Ben Fry and Casey Reas talk Processing:

Sebastian Oschatz discusses vvvv:

Sebastian Oschatz is one of the founders of the Frankfurt-based media company MESO Digital Interiors, established in 1997 to work with experimental media interfaces and interactive installations. MESO creates computational and interactive exhibition designs for clients like Mercedes Benz, BMW, Nikon and Sony Ericsson, among others.

Related: RIA technology stats at RIAStats.

Malcolm Sutherland’s The Astronomer’s Dream (2009)

Nam June Paik and Ryuichi Sakamoto All Star Video (1984)

AACS (Blu-ray DRM scheme/consortium) has reduced it’s licensing fees, offering relief to potential producers of small-run/micro-indie titles. Per-disc licensing fees for small, first-time runs (1000-2000) are around $1/disc. Still kinda steep, but we’ll see if it helps. With replication running an additional $2-2.50 a disc, and the complexity/expense of authoring (BD-J), BD still seems out of reach for micro/art projects.

Sonic has introduced BD-J Converter, a Windows-only plugin for Flash that supposedly converts “interactive animations” authored in Flash to BD-J. From the description(s), it doesn’t sound as useful as it would seem.

Sony also announced “movieIQ” a BD-live feature that grabs movie info from the Gracenote database. Uh… wasn’t this supposed to be one of the main features of BD-live in the first place? A little late to the game, this. Gizmodo:

Honestly, when Sony announced in 2006 that BD-Live would bring interactive, online content to Blu-ray players, this, I think, is was most people expected from the start.

Khoda (2008)

What if you watch a film and whenever you pause it, you face a painting? This idea inspired Reza Dolatabadi to make Khoda. Over 6000 paintings were painstakingly produced during two years to create a five minutes film that would meet his high personal standards. Khoda is a psychological thriller; a student project which was seen as a ‘mission impossible’ by many people but eventually proved possible!

MPEG4, 92MB (includes both films)
Podcast/interview with Dolatabadi here.

Octo-Dancing (2008)

Adobe will offer a standard open framework, code-named Strobe, that accelerates and simplifies media player creation for the Adobe® Flash® Platform. Its extensible plug-in architecture provides production-ready code that meets recurring development challenges, while helping publishers monetize their video content through seamless integration with partner services. With support for the latest player features such as Dynamic Streaming and DVR functionality, Strobe enables developers and ecosystem partners to fully utilize the powerful video features of the Flash Platform.

Intro to Adobe Flash Catalyst from Flash Camp San Francisco.

Adobe® Flash® Catalyst™ is a new professional interaction design tool for rapidly creating user interfaces without coding.

Kevin Lynch’s Flash Camp San Francisco keynote.

Peter Elst has compiled a list of all the Flash Camp videos here.

I have no idea what this is, but it’s cool.

New Deerhoof video reminds me of something…

…oh yeah.

SuperMediaMegaCorp (and local media corp) doesn’t get it. At some point, even aggregators like Hulu will need an API-like functionality allowing developers and creators to add their content ( …or tap their ad network(s)). And BTW, via Bloomberg:

June 25 (Bloomberg) — Television programs such as “The Simpsons” and “CSI” are for the first time commanding higher advertising rates at Web sites including Hulu.com and TV.com than on prime-time TV.

KCRW, the Los Angeles Public Radio station, “gets it.” In addition to widgetized distribution via it’s well thought-out media player widgets, they just released a very nice iPhone app (iTunes link) that has just about all the functionality you’d possibly want—live streaming, on-demand streaming and even an event calendar.

The only additions/weaknesses I see here is a failure to integrate the playlist functionality from the KCRW website directly into the widget (User has to click through to the site—maybe that’s on purpose), and a lack of direct download(s) (may be licensing issues). Well done, and the “viral” distribution of persistent donate/join links can only help the Listener-supported Radio cause.

iPhone app screens. Straightforward, simple interface.

Apps and widgets also allow media creators to distribute and monetize long-tail library/archive content that’s sitting in their vaults. In addition to the business angle, it also frees these cultural and historical artifacts for public/educational use. Local TV and radio stations are essentially “punting” on great cultural and business opportunities (and community building). It’s kinda sad.

