One of a series of ‘futurist films’ by global design collective Universal Everything exploring human-machine collaboration through performance and emerging technologies. To wit:
A dancer teaches a series of three robots (in this case, Izzy) how to move. As the robots’ abilities develop from shaky mimicry to composed mastery, a physical dialogue emerges between man and machine – mimicking, balancing, challenging, competing, outmanoeuvring…
…killing all humans, etc.
Previously: More Than Human
Skater Josh Neuman reaches a smoothly terrifying 112km/h on his decent of an (almost but not quite) deserted road somewhere in the Swiss Alps.
Full screen for best effect.
A short by Estonian animator Chintis Lundgren about Manivald – an ‘overeducated, unemployed and generally uninspired’ 33 year old fox who lives at home with this overbearing retired mother. To wit:
Manivald spends his days learning piano while she makes his coffee and washes his socks. It is an easy life, but not a good one. Their unhealthy co-dependence is about to change when the washing machine breaks down and in comes Toomas, a sexy and adventurous wolf repairman, to fix it, and them.
An installation by global design collective Universal Everything currently running at the Barbican in London as part of the AI: More Than Human exhibition.
Visitors are presented with a gyrating, wiggling abstract animation that tracks and mimics their movements via 47,000 possible variations.
The animation becomes more agile as it learns the specific movements of the observer. The exhibition runs until the end of August, if you’re passing.
Further to a current marketing wheeze by McDonald’s in Sweden whereby hives are located on the roofs of restaurants to draw attention to the world’s dwindling honeybee populations, behold: the McHive by brand marketers Nord DDB – a fully functioning hive in a miniature replica Mickey D’s.
A rather mesmerising short by Alexa Lim Haas focussing on the daily routines of a Chinese manicurist at a Florida strip mall struggling with loneliness and a language she barely understands.
Far less grim than it sounds.
A curious loop by Chinese born Chicago based artist Yuge Zhou featuring a a collage of hundreds of video clips shot in the subway stations in New York. To wit:
The movement of the commuters in the outer rings suggests the repetitive cycle of life and urban theatricality and texture. The inner-most ring includes people sitting on the bench waiting; the central drummers act as the controller of the movement, inspired by the concept of the Four-faced Buddha in Chinese folk religion. For the installation, the video is projected onto the gallery floor and mapped onto a cube with relief in the middle of the projection area. The installation invites audiences to sit on the central cube as Voyeur-gods, to observe the anonymous characters in the projected urban labyrinth.
Now for yeh.
