Here’s an interesting concept via the always fascinating Bldgblog. It’s yet another definition for art and another unlikely medium: apartment blocks, offices, run-down buildings. I’m not sure how likely the physics are for something like this, but I would be willing to bet that if you were able to make structurally-sound ap-art-ments, you could get the whole art-student demographic in the city to line up at the leasing office.

[Link]

Artist: Hermit
Song: Sunny Day
From album: Frequence Eater
Feels like: Waking up tired on a sun-bleached morning.
[buy this album] [Label site (jp)]

Dripping with languor, this song makes me think of waking up and reaching for a bedside guitar before you even open your eyes. You brush the strings, halfway still dreaming. A ray of over-bright sunlight sneaking through the curtains catches facets of floating dust which lift, and drift, and fall. Under these circumstances you happen to think that they might as well be stars.

Artist: 9mm Parabellum Bullet
Song: Talking Machine
From album: Gjallarhorn
Genre: Wakeuprock
[buy this album] [9mm Site (jp)]

Well, after a couple slow songs I thought that I should post something upbeatish, and this song fits the bill nicely. This is a song that moving flatbed-truck-concerts were made for. It keeps on trucking trucking, dancing down the road. People stop, and people turn their heads, and people start to bob their heads, and people start to move. Soon there’s a bubbly wake of people energy following along as the truckcert parades through the city, echoing off of skyscraper windows.

More interesting paper art here. This time from Chris Natrop. I especially like the use of shadows as a definite part of the composition.

[Link]

Artist: Salyu
Song: Arabesque
From album: “Kokyu” (Her songs from the All About Lily Chou Chou soundtrack)
Genre: Dreamy Comfortonica
[buy this album] [Salyu Site (jp)]

When I listen to this song I think of slowly falling while in a dream. I’m sailing through clouds without a sound or feeling but this song, and its voice. Together we slide, effortless glide, through soft warm spaces of sky. Everywhere it’s sunset and the clouds go on forever. I can see though my eyes are closed, and between layers of clouds are cloud-vistas and shifting cloud-landscapes in orange and lemon and white, brightness all around. We are safe and sound in the endless air; for there are no sharp edges anywhere in the world.

Salyu plays the titular Lily Chou Chou in the movie below, and sings all her songs. Lily is the singer/idol that the characters connect through, retreat to, love, and obsess about. She apparently sings this song in an Okinawan dialect. Approximate translation in comments.

All About Lily Chou Chou is a beautiful film about pain, isolation, inspiration, and living. It’s about not getting along with the harshness of reality, and escaping into music and obsession. The characters struggle to understand the world around them, and people, and themselves. They try to connect, but are crushed by circumstances and repeatedly hurt by one another. Their stories are told in snapshot slices of life, panoramas of experience themselves stark and isolated.

The music, ranging from the solo piano of Debussy’s Arabesque, to Salyu’s ethereal song of the same name, paints vivid swathes of emotion from start to finish. It makes the brilliant greens greener and the country sky wider and bluer. It speaks for the characters when they aren’t able to. It’s music as a friend and confidante when no one else will be: It comforts and reassures, it inspires reckless abandon one moment, and appreciation of simple existence the next. In this movie, the music is as much a character as anyone else.

I apologize for being pretty bad at movie reviews, but what I will say, is that this is well worth seeing for anyone who can enjoy a challenging film with real human emotion and lush, expressive atmosphere.

[Site][2][Buy on Amazon]

“…Theo Jansen is occupied with the making of a new nature. Not pollen or seeds but plastic yellow tubes are used as the basic material of this new nature. He makes skeletons which are able to walk on the wind. Eventually he wants to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives.”

The moving art of Theo Jansen is simply spectacular. The basic and mundane materials that he uses to create are metamorphosed into giant living beings that seem to have minds of their own. They crawl, walk, undulate, roll, flap, and fly. These creations are made even more impressive when one realizes that they are powered and manipulated by wind alone. No engines, wires, electricity, or microchips; only the magic of physics and brilliant design. To me, this is completely delightful. You’ll have to see the video clips to fully appreciate the way the amazing complexity of these works can give birth to such simple beauty.

[Link][2][3]

More interesting art, incidentally from Japan. Here we have some crazy metallic fluid which looks positively villainous when exposed to magnetic fields. I want to say something like, “Putting the goth back in metal,” but that doesn’t really make any sense. Make sure to check out the videos. They are more than half of the fun.

[Link]