V.A. Saturday
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Wednesday, 27 July 2011
Lori Nix
In our 79th episode we visit the Brooklyn studio of Lori Nix who photographs epic scenes of destruction and grandeur, natural wonders and glittering metropolises, magnificent architecture and heroic landscapes that all have one thing in common—they're all fake. Lori gives us a tour behind the artifice, showing us how she meticulously crafts the miniature sets using found objects and model-making materials.
This Photographer Achieves Surreal Pictures without Photoshop
This Photographer Achieves Surreal Pictures without Photoshop
The Mp3 Experiment Eight
For our latest mission, over 3,500 people downloaded an MP3 file and pressed play simultaneously. The event began at sunset in two starting points by the Hudson River. The masses converged on Nelson Rockefeller Park as twilight ended and participated in a series of synchronized activities involving flashlights, camera flashes, glow sticks, and masks.
Created by Charlie Todd & Tyler Walker
http://improveverywhere.com
Created by Charlie Todd & Tyler Walker
http://improveverywhere.com
DJ Spooky - 'Sonification of Ice Assets' (Download)
Ice-crystal sonification created in collaboration with Robert AlexanderNASA JPFP Fellow
HERE
Saul Bass Meets Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
(Click to enlarge)
Many of today's artists and designers have and will always be inspired by the one and only Saul Bass, an American graphic designer and filmmaker who was best known for designing innovative title sequences and posters for movies like North by Northwest, Vertigo, and Psycho.Nathan Boyd is one of Bass' admirers. "Saul Bass just blows my mind!," he tells us. "His style is so simple yet so complex! It really captures the feeling of the time those movies were made but, at the same time, works really well today. How is that possible?!"
Boyd, who you may remember as the one behind that clever Disney x Star mashup series, has been creating Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles posters in Saul Bass' trademark style. Why did he choose to illustrate these famous turtles?
"TMNT practically was my childhood," Boyd says. "There is so much nostalgia connected with TMNT for me. I'm a Star Wars fan, first and foremost, but the Ninja Turtles was something that I shared with my brothers growing up. We not only enjoyed the cartoon, but also the comics, the action figures (no matter how ridiculous) and quoting the first movie almost line for line. It's impossible, for me, to think of TMNT without thinking about all the good times I had with my brothers."
Boyd has plans to create one poster for each of the turtles and possibly one more for Shredder. "Still thinking about that one," he says. Love how they bring you right back to your childhood.
Alice @'My Modern Met'
Nathan H. Boyd's website
Stereogum Presents… STROKED: A Tribute To Is This It
Is This It was recorded in NYC at Transporterraum with Gordon Raphael. When it was finally released in the States in the Fall of 2001, a decade after Nevermind, it helped not only put contemporary New York City in the forefront of music lovers’ minds, it offered an easy reference for people to dig backwards into the Big Apple’s rock ‘n’ roll past. For certain younger fans, it was maybe the first time they carefully considered Television (the late ’70s), the Velvet Underground (mid ’60s to early ’70s), and other lesser known garage and rock and whatever bands that inhabited a dirtier, grubbier Manhattan. The title’s pure Richard Hell. The original sexy album cover a minimalist echo of New York Dolls (via Roxy Music). It’s no coincidence that 2001 NYC — eventually, especially Brooklyn — ended up being known for its post-punk revival. (See, for instance, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Liars, Black Dice, Vice Records’ No New York nodding collection Yes New York, etc.) Is This It was a history lesson, but one with enough new ideas to also offer a roadmap.
In a strange way, Is This It sounded like something entirely new and entirely familiar at the same time. That’s one secret to its appeal. That, and the simple head-nodding hooks on modern classics like “Last Nite,” “Someday,” and “Hard To Explain” are so immediate. It’s a clean, but scruffy collection. It’s honed and tight, but also just loose enough — loose mostly in the presentation. People watching MTV in ’01 won’t forget the first time they saw the way Julian Casablancas didn’t seem to give a shit in the “Last Nite” video. Or how the bands’ minds appeared elsewhere when they performed on Late Night Television. It’s a kind of charisma you can’t teach or practice, one that felt as natural as their messy hair.
The Strokes maybe never topped Is This It, but you can’t blame them for that. Part of the record’s appeal is also the youthfulness of it, something you can’t replicate even a year later. That said, they definitely found a way to bottle it on the album itself: If you listen to it now, 10 years later, it sounds as fresh (and vintage) as ever. Which is maybe why its sound continues to surface in 2011 among both shaggy rock groups, yeah, but also kids with keyboards in their bedrooms and folks wearing sunglasses behind their laptops.
Tracklist and download
HERE
Norway Attacks: How a Once Moderate Region Became a Haven for the Far Right
People react at the end of a memorial service at Oslo Cathedral on Sunday, July 24, 2011, in the aftermath of the Friday attacks on Norway's government headquarters and a youth retreat in Oslo Emilio Morenatti / AP
In 2005, Norway's populist, far-right Progress Party ran election-campaign posters that featured a dark-skinned man pointing a gun at the camera and the slogan "The perpetrator is of foreign origin." Today, these posters carry a terrible irony: Anders Behring Breivik — a tall, blond, blue-eyed farmer not of foreign origin — massacred dozens of Norwegian schoolchildren on Friday, July 22, in what seems to have been a deranged attempt to spark a revolution against the influx of foreigners he felt was diluting Norway's heritage.
