gluon.symmetry

Richard Dawkins and The Selfish Gene

2009-12-15T11:36:00.003+02:00

Clinton Richard Dawkins is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science writer. Dawkins first came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term meme, helping found the field of memetics. In 1982, he made a widely cited contribution to the science of evolution with the theory, presented in his book The Extended Phenotype, that phenotypic effects are not limited to an organism's body but can stretch far into the environment, including into the bodies of other organisms.

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The Alchemists of Sound

2009-12-13T22:32:00.001+02:00

The BBC's Radiophonic Workshop was set up in 1958, born out of a desire to create 'new kinds of sounds'. Alchemists of Sound looks at this creative group from its inception, through its golden age when it was supplying music and effects for cult classics like Doctor Who, Blake's Seven and Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, and charts its fading away in 1995 when, due to budget cuts, it was no longer able to survive.

There are interviews with composers from the Workshop, as well as musicians and writers who have been inspired by the output. Great archive footage of the Workshop and its machinery is accompanied by excerpts of the, now cult, TV programmes that featured these sounds.

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Sarah Morris - Capital

2009-12-07T11:38:00.003+02:00

Capital continues Morris's investigation of the way we decode and therefore begin to understand the built world around us. She is interested in our intuitive relationship to architectural statements.

In Capital, an intangible craving for power and money, mingled with a hint of widespread paranoia exemplified by the political process, becomes a metaphor for the architecture that structures our daily lives.

Sarah Morris's film, was shot on location in Washington, D.C. on September 11 - 14, 2000. It shows fast-paced sequences of political icons: the Mall, the White House Press Office, the World Bank, uniformed members of the Secret Service, the Presidential motorcade, the Watergate Complex, the Kennedy Center, the Department of Energy, the J. Edgar Hoover Building, among many others.

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meanwhile

2009-11-11T20:46:00.002+02:00

Mamers Valles, Mars

2009-11-05T15:03:00.003+02:00

Glacial and fluvial landforms that date to ancient Noachian and Hesperian times indicate an abundance of liquid water on Mars at that time. Of interest is evidence of younger (i.e., Amazonian) glacial activities. These processes have recently been suggested for some locations in the Marmers Valles region of Mars.

Marmers Valles tracks about 1000 km along the dichotomy boundary on Mars, near the Deuteronilus Mensae region. This region is characterized by "fretted terrain", a term used for a surface having a stippled and pitted texture. This surface texture is proposed to have resulted from the partial removal of formerly smooth and thin deposits by deflation and sublimation

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Zimoun: Sound Sculptures & Installations

2009-11-02T11:27:00.002+02:00

more info at http://www.zimoun.ch/

Man on Wire

2009-10-28T11:08:00.003+02:00

James Marsh's dazzling, invigorating documentary MAN ON WIRE tells the story of a truly inspiring figure.

In the early 1970s, a fiery young Frenchman named Philippe Petit wanted to shake up the world. When he saw the World Trade Center being built in New York City, he found his mission. Petit was a trained high wire walker, and his goal was to set up a wire between the two towers and give the world a show it could never have expected. As is often the case with these endeavors, the actual high-wire walking was the easiest part of the plan. For nearly seven years, Petit worked on the project, recruiting associates who supported him every step of the way. Finally, after eight months in New York, the day came when Petit and his cronies jumped into action. This wasn't easy. They had to find a way to sneak past security and make their way to the top of the towers with heavy equipment, at which point they had to battle the elements to install the wire. After many close scares, the time came for Petit to realize his dream--and the rest, as they say, is history. Marsh crafts MAN ON WIRE like a heist film, presenting rare and fascinating footage of the actual event alongside flawless reenactments and modern-day interviews with the participants. The result is an immersive, emotionally gratifying motion picture, made all the more stimulating by Michael Nyman's electrifying score.

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The Cause of Imagination

2009-10-18T20:28:00.001+03:00

If you've ever wondered what the inside of the Spaceship on Monta Vista Blvd. looks like, this is your chance to find out. Architect Bart Prince takes you on a tour of his home and studio, and discusses the intentions behind some of his most innovative and ambitious works. This is a fascinating look at a little of the private life of the highly regarded and internationally known architect who makes his home in New Mexico. Orginally broadcast on New Mexico PBS station KNME.

Exile in Buyukada

2009-10-18T20:20:00.001+03:00

In the eleven years following his expulsion from the Soviet Union, Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) exposed the crimes of Joseph Stalin through his writings, tried to organize a worldwide current of opposition to capitalism and Stalinism alike, and lived with the dark foreboding of his own eventual demise at Stalin's machination. Exile in Buyukada is a plausible cinematic evocation of Trotsky's time of persecution and frustration. A hybrid of documentary and drama based on Isaac Deutscher's celebrated biography, The Prophet Outcast (1963), and narrated enchantingly by English actress Vanessa Redgrave, the film depicts Trotsky in his Turkish exile.

This is how we walk the moon

2009-10-02T22:58:00.002+03:00

Johanna Billing vs Arthur Russell - This is how we walk on the moon (Bogdan edit)

Toshimaru Nakamura

2009-09-29T10:42:00.003+03:00

Various Tracks from Improvised Music from Japan

No-input mixing board player

Toshimaru Nakamura has been producing electronic music on self-named "no-input mixing board," after long unhappy years with the electric guitar. The name describes the method of his music. "No" external sound source is connected to "inputs" of the "mixing board." Mostly an improviser, occasionally a composer for dancers, an instrumentalist for compositions.

Nimb 19.1

Nimb 19-1

Oosslloo

>> video Sachiko M & Toshimaru Nakamura
>> info

back

2009-09-14T10:45:00.010+03:00

download

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Baadeh Sabah by Albert Lamorisse

2009-08-19T18:30:00.002+03:00

"A well- known French filmmaker, Albert Lamorisse, under the aus- pices of Iran's Ministry of Culture and Art, produced the poetic film "Lovers' Wind" (1969). Eighty-five percent of this dramatically visual film is shot from a helicopter, providing a kaleidoscopic view of the vast expanses, natural beauty, historical monuments, cities and villages of Iran. The "narrators" of the film are the various winds (the warm, crimson, evil and lovers' winds), which accord- ing to folklore, inhabit Iran. They sweep the viewers from place to place across the Iranian landscape, introducing the incredible variety of life and scenery in Iran. The camera, defying gravity, with smoothness and agility, provides a bird's eye view, caressing minarets and domes, peek- ing over mountain tops beyond, gliding over remote villages to reveal the life enclosed within the high mud-brick walls, bouncing along with the local wildlife, following the rhyth- mic, sinuous flow of the oil pipelines and train tracks, and hovering over the mirror-like nmosaic of the rice paddies that reflect the clouds and sky. The film is a testimonial to the Iranian landscape and people over which so many dynasties and kings have ruled and have, in turn, passed away. Ironically, on the tenth anniversarv of the completion of the film, yet another seem- ingly powerful dynasty (Pahlavi) has fallen, leaving, as the film points out, the land and the migrating tribal nomads who have survived more or less intact for centuries. Upon completion of the film, the Ministry of Culture and Art decided that Lamorisse had not sufficiently emphasized the industrialization of Iran. So he was called back to film additional sequences documenting that progress. This task was never completed, because the helicopter crashed while filming the Karaj Dam near Tehran, plunging Lamorisse and his crew to their deaths. This film, whose storybrook style of narration is often contrived, does not purport to be a social document on Iran; nevertheless, it has never been shown publicly in theaters in Iran." ºº -- Hamid Naficy

recommended as well:
Claude LeLouch - Iran

Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask

2009-08-15T18:53:00.002+03:00

Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask explores for the first time on film the pre-eminent theorist of the anti-colonial movements of this century. Fanon's two major works, Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth, were pioneering studies of the psychological impact of racism on both colonized and colonizer. Jean-Paul Sartre recognized Fanon as the figure "through whose voice the Third World finds and speaks for itself." This innovative film biography restores Fanon to his rightful place at the center of contemporary discussions around post-colonial identity.

