A four-minute recording of the tank at Japan's Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium, the second largest in the world. PZ Myers of Pharyngula recommends that you "let it load in HD, put it on full screen, and set back and mellow out for a few minutes." (The embedded video is HD quality, so you can pop it into full screen right here.) It's definitely better than any screensaver you've got.
Made almost exclusively from spliced and recombined audio samples from Disney's 1951 film Alice in Wonderland, Wonderland, by Australian electronic artist Pogo, is an oddly pleasing album of eerie, rhythmic chillout tunes. All four songs are available for download from Last.fm. (My favorite is Lost.) The first track, Alice, is also available as a music video on YouTube.
From the album "Perennial Favorites" (Mammoth Records). Winner of "Best Animated Music Video" at the 1999 Vancouver Animation Festival. Directed by Raymond Persi and Matthew Nastuk.
Getting hyped up for the SNZ show tomorrow. I can't wait!
Tomorrow is the official inauguration of CERN's breakthrough particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC. It actually went online weeks ago. I missed it — while the fate of the world hung in the balance (not really), I was off in Alaska, peacefully enjoying the continued existence of the planet Earth. While that was cause for celebration (and if you want to celebrate, io9 has got you covered), just over a week later the LHC was shut down again due to mechanical issues, and will stay down for winterization. Still, it'll be expanding the boundaries of human knowledge and imperiling the Earth again next spring.
So, the point of this post: in order to explain the mysterious, sometimes feared, and much-misunderstood workings of the LHC, a bunch of clever folks bravely stepped up to demystify the project and give the world the reassurances it needed in the form of the brilliant, beautiful Large Hadron Rap. Because science is best popularized through rap, as MC Hawking well knows. If you want to memorize every word and sing along, check here for lyrics and other info.
Don't forget that on the day the LHC went live, Torchwood was there, to make sure the Earth was safe. On "Big Bang Day", BBC's Radio 4 broadcast "Lost Souls", a Torchwood radio play commemorating the activation of the LHC. It's no longer available freely (again, sorry for the lateness — Alaska), but it can be purchased for download, and there's also an audio cd.
And just because the song made me think of it: They Might Be Giants - Particle Man. As dramatized by Tiny Toon Adventures. That was my first introduction to the song, and it's good enough for you, too.
I actually screened several different Particle Man music videos on YouTube, until some peculiar live-action renditions (is that the real TMBG video?) and what appeared to be a slew of similarly-executed entries from some beginning animation class project began to turn my brain to mush, and I simply fell back on what was oldest and most familiar. So enjoy this musical and animation classic on, roughly speaking, the subject of particles. Sort of.
I think what this post needs to finish it off is some MC Hawking. MC Hawking - Entropy.
And now I promise I'm all geeked out. It'll be something classy next time.
Last month saw the release of the new Futurama direct-to-dvd movie, The Beast with a Billion Backs. (This is the second such dvd -- in case you missed it, Futurama's previous last gasp from beyond the grave was Bender's Big Score, and shame on you for missing it!) It's a rare reprieve for a canceled series, and here's to many more.
To sort of celebrate the occasion, and mostly because I just discovered this and think it's cool, I have a brief selection of videos showing the origins of Futurama's theme song, which was composed by Christopher Tyng and inspired by "Psyché Rock", a song off the 1967 album Messe pour le temps présent by French electronic music composer Pierre Henry.
There's even a great retro-futuristic animated music video (from a 2000 release of the compiled remixes, I believe) to accompany the now-familiar, spacey tune. I just love it. Here's Pierre Henry - Psyché Rock:
The song has been covered and remixed many times (for a full list of artists and versions, see here). This is just one of the remixes by Fatboy Slim (also with some nice animation):
Now you probably want to see the Futurama opening sequence, straight up. You don't want to know how long I spent searching YouTube for a suitable version -- none exists. I couldn't even find a good video for the cool new version from the opening credits of Bender's Big Score. What's going on, Internet? As a substitute, the best I could find was this extended version of the song, which includes all of the various comic subtitles from the opening sequence. (The volume's pretty weak, so be prepared to crank it up.)
Amanita Design (creator of Samorost) does it all -- I haven't yet had the opportunity to link to the absolutely beautiful music video they created for Under Byen - "Plantage". The visual style will feel very familiar to fans of Samorost.
