Thursday 30 December 2010

Ametsub's Repeatedly


Designed, directed and produced in Turin and Milan by Lucio Arese, Repeatedly is the official video of Ametsub's new single released by Mille Plateaux, on the The Nothings of the North album.

Lucio Arese created this entertaining media art film by deploying experimental stop motion animation techniques, in order to create artificial mapping topologies of various 3D and virtual geometric shapes. These forms were used to represent the various glitches in harmonic and rhythmic residua structures of the music, itself giving rise to a neatly formed audio video synchronization.

Interesting to note that almost every frame of the video becomes a digital sculpture blended into the urban landscape, go here to view them.



Ametsub has one of the coolest musician websites I've experienced for some time !

Saturday 25 December 2010

‘The Metamorphosis of Osdorp’


is both a book and a video using the book from which slick computer graphics are infused with live action creating an intriguing video, celebrating the emergence of Amsterdam Nieuw-West, from two nearby urbanized areas of Osdorp.

This short slick  entertaining animation, (produced by PlusOne Studios) combines live-action with digital media, illustrating the architectural highlights of the restructured urbanized areas of Slotervaart and Geuzenveld-Slotermeer into  Amsterdam Nieuw-West.

Monday 20 December 2010

Paper craft animation: The Move by Mandy Smith


is a charming short story animation inspired by moving in Amsterdam, illustrated through paper. It is a subtly sublime piece of entertainment made ever more enjoyable, by the quaint nature of Mandy Smith's delicate paper sculpture constructions and set designs. The  cool music and sound design from Lawrence Horne, Piers Burbrook de Vere and Jeremy Yang, works a jovial treat.

Mandy Smith's, media art is subtle and complex yet seductively simple and cute, visit her website, to view her clever paper craft skills.

Credits
Direction and Art Direction/ Mandy Smith
DOP/ Ties Versteegh
Stunt Co-ordinator/ Lars Siemens
Online Artist/ Daisy Hulsken
Grading/ Rachel Stone
Post Production/ The Ambassadors


Friday 17 December 2010

Regenerating or self-healing plastic


Plastic is in no doubt a problematic material particularly in the light of how often it turns up as detritus polluting our waterways oceans and interurban landfills. But there are some areas of our erstwhile existence that particular gadgets and technologies are specifically relied upon, such as certain parts of wind turbines, medical equipment, satellites, aircraft or the Mars Rover, to keep working without fail.

Thus when a particular plastic part breaks or causes the whole thing to malfunction, it more or less means replacing the whole thing - no doubt in some cases a very costly and time consuming thing to have to do. But then along comes a clever new polymer invention, a shape-memory polymer that allows a certain kind of broken plastic part to self-repair.

In this video, advanced materials scientists Mia Siochi & Keith Gordon at Nasa's Langley research center demonstrate a self-healing polymeric material that repairs itself immediately after a breakage.



Simultaneously, Henry Sodano and his team at the Arizona State University have "brought researchers a step closer to the ideal: an autonomous system that could "regenerate itself entirely" Read more.

Monday 13 December 2010

The futuristic 'Tûranor' PlanetSolar catamaran


is the worlds largest solar powered boat and is presently preparing to depart Cancun having been there, promoting the use of sustainable energy to the delegates of the World climate conference of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change).

The 'Tûranor', a Swiss creation, is set to become the first boat ever to circumnavigate the world using dedicated solar power, slicing the water at a top speed of 14 knots

The double-hulled boat is 31 meters long, 29 m wide and 7.6 m tall with a crew of six, was developed and by Raphaël Domjan from Switzerland and funded by the German businessman Immo Ströher.

The craft was built with incredibly light yet very durable carbon fibre sandwich construction.by New Zealander, Craig Loomes who is considered to be one of the world’s most innovative boat designers and built by the Kiel-based boat-building firm, Knierim Yachtbau.  The following video shows the boat crisply sailing through the water with its almost 2 meter wide specifically engineered propellers.



'Tûranor' PlanetSolar uses the highest rated  Lithium battery cells available, powering two electric motors and the 500 square meters of solar panels allowing the catamaran to travel for up to three full days, even without direct sunlight. Go here to read more and or view more photographs of it here.

