Tycho, See, Kinect, Light

Anyone who knows me well will be familiar with my love of music and art, and my particular fondness for mediums where the two intersect. One such example is the music video. Music videos have been around for longer than I have been alive, and the ones that have lingered the longest in my memory have been those that are incredible story tellers or are stunning works of art themselves.

The use of light in Tycho’s music video for “See” is hands down the most innovative one I’ve seen in a very, very, very long time. How does it work? Director Bradley Munkowitz uses a full-spectrum camera to capture the band playing in a pitch-dark room as they are bathed in infrared light emitted from the Microsoft Kinect. The result? A stunning visual treat of dew-like movement which Munkowitz describes on his Vimeo page as “fields of bokeh and shimmering discs [revealing] multiple layers of shape and form”.

See for yourself:

Reverie Roundup: Food Edition I

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 Reverie Roundup is an ongoing series curating quality ideas in quality writing. Some are long form, some are short form, some are just pure fun!

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To take into account during y’alls’ food-filled Thanksgiving:

– Camel milk. Yes, it’s a thing. (And apparently quite tasty!)

– Juice cleanses: not actually cleansing after all. (Eat whole fruits; treat juice – aka liquid sugar – as a treat.)

– Don’t remain unaware of what an apple should express. Boycott the Red (Un)Delicious! (“But as genes for beauty were favoured over those for taste, the skins grew tough and bitter around mushy, sugar-soaked flesh.” )

– Red Bull is just soda. (but with taurine & B-vitamins!)

 

 

Essence of the Night Drive

There are two types of people in this world: those who love watching the world speed by, and those who don’t. I for one, was born the former. A lifelong airplane window seat-er, shameless people watcher, and eternal road trip keener, there is just something so inherently calming and mesmerizing about steady, continuous movement. Perhaps voluntary hypnotism lies at the core of all beauty.

What I love most about all of these experiences is the inescapable wonder of life that comes and goes in your field of vision. In the perpetual forward motion of both time and space, you are simultaneously an actor and a spectator. The sensation of temporary stillness and suspension, even in all its falseness, is an opportunity for reorientation and re-inspiration before stepping back into the flow.

In this video, Japanese filmmaker Hiroshi Kondo expresses the night drive at a whole other sensory level. What is usually a surface experience, Kondo distills instead to its essence of light, sound, and movement. Hypnosis it is, and a refreshing one at that.

Objects of Convenient & Inconvenient Design

 

“The Uncomfortable is a collection of deliberately inconvenient everyday objects, by Athens-based architect Katerina Kamprani.”

When was the last time you thought deeply about an everyday item? If you’re like most, everyday objects are, well, everyday objects! They’re ubiquitous. They exist predominately to function. They provide utility during key moments as you go about your day, and fade smoothly into the background upon the temporary completion of their duties. They are best personified as recipients of the Best Supporting Actor award: regulars who can steal the scene when duty calls and are indispensable to others’ journeys of advancement, yet are never the focal point in the grand scheme of things.

This is why the Atlantic‘s Object Lessons is one of my favourite essay series. In it, the backstories of everyday things (either ordinary or on the quirky side) are dived into with a relish and an attention to detail they’re rarely afforded. From shower curtains, ice buckets, and brothel tokens, to light switches, shipping containers, and poems, there is much in the world to think and learn about once you get started down the rabbit hole.

What I love most about everyday objects is the sheer brilliance packaged in their unassuming design. As The Uncomfortable design series demonstrates, slight tweaks to what makes these objects work so well can wreak havoc on their basic functionality and render them utterly useless. So, the next time you reach for that doorknob, thank the brilliant inventors and tinkerers who’ve made it as far from a pain in the arse to use!

 

 

Reverie Roundup: Led Zeppelin’s Dubious Originality, Injustices Rarely Forgotten, Library Contents, and Marge Simpson

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 Reverie Roundup is an ongoing series curating quality ideas in quality writing. Some are long form, some are short form, some are just pure fun!

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Proper credit for some of LedZep’s most recognizable songs, graphic c/o Bloomberg Businessweek: Innovation & Design

 

– Stairway to Heaven: was Led Zeppelin influenced or did Led Zeppelin steal? Plus, this fun game to illustrate the eery similarity. (Sampling in its early form! But sampling while passing off the work as wholly original?! No! BOOOOO!)

– Why every interaction matters, especially when you’re in a position of power. (Injustices of any degree are remembered for a long time by those on the receiving end, and easily forgotten by their originators)

– A library’s contents as a reflection of the current librarian’s management objectives. (dilemma of: preservation vs. service for a specific community)

– Marge Simpson models the most iconic fashion poses of all time. (aw yis, Magic Margie Marge, what a gal!)

Reverie Roundup: 18th-C Parisian Mistresses, Same-Sex Marriage, Bacon Fat, & Brian Williams

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 Reverie Roundup is an ongoing series curating quality ideas in quality writing. Some are long form, some are short form, some are just pure fun!

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Prolific French royal mistress Gabrielle D’Estrées, in her most popular pose!

 

– French police in the 18th-century kept extensive tabs on Paris’ elite prostitutes (ie. mistresses/kept women/dames entretenues). The purpose? Loose governance of a hidden population and its commercial space, by making visible what was socially accepted yet not fully socially embraced. (Information is power. Awareness is passive yet provides the opportunity to become active. Those who can operate without detection are in the most powerful position.)

– How the POTUS came to announce his position on same-sex marriage. Featuring the decisive words of Joe Biden Jr:

“I look at those two beautiful kids,” Biden began. “I wish everybody could see this. All you got to do is look in the eyes of those kids. And no one can wonder, no one can wonder whether or not they are cared for and nurtured and loved and reinforced. And folks, what’s happening is, everybody is beginning to see it.

