Box: A Groundbreaking Demonstration at the Intersection of Robotics, Projection-Mapping, and Software. Produced by Bot and Dolly, a San Francisco-based design and engineering studio, this amazing clip was filmed entirely in camera and demonstrates a mixture of robotically controlled monitors, projection-mapping and choreographed human interaction. Via their website: “Box” explores the synthesis of real and digital space through projection-mapping on moving surfaces. The short film documents a live performance, captured entirely in camera. Bot & Dolly produced this work to serve as both an artistic statement and technical demonstration.
I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I’ve been excited by projection mapping, even if you’re skeptical this is seriously worth just a few minutes of your time. Update: Here’s a short behind the scenes clip. Percussive Maintenance: A Supercut of People Banging on Broken Technology in Film and TV.
The New American: An Abstract Stop Motion Animation Laser Cut onto 800 Blocks of Wood by Nando Costa. Created by designer Nando Costa (previously) The New American is a painstakingly crafted motion graphics animation that was laser cut into a series of 800 individual maple blocks, a process that took nearly two years. Of the work Costa says: The abstract storyline showcased in this piece is a concoction of a variety of ideas and can perhaps be described as a union between concepts and experiments born during the Situationist movement and real life events experienced during the last few years in American society.
Particularly the duality between the economic downturn and the shift in values and beliefs of many citizens. Several frames from the animation are currently available over on Etsy. (via Vimeo Staff Picks) Night Stroll: Geometric Lightscapes Animated on the Streets of Tokyo by Tao Tajima. Night Stroll is a lovely animated short by Tao Tajima. Various light figures are seen interacting with locations around Tokyo, I can’t begin to guess how this was all planned, shot and animated and there is almost no information about it online, but it’s remarkable nonetheless. (via be con in riot)
Liquid Bricks. This wonderful video arrived in my inbox from Benjamin Boré who created this perfectly executed liquid brick installation as part of a collaboration at Raum à La Box in France. Meant to “question the harshness of the city” the idea is really quite simple, to embed a water-filled pouch beneath the city streets, and the effect is pretty charming, especially for the kids clamoring all over the thing. Music by Mansfield Tya. Thanks Benjamin! Anti-Gravity Dancing. Incredible Vertigo-Inducing Animations of San Francisco. This post contains a number of extremely large animated GIFs which might taken a moment to fully download.
Sorry for any inconvenience. Director Kevin Parry (previously) recently directed a wonderful music video for Kalle Matson, shot by Andrea Nesbitt, featuring a number of visual special effects that appear to slingshot the camera through wide views of San Francisco. Parry has a full gallery of smaller animations where you can see some of the isolated shots, but I had him export seven large, absolutely bandwidth-sucking versions, five of which are above. For two more, see also Ocean Bay Bridge and Market Street. Regarding how this was all accomplished he says via email: The zooms are done by setting up a camera at each end location and filming the camera zooming in and out. You might remember Kevin’s video from a few months ago, A Stop Motion History of the World. A Duet for Leaves & Turntable. Composer and sound artist Diego Stocco released a brief clip today featuring his experiments with a new turntable and a few freshly gathered leaves.
Leaves! More specifically all bass, kick and snare sounds heard in the video were made by alternating the leaf type, angle, pressure as it was applied against the turntable. If you’re unfamiliar with his work, Stocco is known for sampling audio from nature and other unexpected instruments in order to remix and modify them into music. My favorite piece is still Music from a Dry Cleaner. Animated Music Video Filmed Through a Band’s Breath in Freezing Temperatures by Wriggles & Robins. Innovative directing duo Matt Robinson and Tom Wrigglesworth of Wriggles & Robins (previously) just released this great new music video for the band Travis. The team shot at below freezing temperatures and filmed projected animations that could only be seen when the four band members would breath through the cold air.
Although subtle, there are some amazing sequences that really make this worth watching all the way through. You might remember Wriggles & Robins’s life drawing video from a few months ago. ‘Oscillate’ is a Mesmerizing Digital Animation of Sine Waves by Daniel Sierra. Oscillate is a thesis animation made by Daniel Sierra for his MFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York. While essentially an experiment in animation, Sierra says the project was an attempt “to visualize waveform patterns that evolve from the fundamental sine wave to more complex patterns, creating a mesmerizing audio-visual experience in which sight and sound work in unison.” Make sure you view it full-screen, headphones on, you know the drill. I could have watched this continue for twice as long. Hope he got an ‘A’. (thnx, neil!) A Hard-Hitting, Toy-Mincing, Stop-Motion Music Video for Delta Heavy.
This new stop-motion music video for Delta Heavy is pretty incredible. Watch as a cavalcade of classic boardgames from your childhood meet an untimely demise, all for the sake of dubstep. Warning: dubstep, a genre of music my ears are still trying to play nice with. Directed by Ian Robertson. Landfill Harmonic: An Upcoming Documentary About the ‘Recycled Orchestra’ in Cateura, Paraguay. Cateura, Paraguay is a small city that has grown atop a massive dump. It is regarded as one of the poorest slums in Latin America, a village where people live among a sea of garbage. Incredibly, the landfill itself is the primary form of subsistence for many residents, who pick through waste for items that can be used or sold. Prospects for most of the children born in Cateura is bleak as gangs and drugs await many of them.
But then one day, something amazing happened. A garbage picker named Nicolás Gómez (known as “Cola”) found a piece of trash that resembled a violin and brought it to musician Favio Chávez. Using other objects collected from the dump, the pair constructed a functional violin in a place where a real violin is worth more a house. Using items gleaned completely from the dump, the pair then built a cello, a flute, a drum, and suddenly had a wild idea: could a children’s orchestra be born in one of the most depressed areas in the world? Musical Light Swings on the Streets of Montreal. 21 Balançoires (21 Swings) is a recent project by Canadian design collective Daily Tous Les Jours, known for their wide variety of interactive public installations and experiences. Surrounded on both sides by a new music complex and science center, designers Mouna Andraos and Melissa Mongiat chose to bridge the gap between the two by converting a narrow strip of land into an enormous interactive instrument.
Pre-recorded sounds from a xylophone, piano, and other instruments were programmed into color-coded swings that when in use play various notes, however when swung in unison with careful cooperation, more complex melodies and harmonies arise. An additional “secret mode” was programmed to only play when all 21 swings were in use. What a fun idea. Earlier this week a few blogs reported a photo from this series as being some type of swingset bus stop. Diego Stocco Builds an Entire Orchestra of Modified Instruments. Musician and sound artist Diego Stocco (previously here and here) is known for his unique multi-track music videos that combine sounds sampled from common objects and modified instruments. In his latest video Custom Built Orchestra Stocco endeavored to create nearly a dozen custom instruments, some completely from scratch and others from instruments he acquired with structural defects that he then altered to create new musical devices. The result is pretty amazing. See the full details of the project over on Behance.
New Mind-Warping Animated GIF Art from Paolo Čeric. Digital artist Paolo Čeric (previously) continues to crank out some of the most elegant and bizarre gifs I’ve seen lately. The Croatian artist relies on software like Cinema 4D, After Effects, and a programing language called Processing, as well as a wild imagination to strange forms that wobble and twist with energy. See more recent animations on his Tumblr. Scrap Metal Beasts by Robert Jefferson Travis Pond. Shortly after discovering the work of Natsumi Honda I stumbled onto the work of Robert Jefferson Travis Pond of Steel Pond Studios. Pond uses all mater of scrap metal from motorcycle parts to old gears, steel handles, and other found hardware to weld these imposing, well-armored birds, fish, and other beasts.
Watch the time-lapse above to see how he works. (via curiopt) Anti-Gravity Object Modeling: “Mataerial” is a Robot That Draws Sculptures in 3D. A few months ago we saw the invention of the world’s first 3D printing pen, the 3Doodler, that allows people to draw small objects seemingly out of thin air. Now, a large team of researchers including Petr Novikov, Saša Jokić from the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) and Joris Laarman Studio, have decided to up the ante. The result of the team’s research is Mataerial, a large robotic tool that can draw three dimensional objects that sprout vertically from the ground or horizontally from a wall, seemingly without regard to the effects of gravity.
Where traditional 3D printers print layer after layer of 2D material to build more complex shapes, Mataerial relies on a chemical reaction between two components of a thermosetting polymer to solidify almost instantly as it extrudes from a nozzle. Perhaps the Mataerial team says it better: The device can even alter the color of the material being used to create gradients or other shifts in hue in real time. Incredible New Sketchbook Illustrations from Mattias Adolfsson. Book and paper sculptures by Noriko Ambe. Katsumi Hayakawa: Power of Paper. Revolution: The Lifecycle of Water Told in a Stop Motion Pop-Up Book. Paper Landscape Illustrated by Eiko Ojala. Hand-Cut Paper Microorganisms by Charles Clary.
Drawing with Paper: Amazing Papercraft from Lobulo Design. Incredibly Intricate 3D Paper Infographics by Pattern Matters. Geometric Paper Torso with Removable Organs. The Geometric Paper Torso, Now with DIY Templates and Tutorials. Paper Mt. Hood. Cloudy House: A Geodesic Paper Cloud Installation by Tomás Saraceno. Stop Motion Wire and Paper Music Video by Patator Prod. Intricate Wire Drawings by CW Roelle. The Beauty of Mathematics: A Visual Demonstration of Math in Everyday Life. Incredible Interactive Light Sculpture by Joshua Kirsch. One man, 100,000 toothpicks, and 35 years: An incredible kinetic sculpture of San Francisco. Kim Hyun’s Dice Figures. Kyung Woo Han. Wire Anatomy. Jonathan Schipper’s Robotic Sculpture Simulates a Glass Bottle Hurled at a Wall. FLUIDIC – A Sculpture in Motion: An Interactive Field of 12,000 Spheres Illuminated by Lasers.
MÖBIUS: A Stop Motion Sculpture.