In a a similar vein as Videogramo and Elna Frederick, artist Math Wrath creates animations and illustrations using a retro-tech, animted .gif aesthetic. His work ranges from the comedic (see "How it ends") to the terrifying (see [or don't see] "Pleasurecrusher"), and are all worth checking out. Some of his works have sound, so keep your headphones on.
via blitblit
Spanish group Videogramo displays a series of colorfully mutated animated .gifs on their site. Each image is as unsettling as an animated .gif could possibly get, featuring contorted, dull-faced .gif manikins disected by pixelated tubes, patterned planes, and faceted shapes. Half Kid Pix and half Frankenstein, the whole display is simultaneously fascinating and disturbing.
Via Nullsleep
Aaron Zinman's Personas creates an animated visualization of your online persona, creating in an interesting color-coded DNA strip of traits and topics that associate with your name across the Internet. Part of MIT's Metropath(ologies) exhibit, the engine "...uses sophisticated natural language processing
and the Internet to create a data portrait
of one's aggregated online identity."
Entering "Tiff Chow" results in a decent summary of what I'd imagine my online persona to be, but "Tiffany Chow" generated a much more edcuated and medicaly oriented persona given my talented Chow doppelgängers out there. That said, apparently the engine creates different results every time, and if you share a name of many on the web you'll get to see "alternate lives flash before you", as @doorknobdude put it. Reardless it's still a pretty neat visualization, though I wish they wouldn't cateorize the tag "game" as a sports-affiliated topic. I'm no jock, Spock.
via mbf tod@ay
Meme shirts by Know Your Meme are my cup of tea. Not only are they tastefully designed, but they are made of pure win and awesome (and looooooooooong cats, and ORLY Owls, and so on and so forth). Someone want to get me the Loooooooooong Cat shirt? I'll give you a loooooooooong cat hug!
via Waxy
For many, Twitter serves as the web's hottest way to spread the word, but for some it extends a platform for fun and sometimes mischievous roleplaying. I tend to reserve my follows for real-life folk, but on the occasion that my favorite and most beloved riddle-solving academic, Professor Layton of Professor Layton and the Curious Village for the DS, joined Twitter, I followed without a second of hesitation.
@TopHatProfessor brought the voice of Layton to life on the web, serving up daily riddles to his followers and rewarding the first to answer with a satisfactory @reply of "CORRECT!" As time went on, other players from the Curious Village began to appear on Twitter, and it was the general understanding that Nintedno had developed a clever marketing campaign to rustle folks up for the next Layton game, Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box.
But (!), thanks to some investigative work of Kyle Orland at Crispy Gamer, it turns out that the entire Layton ensemble was something that curiously came together with the start of one college student/game journalist, Roger DiLuigi (@RogerBase):
"I figured that if Nintendo wasn't going to make the U.S. release of the second game known, I was going to take matters into my own hands."
Never once supported by Nintendo, DiLuigi crafted TopHatProfessor into such a convincing character that three other writers joined in on the fun and created @ApprenticeLuke, @DonofScience, other familiar faces from the game. While DiLuigi has since revealed the man behind the Professor, the characters continue to engage in what seems like a fan-fueled dinner-theater atmosphere. A truly neat story, check out the article to get the details!
One more post before I go. As many before me have already exclaimed, the work of Elna Frederick is absolutely breathtaking. With touches of Out_4_Pizza and Petra Cortright (who looks to be a contributor alongside Frederick at Computers Club), Frederick composes some stunning scenes of moving, interactive pixels. Wander around her site and playfully mouse over the images. You're in for some lovely surprises.
It's strange to realize that in a few weeks I'll have been out of college for two years (and I'm still alive, fancy that!). My final days at Vassar College were chaotic and wonderful, particularly because I had committed to delivering two thesis projects for both my Studio Art and Media Studies majors. In the spirit of reigniting my artistic gusto, I archived all of the old scans I have of both projects onto my flickr. The idea is to complete/start working on them once again, so hit the jump to see some potential personal projects I'll be trying to work on!
Continue reading "Works in Progress - My Graphic Novelette and the CNN Project" »
As I've previously outlined, while I enjoy sharing a few photos of myself between friends and family, never before have I been one to indulge in the whole self-portrait everyday "thing" on the web. That is until I got my MacBook Pro, where just opening up my lappy and clicking on the Photo Booth icon (which, strangely enough looks a lot like to me like the red room from Twin Peaks) became the equivalent of staring at the bathroom mirror and making faces at myself.
After a full year of funny faces, I collected all of the old photos I had taken in 2008 and stitched them together into a giant 90 photo summary of my year. It turned out rather swell, so I've decided to keep it up for 2009 only this time with a twist (a twist!). I take photos whenever I feel like it (not everyday), and if I've tweeted that day I'll overlay a tweet on top of the photo. Sometimes the c-c-c-combo of the tweet and the photo are conveniently masterful, other times not so much, but it's a fun project regardless.
This month is shown above, but I also have January, February, and March covered in the Year of the Ox (my year!). A few of my friends have followed my footsteps, and I encourage anyone else to as well! Either way, Happy May, and in the spirit of Friday I am totally entitled to recommend you listen to Hall & Oates' "I can't go for that" for your evening's dance-spiration:
