yhancik : aggregated

This Saturday, at the DNA in Brussels



Zerkalo, a project coproduced by Victoria Lukas and Heinrich Mueller*
Drexciya, Japanese Telecom, Arpanet & Dopplereffekt


With visuals by uliawithred

As sneaky and/or awkward as Louis Theroux might sometimes be, it was a nice and sensible documentary about (not meeting) Michael Jackson.

You can, quite ironically, see Louis being turned down by Michael's close friend Uri Geller... in favour of Martin Bashir who was then working on his own documentary, the infamous Living with Michael Jackson.



It's worth a watch. Probably more than what will flood our TV for the coming days/weeks/months.



Also, from Boing Boing



*sigh*

On Friday, I saw Fennesz live, in a small church, for free !

And thanks Cthulhu, it was free, because it's been terribly short, and not pretty good :/

1) When he arrived, his laptop was obviously missing from the gear, so he had to get it back at the hotel (or something like that). It started like 20-30 minutes late.




2) It was either too messy or too monotonous... he was basically nonchalantly playing is guitar, then fiddling around on his laptop, but it wasn't really leading anywhere or constructing anything. It felt like I was watching Christian in his studio experimenting around with some sounds. Why not. BUT WELL, it was free, eh.




Before that, I saw the second half of BL!NDMAN's set. Very contemporary and minimal, and something that, I think, womanonfire & nomi would have enjoyed. One of the member strangely looked like a smoother version of David Bowie... especially with that saxophone...



Alva Noto was playing like, next door, at the Recyclart, at the same time. So I missed it.

Instead I saw Byetone (not to be nerdly misread as Byteone), which a bit like a groovy/danceable version of Alva Noto (with an hint of Pan Sonic). It was nice enough.


Click on the pic for a video of.. well a Byetone performance at OFFF'09, but it was pretty similar ;)

~

On a side-note, totally unrelated, but the Weekly World News is on Google Books!

Bad Mobile Phone Pic #4

yhancik posted a photo:

Byetone Live @ Recyclart

Bad Mobile Phone Pic #3

yhancik posted a photo:

Even the live sound engineers browse Facebook at work :p

Bad Mobile Phone Pic #1

yhancik posted a photo:

Christian Fennesz live in Brussels, Église Notre-Dame de la Chapelle, 2009

Bad Mobile Phone Pic #2

yhancik posted a photo:

Herr Fennesz's Holy Laptop

I've never really liked war games (videogames not wargames :p), because I'm not exactly militaristic, and the idea of "playing war" (especially historical ones) is a bit disturbing.

Still I've enjoyed Operation Flashpoint, released in summer 2001, because it was probably the best "sandboxing" game at the time.
In other words, as opposed to corridor oriented, heavily scripted games, it gave you a large "playground" with many possibilities (including the ability to use various vehicles).

It was pretty realistic, unforgiving. I'm not much into hardcore simulations, but the fact that this was "not fun" made it more acceptable as a war game.
Crawling miserably on the ground because your legs were hurt was... some kind of experience.

I was playing OpF when I heard that those planes didn't accidentally hit the Twin Towers. I had no idea what the world would turn into in the coming months, but playing a virtual solider didn't felt.. right.
And since then I have not played much anymore, except for some multiplayer games with kant312 & co.

Bohemia Interactive is releasing the second successor to Operation Flashpoint. Called Armed Assault 2, it's basically the same old thing, but bigger and more powerful. Since it's a sandboxing game (that thus mostly relies and its mechanisms), it can only make the experience more rich.

The following videos have been made with the editor. Which means that basically someone chosed a map, put a bunch of units on it (between 1000 an 1500), and started the game. From there, the AI will take care of every single character, except the player of course.





It's not about the technical achievement. It's about a simulation engine becoming a drama engine.
It's about being put in the shoes of squaddie running helplessly in a large and confusing battleground, in a grim night.

There's still that idea that a relevant, moving, deep game has to be as great as an Hollywood film, with a couple of memorable characters, and a great story spreading across significant scenes. It can work, but to me it's missing the point and specificities of videogame as a medium.

In cinema, we need a scenario because the world it creates can't live by itself. It's like a chessboard without players.
Computer simulations have the ability to build a world that lives by itself. Even a set of simple rules can produce a large array of situations and behaviours. As in life, your story becomes the series of events you went through, following circumstances and your own decisions. It's not a scenario anymore, it's your own story.

The videos above wouldn't work as a movie. Nobody would watch that simple solider lost in an unknown war for two hours. To keep anyone's attention you'd need dialogues (or worse, a voiceover), some background, some pathos, etc etc (except in video art, of course). Videogames can afford to do without all that.

Saying that the experience in ArmA2 is better than [some great war film] would be like comparing "visiting Berlin" with Wings of Desire.
But games taking this direction are, to me, more relevant as experiences than those that stay stuck as eternal movies wannabies.

