An interesting look at Tokyo juxtaposing a car-ride on the Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway taken from Tarkowsky‘s 1972 film Solaris with the same ride filmed in 2005.
http://www.fischerelsani.net/kelvin/tme_v.html
Via vvork.
A great collection of time lapse clips from the PinK Tentacle .
I have always really loved these simple, yet expressive Stop Motion Studies from David Crawford.
In David’s own words:
“It is said that 90% of human communication is non-verbal. In these photographs, the body language of the subjects becomes the basic syntax for a series of animations exploring movement, gesture, and algorithmic montage. Many sequences document a person’s reaction to being photographed by a stranger. Some smile, others snarl, still others perform. Some pretend not to notice. Underneath all of this are assumptions and unknowns unique to each situation.”
Japan’s love affair with ska, reggae, mambo and other Caribbean music is well-documented, but I’m starting to see steel drum bands popping up all over the place. Is it just me? First there was the Panorama Steel Drum Orchestra at Fujirock this year, and now the Caribbean Magic Steel Drum Orchestra from Trinidad & Tobago play next next week, and just this weekend a Steel Drum band played at my local grocery store – I’m not kidding:
I can’t say enough about the amazingly fun and interesting Radiolab podcast. Imagine the best Discovery Channel-type show you’ve ever seen and then convert it to a radio program that you can stop and start at your leisure (or rewind a bit when a train arrival drowns it out). The latest installment is about emergence, which is basically the theory of how large, complex systems happen almost by accident via thousands or millions of unwitting players. For example, ants: individually, they are incompetent scavengers, but collectively, they are responsible for incredible feats of engineering.
The same ideas can be applied to weather systems, thought processes, google searches and the shape of cities, which made me think of Tokyo: How did it get it’s shape? Why did it spread where and when it did? Most of it was not planned,really, but formed through a series of happy accidents. For example, one guy opens a pizza parlor. It becomes popular, so some other guys opens a shop nearby to get into the action, then another and another and then TA DA! Roppongi is born. No one planned it – it just happened.
Really interesting authors like Steven Johnson (this book is great) and James Surowieki (I’ve mentioned him before) add fascinating examples about how a million small unplanned things can add up to massively amazing accomplishments.
Hitotoki is a great new site from some of the same guys that created Tokyo Art Beat. Here you read/write about the Tokyo experience. Some are quite good - few of them are crap - and best of all they’re mapped-out (use the cursor to move it around) and stories are short enough to gobble up several at one sitting.
Dunno how many of y’all kept up with Stippy.com’s story of “George,” a gaijin who spent a couple weeks in a Tokyo holding cell, but he’s at it again, with a straightforward expose on his marriage strife. The comments are almost better (and longer) than the article itself.