This excellent video travelogue by Ruslan Fedotow lets you glimpse into Syrian life, people and land. Ruslan is a student of the Belarussian Academy of Arts.
If you like this video, be sure to check out the Egypt & Lebanon Montage by Khalid Mohtaseb.
By combining time-lapse photography and video material, Benjamin Sichert reveals the magical atmosphere that haunts these old factory buildings. The footage shows the oldest motor plant in the world, that was founded in 1864 by Eugen Langen and August Otto in Cologne, Germany, and marks the beginning of Deutz AG. Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach worked here from 1876 in a management position. Unfortunately, the building will soon be demolished to create space for a new cable factory.
It is interesting to note that Benjamin uses a selfmade miniature Dolly (motorized camera slider) to create smooth camera movements and also sells different versions as entry level models for time-lapse photography and video filming.
Via Bewaremag.
During this year’s See Conference there was an interesting discussion whether facts and figures are better transported via infographic or video. While there obviously is no clear answer to that – the “best” format being dependent on content, audience, situation etc. – it is worthwhile to compare the different effects of each format.
Here are two examples in which the same information is presented as infographic and in a video. Choose for yourself:
Obsessed With Facebook
OnlineSchools.org presented this infographic, Alex Trimpe the according motion graphics video:
The Billion Dollar Gram / Debtris US
In the second example, both infographic and animation were created by data journalist and information designer David McCandless (Information is Beauftiful):
Which format do you prefer and why?
In this commercial for the launch of the Galaxy SII in France, Internet-famous Finger Tutting artist JayFunkY (Los Angeles) performs his awesome finger choreography illustrated by some nice motion graphics.
(Click through to YouTube to watch in HD and full screen!)
By the way: Finger Tutting is a “contemporary abstract interpretive street dance style modeled after Egyptian hieroglyphics” and related to other street dance styles such as Robot or Popping.
Via Design you Trust.
Here’s a funny stop-motion animation for the BBC Knowledge Channel by Seattle based artist Sean Pecknold.
TED announced the 10 winners of it’s inaugural Ads Worth Spreading initiative. Selected from more than 1,000 submissions from around the world, they are some of the most creative and compelling communications of the past year. “We’re seeking to reverse the trend of ads being aggressively forced on users. We want to nurture ads so good you choose to watch – and share”, said TED-curator Chris Anderson about the effort.
Here are my favorites. See all winners and honorable mentions on the Ads Worth Spreading initiative site.
My last post reminded me of the work of Australian choreographer Gideon Obarzanek, who is the founder and artistic director of the renowned dance company Chunky Move. Taking video projection one step further, he utilizes tracking camera systems and special software developed by German interactive software engineer Frieder Weiss to generate light and sound in real time in response to the dancer’s movement.
With the use of this technology, he explores how we perceive our own bodies and the space around us. The organic symbiosis of dancer and interactive projection visualizes layers of images and movement we cannot normally see but which we feel or know to exist.
Here is an interesting talk of Gideon, in which he shows examples of his work and explains the work behind.
Having been Chunky Move’s artistic director and CEO for 15 years, Obarzanek will step down at the end of 2011. By doing so, he wants to reconnect with performing and the things that initially drew him to dance in the first place: “I decided that I started this company and I was very excited about starting this company but I wanted to spend more time in the studio, more time working with other artists and less time being responsible for an organisation.”
With “Faker”, Obarzanek will be returning to the stage as a performer after 15 years. Here you can watch an interesting interview about this new piece.
If you like Japanese Sword Fighting, this is a must-see. In this performance, Taichi Saotome perfectly matches his sword choreography with an amazing shadow video animation created by techno-artists TeamLab. From the Special New Year Performance of Dragon and Peony, Sword Dance and Shadowgraph at the Galaxy Theater in Tokyo.
(click through to YouTube to watch in HD and full screen!)
Via Reflectionof.me
In this post from July 2010 I already introduced the work of photographer Todd Selby who visits home and work environments of authors, musicians, artists, designers and actors to capture interesting people in their creative spaces. In the meantime, Todd also started to make short films. I absolutely enjoyed this cinematic portrait about Mitch Alfus, the “Leather king” of New York.
(Click through to Youtube to watch in HD and full screen!)
By the way: His book, which was sold out at the time of my last post, is available again.
You can buy it at Amazon.com or Amazon.de.
South Africans Stan Engelbrecht and Nic Grobler are currently spending as much of their time as possible traveling through South Africa by bicycle to meet and photograph as many fellow cyclists out there as they can find. They are focusing on those who use bicycles as an integral tool in their day-to-day existence, wondering why very few people in South Africa use bicycles as mode of transport despite the lack of proper public transport infrastructure.
To finance their goal to publish a book about the project in the first half of 2011, they launched a fundraising campaign on Kickstarter, which will soon start into phase III for actual printing and binding of 3000 copies of the book. If you pledge an amount of $50 (or more) you thereby pre-order a copy of the book at the same time.
For constant updates, follow the project on on Twitter and Facebook. You can also find more photographs at the project’s homepage and more video clips on Vimeo.