Isaac Julien, the celebrated black British director of such provocative films as Looking for Langston and Young Soul Rebels, integrates the facts of Fanon's brief but remarkably eventful life with his long and tortuous inner journey. Julien elegantly weaves together interviews with family members and friends, documentary footage, readings from Fanon's work and dramatizations of crucial moments in Fanon's life. Cultural critics Stuart Hall and Françoise Verges position Fanon's work in his own time and draw out its implications for our own.

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Anti-Œdipus

2009-08-13T10:45:00.002+03:00

Anti-Œdipus (1972) is a book by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. It is the first volume of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the second volume being A Thousand Plateaus (1980). It presents an analysis of human psychology, economics, society, and history, showing how "primitive", "despotic", and "capitalist regimes" differ in their organization of production, inscription, and consumption. It describes how capitalism channels all desires through an axiomatic money-based economy, a form of organization that is abstract, rather than local or material.

>> wiki
>> the book

It Felt Like a Kiss

2009-08-09T18:22:00.002+03:00

Adam Curtis has gone a bit mad. The insultingly gifted documentary maker behind The Century Of The Self and The Power Of Nightmares seemed rather quiet of late. In fact, since his 2007 BBC2 series The Trap, his only visible pieces of work were two short (and superb) mini-documentaries he created for my BBC4 series Screenwipe and Newswipe.

He's made a new documentary called It Felt Like A Kiss. Except it isn't just a documentary. It's also a piece of interactive theatre, with music composed by Damon Albarn and performed by the Kronos Quartet. And it doesn't take place in a cinema or concert hall, but across five floors of a deserted office block in Manchester.

It Felt Like a Kiss tells the story of America’s rise to power in the golden age of pop, and the unforeseen consequences it had on the world and in our minds. Beginning in 1959, the show spotlights the dreams and desires that America inspired during the ’60s, when the world began to embrace the country and its culture as never before. But as this daring production unfolds across five floors, blending music with documentary and the disorientating whirl of a fairground ghost train, the audience is forced to face the dark forces that were veiled by the American dream – a dream that ultimately returns to haunt us all.

>> trailer

News from Nowhere

2009-08-08T17:29:00.002+03:00

News from Nowhere (1890) is a classic work combining utopian socialism and soft science fiction written by the artist, designer and socialist pioneer William Morris. In the book, the narrator, William Guest, falls asleep after returning from a meeting of the Socialist League and awakes to find himself in a future society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. In this society there is no private property, no big cities, no authority, no monetary system, no divorce, no courts, no prisons, and no class systems. This agrarian society functions simply because the people find pleasure in nature, and therefore they find pleasure in their work.

The book explores a number of aspects of this society, including its organisation and the relationships which it engenders between people. Morris cleverly fuses Marxism and the romance tradition when he presents himself as an enchanted figure in a time and place different from Victorian England. As Morris the romance character, quests for love and fellowship-and through them for a reborn self- he encounters romance archetypes in Marxist guises.

>> the book

Sans Soleil

2009-08-07T16:13:00.001+03:00

Sans Soleil (Sunless in English) is a 1983 film by French director Chris Marker. The title is from the song cycle Sunless by Modest Mussorgsky. Sans Soleil is a meditation on the nature of human memory and the inability to recall the context and nuances of memory and as a result, how the perception of personal and global histories are affected.

Stretching the genre of documentary, this experimental essay-film is a rich composition of thoughts, images and scenes, mainly from Japan and Guinea-Bissau, "two extreme poles of survival". Some other scenes were filmed in Iceland, Paris, and San Francisco. A female narrator reads from letters supposedly sent to her by the (fictitious) cameraman Sandor Krasna. Sans Soleil is often labelled as a documentary or travelogue, however it contains fictional elements and moves from one location to another without regard to a location or character-based narrative.

>> imdb

Encounters at the End of the World

2009-08-07T12:24:00.000+03:00

In the most hostile, barren, alien environment on the planet - you meet the most interesting people.
Welcome to Antarctica - like you've never experienced it. You've seen the extraordinary marine life, the retreating glaciers and, of course, the penguins, but leave it to award-winning, iconoclastic filmmaker Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man, Rescue Dawn) to be the first to explore the South Pole's most fascinating inhabitants...humans. In this one-of-kind documentary, Herzog turns his camera on a group of remarkable individuals, "professional dreamers" who work, play and struggle to survive in a harsh landscape of mesmerizing, otherworldly beauty - perhaps the last frontier on earth.

