Converse is back again with another great track and video by three artists. All Summer features Kid Cudi, Rostam Batmanglij from Vampire Weekend and Bethany Cosentino from Best Coast. Summer is not over yet!
Xide Mood is a great site for Carlsberg that generates a custom mix of You Tube videos based on your mood and music genre preference. What do you get if you mix 100% Hits with 100% Swedish Summer…? Find out here.
Strangers in Stereo serves as a hub for syndicated posts by 25 of the world’s most influential music blogger’s; it features original editorials and a now playing weekly section. Launched in March with a SXSW showcase it recently added Ireland’s own Nialler9 into the collective.
Y&R Chicago and Die Hard batteries partnered with Zoo Films director James Frost (OK GO and Radiohead music video fame) to create a keyboard made of cars powered by 1 battery for Gary Numan to perform his 70’s hit “Cars.” on. This is awesome.
With a passion for digital and a love of statistics, we just love it when we get them both at once. This video by Jesse Thomas combines animation with statistical visualisation, presenting the latest digital trends from all over the world. The video offers a quick insight into the current digital global climate, highlighting the continuing rise of social media and online video platforms through stats such as 2.5 billion photos uploaded to Facebook every month or that YouTube serves 1 billion videos per day. Amazing!
The internet is often hailed as a fantastic collaborative tool, something which allows people to share ideas and come together to solve problems. While that’s certainly true, it’s also so much more. The internet is a way for people to take the things they like, bring them together and create something completely new – the Mashup!
We recently came across this great little ‘story’ of how one mashup inspired another, which itself then inspired a third. What makes this ‘story’ particularly cool is that the final mashup is a brilliant analysis of where mashups came from and why they’re so important.
So it all started last March. AvoidantConsume created a really cool mashup for the Phoenix song Lisztomania. Having always thought the song had an 80′s feel to it, AvoidantConsumer pulled together footage from four classically 80′s movies: The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Mannequin and Footloose.
Then in May, the GodDamnCobras decided to create a tribute to the AvoidantConsumer brat pack tribute. This took the form of a fun 90 minute shoot on the roof of one of their buildings. They describe it as a “welcome to summer, a goodbye to Heidi, and a tribute”.
So where to next? In February of this year, Normative put together this brilliant analysis of the two videos mentioned above, but also to a third that we weren’t even aware of – a tribute that was made to The GodDamnCobras mashup. So if you only watch one of these videos (though we do recommend you give them all a quick peek), make sure it’s this one. It’s pretty much all you’ll need to know about what a mashup is, where they come from, and, ultimately, why it’s so important that we keep on making them.
Finally, since we’re on the subject of mashups, why not take a look at Cybercom’s own Obama Mashup!
This brilliant film was produced by Keiichi Matsuda for his final year Masters in Architecture. It forms part of a larger project around the social and architectural consequences of new media and augmented reality. Matsuda suggests that as the expansion/progression and blending of digital utilities and platforms continues into the latter half of the 20th century, there is a distinct possibility that we will see the merging of the online and offline worlds through hyper-reality. This hyper-reality will provide a cacophony of imagery and sound through a constant and always on media space. Architecture will take on a whole new role for branding, image-building and consumerism.
The question is asked; could augmented reality recontextualise the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change the way in which we operate within it?
Vodafone New Zealand have just released a viral video campaign that follows a slightly similar line to AKQA‘s Christmas Wish from last year. However, instead of microwaves, mobile phones have been used used.
The premise is simple, using 53 different ringtones and text alerts from 1000 different mobile phones, Vodafone New Zealand sent over 2000 text messages timed to perfection, to reconstruct Tchaikovsky ‘s 1812 classical masterpiece. The end result is a work of art and demonstrates a triumph of technology and imagination working together. We dare you not to be impressed.
You need to make an ad for Comic Relief. It has to be something that everyone will remember. It’s probably a good idea to use an existing celebrity to create recall and cut-through, but who would you use? Who has the appeal to reach out and make people enjoy the ad, remember the ad and, most importantly, talk about the ad (aside from actually giving money to Comic Relief of course)?
It’s a tough decision to make, so Fallon didn’t bother – they just used all of them!
It was announced that as of today (10th March), all premium music Videos will be removed from YouTube. It is expected that the vast majority will be gone by Friday morning. The decision has come on the back of an on-going dispute between YouTube and the Performing Rights Society (PRS), which represents music publishers. PRS has been pushing for a better pay deal for artists whose videos are made available on YouTube but, with no forseeable progress being made, they have called for their removal.
Interestingly, it was reported last Thursday that YouTube and the Universal Music Group are currently in discussions to form a partnership under which YouTube would create a new hub for music videos. It is speculated that part of the deal would be for YouTube to also provide technology and advertising support to the new hub (similar to MUZU.tv).
According to sources, similar talks have been held with a number of other music groups but there are no firm details as to how these have gone. It is clear however that YouTube are actively seeking to increase there revenue stream through strategic partnerships with content providers.
