Probably one of the best projects I have ever had the fortune to work on. I still can't believe that we managed to find a man that was born without a body, but thanks to this film, he found a body and has fulfilled the dream of dancing. Enjoy.
Check out Radical Friend. A bizarre and amusing site. Clicking on one of the twenty odd stones forming the letters RF, plays a 1 second clip of a person throwing a stone at the camera. But who are Radical Friend. I want to know more.
Diesel has just launched a new series of videos that are equally disturbing as they are funny. The series of unusual videos will make you cringe, wince and quite possibly wretch, as part of Diesel's latest twisted interactive entertainment experience. (Watch the videos at the end of this post).
Pete The Meat puppet probably relegates Chucky into second place as the most scary doll in the world. This hilarious music video plots the rise to success of a modern day Pinnochio made of meat, and his even more rapid spiraling decline into depravity. Be prepared to throw up as you see him chew on his own leg in a state of desperate hunger.
Each of the videos takes audience participation and community generated content to an entirely disturbing new territory.
Sailing even closer to the bone of good taste is Hair Bath. Like most people I am sure, I think there is something pretty disgusting about hair once it has been cut from your head. But to see someone quite literally bathing in a bath full of the stuff... and rubbing it all over their face! Weirder still than a naked girl bathing in hair, is that the girl claims the hair was sent in by visitors to the Diesel website.
Dance Party on the other hand is equally dark, but in less of a stomach turning way. Either its rye parody of reality talent shows, or the awkward semi-naked misfit dancers pulling some pretty odd dance moves, or maybe both, had me laughing out loud. There are more episodes being uploaded each week, so stay tuned to see who will win the contest.
View more videos at Diesel.com
Pete The Meat Puppet - With handy karaoke lyrics
Dance Party - An Underground Endurance Dance Contest
Hair Bath - Will you send her in some of your hair?
Some stills from the videos.
A couple of ads that I found while browsing recently and wanted to consign to memory. I love the music in the Old Lady - West ad. I do not know who is the artist, so if anyone knows who it is please tell me if you know. How weird it that ad? I can't think of a less appealing character to promote smoking, which actually makes the ad all the more interesting! It really feels like an old Diesel spot.
West_Old Lady commercial from Stefan_K on Vimeo.
As for this Sprite advert, I really like it's simplicity and way that it delivers its surprise.
De lejos están todas buenas from Matias Tripailao on Vimeo.
With the objective of raising awareness about Global Warming and the hazards of the use of plastics, Tomas Saraceno has conceived and instigated a very interesting project called Museo Aero Solar. Building a hot air balloon from plastic bags, the balloon flies from town to town, city to city, and grows larger as more bags are added in each location it lands. More images can be found on the projects blog.
Read on Swiss Miss
This retro style watch that makes more than a giant reference to 8 bit computer games, looks like it was taken directly off the wrist of Mario. I want one please! It appears that this design was revealed way back in 2005, but I can't find out if you can buy in in Europe. More info (in Japanese can be found here on FunShop).
Originally read on TechDigest.
This is quite frankly speaking, one of the most moving and spectacular things I think I have ever seen! I can't believe that this passed my by, as it took place in London about 18 months ago. If you have not seen it, watch the YouTube video below and be amazed.
This epic street theatre featuring gigantic puppets was entitled 'The Sultans Elephant' and is the fifth in a series of works that have enchanted crowds across cities worldwide. Performed by the Royal de Luxe theatre company
The girl genuinely seems to take on a life of her own, and is disturbingly realistic at times. When she moves and looks towards the child sat swinging on her arm I was blown away. These guys really know how to 'animate', and to do so on such an epic scale is awe inspiring.
The music featured in the video is Decollage by Les Balayeurs Du Desert, and can be bought here from iTunes.
More spectacular images of the event can be seen on the Flickr page of Simon Crubellier. I have used his photo's here in this post.
More information can be found on the official site, or from the Wikipedia entry.
When I was studying art at college my self and my fellow students were lucky enough to be given a workshop by a creative duo that called themselves AVI Billboard Interventions, that also were a new breed of culture jammers. They worked to subvert existing outdoor advertising, to create a new and often opposing message to the one of the original advert. What was new about their approach was the way that they hijacked the advert. Until then, people would use far more crude means to subvert or hijack the message, such as spraying or painting over the image. But theirs was not such an immediately obvious take over. At the time the Apple Macintosh was just starting to revolutionise the design scene, and was putting cost effective and professional typography and print technology in the hands of the masses. Their approach was to harness this new opportunity make their changes to the billboard in such a way as it would be unperceivable to the viewer. Simply by selecting the right font, and replacing a few select words of a campaign, they infected billboards like a hidden virus, and their subversive message was suddenly given the weight and credibility of a polished, glossy marketing campaign, appearing to be delivered by a major brand. A billboard ad, ironically located at the exit of a car pound for towed illegally parked cars, suddenly Volvo cars appeared to be telling people to 'Buy A Bike' rather than their latest station wagon, and the government began suddenly being honest and self critical, telling people how their policies were failing.
