Now streaming: the archive of our Google Hangout On-Air with Jesse Vigil of Psychic Bunny, one of the designers of the new audio adventure game FREEQ (iOS/Android). I got a chance to play with FREEQ last night, and it’s quite engaging.
We’ve featured dancer Matt Luck’s work before. The last time was his masterful duet piece set to a cover of Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark. If anything this new work is even more striking for it’s aesthetic and blending of design and dance. [Music by James Blake]
I first encountered Sifteo Cubes back at IndieCade last October, and spent some time playing around with the little blocks which I first mistook for iPod Nanos.
The "little magic blocks" have garnered attention from some interesting game developers. For example, Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield–arguably the single most influential game designer of the past few decades–is working with the platform.
A lengthy write up in Kill Screen Daily asks if Sifteo is the new Nintendo, and while I wouldn't jump to that conclusion there is something about the potential trapped in this form that makes me think the developers may have something more than the next Tamagotchi on their hand.
This promo video goes a long way to illustrating this potential:
Follow Noah Nelson on Twitter (@noahjnelson)
Over the weekend I was having a conversation about the new Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Museum that’s been announced. Specifically we were talking about the interactive exhibits. My companion expressed disgust at that kind of thing for a museum ostensibly about an art form.
I countered that people don’t appreciate what goes into something as complicated as filmmaking until they get some hands on experience with it themselves. Film lighting, in particular, is underestimated by pretty much everyone who hasn’t tried to make a video look halfway decent.
So you can imagine how delighted I was when BoingBoing’s Rob Beschizza posted this teaser for an upcoming music video today. Here’s the power of light, kids.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and promise you that this will be the first of two posts on Present Shock, the Douglas Rushkoff book that has been getting a mountain of attention in the tech press since it was released earlier this month.
The second post will be an in-depth discussion of the book, and I hereby pledge that it will be unveiled two weeks from today. There. Made a promise and barring that thresher accident I’ve been fearing since I was 14, I’ll be keeping that promise.
This post, however, is my surface review. You see I finished the book a week ago and I can’t stop thinking about it. I don’t want to, either. In fact I don’t really want to do anything these days except talk about the book with other people who’ve read it. Which is why Present Shock is this week’s edition of THE WEEKENDER.
The essential thesis of Present Shock is this: time is out of joint. The digital technologies that we have woven so deeply into our lives have a different relationship to the concept of time than the human brain does. No human can multi-task as efficiently as a computer can, and our attempts to do so are driving us a kind of crazy. (more…)
One of the great things about the past few years is just how much Lucasfilm has encouraged its fan community to rework its material and make it their own. Which could be changing drastically as Disney, new masters of the Star Wars universe, restructure the smaller company (read: lay nearly everyone off).
If the attitude towards remixing work changes, we could lose great projects like Star Wars: Uncut and this great video from the Auralnauts, makers of the fantastic Holiday Bane.
Facebook held another big annoucement event today, this time for their Android make-over they’re calling “Facebook Home”.
Problem is: does anyone really care?
Every few months Facebook comes up with some new “revolutionary” experience: Timeline, Graph Search, the New Nu Gnu News Feed. By the time we actually get it–I’m still waiting for Graph Search to magically appear for me– it usually pales in comparison to whatever horrendous changes Zuckerberg and company have made in order to make feeding us, the end users, advertisements easier for their real customers. Those being the companies who actually buy Facebook ads.
I’ll grant them one thing on this “Home” concept. (more…)
“Nothing is inevitable except the future.”
FutureStates, the public media series that gives emerging and established filmmakers the challenge of imagining a future America, is returning this month. The ITVS/Corporation for Pubic Broadcasting production will run exclusively online at futuretates.tv and PBS.org.
The FutureStates collection is a host of sci-fi gems, grounded in the kind of concern with the shape of our society that made the science fiction of the mid-20th century so valuable. The sci-fi tropes in these stories aren’t an end unto themselves, but a means to explore the consequences of modern day thinking. The previous three seasons are currently viewable at futurestates.tv.
tl;dr: Essential viewing. The shorts start making their debut on April 24th.
Whatever happened to kids wanting to grow up to be astronauts? What happened to walking on the moon and dreams of colonizing Mars?
NASA, the American Space Agency for those too who have forgotten or never paid attention, has endured a generation of budget cuts. That’s part of what happend. For decades now what was science fact has been regulated to science fiction.
The Aerospace Industries Association (a lobbying group, so they’ve got a dog in this fight) is hoping to leverage the popularity of Sci-Fi to get people excited about space exploration once more. They’re raising funds to put a 30-second ad for NASA’s space exploration in front of the premiere of Star Trek Into Darkness. To get it done they’ve turned to crowdfunding site IndieGoGo.
The proposed ad will a cut down version of this video, which features the voice of Peter Cullen. If you’ve ever watched a Transformers… well, anything… he might sound a bit familiar.
H/T: Brian Clark Via The Verge
The first “prosumer” grade video cameras were hailed as the arrival of a filmmaking revolution. Igniting that revolution has proven to be a bit more complicated than grabbing a camera from Best Buy.
The cost of production equipment has been driven down, and the rise of digital distribution — both theatrical and on-demand — has radically reduced certain costs on the exhibition side. However, the core issues that face any filmmaker, how to fund their film and find an audience for it, feel as if they have only grown more acute.
For filmmakers, crowdfunding has been the next big part of a continuing revolution.
“I believe that it has only begun to disrupt the film funding space,” said Emily Best, founder of the crowdfunding/distribution hybrid Seed & Spark. “And that’s a big claim when Kickstarter raised over $30 million for independent film in the past three years. That’s a tremendous feat.”
At this year’s South By Southwest Festival, it became apparent that a new ecosystem that goes far beyond crowdfunding is emerging. One that could, in theory, shepherd a film through all the phases of its life apart from production: development, financing, distribution and exhibition. Perhaps the last obstacle remaining is the lack of a map to help navigate them all.
What follows is an attempt to illustrate some of these choices. A snapshot of the terrain as viewed from the vantage point coming out of SXSW.
(more…)