“Things are changing so rapidly, it’s going to become a political liability in the near term for an individual to say, ‘I oppose gay marriage.’ Mark my words.”

Having started down this road, he seemed incapable of stopping. People his children’s age could not understand why gay couples should not be allowed to marry, he said. “ ‘I mean, what’s the problem, Dad?’

“And my job — our job — is to keep this momentum rolling to the inevitable.”

– “A skillet of bacon grease is a little munitions factory.” The U.S. government’s call for fat salvage donations during WWII. (Bacon fat was presumably given up grudgingly – it appears our older-generation brethren were also infatuated with the delights of bacon!)

– Brian Williams, NBC anchor and rapper extraordinaire, dishing it out to Jimmy Fallon with some of the best straight-faced thug-life references out there. (“I would like some pride of authorship – what about some early, pre-hearing loss Foxy Brown?” + “I’ll do Rollout, uhh, who’s your weed man why you smoke so good?”)

Bob Mazzer: 1970s/80s London Tube Scenes

There are so many things we see on our daily commutes but don’t always have the opportunity or guts to capture. They don’t necessary have to be wild or odd – just a little out of the ordinary, just enough to catch one’s eye. Luckily for Londoners, photographer Bob Mazzer was paying attention.

Some trains were not in vain.

For more Mazzer delights, there’s this short VICE interview, this Telegraph compilation, and this profile of the exhibition opening night.

The Barkley Marathon: Toughest 100 Miles Ever?

Lazarus Lake, Barkley co-creator, lights the cigarette that starts the race.

This is the ultra-marathon to finish. 5 loops, 60000 vertical feet, 60 hours. Only 14 runners finished in the last 30 years? That’s a stat that speaks for itself.

Love this quote:

“You haven’t tested your limit until you’ve tried something you can’t do. Then you know where your limit is – it’s right there where I quit, that was it.” – Lazarus Lake

Really puts into perspective the value of starting on a path towards a dream goal – you might not succeed this time, you might not succeed next time, you might not succeed in the next few years, but it sure as hell beats waiting on the sidelines and not gaining any insight at all.

The worthwhile video here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/372247/the-roughest-toughest-race-in-the-world/

Hilda Longinotti: The Ballsy Woman

“When I started with him, I had no balls. But over the 20 years, I grew them and grew them and grew them. So I think he’d be very proud of the ballsy woman I have become today,” – Hilda Longinotti

Leaning in, pre-Sheryl Sandberg style. The type of woman I’d love to sit beside on a long plane, train, or automobile ride!

 

 

 

 

Reverie Roundup: Julian Assange, Repetitive Music, Arthur Miller, Burrnesha, Germany’s Power Predicament

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 Reverie Roundup is an ongoing series curating quality ideas in quality writing. Some are long form, some are short form, some are just pure fun!

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Mr. Julian Assange.

– Thought writing that paper was bad? Try ghostwriting Julian Assange’s autobiography. Quite a long writeup, but extremely telling and an excellent, excellent read. It would be an injustice to our generation’s memory of WikiLeaks without having read Andrew O’Hagan’s essay and first-hand account on the man behind it all.

> “And there it is, the old conflation, implying that his detention is to do with his work against secret-keepers in America. It is not. He was detained at Ellingham Hall while appealing against a request to extradite him to Sweden to answer questions relating to two rape allegations. A man who conflates such truths loses his moral authority right there: I tried to spell this out to him while writing the book, but he wouldn’t listen, sometimes suggesting I was naive not to consider the rape allegations to have been a ‘honey trap’ set by dark foreign forces, or that the Swedes were merely keen to extradite him to America. Because he has no ability to see through other people’s eyes he can’t see how dishonest this conflation seems even to supporters such as me.”

> “He told me about a failed siege by the police and about some projects they were getting off the ground, but quickly, as always, turned to demolishing one of his supporters. He continued with his habit of biting the hand that fed him, satirising or undermining those who came to his aid.”

> “He has always cared too much about the fame and too much about the credit, while real relationships and real action often fade to nothing. Snowden was now the central hub and Julian was keen to help him and keen to be seen to be helping him. It’s how the ego works and the ego always comes first.”

– The power of repetition in music: the speech-to-sound illusion, the semantic satiation effect. (Try it out yourself!)

“Repetition can actually shift your perceptual circuitry such that the segment of sound is heard as music: not thought about as similar to music, or contemplated in reference to music, but actually experienced as if the words were being sung. This [speech-to-sound] illusion demonstrates what it means to hear something musically. The ‘musicalisation’ shifts your attention from the meaning of the words to the contour of the passage (the patterns of high and low pitches) and its rhythms (the patterns of short and long durations), and even invites you to hum or tap along with it. In fact, part of what it means to listen to something musically is to participate imaginatively.”

– Arthur Miller’s short essay on his boyhood in Brooklyn. (Always love me some Arthur Miller!)

– The Mountains Where Women Live as Men.

“Don’t confuse who I am with being a lesbian,” he said, “or I’ll kick you in the shins.

The word burrnesha translates as “he-she.” And like most burrneshas, Haki was a virgin who had taken a vow of celibacy that elevated him to a time-honored position in the community, the in-between person. The origins of the tradition weren’t clear, but historically, when the male heirs of a family died or had been killed and property could no longer be passed in patrilineal fashion, an allowance was made: If a virgin daughter remained, she could assume the role of patriarch by swearing in front of a dozen village elders that she would remain celibate for the rest of her life. By this declaration, the burrnesha secured the family estate—and honor. It was, as one observer told me, “a choice of force, not happiness,” a social construct and selfless act to protect the family.

– The Reluctant Giant: Why Germany Shuns Its Global Role. (history has both hindered & inspired)