I was reminded of the work of AVI after seeing the work of London based culture jammer 'The Decapitator', who has started re-appropriating billboards, albeit in a far more grotesque and darker fashion. The Decapitator pastes an image over the heads of models in adverts, to make them appear as if they have somehow been decapitated. Having carefully recreated the correct looking background, the subversion is not immediately apparent, and the viewer is left believing that the company behind the advert genuinely included a decapitated model. The meaning may be less apparently socially or politically motivated (or not as the case maybe), at least it but the approach is the same. I would love to see lots more of this kind of subversive activity!
I found the images on CMMNEWS Check out The Decapitators culture jamming on his Flickr account. Here are a few examples, a mix of subverted ads and their original formats.
UPDATE: Since writting this entry I also came across the work of Saatchi & Someone a culture jammer that created some very interesting and political billboard subversions.
There is also more info on how to go about hijacking billboards in this article on Urban75
This guy gets my award! This guy does with one leg, what most people couldn't do with too. Kind of put's Rolf Harris' Jake The Peg, with the extra leg to shame.
When you are packing a weapon, you want it to look stylish, no? No longer concerned with the technical specifications, the thing that is going to sway my decission when buying a 'personal saftey device' is how fashionable I will look when I pull it from my bag and defend myself from attack. I may be their next victim, but would hate for any mugger to think that I was a fashion victim. That's why I will be carrying a Tazer MPH, with its sexy leopard skin print. Not only that, but when I am not busy fending off an attacker the weapon does not need to languish in my bag...oh no! It sports an MP3 player, so I can listen to all my favorite tracks while I travel in fear. Heck, just thought, if I am listening to my Tazer as I walk my dangerous route home, maybe I won't hear my attacker approach? Hummnn. As I Taze them, will the MP3 player still work??? I am going to have to get these questions answered. Stay tuned.
I saw this very interesting documentary last week on psycological warfare in the Second World War. Charting the reciprocal steps that both sides took in an attempt to out do the other, in order to undermine confidence and seed doubts in the minds of their opponents soldiers.
Both sides used combinations of propaganda that combined erotic images mixed with moral sapping messages about death or ones that cast doubt over the loyalty of wives and girlfriends left back home. The results were haunting and powerful examples of a new type of communication material. Due to thier pornogrpahic nature soldiers would keep the images, and pass them around, despite their darkly masked messages, and became one of the first examples of 'viral communication'. The British used similar propaganda techniques with their own soldiers for spreading information, claiming it to be more effective than the BBC at getting a message across.
Entire departments were set up to investigate and develop pornographic propaganda, and as the war progressed, it is clear to see the evolution from hand painted pictures to more explicit photographs, and ever more disturbing and dark messages.
The British set up a fake German radio station that titilated the German soldiers. It became an institution to which they would tune in religiously, hooked on it's upreviously unseen explicit content. The British would then slip in doubt enducing and depressing news, such as recalling all of the dead families killed in the most recent bombing raids on Berlin.
The images employed all sorts of sophisticated tricks, such as holding the image up to the light revealed a new darker message. In strict stiff upper lip seriousness, one British artist was asked to doctor an image of Hitler, to make him appear as if he were holding his penis. No doubt such an image would have appeared in everyones inboxes. What is funny is to think that such an image was commisioned as a military tactic - does this department still exist and are they responsible for the many videos of Bush and Bin Ladden that flood the web today? Much of the activity is likely a precursor to advertising strategies and certainly adhears to the old adage that sex sells!
Much of the documentary seems to have been based on, or at least included much of the content featured in this site. Well worth checking out!
Three chocolate bunny melting experiments. Created by Sander Plug in collaboration with Lernert Engelberts, the video is both painfully sad and beautiful, and not for children under 7 or chocolate lovers. Watch the rabit meets his sticky end all in the name of art. Check out Sander Plugs site for more examples of his work.
Via Nice To Meet You
Following on from the Diesel viral campaign for Freezy Sneakers, here is another example of how odd videos can be remarkably addictive and how strangeness has a very important part in advertising online. Here a man slithers across a Burger King restaurant floor and swallows hole someone elses burger, as if he were a snake. I am not sure what is more odd. The snake-like way he swallows the burger, or the repulsive thoughts of actually getting down and lying on the floor of a fast food restaurant!
Yes there is hope for dogs with weight problems and eating disorders. Entering an new realm in the world of exercise videos, Mariko Takahashi's workout should leave your pooch in perfect shape. This deliciously surreal clip is actually a short film to promote Panasonic during the 2004 Olympics, and was one of ten short movies in the Capture The Motion series . Made by Japanese designer, commercials and short film director Nagi Noda this film will freak you out. This is one of my favorite shorts, I can't imagine how Nagi came up with the concept, that comes across in such a positive way, yet on another level does seem to allude to more serious issues about our obsession with exercise and it would also not really surprise me to hear that there really were dog exercise video's on the market either!
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