Techno Viking Action Figure
Finally! It’s the Techno Viking action figure!
Next I want the Berghain Türsteher action figure.
Posts Tagged ‘YouTube’
Speaking In Code
Somebody has uploaded what by many is considered the best techno documentary ever, Speaking in Code (2009), to YouTube. It’s narrated in German, but that shouldn’t be a problem for any Dutch or German speaking native (sorry if you’re not). The documentary won a couple of independent film festival prizes, so it’s more than just an insiders-only movie.
The film follows a couple of people, dj/producers as well as music lovers, in the European and American techno scenes as it existed a couple of years ago.
From Wikipedia:
Speaking in Code is an account of people who are lost in music. Director Amy Grill follows a series of characters (including her techno-obsessed husband) over a number of years as some struggle to make it while others thrive in the world of electronic music.
The film reveals six intertwined character studies and raw vérité views of new music. It’s a window into a world filled with warehouse parties, endless gigs, international travel, risks, inventions, triumphs and breakdowns.
The characters are: Modeselektor, a producer duo, jettisoned from playing a tiny room in the US to playing to 20,000 people at the Sónar festival in Barcelona; journalist Philip Sherburne, who leaves America to find a more complete techno lifestyle in Europe; The Wighnomy Brothers, catapulted from their idyllic world in Jena, Germany to face their breaking point on camera; Tobias Thomas of Kompakt, who contemplates the near-end of his career; and Monolake, an inventor of the Ableton software that nearly all electronic musicians use to create their music, who continues his steady yet quirky approach to a life in music. While back in the US, David Day (Grill’s husband) tries tirelessly to turn Boston from a rock-centric town to a techno city. Day’s wanton attempts to make electronic music popular put strain on his marriage to the director.
And the soundtrack, I must say, is brilliant. If you got time, check this out:
Video Clip Showing MRI Brain Activity
Check this out: the above video purports to show, through some kind of process, the images and “movies” that play inside our heads.
For now, this is only about the reconstruction the brain makes while watching video clips. But imagine this technique allowing visualization of one’s thoughts or dreams…
Here’s how it works, according to the Berkeley researchers who ran the experiment:
The brain activity recorded while subjects viewed the first set of clips was fed into a computer program that learned, second by second, to associate visual patterns in the movie with the corresponding brain activity. Brain activity evoked by the second set of clips was used to test the movie reconstruction algorithm. This was done by feeding 18 million seconds of random YouTube videos into the computer program so that it could predict the brain activity that each film clip would most likely evoke in each subject. Finally, the 100 clips that the computer program decided were most similar to the clip that the subject had probably seen were merged to produce a blurry yet continuous reconstruction of the original movie.
Researchers at UC Berkeley used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and some seriously complex computational models to figure out what images our minds create when presented with movie and TV clips. So far, the process is only able to reconstruct the neural equivalents of things people have already seen, but eventually it might be possible to construct the images people see in dreams and memories.
This could also open up new ways to communicate with those whose speech is severely impaired, such as stroke victims, patients with neurological diseases, and even people in comas. It’s probably worth stressing that we’re decades away from using this tech to read people’s thoughts and intentions, just in case that’s something you’re worried about.
The researchers developed this technique by showing study participants a series of black-and-white photographs while imaging their minds. By comparing the photographs with the scans, they were able to engineer a way to recognize any image from how the brain responded. With that basic principle in place, it was then only a question of building up a sufficiently complex computer model to decode moving, color images like those in the video above.
via io9
Trololo Orchestra
We’re happy to share that the blonde guy singing the Trololo song in this video -- in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, performed by the Sweelinck Orchestra of the University of Amsterdam! -- is a good friend of your bloggers truly.
If you read this, dude: congrats with having your very own YouTube, CBS and Huffington Post internet hit!
More trololo on LSD:
Charlie Bit My Finger Horror Version
Remember “Charlie Bit My Finger“? Here’s the zombiehorror version:
It is the entry of director Jeff Chan in the Canadian Worldwide Shortfilm Festival.
