This is the work of Mike Winkelmann or as he calls himself, “Beeple“. Beeple was responsible for another video I featured here some time ago called “Kill Your Coworkers“. His computer animations are pretty compelling, somehow rendering fully believable worlds in which his characters live.

Like this, how could you not believe that in the future things will be like this? And who wouldn’t want their kitchen to serenade you with clangs and bangs? Heh?

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The Transcendent City – showing the way a future city could be, if it lived in the mind of a botanist idealist.

Galileo – An Animated Short – stirring short will make you feel surrounded by butterflies.

If this process does anything, it provides us with a sort of magnifying glass that lets us see deeper, more intuitively, into the world’s minute underpinnings, forcing us to remember that this place isn’t actually all grand vistas and vast landscapes, but billions of tiny pieces stitched closely together. And the result is almost poetic.

Colorfully Tied

I’m smitten by Tina’s work, not only because of the microscope she uses but also that she’s brave enough to travel into the relatively inhospitable industrial zones of Oakland with an expensive camera. And also because bicycles are a big part of her process. I just love bikes.

I asked Tina some questions about her style:

How is the bicycle part of your photography vision?

Photography is a big part of who I am and how I move though the world. When I bought the bicycle I have now, I brought the camera with me. I realized pedaling broadened my range of scope and allowed me to take more photos than I normally would on foot. Over time, the bicycle has become as important to me as the camera. When I go out riding, I ride for hours. I rarely put the camera away.

You focus a lot on industrial areas, what do they mean to you?

I am drawn to places and things that are lost or forgotten. I see beauty in the decay. In an urban environment, those places are often found along railroads, piers, or factory heavy streets. In a place seemingly still and desolate, there are many traces of life. I chase memories, even when they are not my own.

How would you describe your technique in five words?

Pedal, wander, daydream, see, collect.

Warm Windows

Trail 55088

Time

The Only Thing

The Saddle

Ready for Flight

Martini Light

Hay Cycle

Website Spotlight – Lost in the 415 – A photographer brings her discerning eye to the City of San Francisco.

Take Better Photos Now! Ebook Gets You Out of Auto Mode – A review of the best photography book you can buy for 10 bucks.

I came across the video by way of Avoision.com who led me to the song from Gotye’s newest album, Making Mirrors. The combination of creeping voice manipulations, 60s Jetson’s style animation and a theme that gradually darkens as the story is revealed, a story incidentally that speaks a lot about our current state of technology, compels me to share.

Have a listen to these “amazing simulations sounding even better than the real thing.”

Pick up Making Mirrors right now, man. Not all his tracks are like this one, he actually does have a fantastic singing voice.

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Black Keys Music Video is a Movie Trailer – Howlin’ For You has a video that would make Tarantino proud.

Stop-motion Music Video Uses So Much Toast – OK Go! does it with their crazy idea for a video, and it works.

Thirty-year veteran interdisciplinary artist Guy Laramee takes books from what you might call common library fodder and turns them into pure metaphor. Each book a landscape, each landscape a panorama dripping with a brilliant sense of majesty.

Michelangelo thought every block of stone had a statue inside and that it was the task of the sculptor to discover it. For me, this is exactly what Laramee does, revealing the nature of what’s trapped inside books, making it possible for the even left brain to experience them, envisioning the book as so much more than simple dissemination of information or storytelling. Not to mention, it kind of makes me want to go hang-gliding. And that’s a good thing.

Via Makezine.

The Truth in Books – What Lies Inside – more incredible book sculpture that will knock your socks off.

A Macabre Childhood – Neil Gaiman and the Dangerous Alphabet – a children’s book like none other.

Surrealist Chocolate – Bonsoir Paris and their Melted Wood Sculptures – taking wood sculpting to a whole new level: the surreal.

Everyone’s favorite bodily secretion-named street artist, Phlegm, has given us a great new illustration: “Civilisation”. Part Edward Gorey, part Nightmare Before Christmas, there are impossible and dangerous worlds in here, rife with the usual Phlegmatic imagery, bringing a unique tribute to his macabre creativity.

This is part one of three, the second and third, as of today, are forthcoming. Keep tabs on this cool series on his blog.

See his art in the wild in the Phlegm section of the 10 Times One Street Art Field Guide.

Via Juxtapose.

Lost in the Baroque – The Drawings of Mattias Adolfsson – comic illustrator puts an 17th-century spin on a bunch of very modern things.

Wonderful Days – wicked sci-fi illustration whose days may not be as wonderful as the title suggests.

