Obsessively Interested ... in Everything.

Today on AdVerve, Darryl posted this beautiful video featuring Michael Wolff for Intel Visual Life. I just felt so much better after watching it. It's pleasing to the eye and commands your attention, but in quietly; something in you just gives pause. It's the story of the work that we do and the story of us, as individuals, traveling quietly through our lives.

You'll see here that Wolff emphasises the importance of curiosity, appreciation and imagination -- none of which are possible without really taking the time to see. We know this intuitively but it's harder to live; our inherent desire to be simpler is in constant combat with the world's desire to populate us with itself. I wish I could carry this sensibility with me all the time.

Scrape Scraperteeth: Artgames Recognised as Gameification Seizes Our Souls

Scrape Scraperteeth is a new artgame by my friend Jason Nelson, who, with it, has received some much-deserved recognition (at long last!).

In his words:

The game was commissioned by the San Francisco Gallery of Modern Art for a series on interactive works. Hopefully this is a sign that, as the recent Supreme Court ruling stated, that games (even simple/odd ones like mine) should be seen/created as artworks first and galleries are recognizing the artistic potential of the game engine and playscapes.

What I love about Jason's games is that the rules aren't obvious. You have to learn and relearn them in the landscape provided -- a landscape so loaded with cultural cues that they're an exercise in themselves. Let me know what you think. (Jeff Kwiatek has already responded to me with, "Oh my god what is this? It's overwhelming ... the stress.")

Here are other games of Jason's that I've covered, over the years. I have always found that with him I don't just play, I linger.

Videos to Feed Your Face, Head + Heart

I'm all MIA right now because MIPTV is eating my life, but I've seen so much good stuff in just the last handful of hours that I have to stick them here before I forget.

To start with, with help from James Martin I discovered French air performance band Airnadette last night. Their energy and stage quality is incredible. Plus, it's the kind of art that can only be born in an ever-more-connected world with a shared nostalgia and a passion for mashups. A glimpse of last night's performance at the 314, footage courtesy of our vigilant music bloodhound Stuart Dredge:



They got French people to dance! That basically never happens. And like a spell being broken, shortly after a handful of ever-more-intense encores the crowd awkwardly dispersed, leaving the music hangin'.

This I found on Engadget this morning: a Kinect hack that turns Barcelona tourists into 3D souvenirs - that is, a statue of yourself, posing like a statue, that you can take home! How meta. And also another really good reason to keep up with what's happening in 3D tech dev right now:



A magnificent mashup of art and science, brought to you by blablabLAB, which made use of three Kinects and a RepRap machine.

And lastly - this is just gratuitous - the music video for Jolie Coquine, the first single off the Caravan Palace soundtrack, 2008, via Murielle Cadiou:



I just love the production in this. And that slow, labyrinthine way of revealing a story ... it's compelling.

'We Believe' Makes Me Want the iPad 2

Look at how this ad gets the message across. There is no sex appeal, no pop; it is quiet, feather-light and functional. I would like my life to be this way. I am halfway convinced that if I purchase this, I can pack my life inside it and it too will be quiet, feather-light and functional.

And then I will become a ballerina, and angels will sing when I put one foot before the other, and glints of sun or silver cloud lining will dance blithely across my pristine smooth cheek, and everyone will love me, and I will be famous.

'Litany' by The Independent

"Litany," by Lowe Worldwide for The Independent, launched in 2000 and still makes a nice, melodic watch.

You will occasionally feel provoked. You'll wonder what this is building to, what revolutionary slogan you're about to get sandbagged with ... but the conclusion is simply the product itself, quietly parked on a porch step with a last accompanying "...don't read."

You are moved, but not overworked. You understand.

What finesse.

Via Georges Mohammed-Chérif of the infamous Buzzman, which most recently graced us with a convoy of falling angels.

35MM: The Message, The Medium, The Message

The speed with which awesome stuff is being created, published and shared today is whiplash-inducing, exponential.

35mm from Pascal Monaco on Vimeo.

I can hardly keep up. And I have trouble imagining a time or place when true creative work was rare and had to be passed, intact but tattered, from hand to hand, or only recounted: a treasure whose survival relied on the willingness of a living vessel to carry and spread it with fidelity. Now our art stands alone and often runs, with little motivation on the part of the creator.