Friday 10 December 2010

360 degree Surround sight video camera


The multi-lens eyes of insects like the house fly have inspired researchers from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) to invent an unusual looking camera that captures 360 degrees of simultaneous images, which then reconstructs the images in 3D.

The researchers have developed two prototypes, both using camera lenses found in mobile phones. One has a lens head about the size of a tennis ball which  features over a hundred camera lenses and the other about the size of a squash ball with only fifteen lenses.

The user can choose to have them all work together to obtain a panoramic image that covers a 360° range of vision, or individually to capture a particular point of view.

Professor Pierre Vandergheynst of EPFL's Signal Processing Laboratory, talks in the video of how the system works and of the abundant uses to which the revolutionary technology can be applied, including video-conferences, video surveillance, movie making, and creating backgrounds for video games.

Tuesday 7 December 2010

The ubiquitous uses of Spray-on Liquid Glass


is a revolutionary new Nanoscale invention that is non-toxic, transparent  and can protect almost any surface against any damage from hazards such as water, UV radiation, dirt, heat and or microscopical bacteria.  The material is also breathable, flexible and environmentally friendly, which makes it suitable for an enormous array of everyday products.

"The liquid glass spray (technically termed “SiO2 ultra-thin layering”) consists of almost pure silicon dioxide (silica, the normal compound in glass) extracted from quartz sand.  Water or ethanol is added, depending on the type of surface to be coated. There are no additives, and the nano-scale glass coating bonds to the surface because of the quantum forces involved. According to the manufacturers, liquid glass has a long-lasting antibacterial effect because microbes landing on the surface cannot divide or replicate easily." physorg

Sprayed onto almost any surface, an invisible film 100 nanometers thick some 500 times thinner than a human hair, forms a completely impermeable layer. Central to the product's ubiquity is that it's available in a solution of either alcohol or water dependent on which surface needs to be protected. Spray-on-glass looks as though it will make most cleaning products obsolete, since it can be used on almost any surface in the home, and one spray is said to last a year.



"Several organizations are said to be testing the product, including a train company in Britain, which is using liquid glass on both the interior and exterior of the train, a luxury hotel chain, a designer clothing company and a German branch of a hamburger chain. " Telegraph

According to Nanopool, sometime in the near future, almost every product you purchase will be protected with a highly durable easy-to-clean coating.

"Liquid glass spray is perhaps the most important nanotechnology product to emerge to date. It will be available in DIY stores in Britain soon, with prices starting at around £5 ($8 US)." physorg

Sunday 5 December 2010

Out of the Inkwell: The Tantalizing Fly


is a marvelously entertaining little historical cartoon animation (1919) directed and produced by Max Fleischer for Bray Studios.

Out of the Inkwell was a major animated series of the silent era produced by Max Fleischer from 1918 to 1929, who invented the Rotoscope. Film was projected through an opening in an easel, covered by by a glass pane on which he drew the  sequences. Advancing the film one frame at a time the projected image was traced onto paper.

The popularity of the Out of the Inkwell series was driven by the integration and interaction of live action sequences of Max Fleischer in the process of creating his ink pen drawings with his animation sequences.

Wednesday 1 December 2010

Earthquake Viewer demonstration video

Earthquakes like volcanic eruptions, mud slides, avalanches and tornado's are among the most tragic outcomes for people and man made structures globally and locally which usually occur with little or no warning.

Of all those natural disaster occurrences, earthquakes according to scientists are the most frequent, and of the 500,000 earthquakes that occur each year, about 100,000 can actually be felt.

Scientists from the UC Davis KeckCAVE have recently developed an Earthquake Viewer application in order to visualize the outcomes of 70000 earthquakes that occurred from 1899 to 2010.

Here now is a video animation where each dot on the globe equals one earthquake hypocenter. The movie begins by revolving around the earth transitioning between a transparent earth and non-transparent earth. The movie then zooms on the geographies of Tonga Trench - near Fiji; Southern California to Mexico; and the Aleutian Arc - near Alaska.



The soundless aspect to this video perhaps helps us commemorate their impact on our existence but also comments on the haunting devastation that they continuously bring upon our consciousness and planet alike.

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