iron maiden's gonna get you, no matter how far

On August 4th i'm gonna see Iron Maiden live for the first time in my life. The reason i am so excited about the concert is that i realised i will never be as passionate about any other band as i used to be about iron maiden. i had been their passionate fan during all highschool, and quite some time afterwards. albums, bootlegs, live concerts, videos, b sides, artwork, tshirts, you name it, i had it. i knew all lyrics from all their songs (and still know an impressive amount of it). i convinced all my friends to give them a chance. i listened to fear of the dark and dance of death each morning, around 7 a.m. when i crossed cismigiu park on my way to highschool. i have a tremendous amount of memories connected to iron maiden one way or another. and my greatest dream back then obviously was to see them perform live.

until they come, here's a video with two of my favourite guys ever, maiden's vocal bruce dickinson and top gear's jeremy clarkson.

articulate things through animation

A few weeks ago, i eventually watched The Nightmare before Christmas. I know that it's weird to have postponed the moment so much, and it was actually the only Burton related movie i hadn't watched, but well. I guess it's better later than never :). And what i also did a few weeks ago was to read Neil Gaiman's Coraline, the wonderful and terrifying adventure of a little girl who enters a parallel version of her own life. The connection between the two, apart from them both being very enticing stories ? Director Henry Selick, who had successfully directed Tim Burton's piece, and is currently working on the first 3D stop-motion animation movie based on Gaiman's tale. Reading more about Selick, i got more and more intrigued and, among other things, i found Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions - the animated short that attracted Burton's attention in the first place and basically obtained Selick the Nightmare before Christmas proposal. I particularly liked the use of cut-out animation.

analog city pixelmania

i haven't been a doer lately. which is very bad and kinda hurts. and it's not because i don't have all sorts of ideas and plans and means, but because i pretty much feel like i've lost motivation and inspiration. That's a weird feeling for a very passionate person. Happily, i am now writing a presentation which is more like a story about small things that make a (big) difference. Maybe that drives some change in my attitude.

a vision of students today

i was complaining about my college conditions, and now Gavin points out this extremely interesting vision of a student's life, envisaged by Michael Wesch. And it's interesting to follow the entire discussion about the video. Of course, there are differences in numbers, but i think the idea applies quite well to our city as well.

film noir a la venity fair

there was a period when i nearly breathed film noir. I watched the movies like crazy, i watched documentaries, i read books about it. and i'm obviously still fascinated by this topic, although i now watch and read other things also :)).

that's why i was very happy when Sanziana indicated these two bits in Vanity Fair - a very interesting "concept-noir"...

...as well as a nice explanatory article entitled Day into Noir.

pretesting

The story of Gusty and Ford

Do the Green Thing is a very nice initiative, because it encourages us to focus on the small things that can collectively make a difference. There's been so much buzz lately about the huge problems humanity is facing nowadays, that it's easy to feel overwhelmed and to think that there's not much you can actually do. But i think that's totally wrong, cause every small contribution is very important once the pieces are put together.

Green Thing comes as a community that makes it easy and enjoyable to be a bit greener. Every month, a new Green Thing challenge is issued. And basically what you have to do is actually do it (or, even better, have fun while doing it). October's Green Thing is Walk Once - and the way in which they invite us to walk more is a short animated story that illustrated how much obervational potential there is in walking. Enjoy!

I'm very enthusiastic about this type of "challenging" communities, because they are so engaging. You just want to enter the game and contribute to its rules, and generally do stuff, share and make a difference. Not like the regular "let's develop a social networking site, cause they're fashionable among teens nowadays, but without asking them to do anything in particular, cause they're so lazy" that most times ends up as a deserted site, which doesn't have anything particular to attract the teens, and provides even less to encourage them to visit again.

week animated treat

I've just finished an eye-opening meeting with the director for our new campaign, and the guy managed to completely change our optics and add a lot of value both to the ideas, and the executions. Which feels good and relieving, especially since this is happening after last week's horrid experience with some executions gone completely bad.

Sometimes it's really amazing how different your perspectives get when you sit around and discuss the details of a final execution, especially with an outsider. He gives you hints, and then each member of the team starts to make connections and visualize the details of the spot in a particular manner, that depends highly on the cinema references the person has experienced. And obviously, the more you've seen, the more perspectives you have. Which is why Anim'est is a complete thrill - the festival brings a very interesting blend of different animation styles, some of which focus on expressing a certain concept in an intriguing manner, just like some others focus on offering visually striking imagery, while others focus on "paying forward" a feeling, no matter how minimalist the way. After last year's edition, i felt completely resetted and refreshed, and i'm expecting no less from this year's edition. As a slight preview, here's the trailer for René Laloux's famous Fantastic Planet (La Planète Sauvage, 1973). And if you like it, you'd better come to the festival, cause they've got an entire Laloux retrospective among other loads of goodies that will probably confirm, as Laloux said, that "That which suggests is superior to that which shows. Movies today show more and more. It's paranoid dictator cinema. What we need is schizophrenic cinema."

