Nursing a hangover; this tv-hour long interview has been just the thing needed. Part 1 of 4.

Last post’s articles touched on some fairly sombre points. This one has a cat in it.

Europe: A crisis of the centre
“There were two “moments” in the defeat of liberal centrist politics in Germany, Austria, Spain etc. in the 1930s: the first, where polite society realised the working classes were swinging to the right and left, but patronisingly reassured themselves that the world of Jazz, surrealist poetry and foreign holidays could never end. That is, they said to themselves: the workers are clinging to the past, but we, avatars of a more liberal and progressive future, have economic history with us, which points only in the direction of liberalism and economic co-operation.” [full article]

Movie Studios Are Forcing Hollywood to Abandon 35mm Film. But the Consequences of Going Digital Are Vast, and Troubling
This year, for the first time in history, celluloid ceases to be the world’s prevailing movie-projector technology. By the end of 2012, according to IHS Screen Digest Cinema Intelligence Service, the majority of theaters will be showing movies digitally. By 2013, film will slip to niche status, shown in only a third of theaters. By 2015, used in a paltry 17 percent of global cinemas, venerable old 35 mm film will be mostly gone. [full article]

Cassini Sees Objects Blazing Trails in Saturn Ring
“I think the F ring is Saturn’s weirdest ring, and these latest Cassini results go to show how the F ring is even more dynamic than we ever thought,” said Carl Murray, a Cassini imaging team member based at Queen Mary University of London, England. “These findings show us that the F ring region is like a bustling zoo of objects from a half mile [kilometer] in size to moons like Prometheus a hundred miles [kilometers] in size, creating a spectacular show.” [full article]

Does the Internet Make You Smarter?
These claims were, of course, correct. Print fueled the Protestant Reformation, which did indeed destroy the Church’s pan-European hold on intellectual life. What the 16th-century foes of print didn’t imagine—couldn’t imagine—was what followed: We built new norms around newly abundant and contemporary literature. Novels, newspapers, scientific journals, the separation of fiction and non-fiction, all of these innovations were created during the collapse of the scribal system, and all had the effect of increasing, rather than decreasing, the intellectual range and output of society. [full article]

Realising that the majority of recent posts are mostly video related; here are some tumblr sites for something different.

Coloring with Aloha

Sone Ki Diwaane

Franflow

At least I’m starting to ‘annotate’ some of this stuff too.

Made me realise I haven’t played an RTS in a long time… might still be a while, but this video sure helps leaving me wanting.

Was wanting to post one or two of these, but honestly, I just want to post everything that makes up the website that is Colossal.

Started up just over two years ago, this blog has been consistent from the get go in finding and posting some of the most inspiring and creative things happening out there and on the internet and my go to guilt trip for not being active enough.

Highly recommend bookmarking the shit out of it.

24 Hours of Photographs Merged into a Single Panoramic Image

Underwater Portraits by Jacob Sutton

Stupidity Captured at 2,500 Frames per Second

On a bit of an editing thing lately and what better way to exhibit this, than three video demonstrations of how the process can drastically alter the original intention of a work.

First, one from the fan-editor’s fodder favourite:

A classic re-edit of a classic (and a prime example of why I almost never bother to watch trailers).

And finally, something a bit more cheeky…

Having missed out on most of the Coachella webcast (though Radiohead was still mandatory viewing), one thing in particular that had the interwebs abuzz is the holographic performance of the late, great 2pac as seen in this video:

The almost futurama-esq ethical humor of this aside, this was a really impressive feat of technology that had me well impressed (and pulling out the 90’s rap again); but yet the whole ‘hologram’ aspect of it still didn’t seem right.

Well, Ars Technica has a good article on the performance and technology here, and yep, it’s still not quite full form hologram technology, but a big step in both rendering technology and hardware material; but best of all, it’s still using an technique from the 19th Century called Pepper’s ghost.

So here’s how it works: the audience needs to be able to see into the main room, but not in an adjacent hidden room. In the case of the Tupac “hologram,” that’s the main stage where a real-life Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre were sharing the limelight. However, hidden on stage is a piece of glass, where the images can be reflected from and pushed into a target area that makes it seem like a single room. However, off to the side, behind the glass, there’s a hidden room that has the original object being projected.  [ ars technica article ]

Other high profile uses of this technique in the past include certain ‘visual effects’ on Lord of the Rings, a plot device in The Illusionist and most notably, a digital Japanese pop star named Hatsune Miku, who, during the course of looking up what her name was again, I just found out she’s the singer of Nyan cat. Awesome.

I just love that application of old ideas with new technology, and the technology used here is pretty damn good, especially for bringing an (allegedly) dead guy back from the grave to give a live performance to thousands of fans. How will this affect future entertainment performances and what nots? No idea, but it is still definitely still some time away before I can live out that Leia hologram reenactment dream (and then fantasy afterwards).

UPDATE: thanks internet!

And finally, though turn your sound down at the end of it…