This stop motion animation film using over 12,000 laser-cut pieces of construction paper was made for Josh Ritter’s new single ‘Love Is Making It’s Way Back Home’ and it’s fantastic.

A team of nearly twenty artists, editors, directors and product assistants were involved in the project. They started by storyboarding the video, then created a computer animation version of the track before converting the digital graphics into paper cutouts, frame by frame, photographing those 12,000 cutouts and then stitching them together into four minutes of paper animation.

If you’re interested to know more about the process and want to see some behind the scenes footage then check out Josh Ritter’s blog.

Production designer Sam Cohen said;

We had to determine ahead of time which images to cut as positives or negatives, how to anchor the cutouts to the paper frame that surrounds it so the pieces wouldn’t fall out, as well as a host of other problems. It was definitely the most labor intensive video we’ve been a part of.

In addition to the video premiere of ‘Love Is Making Its Way Back Home’, Ritter has teamed up with Etsy to open a shop. The artists behind the video have created a limited run of screenprinted posters based on a selection of frames. Each poster will include one of the die-cut construction paper cut-outs, as well as an mp3 of Love Is Making Its Way Back Home’.

Via Colossal

I don;t know much about VJing but I do know what I like and this video by South American duo Vjsuave called ‘La Cena’ i’s wonderful. It’s the result of an artistic reunion between Ygor Marotta from Brazil and Ceci Soloaga from Argentina. The idea started in 2010 when the two of them decided to refresh the Vj scene by combining organic content with digital animation in a constant search of new ways of expression.

The animation you’re looking at was projected into the jungle and captured with stop-motion techniques and nature moonlight in the Delta Tigre near Buenos Aires in Argentina.

Via Wooster Collective

These days with corporal punishment banned and child protection a ‘so called priority’ for politicians it’s worth remembering what school used to be like in Victorian times. Have a look at this list -  from an American School in 1948 - of deserving punishments for 46 misdemeanours. All pretty minor offences carrying serious consequences. They’re unbelievable.

Note that to ‘blackguard’ is to be verbally abusive and ‘Bandy’ is a game played on ice.

RULES OF THE STOKES COUNTY SCHOOL

Offense	Lashes
1. Boys & Girls Playing Together	4
2. Quarreling	4
3. Fighting	5
4. Fighting at School	5
5. Quarreling at School	3
6. Gambling or Betting at School	4
7. Playing at Cards at School	10
8. Climbing for every foot over three feet up a tree	1
9. Telling Lies	7
10. Telling Tales Out of School	8
11. Nick Naming Each Other	4
12. Giving Each Other Ill Names	3
13. Fighting Each Other in Time of Books	2
14. Swearing at School	8
15. Blackguarding Each Other	6
16. For Misbehaving to Girls	10
17. For Leaving School Without Leave of the Teacher	4
18. Going Home With Each Other without Leave of Teacher	4
19. For Drinking Spiritous Liquors at School	8
20. Making Swings & Swinging on Them	7
21. For Misbehaving when a Stranger is in the House	6
22. For Wearing Long Finger Nails	2
23. For not Making a Bow when a Stranger Comes in	3
24. Misbehaving to Persons on the Road	4
25. For not Making a Bow when you Meet a Person	4
26. For Going to Girl’s Play Places	3
27. For Going to Boy’s Play Places	4
28. Coming to School with Dirty Face and Hands	2
29. For Calling Each Other Liars	4
30. For Playing Bandy	10
31. For Bloting Your Copy Book	2
32. For Not Making a bow when you go home	4
33. For Not Making a bow when you come away	4
34. Wrestling at School	4
35. Scuffling at School	4
36. For Weting each Other Washing at Play Time	2
37. For Hollowing and Hooping Going Home	3
38. For Delaying Time Going Home or Coming to School	3
39. For Not Making a Bow when you come in or go out	2
40. For Throwing anything harder than your trab ball	4
41. For every word you miss in your lesson without excuse	1
42. For Not saying yes Sir or no Sir or yes Marm, no Marm	2
43. For Troubling Each Others Writing Affairs	2
44. For Not Washing at Play Time when going to Books	4
45. For Going and Playing about the Mill or Creek	6
46. For Going about the barn or doing any mischief about	7

Wm. A. Chaffin, Master, November 10, 1848.

Via Lists of Note

The Divided Brain is the title of a new RSA Animate from renowned psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist. In this short video he explains how our ‘divided brain’ has profoundly altered human behaviour, culture and society.

These animates are wonderful and there are lots more where they came from

Via RSA - Vision videos

So what is a Daft Punk Chiptune? Well in this technologically obsessed world when people are downloading, remixing, mashing and manipulating music at will the notion of limitations and using old school devices is becoming ever increasingly popular. One result of this shift is the chiptune, a style in which producers are limited to the sounds of a video game console, such as gameboy, to create new mixes of old tracks using eight bit sounds.

Into that genre there is a truly dedicated worldwide community of musicians called Da Chip who only produce chiptunes. In 2009 they released Volume 1 of Daft Punk tunes. Recently they produced Volume 2. Both are free to download from their website. Let me know what you think – naturally its tinny and basic but then that’s the point.

