Here’s a cool animated interpretation of John Coltrane’s tune, Giant Steps. “The musical theme defines a space and the musical improvisation is like someone drifting in that imaginary space.” Pretty darn cool. I wish there were a full length version—where’s the piano solo?
Category: video
Okay, so I’m pretty much amazing. A nice little voiceover parody of a John Petrucci guitar instructional video, working the metronome. He pulls off some nasty chromatic scales.
Mr. Deity is a bi-monthly video series that looks at God and the Universe with a smile (and sometimes, a wink). In the first film about Creation God decides which evils to nix and which to keep. Great soundtrack, too.
A pretty cool video demo for a multi-touch computer interface. Gotta love the chill, new age, destiny music. Let’s hope they make a drafting table version so I don’t have to stand up all day.
Pretty cool to see that Lasse Gjertsen was featured in the Wall Street Journal back in December for his music videos on YouTube, Amateur and the earlier Hyperactive.
Truth in Advertising, a 12-minute film about the dysfunctional, corrupt world of corporate advertising, though the parable could really cut across any kind of office or industry. (nsfw)
If you’re a Steve Reich fan and you’ve heard tunes like Come Out, It’s Gonna Rain, Piano Phase, and those other early works, you might like Pez Phase.
Fans of the Hipster PDA will hail the introduction of the Hipster Shuffle. I love the Apple Dancing. [via 43 Folders]
The Mises Institute published a video called Money, Banking, and the Federal Reserve. Must see.
Here’s an old interview with L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. about his escape from Scientology. The Stephen Colbert also offers a balanced perspective on the Daily Show.
If you liked Flatland the book, you’ll be glad to know there will soon be an animated movie for it. Alan Nelson links to several places you can read the book online (or get the gist of it anyway). [via seat 1a]
Winsor McKay agrees to make four thousand pen drawings that will move. In this silent film from 1911, cartoonist Winsor McKay (of Little Nemo comics fame) demonstrates some of the first animation, AND it’s in color. The actual cartoon starts around the 7:30 mark. [via four color comics]
There’s going to be a movie about Helvetica, the typeface you see pretty much everywhere. “Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which is celebrating its 50th birthday this year) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives.”
Cinephiles and typophiles might like this growing collection of some of the most original main title sequence designs. [via do]
Metacritic scraped the best-of lists from all the major film review publications and presents the aggregated critical favorites from 2006. United 93 and Army of Shadows came out on top.
A nice little parody of old-school idiotic sexism. “In thought, be plain and simple, and let your natural sweetness shine through.” We’ve come a long way.
“I confess I’ve been increasingly dissatisifed with the direction of modern pop, which has more and more privileged screechy and/or whiny vocalists who are utterly unable to play any instrument themselves, and thus, usually, unable to actually write music or songs themselves.” Over at Collision Detection, Clive Thompson points to a recent article by Chuck Klosterman about how YouTube is reviving musical virtuosity. Klosterman:
One of those depressing paradoxes about rock ‘n’ roll: Very often, profoundly exceptional guitar playing is boring to listen to… It’s difficult for nonmusicians to appreciate world-class guitar playing through solely sonic means, mostly because a) the difference between great guitar playing and serviceable guitar playing is often subtle, and b) every modern listener assumes production tricks can manufacture greatness. (As a result, radio audiences are automatically skeptical of what they hear.) Guitar brilliance usually comes across as ponderous. But that changes dramatically when one adds the element of video; somehow, watching changes the experience of hearing. There are certain things that sound good only when (and if) you can see them. And YouTube lets you see them.
Two comments on the side:
One, for great example of YouTube sanctifying musical skill, check out the video of Stanley Jordan playing “Autumn Leaves” that I linked to earlier. Seeing is believing there.
And two, I’m really curious why Esquire didn’t put the links directly in the body of Klosterman’s essay–we’re talking about the internet, here. Is there a reason to list a plain-text web address buried in a footnote?
A couple additions to my growing series of links about understanding large-scale concepts. Here’s a timeline of evolution from the beginning of Life up to Now. The image of the timeline is 135 feet long, and homo sapiens showed up right at around last pixel. And via infosthetics, a video comparing the planets, the Sun, and a number of other stars.
The first five links in my scalar collection were about the scale of the atom, the Earth’s population, the stars in the sky, showing 570 million years in 1 hour, and visualizing enormous numbers. Oh, as a bonus there’s also the one I linked a while back where you can learn about existing in 10 dimensions.
Mark Larson 
