(small) creative initiatives that challenge (big) traditional ideas
• ( egoistic ) • activistic • architectural • audible • cinematic • conceptual • graphic • strategic • surface • urban • wireless
Credits Neverending is an interactive TV program that contains no other content than a continuously growing list of end-credits.
The credits are written by attentive viewers who - somewhere between the lines - are invited to interact and submit their own credit lines from a website.
The program was created for the Finnish TV channel Dina and developed as a part of a project that seeks to produce intentionally boring TV.
Related: The Million Dollar Movie Project
Posted by Sebastian on Jul 14, 2006
Stylewars is a legendary documentary about graffiti/hip hop from 1982 by Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant.
The movie features some of the very first street artists as the graffiti culture seems to be going though its first identity crisis: Are they artists or vandals? Who are friends and who are enemies?
Now, 14 years later, Stylewars has been released on DVD but more interestingly, it has also turned into an website. In contrast to the usual movie-websites, Stylewars manages to combine the best from the movie and the web and in the process, it creates something refreshingly new!
BMW recently launched a TV commercial featuring Dutch artists/scientist Theo Jansen.
Jansen is reknown as the charismatic creator of the kinetic sculptures that behave as artificial animals and BMW teamed up with him to profile their leadership in the fields of technology and innovation.
It's quite normal that advertising finds inspiration from the arts and vice-versa but its far from normal that artists are actually profiled in this way
Last year, Honda created a popular commercial, which was a replica of the exceptional 30 minute cinematic artwork Der Lauf Der Dinge (The Way Things Go) from 1987. In contrast to Jansen in the BMW commercial, the artists (Peter Fischli and David Weiss) were not credited in any way.
• BMW commercial • Honda commercial • Der Lauf Der Dinge
The ever-innovative Beastie Boys has done it again. This time they, have created a musicmentary based on footage, filmed by their own fans.
Back in 2004, the Beastie Boys handed out 50 mini-cameras to audience members at their performance in New York's Madison Square Garden. In order to cover different perspectives, the cameras were handed to fans spread throughout the arena.
Afterwards, the cameras were collected and the movie directed by Nathanial Hörnblowér (aka Beastie member "M.C.A"/Adam Yauch) who is also the director behind their inventive music videos.
AWESOME: I FUCKING SHOT THAT! premiered at this year's Sundance Festival and is due to be released on DVD in July.
Posted by Sebastian on Apr 23, 2006
Warcraft is one of the most successful multiplayer games in the world and when a popular player died in real life, other people in the game thought it would be a nice gesture to have a virtual memorial service in the Warcraft world.
The friends logged onto his account and took his virtual character to a lake, where the memorial would take place.
But another tribe heard about it and decided to ambush them. They killed the dead guys' character and wiped out everyone else who showed up.
To make things worse, they filmed the massacre and put it on the internet.
Posted by Sebastian on Feb 16, 2006
Passengers waiting for their train to arrive in the Copenhagen Metro are the target audience of a new short film festival called 60 seconds.
During the festival, a selection of films relating to the theme of motion will be screened on 9 metro stations below the city streets.
Watch the metro merge with cinema between February 23rd and March 2nd.
Inspired by the current pixel advertising craze, two students at the International Film School in Wales are asking people to donate money to fund their first feature movie.
In return, those who donate £3 or more will receive a screen credit as executive producer.
The students aim at raising a million dollars by involving thousands of sponsors. And while they are at it, they also hope to get in the book of Guinness World Records for the movie with the longest list of credits.
• www.themilliondollarmovieproject.com
Why is Rocketboom.com such a popular vlog? Probably because it feels like...TV.
In case you missed it, Rocketboom is a three minute daily videoblog that features a mélange of satire, news and techno-culture. Unlike most other videoblogs, it is very well produced and each show, or 'entry', takes around 4 hours to make.
Rocketboom is based in New York City and the show is produced + directed by Andrew Baron and hosted + co-written by Amanda Congdon. Besides being fun, interesting and sometimes inspiring, it is compatible with a variety of media players so, there's little excuse for not watching the show.
Posted by Sebastian on Jul 01, 2005
Since its kickstart in the 80's, the Netherlands has developed a unique VJ culture driven by artists, photographers, designers etc. who do not only perform at clubs but also at galleries, museums and other cultural venues.
VJ'ing is considered an artform in itself and recently, a brand new concept called CNCDNC that blends clubbing and media-art was launched at club11 in Amsterdam. CNCDNC's main objective is to challenge the form and context of traditional cinema and every event will feature an established filmmaker who will perform as guest-VJ.
At the opening event on June 17th, CNCDNC starred no less than the experimental director Peter Greenaway, renown for his visually extravagant and non-narrative films such as The Pillow Book, Prospero’s Books and The Cook the Thief his Wife and her Lover.
During the course of the night, Greenaway VJ'ed in two separate sets using a touchscreen system connected to 12 surrounding displays.
System Azure and Evidence Locker are two separate artworks by Jill Magid that explore the creative potential of surveillance cameras. Magid demonstrates how CCTV cameras can be used to create and record beautiful moments and interactions instead of just watching for problems.
System Azure is a series of jeweled security camera installations, conceived in 2003. Magid originally approached the Police Headquarters in Amsterdam and asked if she could cover the surveillance cameras on their facade with fake jewels as an art project.
When the police rejected her request, she created a spoof company called System Azure and re-approached them with the exact same question. This time around, she introduced herself as Head Security Ornamentation Professional and presented the idea in terms of 'public relations instead of art. Naturally, she asked for a fee.
Bingo! After a lengthy period of negotiations, she succeeded in in covering four of the Headquarters’ cameras with glittering rhinestones.
In 2004 - commisioned by the Liverpool Art Biennial - Magid created Evidence Locker in which she employs Liverpool's CCTV infrastructure to stage a conceptual cinematic narrative.
The work is composed of 31 days of CCTV footage, which features Magid traversing the city while being wirelessly guided, monitored, and recorded by an 'observer' in the central CCTV control room.
The project's website is a narrative in itself and contains lots of interesting information. Visitors can get access to 31 fragments of CCTV footage as well as diary-like letters written by Magid to her 'observer'.
• System Azure • Evidence Locker
Contact: Sebastian Campion