A collection of digital wonders and some other stuff
Social Theory Trading Cards are making a comeback in the blogosphere lately. Here is an unofficial card that I produced. If you don’t know Old Sailor, then I recommend reading some of his posts. I wonder what the folks over at Plastic will think of this. I would make more of them, but I’m not good at writing up people’s social theory.
Update: Old Sailor responds.
I read the headlines about Grey Tuesday last week as it approached but I didn’t bother to read what it was all about. I thought it sounded boring.
So today I read all about it and I downloaded a couple of songs from DJ Danger Mouse’s Grey Album this afternoon. While I strongly believe in the principle of Grey Tuesday, that is to say that copyright law needs reform, I have to say the songs themselves didn’t bake my cake. I guess I’m just not into that indie rap stuff. Anyway I do hope the attention that the Grey Album is getting will bring about some common-sense changes to copyright law.
For those of you unfamiliar with the situation, let me catch you up to speed.
DJ Danger Mouse has taken audio tracks from Rapper Jay-Z’s Black Album and remixed them with music from the Beatles White Album. The new album is cleverly titled The Grey Album.
Enter EMI and copyright lawyers. They claimed that he had not asked permission or paid for the rights to use The Beatles music and demanded that he stop selling his record. The DJ agreed to comply with the order and is no longer distributing the record, which was allegedly only intended for the ears of friends.
But the story doesn’t end there. In issuing the order, EMI has unwittingly thrust The Grey Album into the public spotlight, prompting guerilla music lovers to post MP3s on their websites and blogs specifically on, but not limited to, Tuesday February 24th. Considering that only 3,000 copies of The Gray Album were pressed and the fact that it has been banned pretty much guarantees a Holy Grail status among hip-hop fans and serious music collectors alike.
“Grey Tuesday” Civil Disobedience Planned February 24th Against Copyright Cartel
In protest of EMI’s action approximately 170 sites hosted a full copy of the Grey Album on Tuesday, in spite of the fact that many of those sites had received cease and desist letters from EMI’s lawyers.
So how successful did Grey Tuesday turn out to be?
“After a survey of the sites that hosted files during Grey Tuesday, and an analysis of filesharing activity on that day, we can confidently report that the Grey Album was the number one album in the US on February 24 by a large margin. Danger Mouse moved more “units” than Norah Jones and Kanye West, with well over 100,000 copies downloaded. That’s more than 1 million digital tracks.”
I think that’s pretty cool.
A couple have people have written the same basic message:
Just to let you know the correct lyric [in Stairway to Heaven] is ‘just a spring clean for the maid queen’ not may queen.
Actually folks, it is may queen, but if you looked up the lyrics before emailing me, you’d already know that. What is a maid queen anyway? I bet if I had one my house would be spotless.
The Mazda Transformer – Shows one of their cars transforming into an Autobot.
Hell Boy Test Animation – Quick animation of the upper torso of Hellboy done in Mike Mignola’s drawing style but in 3D.
Tetra Vaal Demo Spot – It’s a neat 3D Demo from theembassyvfx.com about a futuristic robot that could be used to police developing nations.
I made a screen saver advertisement for the Swim Meet coming up on the weekend. Here it is in all its shockwave flash glory — in other words you don’t have to save it and install it in order to view it. I may only leave it up for a month or two, so if you missed it… well that’s too bad! :)
Britney Spears might say she’s not that innocent, but some fans of Michael Jackson have put together a song that PROVES he was set-up. Ok it doesn’t really prove anything but a fun game when you are listening to the song is to try and figure out whether this is parody or not.
In an effort to educate the masses via easily drawn stick figures my friend Gavin has put together a quick step-by-step explanation of how indie films are made. New Media students and Drama geeks alike — take note.
Continue reading “The Rocketpack Guide to making…An Independent Film”
Last month, South Park ran a humorous and informative episode titled “All About Mormons”.
From the South Park Studios Website:
“A Mormon kid moves to South Park and Stan has to kick his ass. But when Stan and his dad meet their new Mormon neighbors, they become fascinated with how genuinely nice they are. Meanwhile the other boys mock Stan relentlessly for wimping out.”
If you’re in the United States (or have an IP address in the United States) you can watch the episode here:
Or if you want, you can check out the “audio only” version in 4 parts:
I think pretty much the greatest thing about this episode is that is gives people who don’t know anything about the church a background into how the church started. As someone that knows from personal experience, they tell the Joseph Smith story pretty much just like they do if you were to have the Mormon Missionaries come into your house and tell you the story, except for the part where they call Martin Harris dumb. Mormon Missionaries would never call him dumb — unless they were calling him dumb because he gave his wife the unpublished transcript, then they might but other than that — no way. This episode also portrays what nice people Mormons are — based on some of the Mormon families I know it’s so accurate it’s scary.
I am finished one of my two new media flash assignments. Anna-Maria said of all the flash stuff she has seen me make she liked it the best – that was before it even had sound! However, don’t get your hopes too high, it’s cool but not my best ever.
Check out the other living works I’ve created in this same style.
ASCII and the Matrix are together at last.