Infection
Imogen Heap Performs “Me, the Machine” at Wired
Imogen Heap demonstrates her amazing new musical gloves at WIRED 2012. “Using a unique gestural vocabulary, motion data-capture systems, and user interfaces to parameter functions developed by Imogen Heap and her team, artists and other users will be able to use their motion to guide computer-based digital creations. The Musical Gloves are both an instrument and a controller in effect, designed to connect the user fluidly with gear performers usually use, such as Ableton – think Minority Report for musicians brought to you by the DIY/maker revolution.”
Inspired when Kelly Snook invited her to the MIT Media Lab in 2009 and she tried on Elly Jessop’s musical glove, she and her creative team, headed by Kelly Snook, began developing a glove that would enable “more expressive control of the tech in studio and on stage, something I could wear and create sound fluidly with, more organically, humanly somehow.”
The gloves offer an integrated, transcendent experience for the live performer, wherein she uses her motion, gesture, and body to create and control electronic music in an organic process, almost “touching” the notes, as if they were visible around her and her bodily movement, her physical interactions, literally performed the music.
“Heap told Wired 2012 that before she got her hands on her ‘magical gloves,’ she would make music with an array of instruments and virtual instruments, along with Albeton music software: ‘Basically, inside this software I can play virtual instruments and loop things, add layers and textures that I spend hours working on in my basement. But I wanted to bring those sounds on stage with me. I strapped keyboards onto me, had microphones attached to my wrists so that I can mic up wine glasses or guitars or whatever I wanted to record. The problem was, how could I do this on the move?’”
After a demo explaining how these gloves operate, she performs the song “Me, the Machine” from her new album, a breathtaking experience in context of what has gone before, and beautiful and alive. To learn more about the gloves, read the full write-up on Imogen Heap’s Website.
Lyrics after the cut:
See more after the cutThe Popovy Sisters’ “mod.” Collection
Tags: alien beauty, architectural fashion, avant-garde, bjds, collars, conceptual fashion, distorted bodies, dolls, edo-period japan, futuristic, hair, headdresses, historically inspired, hoopskirts, kabuki-inspired, otherworldly, red and white, samurai mask, white hair
Room Inspiration: Charmaine Olivia’s Studio
I am in love with the decor of the artist Charmaine Olivia’s studio. Simple, effective touches make for an atmosphere that is airy, delightfully antique, whimsical, a bit mystical/witchy, and beautiful.
All images are from Charmaine Olivia’s Flickr stream.
Tags: dark ethereal, dream houses, interior decoration, vintage
Another trailer for Alice: Madness Returns
Here is a trailer, featuring gameplay, for Alice: Madness Returns, which was released earlier this month (making it the fifth and final trailer).
Alice: Madness Returns is released in the U.S. on June 14, and in Europe on June 16, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.
I’m so looking forward to this!
Tags: alice in wonderland, american mcgee, colorful, cute n creepy little creatures, dark fairy tales, dreamscapes, gloomy color schemes, hauntingly beautiful, horror video games, innocence/menace, insane asylum aesthetic, insanity, madness, neo-victorian, psychological horror, surreal, trailers, victorian
Tiniest, Sweetest House
This 12x12ft (144 square feet) cabin is the Innermost House, and is located in the mountains of Northern California. Comprising a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, a study, and a sleeping loft, it has no electricity; the owners, Diana Lorence and her husband, do all their cooking and heating with the fireplace, and use candles to light it. As Diana writes in her guest post over on the Tiny House Blog, [The Innermost House] faces directly south beneath an open porch that shelters our front door. A hill rises to the north behind us and the forest lies all around. The house encloses five distinct rooms: to the east is a living room eleven feet deep by seven feet wide by twelve feet high; to the west the house is divided into kitchen, study, and bathroom, each approximately five feet wide by three feet deep, with a sleeping loft above the three of them, accessible by a wooden ladder we store against the wall.
We do not have electricity or power of other kind, so we warm the cabin and cook our food and heat our water for bathing all over the fire.
It’s absolutely beautiful in my opinion.
