Yhancik Magazine

This Saturday, at the DNA in Brussels



Zerkalo, a project coproduced by Victoria Lukas and Heinrich Mueller*
Drexciya, Japanese Telecom, Arpanet & Dopplereffekt


With visuals by uliawithred

As sneaky and/or awkward as Louis Theroux might sometimes be, it was a nice and sensible documentary about (not meeting) Michael Jackson.

You can, quite ironically, see Louis being turned down by Michael's close friend Uri Geller... in favour of Martin Bashir who was then working on his own documentary, the infamous Living with Michael Jackson.



It's worth a watch. Probably more than what will flood our TV for the coming days/weeks/months.



( Also, from Boing Boing )

On Friday, I saw Fennesz live, in a small church, for free !

And thanks Cthulhu, it was free, because it's been terribly short, and not pretty good :/

1) When he arrived, his laptop was obviously missing from the gear, so he had to get it back at the hotel (or something like that). It started like 20-30 minutes late.




2) It was either too messy or too monotonous... he was basically nonchalantly playing is guitar, then fiddling around on his laptop, but it wasn't really leading anywhere or constructing anything. It felt like I was watching Christian in his studio experimenting around with some sounds. Why not. BUT WELL, it was free, eh.




Before that, I saw the second half of BL!NDMAN's set. Very contemporary and minimal, and something that, I think, womanonfire & nomi would have enjoyed. One of the member strangely looked like a smoother version of David Bowie... especially with that saxophone...



Alva Noto was playing like, next door, at the Recyclart, at the same time. So I missed it.

Instead I saw Byetone (not to be nerdly misread as Byteone), which a bit like a groovy/danceable version of Alva Noto (with an hint of Pan Sonic). It was nice enough.


Click on the pic for a video of.. well a Byetone performance at OFFF'09, but it was pretty similar ;)

~

On a side-note, totally unrelated, but the Weekly World News is on Google Books!

( An introduction - Some background )

Bohemia Interactive is releasing the second successor to Operation Flashpoint. Called Armed Assault 2, it's basically the same old thing, but bigger and more powerful. Since it's a sandboxing game (that thus mostly relies and its mechanisms), it can only make the experience more rich.

The following videos have been made with the editor. Which means that basically someone chosed a map, put a bunch of units on it (between 1000 an 1500), and started the game. From there, the AI will take care of every single character, except the player of course.





It's not about the technical achievement. It's about a simulation engine becoming a drama engine.
It's about being put in the shoes of squaddie running helplessly in a large and confusing battleground, in a grim night.

There's still that idea that a relevant, moving, deep game has to be as great as an Hollywood film, with a couple of memorable characters, and a great story spreading across significant scenes. It can work, but to me it's missing the point and specificities of videogame as a medium.

( And here I explain why... )

délicieusement rebaptisée "Cinematek".
(dès lors devrais-je écrire "Se soire @ la cinematek ya sa lol" ?)



Oh oui!
avec introduction par cet architecte de François Schuiten... plus tard dans le mois y'a Midam Présente Alien, oh oui (bis)

"Firefox, most popular search engine after Microsoft & Apple"

Sheesh, it's just like my father saying "Google" for Firefox, "Internet" for browser, "Adobe" for Acrobat or "Microsoft" for Office.

It also could totally start a meme.

A new Google experiment, displaying results in a grid.
Boring example by Google : http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=dog%20breeds

More funny :
http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=memes
http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=villains
http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=rephlex
http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=rambo

Thank you, Google Squared!

Now go have fun with it, dear friends!

So Johnny Lee was doing clever things with the Wiimote.
He HAD to be hired by Nintendo.

He's been very silent for a long, but the project he's been collaborating with has been unveiled at this year's E3. And it's with... Microsoft!


http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/projectnatal

It's still more of a promotional teaser than a real tech demo, but it gives you an idea.

It's like the Wii without a Wiimote.
I'm a bit concerned that will suffer from the same issues then... accidents, imprecision, and lack of interesting games to use the new "controller" (especially in this age of crossplatformery).. but well, we'll see.

And if people manage to hack into the device so we can use it on art project, it will surely be awesome :p

~

Do you remember the Nintendo ON hoax ?



It was exactly 4 years ago.

Happy Birthday, womanonfire & orlandobr !


And aside from that, on June 5th at iMal, there will be a concert of (among others) Christina Vantzou, one half of The Dead Texan (the other half being Adam Wiltzie from Stars of the Lid).

The other artists playing will be Christopher Willits (who obviously worked with Sakamoto and Matmos) and some Quix.

Here's a video of a Willits' track, illustrated by Vantzou.



http://www.imal.org/ESS

Well this is what I got from Waxy's recent posts.