JD Lasica on the social implications of Boxee.

As internet video matures, we face a crossroads: will technology and public policy support a more participatory culture — one that encourages and enables free expression and broader cultural engagement? Or will online video become a glorified TV-on-demand service, a central part of a permissions-based culture?

Warren Lieberfarb, the visionary former head of Warner Home Video, thinks it won’t be long before we’ll be able to purchase and store our own personal collection of movies and transport it from device to device, anywhere within an extended home domain.

“I see a very, very, very big transformation that’s going to change the balance of power in media,” he says, choosing his words with care. “It will step away from the broadcast and cable networks to specialized niche programming that will be accessible through on-demand services. That is the revolution. And nothing is going to stop this.” …

“All this is going to bypass the broadcast and cable networks,” he says. “The whole notion that you sit at a television at a designated time and you tune in to watch what they say you watch—it’s over. It’s going to take a while, but it’s over.”

Your radio stations will be mobile apps, or apps/plugins for Boxee or other media-center software. So will your newspapers and TV stations. Films and shows will be widgetized, and mobile/settop apps will not only distribute the media, but alternative/supporting content (Data!) as well—perhaps they’ll even allow you to interact with the content in realtime. Those that don’t embrace user/viewer control and Open-ness will die. Good times.

Check out their Youtube channel and portfolio. Awesome work.

Just watched Experiments in Terror, Vol. 3 (Highly Recommended), which contains an absolutely stunning short, The Red Door, by Jason Bognacki. Apparently it’s part of a full feature that’s yet to be completed—let’s hope that happens soon. More info at the film site.

“The Red Door is a blood-drenched psychological mystery through the distorted gaze of Lynda and her fantasy self, Loma, heroines who both try to redeem Lynda from a tragic past. The Red Door is a modern novella – not quite a short story and not quite a novel, but definitely a modern Giallo story.”

Tortoise @ The Tabernacle – Atlanta, GA 12/31/2004

Lydia Lunch/Marc Almond/Nick Cave/Clint Ruin-Immaculate Consumptive (Unreleased Live Audience Recording), 1983

American Prince (Dir. Tommy Pallotta 2009) .torrent

In 1978, Director, Martin Scorsese turned his camera on his friend and roommate, Steven Prince, with his lost documentary “American Boy”.

Best known for his role as the gun salesman in Taxi Driver, Prince was a true-life raconteur, actor, ex-drug addict, and road manager for Neil Diamond. To Scorsese, Steven’s life was more fascinating than what any screenwriter could dream up, it had to be captured in celluloid. To Tarantino, one of the most memorable scenes in film history is an homage that actually happened to Prince in real life. Three decades later, filmmaker Tommy Pallotta draws out Steven Prince to recount his days since “American Boy” and to compose the next chapter of his story.

Trailer for awesome Julius Shulman Doc, Visual Acoustics, The Modernism of Julius Shulman.

Q+A with director Eric Bricker, via The Austin Film Society.

Lot’s of cool stuff at Subblue. Check out the Guilloché Pattern Generator:

Ajaxian has more:

DailyMotion goes a step further. They announced not only a demo area but “a new R&D platform dedicated to open video formats and web standards: openvideo.dailymotion.com“. You can find 300k videos all encoded in open formats right now.

What else is happening in HTML5? Get your nerd on here. You can also check out the W3C overview.

Also be sure to checkout The Open Video Conference, June 19-20 in NYC.

Sid Laverents, who started making movies in his Southern California basement after he turned 50 and became perhaps the most celebrated hobbyist in the amateur film world, his resourceful and dryly giddy work chosen for the National Film Registry, died on May 6 in Chula Vista, Calif. He was 100 and lived in Bonita, Calif., near San Diego.

Kinotek is an italian collective dealing with experimental video and digital media, working in the intersections of video design, vjing, live media and AV installations.

David OReilly (Please Say Something) has a free, downloadable 3D model of Walt Disney’s head. Also check out his visuals for MIA at Coachella.

Matt Zoller Seitz’s 5-part series contextualizing Wes Anderson’s visual style and influences.