I adore this video. The song is "Remind Me/So Easy" by Norwegian duo Röyksopp, and the animation is a strange and wonderful video by French design studio H5 showing a day in the life of a London office worker as told entirely through infographics, from the features of the alarm clock that wakes her up and where her sewage goes after she flushes to dancing pie charts and stock quotes at the office to stats on pints of beer consumed across the country at the end of the workday. Though the style is deceptively simple, the system is bogglingly complex, revealing the amazingly intricate workings of modern life as we move through it in almost total oblivion. Via Le territoire des sens.
"The Child" by Alex Gopher is another video created by H5 in 1999. In this one, the entire story is acted out by animated blocks of typography. Very cool.
Welcome to Blue Tea's Third Annual All Hallow's Eve Roundup. It took a while, but I managed to scrape a few things together. I hope you enjoy.
Art
Feeling funereal? Cemeteries, a Flickr photoset by talented photographer Burza-snieta, who has a lot of other very worthwhile galleries not appropriate to our theme today. Via La main gauche.
Mia Mäkilä Lowbrow and Horror Art should give you plenty of dark, lurid stuff to look at as you while away the long Halloween hours. Not much else to say...go and feast.
Kris Kuksi does a lot of different kinds of work, from botanical renderings to fantastic painting to realistic portraiture, but what I'm interested in today are his stunning, outrageously detailed mixed-media sculptural works. You'll find them under the category "the grotesque" in his eclectic gallery, and they will hold you in thrall. These thumbnails don't do them justice. Via Dark Roasted Blend.
Dark, surreal paintings by David Ho. They are technically excellent and wonderfully evocative. If I weren't posting this for Halloween, I'd pick some of the dreamier or more magical pictures, but today I'm plumbing the gallery for the grimmer, hellish, even Boschian scenes. Try especially the "Contemplation" series, which "dwells upon the spectrum of human emotions, desires and needs", or, for a modern fairy tale, the series of "Candace the Ghost". Via The Lumper.
I haven't yet done Ray Caesar, which is a shame. His portraits of wicked, elegant, creaturized women and menacing, haunted-looking girls inhabit their own world of cold, detached, refined grotesquery.
Swan Bones Theater is the gallery of artist Kelly Louise Judd, and features a nice array of paintings as well as illustrations and dolls in a fairy-tale-inspired, pop-surrealist tradition. Gloomy forests, brooding ravens, and pale maidens in pearls and lace and wolf's-skin clothing abound.
Games
It looks like Exmortis 3 isn't ready for Halloween this season, but in the meantime you can enjoy a little slice of spooky with Ben Leffler's macabre minigame, Purgatorium. Only he could make a baby's nursery such a dreadful place. Not for the faint of heart! If you liked that and haven't already played his excellent Exmortis series, make that your next stop.
Project Pravus is a classic haunted house game, a lights-down speakers-up after-dark spookfest. You are a real estate agent investigating a house for sale at a suspiciously low price. The locations are moody sepia-toned photographs, the sounds are low and rumbly, the sights are gore and ghosts and secrets revealed. Short and dark. Walkthrough at Jay Is Games.
Eternal Darkness is a short, goth flash game that's light on substance but scores high marks for style. You play a teen girl who goes to a nightclub, falls in with a bunch of vampires, and has to save the world. As far as gameplay goes, there are only a few decision trees to navigate, but in between you can enjoy the fully-voiced characters, punk soundtrack, slick animation, a nice credits sequence, and even some "outtakes" at the end.
I also hope you enjoy this screencap from the credits, by the way. You don't know how hard it was to get. Incidentally, if you're really bored, I discovered that you can right-click on the flash player about where I took this cap and uncheck "play" -- the action will freeze, but the people keep dancing in the background. But remember I said only if you're bored.
Devil's Triad is described by its author as a "cutesy, evil vs. evil thing", with "multiple endings, an RPG-style battle with Satan, and lots of cute characters to interact with." You can play as a vampire, witch, or ghost, and your task is to unite with the other two characters to defeat Satan. A little longer and with some more depth than the typical casual game offering, this one will take a little time to play through. Quite nicely done.
Video
The music video for Emilie Simon's "Flowers", a wonderful gothic-cute, Burtonesque animated gem.
Nightmarish Boschian imagery remixed and brought to hellish life in this comic-grotesque music video for Buckethead's "Spokes for the Wheels of Torment".
Delightfully dark and super stylish music videos by My Pet Skeleton. Click "music videos" on the menu to the left, or have a look at the 2006 Reel for a quick and tasty sample of their work.
