art – whatleydude

Five things on Friday #88

Things of note for the week ending September 5th, 2014.

1. Disappearing Drive-Ins

Photographer, Stephanie Klavens, has been documenting the fading world of US-based drive-in cinemas in a series of photos called ‘Vanishing Drive-Ins‘.

Strangely beautiful and, for me at least, a little poignant – these snapshots of disappearing Americana make me long for a UK revival.

via

2. Become Legend

Destiny arrives in less than a week from now (advance warning: Five Things might be late next week BECAUSE PLAYSTATION) and this newly released live action trailer is so much better than it should be and could’ve been OH so much worse.

Well done.

3. Interesting London Talks
I’ve been following the Talk London Twitter account for some time now and I still get such joy from it. The premise? A Twitter account specifically for keeping track of interesting talks, debates, and seminars in and around London.

Awesome and dead useful too.

Not in London but want a new Twitter account to follow? Try Saved You A Verge. It’s like Saved You A Click, but for The Verge. Brilliant.

4. UK Cinema Release Dates for your Calendar
I made this thing the other day. I was going to just throw it in as a list item on this week’s Five Things but then I figured it was so good, it deserved its own post.

Basically, I’ve made a calendar-based RSS feed for the UK film releases that I think are going to be good/worth seeing and you can add it to your calendar (iCal, Outlook, or Google) with this handy guide.

That’s all.

Next thing?

5. Inside the ISS
It’s Friday afternoon as you read this (probably). The weekend is around the corner and you’re feeling on top of the world (maybe). But now imagine being above it, looking down, and seeing the whole planet flow by beneath you.

Well, if you were sat in the Cupola section of the ISS, that’s exactly what you’d be able to do.

Like this –

Wouldn’t be lovely if you had an awesome camera? With a telescopic lens? Something with which you could get a proper look at everything down there?

Like this –

Now what if you were to take a video with that camera? One that came in at around 3mins and 40secs long, something that was just wonderful and allowed people to get lost in the wonder that is the planet we live upon?

Wouldn’t that be lovely?

Like this –

via.

Happy Friday everyone.

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Bonuses this week are all massively self-obsessed:

Narcissists or Identity Masters? – Taking a look at the modern selfie trend (featuring a minor contribution from yours truly.
Is Snapchat a good option for advertisers? – The Drum seeks comment and opinion on some recent brands-on-Snapchat activations (again, featuring your Five Things author).
Social Media Week is just around the corner and our hero is hosting a session about how to get the most out of Twitter Cards. Fancy coming along? (important note: event might say Thursday – I think it will actually happen on the Tuesday).
Irish readers might be pleased to know that I’m giving a preview of my SMWLDN talk next week at Measurement.ie in Dublin.
Buzzfeed did a list of ‘London’s Secret Underworld‘ and a couple of my photos are in it.

Until next week.

Five things on Friday #78

Things of note for the week ending June 27th, 2014.
(sorry it’s late)

1. Paper Later
Discovered via my friend Robbie last night (who had just taken delivery of his own copy). PaperLater is a super neat and super retro way of enjoying the articles that you save to your ‘read it later’ app of choice, e.g.: Pocket or Instapaper).

What it does is, for Â£4.99, pull all your saved-for-later articles, lays them out in a decent format, print them up on sustainable / recycled newspaper, and then delivers the whole thing to your door.

Lovely stuff.

The beta is UK only for now and you can sign up right here.

2. Petit Tube
Like Forgotify before it, Petit Tube is a website that celebrates the esoteric content of the internet. In this case, bringing out the very best (or worst) of YouTube by digging up those videos that have zero [or close to zero] views against them. This is deep exploration of the the long tail; here be dragons.

Seriously super random.

3. Phases in Mobile
A characteristically great post from Ben Evans. This week, using the TV ads of the past ten years to analyse how much the face of the mobile consumer space has changed since 1994.

Zero to 2bn customers in ten years. What will the next ten bring?

Read: Phases in Mobile.

4. Facebook’s ‘Experiment’
This story landed two days ago and it is spiralling like crazy. If you’ve not read about it yet, start with Marginal Revolution and click, click, click from there. This will not go away quickly.

5. Superman: DOOMED.
This isn’t an item about Superman. Well, it is. But that’s not what I mean. Guillem March is an artist working in comic books today. He uses his blog to demonstrate the process of creating, amongst other things, covers for different books.

This week he showed the process from this –

To this –

I love this stuff.

That is all.

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Bonus items are all videos this week, enjoy –

Future Batman [hilarious]
Whitney Houston cover [brilliant]
TMNT, trailer 2 [ridiculous]

Five things on Friday #74

Things of note for the week ending May 30th, 2014.