go, oaks

Thanks to Cosmin, yesterday i watched quite a historical confrontation for our rugby team: the Romanian Oaks vs. New Zealand's All Blacks. Without knowing basically anything about rugby, i found myself enjoying the match quite a lot. Because i felt it was a game played by people who are so passionate about this sport, that it would have been impossible for them not to express the beauty of it. All Blacks is a legendary rugby team, and everybody knew they'd win anyway. However, they said they'd engage all the effort they usually do when they play rugby. Romanians declared they felt proud to meet All Blacks, and wanted to show that they're rugby players as well, while also hoping to lose at a difference smaller than 70 points. All Blacks are said to be warriors, not just rugby players, and Romanians wanted to show that they're fighters as well. And despite the obvious difference in value, the game was a very passionate show. The French crowd present on the stadium equally seemed to love the sport itself - they appreciated every interesting move from All Blacks, but they became extremely supportive and encouraging whenever Romanians proved their fighting capabilities (and Romanians scoring was a complete delight). The final score was 85-8, which was not such a big surprise, since the force and coordination of All Blacks can hardly be counteracted. But i really loved watching it.

one of the simple pleasures of life

i'm eventually slowly moving back home. back to my books, and my movies and the many small things i've been collecting during the years. simple things i'm completely in love with. like some old books that were letterpress printed, therefore beautifully crafted. i think letterpress is one of the most beautiful parts in the history of printing, and as it's slowly fading away, i'm sure i'm really going to miss its fine touch.

suburbia

the brief talk at the Czech Center on Monday proved to be a far more exciting and interesting experience than i first anticipated.

First of all, the project itself. It all started when Monika and I were talking about advertising, as we sometimes do, until we reached advertising for the new residential projects. I complained about how annoyed i was to see those huge advertising outdoors brilliantly showing a sort of "promissed paradise", when in fact the reality of many of those residential neighbourhoods was far worse. And she brought into discussion "The end of the suburbia", a documentary she wanted to screen anyway during one of the Documentary Mondays. So she invited me to somewhat "open" the screening by making some points about the differences between advertising and reality in today's new suburbias. I talked to Raluca about it and she proved willing to join me on field with her camera, to look around and take some pictures of the new suburbias.

The more we got into the subject, i realised that the initial thought was kind of redundant. There was no point in simply showing that reality is not like in the commercials, cause that's a sort of a truism. Just like there was no point in simply attacking one residential project or another, because it was far better to simply show people how many of the new suburbias actually look like, as well as what potential problems they have. We talked about how buying a new house in one of the new suburbias didn't mean just buying a piece of land, it actually meant far more than that, and each person should evaluate the context of that piece of land before making the aquisition. Together with our guests, we discussed about the need for urbanistic regulations, as well as potential problems such as the developer, the surrounding environment, traffic conditions, people around, utilities, facilities or deceitful advertising. And we tried to get a bit into the core of this "Monopoly" (the game) standard of living, discussing how we could make people aware of what they should be looking at before becoming the inhabitant of one of the new suburbias. People in the audience also brought into discussion examples from the Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden and New Zealand. And this is how everything actually became the starting point of an extensive study we'll carry out during the next year, one that looks at the new human typology and lifestyle present in the new suburbias, as well as at the development and evolution of these suburbias.

The video below is the trailer for The End of Suburbia, a very interesting case study brought to the Czech Center by John Ketchum.

imagination dead imagine

yesterday, while having one of the endless discussions about the "young generation", we started talking about the sad possibility that kids nowadays completely lack imagination, due to TV, video games and internet consumption. I will not get into that again, but i must admit that the conversation reminded me about Samuel Beckett's "Imagination dead imagine", nicely illustrated below:

the devices of gustav braustache

Organ is by far my favourite musical instrument. Back in highschool, i used to listen to organ pieces each and every day, which made some of my friends call me weird and morbid. Then i made them listen, and some of them fell in love with this kind of music as well.

"The devices of Gustav Braustache, Bachelor of Science" is a short that uses the power of organ music. And it also uses the mad scientist theme. And the crazy inventor theme. And it inspires one to look at things differently. And makes one realise just how many things people invent daily, some of them practical and useful, some others really stupid and useless. A real treat for gadget-freaks.

the unseen video

Found the unseen video on Fallon’s Blog some time ago, and considered it to be a brilliant idea, and today i was also reading Leland's post The Rise of Branded Software? over at Whistle Through Your Comb starting from the site's idea.

"The Unseen Video is much more than a normal, static music video. It is a video that is affected by the weather and local time from the position of the viewer.
We want to create new synergies between the music, the video and the surroundings of the viewer. Every little change in your environment ensures that you will never see the same video twice. The look of the video might slightly change within an hour, but will have a whole new character in a few months."

simple, creative and fun