As we played around this very simple but larger-than-life-sized toy I can remember those tires’ tough rubber surfaces, my palms sliding over their lumpy contours, my little fingers tracing the the channels of the treads, and we’d scratch marks into their surfaces as we ran around. I remember thinking how cold and formidable the rubber and yet so commonplace as to grace our playtime at school. Old tires virtually transformed from something of rubbish into a kid’s recreation.

These days I feel abandoned tires are the epitome of trash – if you see one on the side of the road it can only mean impending economic collapse, forthcoming homelessness, a city struggling to survive. In places where the down economy has hit the hardest, discarded tires take over the environment, giving rise to the presumption that urban decay and dystopia can’t be far behind.

Perhaps to combat this, or to turn it on its head, Mexican sculptor Betsabeé Romero has taken the discarded tire and brought it from a symbol of urban blight to one of progress and creative thinking.

Romero’s tires aren’t something you’ll find in the local classifieds section of your newspaper, nor will they be finds for you to turn your backyard junk pile into a Duchamp masterpiece, these are metaphors for what’s possible. With these pieces Romero makes what she calls “Urban Interventions”, working with local communities to reinvent what many consider to be litter.

Maybe the best part about many of Romero’s pieces is that they also act as rolling rubber stamps, bringing a simple look-and-be-done-with-it aesthetic to something multi-dimensional.

Romero has been showing her work internationally for about 10 years in places such as Mexico, South America, Europe, the Middle East and the United States.

Many thanks to Print Zero Studios for turning me on to this unique artist.

Delicate leaf cuts by Lorenzo Duran - you’ll never look at leaves the same way again.

Gas Mask Rising – The Art of Cody Vrosh – Vrosh will make you wanna wear a gas mask as a fashion statement.

"Words Create Worlds" ad for Czech bookstore Anagram

If you think about it, bookstores are truly miraculous places, each store housing hundreds of thousands of tiny universes, each populated with lists of characters and landscapes and the full scope of human emotion, each ready for you to fall into and be absorbed.

Anyone with a love of books would have a hard time denying a good bookstore’s draw, it’s almost as if it calls you from the street as you pass, beckoning like some seductress, filled with soft light and low voices saying, “Here be dragons!” Especially a store with age and regalia, if you close your eyes you can almost hear its heart beating.

The following are two wonderful stop-motion animations that explore this idea of a living bookstore where books and the creatures that dwell inside spring to life as soon as the lights go down, as if such a thing were as natural as the hair on your head.

The first video is a stingingly sweet piece of visual poetry co-directed by Spike Jonze and French filmmaker Simon Cahn. The film was “hand made with love” by designer Olympia Le-Tan (her Minaudiere Classique handbags make appearances in the film). Mourir Auprès de Toi (To Die by Your Side) takes place in Paris’ one and only Shakespeare and Co. bookstore and stars a amorous skeleton and his ill-fated paramour amidst a backdrop of literature.

Here are two stills from the short:

Here is more on the making of this project, along with an interview with Jonze himself, which he says took 3 months of continuous work along with 3000 pieces of felt.

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This second flight of fantasy may be what happens in a bookstore after hours, as far as you know. It was created by the owner of Type Bookstore in Toronto as a reminder that books are of great importance to our collective culture and that they should be treasured. Or else it’s a tribute to the fact that no matter how many e-readers are sold in the world, real books will never go away.

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The Truth in Books – What lies inside – remarkable book sculptures the likes of which you’ve never seen.

Once Upon A Time… – A Pop-Up Animation – a darling little animated journey through a pop-up book.

The new concert film called Shut Up and Play the Hits follows lead man James Murphy in the days leading up to the final show of the run at MSG, a good selection of concert footage and then the days after. It all looks poignant and spectacular and I’ll be in line to see it when it’s released at indie movie houses in February. It premiers at Sundance on January 22, and if the recording of the show was any indication, the film should be brilliant.

SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS is both a narrative film documenting this once in a life time performance and an intimate portrait of James Murphy as he navigates the lead-up to the show, the day after, and the personal and professional ramifications of his decision.

Recently on the scene is the film’s trailer. It is as follows.

The film likely won’t play the MSG show in its entirety, but you can find the full concert streaming on 10 Times One from a post last year. I recommend at least a listen, if not a full on life dedication to this quirky and great band. Listen to the final LCD Soundsystem show here.

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Jack White Covers U2′s “Love is Blindness” – listen to Jack White’s amazing rendition of U2′s seminal song.

Epic on Epic – Watch The Sex Pistols’ Final Show – a video of the entire Sex Pistol show at the Fillmore in San Francisco.