So much of the beauty we're making now is just mash-ups and homages, like this (or like this!). These are great to watch because you can see how a message manifests itself to another person, how we can never, none of us, see exactly the same thing behind our eyes, and how the seed of that ingested mass communication grows and mutates into other messages we can't control.

And yet somehow there remains an underlying known aesthetic, a cue or value that we can recognise...

The Mini Rocketman Concept

This mixed-media video combines live action with 2d/3d animation, motion graphics, stock footage and visual effects - all in a way that serves the story and builds something inside of you: the seed that makes you a lover of Mini, from one breathtaking sight to the next. It's elegant work.

By director Mischa Rozema for agency BSUR and production firm PostPanic. The shoot went down in Amsterdam and Munich, taking four weeks.

Via.

Wood for Good + Leather Love Wipes...

How do you not love methodhome.com's email blasts? They are wittily written, a little bit wicked and beautifully structured. They're my most favourite in all the world.



(I guess Mint.com's finance updates are my second-favourite marketing emails, if making me feel mildly panicked once a week is the same as feeling love.)

'Live the Everyday' - an Oldie but a Goodie

I always get excited about ads that take their cookie cutter genre (cars, perfume, shampoo) and turn it into something fun. It has a way of elevating us beyond the status of two-dimensional punters.

This VW Golf ad from '08, spun out the somber doors of DDB London, has, what's the word...? Verve.

Brought to us with great love and affection by musical Marseillais expat Gary Garry.

Life Boils Down to a Series of Choices.

Here's an elegant and masculine new piece for Jim Beam featuring Willem Dafoe.



This makes me fall a little bit in love with Dafoe. He has a timeless countenace that makes him feel lived-in and believable in a menagerie of different costumes. Each silhouette is unified by our possibilities: the ones we define, develop and abandon every day.

Don't look too closely at that thesis, or you may find reason enough to make the "bold choice" of midday drinking. With great gusto. And in grayscale!

Unlikely musk-of-man magic brought to you by StrawberryFrog NYC. Brought to me by Facteur Pub, who's also written a beautiful post (en français) about the complexity of choice as-illustrated: a persuasive cocktail for taking up the consumption of bourbon.

Sita Sings the Blues: The Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told

In 2009, artist Nina Paley kindly her labour of love (one year in the world, five years in the making), Sita Sings the Blues, under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License, which basically gives people the freedom to mash up or otherwise play with the content/likenesses as long as they provide appropriate attribution.

My friend Amanda reco'd the video to me recently and I just fell in love with it. To start with, it's a creative piece of work that showcases Paley's versatility as an artist. Plot-wise, it recounts the epic Ramayana in a pithy, freestyle narrative that brings to mind both Mystery Science Theater 3000 (the shadow commentators) and Drunk History (the heroes do what the narrators say, even if the narrators themselves aren't always sure what happened).

All this is quietly interwoven with the tale of Nina's divorce and eventual discovery of the Ramayana. It's not distracting and it fits right in. Also - and this is my favourite part - Sita's woes are given voice with the musical contribution of '20s-era jazz singer Annett Hanshaw. What more, I say, what more can you ask for?*

If you want, hold a Sita screening or donate to Nina. Don't be shy about it; we need beauty like this in the world.

---

*A glowing review from Ebert? No worries, that's covered.

The Truth of Life

I often feel like Anna Karina in this scene, particularly at conferences, where the goal is to network for some vague but promising outcome.

To find an opportunity and be able to pounce on it while clutching watery vodka at a homogenised two-hour mixer is indeed a talent, but I'm little interested in "advancing long-term corporate objectives."

I am looking for people willing to answer immense questions with no answers. The responses sound so sure, so right and somehow still so varied: you're apt to marvel at what we think about that we're never invited to say out loud. This is one of my favourite things to do (and probably the reason why no one ever wants to sit with me).

Last week at a couscous restaurant in Paris, a beautiful retired woman told me to believe in destiny, that life never truly becomes fixed or definitive, and that after 30 years of marriage there is usually no love left. Her husband left her for someone he loved when he was 20 years old, and she is happy.

"Are you going to tell your daughters this?" I asked. They're both slightly older than me.