Tags: cabins, contemporary architecture, dream houses, environmentalism, modern simplicity
4 Most Highly Anticipated Movies
+ Melancholia
{I love Lars von Trier’s work, he’s one of my favorite contemporary directors, and his last film Antichrist (from 2009) was amazing. This movie looks to be potentially amazing as well. Starring Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg, with a role by Charlotte Rampling also, Melancholia can be described as a surreal psychological sci-fi film; the word “Melancholia” being both the name of the planet that’s imminently colliding with the Earth, and an apt term for the feeling and atmosphere of the movie. It promises to be intense, provocative, over-the-top emotional as Von Trier is known for; with a theatrical, sometimes even overly sentimental soundtrack. I love the surreal, beautiful image of Justine (Kirsten Dunst) floating down the river in her wedding gown holding her bouquet. It doesn’t currently have a U.S. release date, but I hope to see it sometime in 2011.}
+ The Tree of Life
{This Terrence Malick-directed movie, starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain, will be released on May 27. It’s one of the most beautiful movie trailers I’ve ever, ever seen. Vague and mystical, it doesn’t show us much of the story, but it’s incredible and moving. It splices together stunning images of outer space, nature on Earth, man-made structures like the ceiling of a church, and scenes from the childhood of the protagonist, Jack (from really interesting camera perspectives, too), in a kind of visual poetry. It seems to be about a man who’s grown up to be an astronaut (Sean Penn) and who’s reflecting on his upbringing and the lessons he learned from his parents, one of whom (the mother) represents the way of love and mercy, and the other of whom represents pragmatism and the way of the world. There’s a line whispered by the young Jack which expresses this tension, “Father…Mother…always you wrestle inside me. Always you will”; and his mother at the end saying, “If you don’t love, your life will flash by.”}
+ Sleeping Beauty
{This movie is written and directed by Julia Leigh and stars Emily Browning, whom I loved in Sucker Punch. It’s a surreal, visually elegant, and classy piece with an oblique fairy tale reference, described as a “haunting portrait of Lucy, a young university student drawn into a mysterious world of hidden desires.” It reminds me of both Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour from 1967 and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. I like its air of mystery, anticipation, and stillness, and its almost-retro sense of elegance and preciseness. It looks like a rare gem. It’s released in Australia on June 23, but doesn’t yet have a U.S. release date.}
+ Martha Marcy May Marlene
{Described as “a thriller that shifts nearly imperceptibly between dream, memory, and reality,” with a bravura performance by Elizabeth Olsen (yes, the younger sister of the Olsen twins), this movie looks really interesting and like one of those near-perfect movies that come along once in a while. It’s about a young woman, Martha, who’s “haunted by painful memories and increasing paranoia” after escaping from a cult. It gets a wide release on July 10.}
Tags: emotive, experimental, hauntingly beautiful, lars von trier, madness, nature, sci-fi, surreal, trailers
Gorgeous and Grotesque: The Art-Dolls of Nita Collins
Nita Collins’ doll-sculptures creep me out and exhilarate me. Disturbing, beautiful, verging on the grotesque, delicately crafted, flawlessly executed, melancholically tender, realistic to the point of being unnerving – adorned with puckered scars, ragged holes in chests, and a panoply of peculiar, unique marks on their flesh that seem to have come straight from Nita’s imagination and heart – the tortured, sweetly exquisite bodies and faces of these dolls are a singular, constant mixture of provocative and moving. They are lovingly scarred, divinely imagined, different from any other dolls I’ve seen. Nita Collins has a unique talent manifest in these gorgeous, poignant art-dolls. Check out her blog here.
Tags: bizarre, dark fairy tales, distorted bodies, dollflesh, dolls, emotive, expressive, hauntingly beautiful, nita collins, realism, scars, sculptures, strange beauty, sweet/melancholy, trauma, virtuoso, visceral
Portrait of a Criminal
Check out this amazing series of “photographs of commitment” from the archive of the Sydney Justice & Police Museum, posted over on the art blog La boite verte. Beautiful, timeless, and peculiarly expressive, these vintage “mug shots” are just brimming with the individuality and personalities of a motley array of people who passed through Australia’s criminal justice system back in the early part of the 20th century – creating unintentional art – offering up to these fringe subjects a sliver of immortality. I am in love with these.
{via the ever-brilliant Coilhouse blog}
Tags: 1920s, artifacts of the past, expressive, hauntingly beautiful, portraits, quizzical, retro, sepia, vintage
Digital Horror: The Stunningly Beautiful Art of Karina Marandjian
Tags: bloodmilk, emotive, fleshy, hooks, karina marandjian, moths, nails, photomanipulation, pierced, red and white, self-portraits, surreal horror, torture, trauma
“Immune”: Floria Sigismondi
Floria Sigismondi is an Italian-Canadian photographer, director, and filmmaker who breaks the boundaries between mainstream and alternative visual culture. She has worked with many high-profile artists on their music videos, including Björk, The Cure, Marilyn Manson, and The White Stripes. Her personal projects and commercial work both amaze me with their preternatural beauty and color.
Floria’s vivid, hallucinatory images are morbid, beautiful, and hyper[sur]real. Her works take place in a strange, artificial, and gorgeously colorful world of her own – film stills from her videos could be taken for photo-art and vice versa.
Tags: floria sigismondi, medical-themed, music videos, otherworldly photography, religious imagery, saturated color, self-portraits, surreal horror, virgin mary
