Donald Duck Discovers Glenn Beck: A Remix

in Art, Current Affairs, Television | October 3rd, 2010

This week, Jonathan McIn­tosh (of Rebel­lious Pix­els) released a new cartoon,“Right Wing Radio Duck,” that remix­es dozens of clas­sic Walt Dis­ney car­toons from the 1930s to 1960s. The artis­tic work is seam­less. The video is down­right fun to watch. And the under­ly­ing mes­sage is entire­ly con­tem­po­rary. A la Col­bert: Keep Fear Alive.

The new video is released under a Cre­ative Com­mons license, and, accord­ing to the artist, this trans­for­ma­tive remix “con­sti­tutes a fair-use of any copy­right­ed mate­r­i­al as pro­vid­ed for in sec­tion 107 of the US copy­right law.” Will Dis­ney, a com­pa­ny that exer­cis­es enor­mous pow­er over Amer­i­can copy­right law, agree? That remains to be seen.

To Glenn Beck fans who dou­ble as OC read­ers (if we have any), I apol­o­gize in advance.

via Alec Couros (aka @courosa)

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John Waters: The Point of Contemporary Art

in Art, Film | September 28th, 2010

If con­tem­po­rary art baf­fles you, if you’ve ever looked at con­tem­po­rary art and won­dered “what’s the point?,” then give some­times con­tro­ver­sial film­mak­er John Waters four min­utes of your time. He’ll break it down for you in sim­ple, if not crude, terms: “Con­tem­po­rary art’s job is to wreck what­ev­er came before it. And from the very begin­ning after the Old Mas­ters, from then on, each gen­er­a­tion wrecked that. That some­thing is pret­ty and beau­ti­ful is prob­a­bly the worst thing that you could say today in con­tem­po­rary art about some­thing, unless it’s so pret­ty it’s nau­se­at­ing.”

You can watch more seg­ments of his Big Think inter­view here.

Relat­ed Con­tent

John Waters’ RISD Grad­u­a­tion Speech: Real Wealth Is Life With­out A*Holes

John Waters Takes You on a Com­i­cal Tour of His Apart­ment (1986)

John Waters’ Hand-Made, Odd­ball Christ­mas Cards: 1964-Present

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

 

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David Simon, Creator of The Wire, Named 2010 MacArthur Fellow

in Art, Film, Television | September 27th, 2010

The 2010 MacArthur Fel­lows were named today. The lat­est “genius” grants go to 23 recip­i­ents, includ­ing David Simon, the cre­ator of The Wire, the long run­ning HBO show that was real­ly (Simon once said) “a polit­i­cal tract mas­querad­ing as a cop show.” Above, Simon talks more about the thread run­ning through his work. The Wire, Treme and Gen­er­a­tion Kill – they’re all ulti­mate­ly about the end of the Amer­i­can Empire, and the cit­i­zens that get left behind. Like the oth­er grant win­ners, Simon will receive $500,000 over the next five years to spend how­ev­er he sees fit …

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The Smallest Stop-Motion Animation Ever

in Art, Film, Science | September 21st, 2010

From the mak­ers of Wal­lace and Gromit comes the small­est stop-motion ani­ma­tion ever. The lil­liput­ian main char­ac­ter, apt­ly named Dot, stands a mere 0.35-inch-tall. Accord­ing to Pop­u­lar Sci­ence, the ani­ma­tors “used a 3D print­er to make 50 dif­fer­ent ver­sions of Dot, because she is too small to manip­u­late or bend like they would oth­er stop-motion ani­ma­tion char­ac­ters.” Then each print-up was hand-paint­ed by artists look­ing through a micro­scope. Once the set and char­ac­ters were ready to go, the direc­tors attached a CellScope (a cell­phone cam­era with a 50x mag­ni­fi­ca­tion micro­scope) to a Nokia N8 and let the cam­eras roll. You can watch the final cut above.

via Pop­u­lar Sci­ence

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The Unseen Sea: San Francisco Natural Beauty in HD

in Art, Life | September 19th, 2010


The San Fran­cis­co Bay Area hard­ly needs any dress­ing up. Its nat­ur­al beau­ty speaks for itself. But this short HD film by Simon Chris­ten, a pro­fes­sion­al ani­ma­tor and aspir­ing pho­tog­ra­ph­er, cer­tain­ly gives artis­tic expres­sion to the allur­ing land­scape of this coastal region. Clouds take on the appear­ance of waves, and lights look like lava, as the col­lec­tion of time laps­es roll by. The film (which you can catch in a strik­ing large for­mat here) comes to us via @AndrewHazlett. Nick Cave pro­vides the accom­pa­ny­ing music — “Mary’s Song” from the sound­track of Assas­si­na­tion of Jesse James.

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Free Online: The Original Superman Cartoon Series in Technicolor (1941–1943)

in Art, Film, Television | September 16th, 2010

Ear­li­er this week, we flagged a dig­i­tal archive of com­ic books from the Gold­en Age. Now we stum­ble upon this nugget from the same era: A video archive that show­cas­es the com­plete Super­man ani­mat­ed car­toon series from the ear­ly 40’s, all in Tech­ni­col­or. Based on the orig­i­nal DC Comics char­ac­ter, these 17 episodes appeared on Amer­i­can movie screens (before the show­ing of fea­ture films) between 1941 and 1943. And they were tak­en seri­ous­ly as an art form. The first episode, com­mon­ly known as “The Mad Sci­en­tist” (watch above), was nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar in 1942, and, in case you some­how missed it, it spells out the whole premise/backstory of the Super­man saga. These episodes – all now in the pub­lic domain – can be viewed on Youtube. Wikipedia pro­vides some oth­er options for watching/downloading these vin­tage bits of Amer­i­cana media.

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Everything is a Remix

in Art, Media, Music | September 15th, 2010


“Remix­ing” has fig­ured cen­tral­ly in the Web 2.0 vocab­u­lary. But, remix­ing isn’t new. It has a long his­to­ry, going back as long as we’ve been mak­ing art. Artists have always been col­lect­ing mate­r­i­al, com­bin­ing it, and trans­form­ing it into some­thing new. Kir­by Fer­gu­son’s new video, Every­thing is a Remix, teas­es this apart as he brings you back to 1960s Paris and Lon­don – to the cut-up lit­er­a­ture of William S. Bur­roughs and the songs writ­ten by Led Zep­pelin with a lib­er­al amount of bor­row­ing. This video, the first in a series of four, appears on Fer­gu­son’s web site in a nice large for­mat. Have a look and con­sid­er donat­ing to his Every­thing is a Remix project.

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How To Photograph an Atomic Bomb

in Art, History | September 14th, 2010

Now show­ing on the New York Times web site, a haunt­ing video slideshow called “Cap­tur­ing the Atom Bomb on Film.” It fea­tures 23 arrest­ing images of atom­ic bomb tests con­duct­ed by the US mil­i­tary between 1945 and 1962. The images (all orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in the 2007 book How to Pho­to­graph an Atom­ic Bomb) are accom­pa­nied by an audio record­ing of George Yoshi­take. Now 82, he’s one of the few sur­viv­ing cam­era­men to cap­ture these destruc­tive weapons in action.

via @palafo

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