>> Werner Herzog

body-drawing communicator for distant partners

2009-08-05T22:13:00.002+03:00

Mutsugoto is an intimate communication device placed in the bedroom environment. Instead of exchanging e-mail or SMS messages using generic interfaces in business-like venues, Mutsugoto allows distant partners to communicate through the language of touch as expressed on the canvas of the human body. A specialized computer vision and projection system allows users to write or draw on their own bodies while laying in bed. Drawings made by one partner are transmitted to and revealed on the body of the remote partner.

Human intimacy is a significant but often neglected part of modern life. More people now than ever carry on long distance relationships with romantic partners, sometimes for extended periods of time. However today's communication systems are impersonal and generic. E-mail, for example, is often read and written on the same computer and at the same desk that one uses for any other kind of communication. Phone calls and SMS messages are sent and received between partners on the same devices used for work and business.

Mutsugoto is a new kind of communication device meant to be used only by romantic couples in long distance relationships. Breaking away from traditional systems intended for operation by any pair of people in any situation, the form and function of Mutsugoto is designed to more strongly reflect the character of an intimate bond.

Mutsugoto is meant to be installed in the bedrooms of two remote partners. Each partner lays on their bed and wears a special ring that emits an infrared beacon, visible only to a camera mounted above. A computer vision system tracks the movement of the ring finger and projects virtual pen strokes on the user's own body. The silhouette of the user is also captured and serves as the "canvas" for this drawing. The completed drawing is transmitted to the remote site where the same silhouette is projected softly on the bed. After laying in the same position, the distant partner can reveal the drawing by tracing their ring finger around their body. Special bed linens and curtains were crafted to enhance the mood of this romantic communication environment.

>> distancelab

Ninety Years of Inspiration

2009-08-03T22:37:00.002+03:00

Inspired by a vision of bringing artists and craftsmen together to start a movement in art which would change the future of the world, Walter Gropius opened the doors to Bauhaus. The year was 1919 when Gropius founded Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar. Germany was bankrupt after a devastating World War I and the younger generation was eager to make positive changes.

“Architects, painters, sculptors, we must all return to crafts! For there is no such thing as “professional art”. There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman. By the grace of Heaven and in rare moments of inspiration which transcend the will, art may unconsciously blossom from the labour of his hand, but a base in handicrafts is essential to every artist. It is there that the original source of creativity lies.

Let us therefore create a new guild of craftsmen without the class-distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsmen and artists! Let us desire, conceive, and create the new building of the future together. It will combine architecture, sculpture, and painting in a single form, and will one day rise towards the heavens from the hands of a million workers as the crystalline symbol of a new and coming faith.” — Walter Gropius

Gropius named the school Bauhaus, which is the transliteration for building house, but according to the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, it stands for “an eagerness to experiment, openness, creativity, a close link to industrial practice and inter-nationality.”

We hope you too can experiment with the creativity of art and be inspired by the Bauhaus movement. Please visit the sites of the artists and sources by clicking on the images or titles.

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Concrete!

2009-07-26T19:24:00.002+03:00

Ruth and Marvin Sackner share their love of words and images with an intimate tour of their Miami Beach home/museum -- the worlds largest private collection of concrete/visual poetry from such twentieth century art movements as Dada, Bauhaus, Italian Futurism, Russian and Eastern European Avant Garde, Surrealism, De Stijl, Ultra, Tabu-Dada, Lettrisme, and Ultra-Lettrisme. Over sixty-thousand objects from around the word speak volumes about a compulsive and joyful life of collecting art.

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Existentialism is a Humanism

2009-07-25T14:55:00.002+03:00

part2

0 / ∞

2009-07-24T22:33:00.001+03:00

zoom

Sad e

2009-07-22T20:10:00.002+03:00

Sade - Hang on to your love (Bogdan edit)