1. ‘Super Important Tweet’
I first found out about this web app via the always interesting Web Curios newsletter. Basically, the premise is that you can add ‘importance’ to a tweet by creating a text-based-image that you can embed in your tweet which subsequently hammers home the importance of what it is you’re trying to say.

However, what it actually does is allow you to create a perfectly sized image for Twitter. That’s right brands, a simple web app now does that thing you all seem incapable of doing.

Amazing, right?

Try it.

2. Ocean Piglets, Shield Toads, and Naked Snails
Aka, how to name animals in German. I used to study German at school and while I’m not a big one for publishing infographics on this here blog of mine, there’s no harm in linking to one.

Seriously, this is brilliant.

3. Beautiful Brands on Instagram

The value of branded activity on Instagram is still very much a point of argument amongst the marketing folk of today. Does it drive any meaningful value? Can you actually measure anything? Why are we bothering? – are all questions that float around when this comes up for discussion, and you really have to know your onions to formulate a decent response.

If you don’t know your onions and want to know more about how Instagram can ‘work’ for brands, the blog of those folk at Nitrogram is a good place to start. There’s a ton of stuff to read up on and, if you’re looking for inspiration, they’re latest post isn’t a bad read at all.

4. Faking Cultural Literacy

Itâ€™s not lying, exactly, when we nod knowingly at a cocktail party or over drinks when a colleague mentions a movie or book that we have not actually seen or read, nor even read a review of. There is a very good chance that our conversational partner may herself be simply repeating the mordant observations of someone in her timeline or feed. The entire in-person exchange is built from a few factoids netted in the course of a dayâ€™s scanning of iPhone apps. Who wants to be the Luddite who slows everything down by admitting he has never actually read a Malcolm Gladwell book and maybe doesnâ€™t exactly understand what is meant by the term â€œGladwellianâ€ â€” though he occasionally uses it himself?

This, from the New York Times, is remarkably spot on.

Go read it.

Properly.

Without skimming.

The final paragraph is a knock-out.

5. Gorgeous Art, at High Speed

From this:

To this:

Cool, right?

Made to been seen at high speeds, these colorful patterns form a sequential whole for commuters whizzing by at top speed. Dubbed ‘Psycholustro’, the artist (Katharina Grosse) created the work as a way to ‘engage everyday travelers with a project that addresses their in-motion perspective and the passage of time’ (more at the source).

I think it’s awesome and, bizarrely enough, similar to an idea I had for the Channel Tunnel when I was nine years old.

It’s OK, I’m pretty sure she didn’t copy me.

…

Exhibiting at the Saatchi Gallery

Yup.

BACK STORY

In March I wrote a post about the reason why I use Google+. In short, it’s only really down to one thing, and that thing is a little feature known as ‘Auto Awesome‘.

What Auto Awesome does is automatically add special effects to the photos that it thinks could do with them. Obviously this is all done separately from your main folder, so you don’t ruin your originals, but the net effect is actually quite fun and cool.

The awesomes themselves vary but my favourite is definitely when Google+ spots a batch of photos that look similar, and then throws them together to create an animated gif.

THE COMPETITION

Shortly after that post went live, I was alerted to a Google-sponsored Motion Photography competition at the Saatchi Gallery (that obviously lent itself to the creation of these Auto Awesomes).

Of the six categories available, I entered this one into the Urban category –

I didn’t win.

Boo.

BUT I DID MAKE IT AS A FINALIST!

Which means:

My work was judged by film director Baz Luhrmann, artists Tracey Emin, Shezad Dawood and Cindy Sherman, and Saatchi Gallery CEO, Nigel Hurst – AMAZING!
I got my name in The Londonist – BRILLIANT!
My work is at this very moment on display in the Saatchi Gallery – SPEECHLESS!

And that’s pretty darn awesome.

As you can see, I’ve already been to see my stuff (and the rest of the entries, including the rather excellent winning entrants) and the whole exhibition is pretty special.

It’s an odd feeling, having work up in the Saatchi. It didn’t really hit me until I was leaving, just how lucky I am to have stuff there. The other work that has appeared in that building. The other artists. The effort.

I’m still a bit dumbfounded by it all really.

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The Motion Photography Prize is on display on the top floor of Saatchi Gallery, Kingâ€™s Road, SW3 4RY until 24 May.

Five things on Friday #71

Things of note for the week ending May 9th, 2014. This week featuring gorgeous art, fantastic film, and provocative pieces of YouTube fodder.

Things of note for the week ending May 9th, 2014

1. What We Do In The Shadows
A couple of film previews this week, first up What We Do In The Shadows, a vampire mockumentary co-written and directed by he of Flight of the Conchords fame, Jermaine Clement.

Yeah, I’d say it looks suitable mental.

Via Total Film

2. 101 Things to love about NYC… in 1976
Scouting New York is one of my favourite casual blogs. Casual in that I don’t read it religiously, but I like to swing by every now and then and see what’s up. Written by a chap named movie location scout based in New York, it’s an awesome take on all things esoteric from the big apple.

His latest discovery is this list of 101 things to love about NYC and it’s pretty awesome.

More here.

3. The Phones Show Chat
Every week, pretty much without fail, my buddy and I, Stefan Constantinescu, record a 30 minute podcast covering about mobile technology. We’re not the only guys that do mobile-related podcasts, 361 degrees is one, Steve Litchfield and his Phones Show is another. In fairness, Steve’s actual show is a 15min video on YouTube, however it comes packing with an accompanying podcast covering that week’s topics in a bit more detail.

Why am I talking about it this week? Steve invited me on as a guest and it was probably the geekiest and best conversation I had all week.

MP3 Download Link

4. Untranslatable Words Illustrated
New Zealand artist, Anjana Iyer, recently undertook a personal project to ‘illustrate words found in foreign languages that cannot be Anglicised word for word’. The series, entitled ‘Found in Translation‘, is wonderful –

But it has to be said, this one, for ‘Rire dans sa barbe’, is definitely my favourite.

Via

5. The Most Important Sexy Model Video Ever
Caught this in Marketing Week yesterday.

Just watch –

Opinions in the comments please.

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Bonus thing this week, from one Mark Jennings
In 1692, some 270-odd years before Pantone, an artist decided to document and describe every colour imaginable over 800 (completely handwritten) pages.

The result is amazing.

More.

Bonus bonus thing: Mark Jennings also goes by the moniker of ‘Mark of Respect‘ and is the sole proprietor of Drinks Galore – ‘elegant drinks tasting for spirited amateurs’. There’s an event coming up in June that is all about gin.

For a reasonable price you get –

5 incredible gins – 3 of which will be neat to show you the true essence of gin
Hands-on gin and tonic masterclass
A cocktail on arrival
Chill out in the wonderful private space at The Hox
Friendly, expert information about the gin

If you like gin, you should go. Tickets are available now.

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That’s me done, see you next week.

Five things on Friday #68

Things of note for the week ending April 18th, 2014.

1. BFI Player
Not sure if this is available outside of the UK but the British Film Institute launched their own web-based content player recently. If you like bloody good film, it’s not a bad place to rent stuff from (and there’s 15% off if you’re a member, obvs).

2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
This has got car crash written all over it BUT wild horses won’t keep me from seeing it at the cinema.

Yes, Michael Bay is rebooting the Turtles.
No, it doesn’t seem like they’ll be keeping to their origin stories.
Yes, the trailer looks terrible / typically Michael Bay.
No, there’s no sign of Krang.
Yes, Megan Fox is playing April O’Neil.
No, the Turtles aren’t as small as they’re supposed to be.
Yes, Splinter will be in it.

Oh, and I really like the postersÂ –

3. Coconut Crabs (and Amelia Earheart)
Potentially a bit of nightmare fuel, so no image – you can click through yourself.

4. One Positive Thing. Everyday.

I like these set of illustrations. A lot. You might too.

Good job they’re available to buy as well, eh?

5. Computerising the Human Experience
The image at the top of this post was created by Victoria Siemer.

Her work is amazing, if a little heart-breaking.

Full set available via Beautiful Decay.

Have a great weekend.

Five things on Friday #66

Things of note for the week ending April 4th, 2014

1. Christian Ward
Good art, yo.

2. Gravity Deleted Scene
This is great (watch ’til the end)

3. Die Hard
I was watched Channel 5 last Sunday, and [the original] Die Hard was voted ‘The Best Action Film Ever Made’. I find it hard to disagree (it really is fantastic). To celebrate, here’s a picture of Bruce Willis.

4. Captain America: Old Shool
Last weekend I saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier (and wrote you a spoiler-free review too), I spotted this awesome old school poster for it not shortly after and just had to share it. It’s super cool.

Side note: I also caught The Grand Budapest Hotel and Under the Skin. You should see all three.

5. The Photography of Stanley Kubrick
Before Stanley Kubrick began to make his name in film, he tinkered around in the related medium of photography.

During the 1940s, Kubrick was employed as a photographer at Look Magazine in New York. It was during this time that he started studying film at the Museum of Modern Art. Fortunately for us, he also took a lot of photos and 1940s New York, through Kubrick’s eye, is fantastic.

The whole set is amazing.

Go check it out.

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Bonus items this week –

80s New York is gritty, strange, and moving.
This guy is too cool for school.
What’s the coolest thing you’ve seen this week? Do me a favour and tell me in the comments. Go on.

Until next time, stay frosty…