Not that it is, of course, the only direction videogames should take, but that's a potential of interactive narration largely underexploited (especially when it comes to the over-exploited genre of "war shooters").
When it comes to "first person" games, at least, I can only think of STALKER, and GTA3/4 to some level (strategy games are a different story. I think..)

délicieusement rebaptisée "Cinematek".
(dès lors devrais-je écrire "Se soire @ la cinematek ya sa lol" ?)



Oh oui!
avec introduction par cet architecte de François Schuiten... plus tard dans le mois y'a Midam Présente Alien, oh oui (bis)

"Firefox, most popular search engine after Microsoft & Apple"

Sheesh, it's just like my father saying "Google" for Firefox, "Internet" for browser, "Adobe" for Acrobat or "Microsoft" for Office.

It also could totally start a meme.

The two foxes

yhancik posted a photo:

A new Google experiment, displaying results in a grid.
Boring example by Google : http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=dog%20breeds

More funny :
http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=memes
http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=villains
http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=rephlex
http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=rambo

Thank you, Google Squared!

Now go have fun with it, dear friends!

So Johnny Lee was doing clever things with the Wiimote.
He HAD to be hired by Nintendo.

He's been very silent for a long, but the project he's been collaborating with has been unveiled at this year's E3. And it's with... Microsoft!


http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/projectnatal

It's still more of a promotional teaser than a real tech demo, but it gives you an idea.

It's like the Wii without a Wiimote.
I'm a bit concerned that will suffer from the same issues then... accidents, imprecision, and lack of interesting games to use the new "controller" (especially in this age of crossplatformery).. but well, we'll see.

And if people manage to hack into the device so we can use it on art project, it will surely be awesome :p

~

Do you remember the Nintendo ON hoax ?



It was exactly 4 years ago.

Happy Birthday, womanonfire & orlandobr !


And aside from that, on June 5th at iMal, there will be a concert of (among others) Christina Vantzou, one half of The Dead Texan (the other half being Adam Wiltzie from Stars of the Lid).

The other artists playing will be Christopher Willits (who obviously worked with Sakamoto and Matmos) and some Quix.

Here's a video of a Willits' track, illustrated by Vantzou.



http://www.imal.org/ESS

Well this is what I got from Waxy's recent posts.

1) Meme sceneries


or : the background of various memes, without its main subject.




2) Bootyclipse


or : "booty-shaking videos on YouTube with the booty removed"

This is one of my favourite works of digital art ever. A reference, to me.



http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/granulare-synthesen/

I don't know if it's one of those awful 90s "cyberthrillers" that comes out a bit late, or an unnecessary revival.
But since the script is written by the same guy who committed "The Net", it's probably the former.



To add to the retro feel, Bruce Willis (lost in another cybermess after Die Hard 4) has wonderfull hair.



But if I understand well, he has hair because he's the robot version of the Real Bruce. So he's "better looking" (hohohohahahahahhihihihi).
It will also be less confusing for the average spectator.


Here's the real Bruce all into the cybermatrix :



Now he looks like a roadie. From the future.

But whatever, aren't your excited yet ?

Why does it remind me of Chou Aniki ?


Et ça semble tout à fait coller à ce grand fait d'actualité.

I don't know... I wish I could salute the fact that they're trying to make something slightly different from MTV standards.
But.. from the start I'm a bit dubious about it.
The futuristic tone is quite obvious. How much do they really embrace the cyber-techno-future, and how much is it a pose?

That actually reminds me of the debate around Billy Idol's 1993 album Cyberpunk.

Released to overwhelmingly negative reviews, Cyberpunk polarized the internet communities of the period. Detractors viewed it as an act of cooptation and opportunistic commercialization. It was also seen as part of a process that saw the overuse of the term "cyberpunk" until the word lost meaning. Alternatively, supporters saw Idol's efforts as harmless and well-intentioned, and were encouraged by his new interest in cyberculture.

There are a couple of funny things with that Boom Boom Pow song & video.

The very obvious display of a HP TouchSmart laptop is a kinda lame product placement, and already undermines their futuristic message. What's futuristic about a contemporary piece of hardware ? That's so 2000 and late, to quote Ferggie's lyrics...

Later : "Y'all stuck on Super 8 shit / That low-fi stupid 8 bit / I'm on that HD flat". LULZ.
Especially when they praise the 808 later.

Or things like "I'm on the supersonic boom / Y'all hear the spaceship zoom / When, when I step inside the room / Them girls go ape-shit, uh". P.I.M.P., space-style ? I wish it was humorous, but it doesn't seem to be.


And in the end, seriously...

It's like Peter Jackson (the splatter comedy one) made a movie with David Cronenberg. In Japan.
Except that it's real.































Although of course it's not.
There's nothing like fiction disguised as reality, especially when it's tackling the myyysterious and the unknown.
The scholars of the Miskatonic University won't deny this :p