It is dangerous to look for answers in the mind of a madman. It does not necessarily reveal anything useful about a nation if one of its citizens murders under the banner of a particular ideology. But if Breivik's psychopathy is unique, in Norway and other Nordic countries his political beliefs are surprisingly widespread. It may seem shocking, but Scandinavia — for years a model of tolerance and cooperation and the sponsor of dozens of worthy international conferences and treaties — has become the latest European haven for xenophobic populist thought.
Norway's Progress Party, of which Breivik is a former member, won more than one-fifth of the national vote in the latest parliamentary election, in 2009. Last year, the Swedish Democrats became the first far-right party to enter the Swedish parliament when it captured nearly 6% of the vote despite a furor that erupted when local candidate Marie-Louise Enderleit posted a comment on Facebook that migrants should be shot in the head, put in a bag and sent back to their home countries. Denmark's Folkparty, which recently ran an anti-immigrant campaign under the slogan "Give us Denmark back," secured 14% of the vote in a 2007 election and has since been an influential coalition partner in government. And the True Finns became the third largest party represented in the Finnish Parliament after winning 19% of the vote in elections in April.
"It is the end of an era," Anders Wildfeldt, lecturer in Nordic politics at the University of Aberdeen, says of the entrance of the far right into the Nordic political mainstream. Citing the success of xenophobic parties in other parts of Europe, Wildfeldt adds, "It's becoming increasingly inaccurate to discuss Scandinavian exceptionalism..."
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Debut for A Clockwork Orange music
Songs written by author Anthony Burgess for a musical version of his novel A Clockwork Orange are to be performed in the UK for the first time.
Burgess adapted A Clockwork Orange for a stage musical in the 1980s after his book was turned into a controversial film by director Stanley Kubrick.The music will be performed next year in Manchester during a series of events to mark the novel's 50th anniversary.
The story follows a violent teenage gang leader in a lawless society.
The film caused an international outcry when it was released in 1971, leading Kubrick to withdraw it from cinemas.
'Ownership of the story' The musical was "a kind of revisioning of the story", according to Dr Andrew Biswell, director of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester.
Burgess, who was born in Manchester, was a prolific composer as well as the author of 33 novels. He died aged 76 in 1993.
"The music is really important because it establishes a tone and a mood," Dr Biswell said. "It's pretty close to West Side Story - that's one of the obvious influences on it.
"There's this scene in prison, where one of the prisoners is kicked to death, which is very throwaway and jolly. That's completely different from the corresponding episode in the film, which is very gloomy and depressing.
"The reason why Burgess wanted to make his own stage adaptation, quite a long time after Kubrick made the film, was to assert his own ownership of the story."
In 1990, Burgess's script was performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company, but the production rejected his music in favour of new songs by Bono and The Edge of U2.
Burgess's songs will be performed by graduates of the Royal Northern College of Music at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation.
A separate musical version of the story, featuring a new score and script, will be staged featuring black actors at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, London, from September.
The anniversary will also include an exhibition about the film, featuring props, photographs from deleted scenes, location photography and rejected artwork at the John Rylands Library in Manchester.
@'BBC'
(Thanx Stan!)
democracynow Democracy Now!
BREAKING: Environmentalist Tim DeChristopher sentenced to 2 yrs for disrupting federal oil & gas auction. Watch DN: ow.ly/5O7kP
Government ordered to release Hillsborough papers
The government has been ordered to release cabinet records of discussions in the immediate aftermath of the 1989 Hillsborough stadium disaster.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was briefed about the tragedy and held several meetings about the disaster in which 96 Liverpool fans died. Information Commissioner Christopher Graham ruled that the information was in the public interest.
The Cabinet Office said it had yet to receive the commissioner's ruling.
Mr Graham's judgement relates to a Freedom Of Information (FoI) request from the BBC which was refused by the Cabinet Office in 2009.
The government has either 28 days to appeal or 35 days in which to release the documents.
The secret files include reports presented to Mrs Thatcher and correspondence between her office and the then home secretary Douglas Hurd, and minutes of meetings she attended.
Mr Graham's decision notice said the "specific content of the information in question would add to public knowledge and understanding about the reaction of various parties to that event, including the government of the day, in the early aftermath".
Mr Graham also criticised the Cabinet Office for "unjustified and excessive delays" in handling the BBC request.
The request had been followed by an internal review which upheld the refusal.
'Cover-up' Relatives of the Liverpool fans who died in the Hillsborough tragedy said they were pleased they might discover Mrs Thatcher's thoughts on the disaster.
They expressed surprise that the commissioner had ordered the Cabinet Office to release the documents, despite the 30-year rule stopping publication of cabinet minutes.
Pat Joynes, a member of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, said: "I'm very pleased that the papers are going to be handed over.