"Of course not." She laughed that cool, distant laugh of untouchable people in very old movies. "It's good to have delusions in youth. And if my husband had never left me, I would never have met my friend Boris." She motioned to the orderly, grinning man across the table. He used to be a professional water skier, and he let me look at all his ski licenses.

Two days ago in Switzerland, another woman told me that the best way to raise your children is not to make sacrifices for them. "Don't neglect them, certainly, but no one is grateful for a martyr, and it isn't right to be one," she said. She and her husband of twenty years raised the twin girls she had with her previous husband.

Asked whether she believes people can be "sure" they've met The One when they've met them, she nodded but doesn't believe there's stock to it. "I was sure of my first husband," she said. "I felt all the things I'd never felt before: the need to love and be loved, to have children. And the moment I was pregnant and we had to make decisions together, I realised I made a terrible mistake. Love takes maturity, and true friendship at its core. We weren't friends."

The current husband is a freelance director, and they travel together to work on projects. Her previous husband found someone else and had another set of twins: boys this time.

And last night over dinner, a thirty-three year-old man with youthful eyes and an azure blue tie leaned in and suggested we may be extraterrestrials, that what we perceive to be reality - this waking life outside our dreams - may not be objective reality at all. I laughed because he hasn't seen Inception yet.

We spent most of the night discussing God and serial killers.

Could We All Be Gulliver...?

Animalcolm's Malcolm Sutherland directed "Umbra" (above), a hand-drawn animated piece neatly described thus:

An explorer adventures into an unknown world, yet it seems that he has been there before.

I like it because it is beautiful, slightly existential and infused with wonderful music that massages your brain. (That part's brought to you by Ben Grossman and Alison Melville.)

Via Tintin Américain, where you can find all kinds of cool stuff, mostly music although he occasionally veers into RANDOM DRIVE-BY AWESOMENESS territory. Also, I have almost all his playlists.

Une nuit Parisienne

My friend Compulsive Tog sent me this, and it gave me warm-fuzzies. C'est là où je vis quoi !

Cockedey's Time Lapse of Tokyo

This stunning time lapse of Tokyo, worth watching just because it pulsates with strange visions, gives the city alternate tints of dreamscape, well-oiled machine and great animal. There were moments when it was like a forest, with the lights of planes blinking haphazardly in the dark, and when the enormous body of a train would interrupt the flow of smaller, faster things, like a snake reposing on sand.

By time-lapse photog Samuel Cockedey. The music is Woob's Paradigm Flux (Tokyo Cut). Read making-of interview.

Beautiful CGI Work: 'Classroom' by Studio Aiko

This walk-through of the little nothings composing a digitally-constructed classroom is so restrained, so austere, that you're surprised when it's over because you wanted to continue.

Make things tenderly. We can still be artisans.

Family on the Cannes Croisette

...because I'd rather show you this than a larger-than-life potshot promotion of Korean reality TV.

The Birth of a Great Violinist

Expect to see a lot of gratuitous hair-swishing action at climax -- after all, this is an ad for Pantene -- but this Thai piece circa 2008 about the struggles of a deaf/mute violinist still made me cry.

That's right! I cried! And boy was her hair amazing!

Un grand merci à @daedalium, the president and founder of hypios, for sending this over today.

Sometimes Brands Do Beautiful Things.

Profit for its sake, and capitalism for its sake, will actually become unstuck, unwind and not work.

-- Global CEO David Jones of Havas Worldwide

Witness while:

Pepsi gives grants to world-changing initiatives, chosen by you.

Humor me ››

Gaultier Lovers Leave a Scent Long After They're Gone

This ad for Le Mâle, the men's fragrance by Jean Paul Gaultier, has been all over TV this week. It kinda bummed me out until the day I randomly opened the My Little Paris app on my iPhone and saw the variant for Classique (pour femme):



Delectable work that speaks to the respective sexes. See the makings-of here and here.

Previous campaigns reveal Jean Paul Gaultier favors other-side-of-the-coin ads for his dual (and dueling?) fragrances, distilling how vulnerability and predatory instinct manifest in both sexes. This series is called L'Appartement.

You can see what kind of thought went into them, as well as clips from previous series, in this set of videos featuring "maître parfumeur" Francis Kurkdjian:

Kurkdjian on Le Mâle (with English translations):



Kurkdjian on Classique: