen Black has been out of print since the early 1990's. My deep gratitude to the uploader!

Microcosmos

An hour of pure eye candy for fans of the insect world. I didn't expect the film to be quite this beautiful. You can stream the entire thing high-definition on Netflix (the narration is translated to English).

Jiří Barta- The Last Theft

A few weeks back I posted a Nurse With Wound song that had a video which was a mashup of clips from the Czech animator and filmmaker, Jiří Barta. This is the original short film from which most of those clips come. I have to say, this film makes my inner goth smile... So light a black candle, sit back and enjoy.


The Last Theft- Part 1



Part 2



Part 3

Synesthesia: A Short Film

A very odd short film I saw a few months ago about the neurological condition known as synesthesia.
Synesthesia from wikipedia:  A neurologically-based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.

Late Night Music- Nurse With Wound - "The Bottom Feeder"

I know I'm a creep. Call me a snob... But my favorite musician since I first bought "The Sylvie and Babs Hi-Fi Companion" in 1986 has been Nurse With Wound, AKA, Stephen Stapleton.


I've always been drawn to strange music, my first exposure to odd music was "Radioactivity" by Kraftwerk... But it wasn't until I heard Nurse With Wound that I found the music that I would later learn is termed sound collage. That is, music that doesn't necessarily have beat, meter or even melody, but is simply sound in time. Sampling and appropriation were a big part of sound collage and I later learned that the style has a rich history beginning with people such as John Cage, Luc Ferrari and even Frank Zappa.
Anyway, the video for this piece of music is great, even more so to realize that it was simply a fan-based montage video. The images are taken from films by a person named Jiri Barta; a filmmaker who I am completely ashamed to say that I have never heard of. I do need to research this person because I think his work is beautiful in the same tradition as Jan Švankmajer and the Brothers Quay.

Brothers Quay- Street of Crocodiles (1986)

While we are on the subject of stop-action animation. I'll post one of my all time favorites. The Brothers Quay create beautifully dystopian worlds that are one part Franz Kafka, one part Joseph Cornell, and one part Hans Bellmer...
Part 1

Part 2

Street of Crocodiles (1986) by Timothy & Stephen Quay.

And no, these are not the people who animated the Tool videos. That person badly ripped off the Brothers Quay.

Nature by Numbers

A gorgeous animation about the patterns and mathematics found in nature.

Video explains the world's most important 6-sec drum loop

While we are on the subject of copyright law, this video is a perfect illustration as to the futility of policing copyright infringement in the digital age. But it is also an illustration of just how intertwined the act of appropriation is in the act of creativity itself. Creativity is literally the act of putting together things that you have experienced before in ways that you have not experienced before.

This fascinating, brilliant 20-minute video narrates the history of the "Amen Break," a six-second drum sample from the b-side of a chart-topping single from 1969. This sample was used extensively in early hiphop and sample-based music, and became the basis for drum-and-bass and jungle music -- a six-second clip that spawned several entire subcultures. Nate Harrison's 2004 video is a meditation on the ownership of culture, the nature of art and creativity, and the history of a remarkable music clip.

Starlings Flocking

I am always baffled by this phenomenon. It is amazing that such a visual spectacle is achieved simply by each bird paying close attention and reacting to what its immediate neighbors are doing. And then, using this local behavior, a slight change in one bird's flight pattern radiates outward to the entire mass.