"Twenty-two years ago, when Mrs Thatcher came to Liverpool Cathedral, my husband asked her face to face if there was going to be a cover-up, and she said: 'Mr Joynes, there will be no cover-up.'
"But there has been a cover-up which has persisted ever since."
Another member of the group Ann Williams, who lost her 15-year-old son Kevin in the tragedy, said: "This is good news. I'm very surprised.
"I thought the government would block it. At least now, we may get to the truth."
Ninety-five Liverpool supporters were killed in a crush of fans at the Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield, where the club was playing an FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest.
The 96th victim was left in a coma for three years and died in 1992.
An inquiry into the disaster held that the main reason for the overcrowding was the failure of police control.
@'BBC'
At last! Maybe finally the truth will be for all for to see...
Tuesday, 26 July 2011
One Day on Earth - Motion Picture Trailer
onedayonearth.org
One Day on Earth creates a picture of humanity by recording a 24-hour period throughout every country in the world. We explore a greater diversity of perspectives than ever seen before on screen. We follow characters and events that evolve throughout the day, interspersed with expansive global montages that explore the progression of life from birth, to death, to birth again. In the end, despite unprecedented challenges and tragedies throughout the world, we are reminded that every day we are alive there is hope and a choice to see a better future together.
Founded in 2008, One Day on Earth set out to explore our planet’s identity and challenges in an attempt to answer the question: Who are we?
Via
Former Guantanamo Chief Prosecutor: David Hicks' War Crimes Charge Was a 'Favor' for Australia
Last week, the Australian government announced that it would initiate legal proceedings to try and seize royalty payments David Hicks has received following the publication of his memoir, "Guantanamo: My Journey," about the five years he spent at the prison facility, charging that he has violated the country's laws by profiting from a crime.
While Hicks' supporters have deplored the decision by Australia's Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, the court proceedings scheduled to begin next month could end up being a blessing for the former Guantanamo detainee and his defense team in that it may afford them an opportunity to show how the Bush administration and the government of former Prime Minister John Howard politicized his case, a fact much of the Australian media continues to ignore.
Hicks, 35, who gave his first interview to Truthout in February, pleaded guilty in 2007 to providing material support for terrorism. Hicks was the first detainee to be convicted before a military commission following the passage of the Military Commissions Act by Congress the previous year. The legislation was crafted in response to a Supreme Court decision that struck down the original military tribunal system set up by George W. Bush after 9/11, which the High Court said was illegal under the Geneva Conventions and US law.
Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor of military commissions at Guantanamo, recalled during a recent interview at his office in Washington, DC, how he was pressured into indicting Hicks for war crimes not long after the Military Commissions Act was signed into law by Bush in October 2006. (Truthout will publish a lengthy story based on our interview with Davis, a vocal critic of the Obama administration's handling of Bush-era torture, in the weeks ahead.)
Davis said he believed that Hicks, who attended training camps in Afghanistan and was sold to US forces by the Northern Alliance for a $1,500 bounty in November 2001, should not have been prosecuted for war crimes. He described the former horse trainer as a "knucklehead ... a little guy with not a lot of education who wanted to be a big shot and went off on this adventure to Jihad."
"After years at Guantanamo, there was no possibility David Hicks would ever repeat that experience," Davis said.
When he was selected as chief prosecutor in September 2005, Davis said he made it clear to his superiors at the Pentagon that "the one case I did not want to start with was David Hicks."
"The first case is the one that will get lots of attention," Davis said. "Unfortunately, Hicks' case was already in the pipeline. It was a terrible case. We told the world these guys are the 'worst of the worst.' David Hicks was a knucklehead. He was just a foot solider, not a war criminal. But when Congress passed the Military Commissions Act they authorized prosecuting material support, which is what Hicks was charged with, as a war crime. You could prosecute everyone at Guantanamo under that theory."
Despite Davis' concerns, the Bush administration was determined to charge Hicks, even if the evidence against him was thin, to help out an ally in the war on terror, US government documents obtained by Truthout show.
Davis also believes that's what happened. He said he arrived at that decision not long after he received an urgent phone call in January 2007 from Pentagon General Counsel William "Jim" Haynes who asked him, "How quickly can you charge David Hicks?"
Davis said that was the first and only time Haynes had ever called him about a specific case and he found it to be "odd." The phone call was made one day after US officials met with the ambassador to Australia, where Hicks' case and its impact on Howard's re-election campaign was discussed, according to a secret State Department document obtained by Truthout.
Davis informed Haynes, who Bush had twice nominated to serve on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, that he could not initiate charges against Hicks "even if he wanted to" because the "Manual for Military Commissions" had not been prepared yet by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and a "convening authority" who is supposed to oversee the process had not been appointed.
"The manual implements the law, in this case the Military Commissions Act of 2006," Davis said. "It fills in the details the statute doesn't. It fills in the elements of crimes, lays out the elements of crimes. When Haynes called me I said I couldn't charge Hicks because I did not know what the elements of the offense are. I said, 'wait for the manual to be written...'"
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Jason Leopold @'truthout'
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