Lichtwriting with Lichtfaktor

People call it lightwriting, it’s a technique where light tricks are performed while a picture is taken using a camera with long exposure. Althought this has been done so many times in ad campaigns and TV commercials, you can’t deny that these type of effects look great.

The guys from Lichtfaktor do nothing but. Check their video after the jump, showing off their creations in sync with an Aphex Twin song.

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Social Media Websites in Illustrated Form

Social news/bookmarking sites these days are controlling what gets popular on the internet, with their users that is. Once a story gets popular on one community driven site, it’ll easily get picked up by its competitors and the blogosphere. Therefore these sites play an important role in discovering new trends beyond the internet and making people aware of things we wouldn’t normally read about.

I personally was a longtime fan, but now I’m distancing myself a bit of digg.com, cause the community has gotten too large after a lot of media attention and the youngsters keep ‘digging’ the lightweight stories. A perfect example is the Paris Hilton jailtime thing going on right now.
So now I’m in search for an alternative with more serious articles.

Anyway, check these very funny and oh-so-true sketches of some social bookmarking sites.

1906 San Francisco earthquake

I just spent half an hour looking at this very fascinating picture that got picked up by the ‘blogosphere’ on the wikimedia server.
It’s a hundred year old high resolution picture of San Fransisco taken right after the great 1906 earthquake(flickr). Apparently the gigantic camera was elevated 2000 ft.(610m) up by a number of kites.

I’ve always wondered, I live in Belgium where the streets are crooked and the traffic’s a mess, but don’t people get lost in this grid like city where every block looks almost identical to the one next to it… And not to mention the numbered streets.

Michel Gondry - The Science of Sleep

Michel Gondry is, as I would categorize Spike Jonze or Chris Cunningham, a very talented music video director that goes beyond that. He also directed films like Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep, which I got to see this weekend.

The Science of Sleep ( La Science des rêves) is a fantastic love tale about a guy named Stephane with a very vivid imagination who falls in love with a girl that doesn’t share the same feelings as he. And whilst he tries to win her over he lets his dreams take over his waking life where we see how much of an imagination he really has.
The movie has sort of the similar style, but I thought Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was more appealing. Nonetheless a very strong beautiful movie which I’ll be adding to my dvd collection soon. I gave it an 8 out of 10 in my sidebar section.

To get back to the man himself, if you want to see a collection of his music videos and shorts films check out The Work of Director Michel Gondry.
Also check his youtube profile where he solves a rubiks cube “with his feet” and a parody to the Will it blend? videos.

Update: This is a clip revealing how Michel faked the rubiks cube stunt, very inventive.

The Cinematic Orchestra - Ma Fleur

It already has been a good year for music and it’s getting even better. Jason Swinscoe with The Cinematic Orchestra released their follow-up to 2002’s “Everyday”.
“Ma Fleur” was conceived as the soundtrack to an imagined film, working alongside a scriptwriter. In a similar manner TCO scored a 1929 silent documentary film, “Man with the movie camera”, for a 2002 album.

As a longtime fan of TCO, I’m happy to see some new stuff. I asked about it on the scissorkick blogpost and apparently Swinscoe had some personal problems to deal with, alright.
It’s a great album, very relaxing, it held up to my expectations and will be playing it a lot in my car. The artwork looks pretty cool too, I bought it through itunes so I really hate that.

cinematicorchestra.com/
www.myspace.com/thecinematicorchestras

Dance of death drawings from 1900

These are a century old drawings by Louis Crucius, a pharmacist and part time artist, which some were later aquired by The Antikamnia Chemical Company for a marketing campaign.

After beginning his working life as a printer’s apprentice, Louis Crucius (or Crusius) completed the necessary requirements to graduate as a pharmacist in 1882 and a doctor in 1890 in St Louis, Missouri. While he was studying he worked in a pharmacy and made humorous sketches that were placed in the window of the store. A collection of these drawings was published in 1893 (‘Funny Bones’). He lectured in histology and anatomy and eventually came to be a Professor of Anatomy but died in 1898 from kidney tumours.

KJ Sawka - “Montreal” dir. Clay Lipsky

A couple months ago I blogged about a music video for Daedelus’ Sundown, which was pretty great, directed by a fella named Clay Lipsky.
He sent me an email to inform me, and maybe a little promotion which is cool cause he has some great stuff, about his latest work.

It’s a music video for, a drum ‘n bass electronica artist, KJ Sawka. I’m not really into the music, all thought I like some Aphex twin or Squarepusher from time to time, but the artist seems really driven and that’s all you need to make good music, love for the business. Check out a live session on the tube.

Again, the video looks great, it nicely blends in with the music (flash, ifilm/ytube).
Apparently Clay also did the Coldcut True Skool video with Roots Manuva and some other artsy projects.
Anyway check his website and props to you, Clay, go clay go.

AmonTobin.com launching Feb. 26th

This is a teaser for Amon Tobin’s new website, which launches on February 26th.
A designer said:

I’m from Notice Bureau, we were in charge of creative and art direction on this project, and we’ve been working on this for over a year. Don’t know if it exactly applies to your blog, but it sure is fun, and we created more that 30mns of animations and videos for the final site.

Meanwhile watch this unofficial music video of Amon Tobin’s Slowly that some guy made with a video game called Gary’s Mod.

BTW I also bought Gary’s Mod and I’m having way to much fun with it, very addictive. It isn’t exactly a game, it’s an application that gives you all kinds of tools to play around with Half-Life ’s physics engine. You can make movies and do all kinds of crazy shit, just check out the site.

Sigur Rós - Flugufrelsarinn

This is a music video created by an Israeli film making student for Sigur Rós’ 1999 song called “Flugufrelsarinn” (It’s Icelandic).
This video gives me a Massive Attack - Teardrop vibe and the creature kinda looks like the controversial and to be released videogame Spore.

Sigur Rós is recording their follow-up to Takk…, and “expect to finish it” this year. This album may be released in 2007, though “nothing is confirmed at this point.” This will be Sigur Rós’ fourth full-length album since they formed in 1994.