1) Meme sceneries


or : the background of various memes, without its main subject.




2) Bootyclipse


or : "booty-shaking videos on YouTube with the booty removed"

This is one of my favourite works of digital art ever. A reference, to me.



http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/granulare-synthesen/

I don't know if it's one of those awful 90s "cyberthrillers" that comes out a bit late, or an unnecessary revival.
But since the script is written by the same guy who committed "The Net", it's probably the former.



To add to the retro feel, Bruce Willis (lost in another cybermess after Die Hard 4) has wonderfull hair.



But if I understand well, he has hair because he's the robot version of the Real Bruce. So he's "better looking" (hohohohahahahahhihihihi).
It will also be less confusing for the average spectator.


Here's the real Bruce all into the cybermatrix :



Now he looks like a roadie. From the future.

But whatever, aren't your excited yet ?

( Why does it remind me of Chou Aniki ? )

Et ça semble tout à fait coller à ce grand fait d'actualité.

I don't know... I wish I could salute the fact that they're trying to make something slightly different from MTV standards.
But.. from the start I'm a bit dubious about it.
The futuristic tone is quite obvious. How much do they really embrace the cyber-techno-future, and how much is it a pose?

That actually reminds me of the debate around Billy Idol's 1993 album Cyberpunk.

Released to overwhelmingly negative reviews, Cyberpunk polarized the internet communities of the period. Detractors viewed it as an act of cooptation and opportunistic commercialization. It was also seen as part of a process that saw the overuse of the term "cyberpunk" until the word lost meaning. Alternatively, supporters saw Idol's efforts as harmless and well-intentioned, and were encouraged by his new interest in cyberculture.

There are a couple of funny things with that Boom Boom Pow song & video.

The very obvious display of a HP TouchSmart laptop is a kinda lame product placement, and already undermines their futuristic message. What's futuristic about a contemporary piece of hardware ? That's so 2000 and late, to quote Ferggie's lyrics...

Later : "Y'all stuck on Super 8 shit / That low-fi stupid 8 bit / I'm on that HD flat". LULZ.
Especially when they praise the 808 later.

Or things like "I'm on the supersonic boom / Y'all hear the spaceship zoom / When, when I step inside the room / Them girls go ape-shit, uh". P.I.M.P., space-style ? I wish it was humorous, but it doesn't seem to be.


And in the end, seriously...

En fait, je viens de tilter, 2 ans après.
Avec ses mouvements de bras, ses jeans slim et ses vêtements fluos.. c'était


à partir de 0:51 c'est assez indéniable, n'est-ce pas ?

Japan is weird. Japan is great.
So are memes.

It takes anything, any accident, misspelling, bug or silly idea to spawn generations of derivative silly ideas.

Referring to a meme might not the most creative act in itself, but the sum of all those small mutations (memetics = social genetics) make up one of the most prolific movements of the interwebz.


Example :

Obviously, there's a bug in Goldeneye (the famous N64 game, not that forgettable movie in the James Bond franchise) if you manipulate the cartridge while playing.

( video! )

A funny bug, for sure.

12 days later, someone remixed it and added some appropriate J-POP



They could have stopped here, because this could easily be the best video ever.


But for some reason, in October 2008, someone drew a little choreography inspired by the Goldeneye glitch.

( video!! )

And from this, there was nothing you could do to stop it.

Absolutely nothing...




A (virtual) dance inspired by a videogame glitch ? This is WIN !

Well at least 3 of them :p and 10 times as many photographers.



But more seriously, it's interesting to see how such events (the whole protest, as well as that RBS highlight) are covered.

From Streetphoto, via the always savvy nomi.

"Obviously most of the protestors are peaceful, but there's generally a tiny hardcore of (mostly) guys who have come with the full intention of doing some damage. They are generally young, and from my experience, complete assholes and cowards. They are often drunk.

(...)

Generally there are only about a dozen of these guys even in a really big demo. Since there are hundreds of photographers, you end up with a big herd of photographers following them everywhere, which of course makes them feel really big.

(...)

So eventually a window gets smashed, and of course the photographers all run en masse towards the sound. It takes about a minute to wreck the inside of the place, only a few people doing it, before the Tactical Support Group turn up, and the bad boys scarper.

These are the photos you see the next day in the newspaper.

Overall, it's not exactly staged. It's much, much closer to Kabuki. Everyone knows exactly how it's going to go, what's going to happen, and nobody gets seriously physically injured."

Nothing new, really, I guess we all know that. But it's also something we easily forget, so it's good to be reminded.
Especially since we're going to see a lot of those in the coming days ;)

Original pics from The Guardian, The BBC and Le Figaro
Epic bonus track.