Via The Creators Project

I’m a Dylan head. Yep, I most certainly am. He’s been the soundtrack to my life. So I’m delighted to be able to show you this, a rare treat, a rare 30 minutes that was recorded in 1964 when Dylan was at his peak as a socially conscious folkie. A week after this was recorded the Beatles landed in America, a month later Dylan rented an electric guitar. And everything changed forever.

This performance was done on a Canadian TV programme called ‘Quest’ and in it Dylan appears in his classic Woody Guthrie mode on a set made to look like a western bunkhouse. He plays six songs; half from ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’, his third album released just a few weeks before the broadcast and half from his previous album, ’The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. The songs, in order of appearance are:

1. The Times They Are A Changin’
2. Talkin’ World War III Blues
3. Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
4. Girl From the North Country
5. A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
6. Restless Farewell

Writer and filmmaker Erek Barsczewski was to say about this appearance;

Dylan’s appearance on Quest, provides the closest approximation available of what his early performances in Greenwich Village would have looked and sounded like.

Via Open Culture

Everyone wants to be recognised, every filmmaker wants to be seen as ‘Lynchian’ (don’t they?). It’s a moniker that’s often bandied about, sometimes a bit too much. However, in this short called ‘Psychic Cheerleaders: Dawn of the New Age’ by filmmaker Taylor Cohan you do get a sense of the same aesthetic that is synonymous with the legendary filmmaker.

The film is set in a suburban environment — an American high school – and is full of subconscious desires and dream qualities that drifts along just to the right side of abstraction.

The premise is basically about a couple of cheerleaders who have psychic abilities, are able to read minds, hypnotize people, who switch identities. It also features a creepy guy who likes to eat corn…strange? Yep. Worth watching? For sure. Let me know what you think

Via The Creators Project

These images by French artist Jefta are pretty disturbing, groptesque, make me squeamish. So what’s he up to? Well what he’s interested in is the relationship between music and the individual.

For this project, ‘Faceless’ he asks the subject to pick a song they find emotionally moving, or, failing that he assigns one arbitrarily to them. They then stand before the camera for the duration of the song while a long exposure shoots them listening to the track. They can do as they wish provided they don’t leave the frame – move or shake their heads – while Jefta records their reaction to the music.

Jefta then posts a montage of three images of the person that mutate from his or her initial stationary position to shots that are;

unrecognizable, leading to a disfigured mask. The face loses its singularity to become a collective shapeless mass.

What do you think – not unlike a weird Bacon image?

Via The Creators Project

Mutantspace arts skills exchange member O Caoimh (formerly of The Citadels) will inevitably be compared to, and was influenced by, English folkie Nick Drake. Lets hope that O Caoimhs album will not be sadly neglected in his time, (which played a large part in causing the severe depression that Nick Drake constantly battled). Although we can draw such comparisons, this debut album is incredibly slow moving but is also beautiful beyond words.

Though his sighing, world weary voice is immediately identifiable, he also proves to be an excellent guitar picker on songs such as album opener ‘there’s gold there somewhere’ and ‘remember when we didn’t kiss’, while lushly baroque string arrangements are provided on other tracks throughout which add another layer of loveliness to the album. Clever lyrical content and carefully constructed music will not disappoint.

Wise and poetic lyrics are almost a match for his mournful, yet hopeful music. Example in lines like ‘Here’s the news and have you heard; you’re going to get what you deserve….And the clouds shift, but your heart won’t budge an inch and the lights lift and your eyes don’t blink or flinch’. (On track ‘And the rain falls’). There is a definite poetic elegance that is even more impressive when you consider that this is the second album from O Caoimh, that so many artists become stinted on. Not her, as the songs run seamlessly into the next. Sublime.

Although he allows some levity on the more upbeat ‘A New Season for Love’ and ‘Head on’, which are superior guitar lead ballads that resolves the album on a beautifully bright high. Well worth checking out.

Isn’t this installation by South Korean artist Do Ho Suh fantastic! It’s called ‘Cause and Effect’ and in the notes on the piece the artist had this to say:

‘Cause and Effect’ evokes a vicious tornado. This vast ceiling installation is a composition of densely hung strands that anchor thousands of figures clad in colors resembling a Doppler reading stacked atop one another, a physical realization of existence, suggesting strength in the presence of numerous individuals. The work is an attempt to decipher the boundaries between a single identity and a larger group, and how the two conditions coexist.

Suh has made some equally incredible installations – below I’ve added a photograph of a piece he did in Liverpool and his Floor piece in Singapore which also uses 1000s of tiny men.

Do-Ho Suh is a South Korean artist who is best known for his intricate sculptures that defy conventional notions of scale and site-specificity. Suh draws attention to the ways viewers occupy and inhabit public space. Whether addressing the dynamic of personal space versus public space, or exploring the fine line between strength in numbers and homogeneity, Suh’s sculptures continually question the identity of the individual in today’s increasingly transnational, global society. Do-Ho Suh represented South Korea at the 2001 Venice Biennale.

Via Colossal