Twoyoutubevideosandamotherfuckingcrossfader.com
Now this is a nice tool for the home dj. It is what it says it is, two YouTube videos and a motherfucking crossfader!
Atheists And Agnostics Speak Out In Arabic
Atheists and Agnostics speak out in Arabic – English Sub.
In solidarity with those who are unable to renounce religion, esp. in Islamic countriesMade by: http://www.youtube.com/user/atheerkt
Organizing the work at:
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=130833886970426
Deliver Me To Hell – Interactive Zombie Adventure Movie
This is pretty damn brilliant: Deliver Me To Hell, an interactive YouTube zombie movie. Created as a marketing action by a New Zealand pizza delivery company named Hell Pizza. You have to help Steve the pizza guy deliver a pizza to a hot chick, in a zombie-infested city. Lots of blood and gore, pretty funny, and really well done.
Watch the trailer here, or start the movie below:
I Am Sitting In A Video Room
This guy made a video of himself, uploaded it to YouTube, then ripped it from YouTube, uploaded that download to YouTube again, then downloaded it again, uploaded that again, et cetera. He did that a thousand times.
The result is this:
An homage to the great Alvin Lucier, this piece explores the ‘photocopy effect’, where upon repeated copies the object begin to accumulate the idiosyncrasies of the medium doing the copying. Full words: I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice as well as the image of myself, and I am going to upload it to YouTube, rip it from YouTube, and upload it again and again, until the original characteristics of both my voice and my image are destroyed. What you will see and hear, then, are the artifacts inherent in the video codec of both YouTube and the mp4 format I convert it to on my computer. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a digital fact, but more as a way to eliminate all human qualities my speech and image might have.
Hitler "Der Untergang" Scene Re-Enacted
A few weeks ago we blogged about the unprecedented removal by YouTube of the Hitler Der Untergang parodies. This because of copyright claims by the producer, Constantin Films, resulting in the death of one of the most creative internet memes in years. Although a couple of clips are still around, most of them are now removed.
But of course, the famous scene can still be re-enacted! Which is exactly what these guys have done. Onwards to a new meme!
First YouTube Video Five Years Old Today
Relatively few YouTube users will have marked the occasion, but five years ago today the first YouTube video was uploaded, sparking a digital revolution of sorts. Nowadays an internet without YouTube is nearly unthinkable.
In the video, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim explains to the camera what makes elephants so cool. For one, I agree with him.
courtesy of: Mashable
YouTube Removes Hitler Videos: The Death Of An Internet Meme
One of the best Internet memes in recent years, the Hitler Der Untergang parodies, is being structurally removed from YouTube by the site’s managers and the movie’s production company, Constantin Films, which owns the copyrights. What a loss, and unnecessary as well.
YouTube has recently begun removing videos that feature content from Constantin Films’ 2004 film, Der Untergang (“Downfall”), despite the fact that many of these videos are parodies and thus constitute fair use of the material.
The Downfall, or Hitler-parody, meme has been, arguably, a viral spat of publicity for Constantin Films in the past few years. The meme takes a now-infamous scene from the movie (the scene in which Hitler reacts to the news that Germany is about to lose the war) and puts satirical subtitles over the action (the movie is in German). Hitler parodies have been made for everything from “Hitler finds out Tony Romo dumped Jessica Simpson,” to “Hitler is Fired from Whataburger,” to, more recently, “Hitler Responds to the iPad.”
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), these videos are being removed because of YouTube’s automated Content I.D. system, which allows copyright owners to disable any videos that contain its content–regardless of whether the videos may be legitimate because they contain other elements. Many of the parodies are still up, as YouTube’s Content I.D. system is not perfect–but it’s probably only a matter of time before the filtering system hunts them down and removes them.
Of course, the real question is: why? Why has Constantin Films chosen to suddenly claim copyright on these clips after six years–especially when the clips generate interest from parties who are otherwise unlikely to even look at the film (the film, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, was independently produced and is entirely in German). Certainly plenty of wayward YouTubers and Internet-goers have been driven to discover the source of the clips that provide them with so much entertainment. So, yes, you wonder why Constantin Films is suddenly putting the kibosh on this obvious stream of free publicity.
Even the director of Downfall, Oliver Hirschbiegel, thinks the parodies are funny. He told New York Magazine in January 2010: “Someone sends me the links every time there’s a new one. I think I’ve seen about 145 of them! Of course, I have to put the sound down when I watch. Many times the lines are so funny, I laugh out loud, and I’m laughing about the scene that I staged myself! You couldn’t get a better compliment as a director.”
Some of Hirschbiegel’s favorite parodies include the one where Hitler hears of Michael Jackson’s death, and the one in which Hitler can’t get Billy Elliot tickets–both of which have been blocked by Constantin’s copyright claims. Hirschbiegel thinks the parodies are a good thing, too–”The point of the film was to kick these terrible people off the throne that made them demons, making them real and their actions into reality,” he told New York Mag, “I think it’s only fair if now it’s taken as part of our history, and used for whatever purposes people like.”
What Constantin Films should do is file a DMCA complaint–the DMCA files parodies under “fair use,” so our beloved internet meme won’t die–but will also protect Constantin Films from what (I assume) it actually fears–legitimate copyright infringement.
So while they’re still online: here’s the video in which Hitler/Hillary Clinton learns of Obama’s primary victories in 2008; here’s the one in which Hitler learns that his car has been stolen; here’s the one (for Dutch readers) in which Hitler wants to go bowling instead of to the zoo; here’s the one in which Hitler learns that there are a lot of Hitler videos online; and finally, here’s the one in which Hitler finds out that parodies of the movie are being made, and orders them removed from YouTube:
British Parliament Considering Far-Reaching Anti-"Piracy" Legislation
As they already have in the Unites States and France, and is being considered in Spain, South Korea and the Netherlands. Our only hope is the European Parliament.
To the consternation of Internet companies and civil liberties groups, lawmakers in Britain are seeking to punish those who illegally copy music.
The British proposal is set to be taken up by the House of Commons on Monday. Under an amendment to the bill in the House of Lords this month, courts would be empowered to order Internet service providers to block access to Web sites that provide pirated movies, music and other media content.
Supporters of the amendment say it would finally give copyright holders the tools to tackle the piracy problem at the supply and demand levels, after more than a decade of largely futile efforts. But critics of the bill say it raises the threat of censorship on the Internet, and could undermine the development of Britain’s digital economy.
Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, which campaigns against restrictions on the Internet, said the bill contained unusually broad scope for abuse. Individuals or companies, he said, may try to use it to suppress any Web content they find objectionable, under the pretext of protecting their copyright.
The British government says a tougher approach on piracy could provide hundreds of millions of dollars for the “creative industries,” which account for more than 6 percent of British economic output. But critics say the enforcement proposals would be expensive to enforce and would generate little new revenue.
(…)
British libel laws, which put the burden of proof on the defendant, are already employed in this way by wealthy plaintiffs, critics say; rather than mount expensive defenses, bloggers and others accused of libel often back down and withdraw their allegations.
Lilian Edwards, a professor of Internet law at the University of Sheffield, wrote on her blog that the measure could be employed by media companies to try to block online video services like YouTube, which sometimes contain clips of copyrighted material.
Geoff Taylor, chief executive of BPI, a trade group for British recording companies, said the proposal to block Web sites was not aimed at the likes of YouTube but at sites like the Pirate Bay, whose founders were convicted of criminal copyright violations by a court in Sweden last year.
“We are not talking about threats to freedom of expression,” he said. “We are talking about massive taking of people’s creative works.”
Meta-Hitler
Hitler responds to the Hitler videos on YouTube:
I would again like to take the opportunity to point to the brilliant Internet database Know Your Meme. For every gag, hoax, meme and viral that ever circulated the interwebs.
