Videos
Maggwire.com
Maggwire bills itself as ‘the iTunes of magazines’. As you read and rate its 600+ magazine articles it begins to recommend other articles you might enjoy. It includes articles from from Vanity Fair, Men’s Health, Esquire, Time and BusinessWeek and Marie Claire. You can search by topic and share interesting articles via Twitter/Facebook. If nothing […]
Top YouTube videos of 2009
Almost…but not quite too late to do a best of 2009 – the top five videos on YouTube globally: 1. Susan Boyle – Britain’s Got Talent (120+ million views) 2. David After Dentist (37+ million views) 3. JK Wedding Entrance Dance (33+ million views) 4. New Moon Movie Trailer (31+ million views) 5. Evian Roller […]
Interactive Wedding ‘Ring’
GeekPhysical specialize in inventing interactive technological events, experiences and installations. Their latest invention is called Cold Feet and tracks the emotions of the bride and groom throughout the big day via a bouquet that contains blue and white fibre optic lights. The bride slips a bio-feedback ring on her finger which monitors whether she’s feeling […]
What Went Wrong
What Went Wrong is an eight-week online interactive series that looks at the causes of the global financial crisis, from Big Think, a “global forum connecting people and ideas,” which has an archive of video interviews with more than 600 experts including and astronaut and a former mayor of NYC. What Went Wrong features interviews […]
Streetlight Storm
Artist Katie Paterson was commissioned by Vauxhall Motors to create an art work on the theme of re-inventing British classics. Paterson took a British seaside town as her inspiration and created an evocative work for Deal Pier. Along the length of the pier, out to sea, the lights flicker in time with lightning storms as […]
Cynthia Schneider: The surprising spread of “Idol” TV
Cynthia Schneider, in a recent TED Talk, explains how “reality TV is driving reality” as competition reality shows such as Britain’s Got Talent, American Idol and The Candidate are changing tribal societies in Afghanistan and the UAE. Watch her talk in the video:
Pink Glove Dance
Staff from Providence St. Vincent Medical Center, Portland, Oregon have put together this fun (slightly uncoordinated) dance to raise awareness of breast cancer. Check out the security dude at 2.32…he looks a Blues Brothers refugee. Watch them dance:
TED Talk – Daniel Pink
Career analyst (and ex-speechwriter for Al Gore) Dan Pink talks about the science of motivation in this TED Talk:
Rumblevision
In 1974, one of the greatest sporting events of all time happened: the boxing match between Muhammed Ali and George Foreman known as the Rumble in the Jungle. To celebrate the bout’s 35th anniversary, NYC label No Mas has created Rumblevision, a series of three short films that re-imagine the fight. Zaire by David Rathman: […]
BBC Archive
The BBC is making its historic TV, photo, document and radio archive available online. Dating from 70 years ago, the archive is divided into collections including The Berlin Wall, Tomorrow’s World, Cambridge Spies, Genesis of Dr Who and Working Class Life. Explore more collections.
Clown Convention
Clown fearers look away now: 200 clowns recently descended on Mexico City for a clown convention. In among the seminars and make up tips, they were protesting Mexico’s raising of taxes, which poor clowns can’t afford. Hat tip to: @barryjamesgibb Watch the video:
Mutate Britain
If Tate Britain is a bit too, well, sissy for you, you should head over to Mutate Britain, which exhibits fearsome art in a setting under the Westway, just off Portobello Road, London. Seen at night, it’s a scene straight from Mad Max or Burning Man, with smoking metal trees, pictures painted straight onto concrete […]
Suburban Housewife
Suzy Jenkins is the Suburban Housewife. See her rap (lots of mofos, so keep the volume down/get ready to beep if you listen at work):
Periodic Table of Experts
If you are looking for interesting experts (or interesting websites), check out Make: Technology on Your Time, which has a series of experts explaining their passions. Watch Bruce Hood from the University of Bristol talk about the supernatural: or Fiorenzo Omenetto, a professor of biomedical engineering at Tufts University who loves silk: or Theodore Gray […]
Eligible Men
Daily Motion has a video of found footage of dating agency videos, which shows a procession of hapless men explaining what they are looking for in love “vivacious, foxy”, “the goddess”, and why they are eligible bachelors (“I’m an executive by day and a wild man at night.” “I’m atonal.”, “I’m interested in most phases […]
Cat Craziness
Thrillist found a site dedicated to mad, bad and sad cats doing evil or having evil done unto them. There’s a naked man in a shower with a cat, a cat attacking a baby, cats in fancy dress and a Russian skydiving cat. Don’t ask why, I don’t know. See more. Watch the Russian skydiving […]
Birds on the Wires
A photograph of birds roosting on telegraph wires inspired Jarbas Agnelli to see what it would sound like if he were to translate the birds’ positions to musical notes: it’s surprisingly tuneful. Watch video: Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.
Bronx Art
Bronx School for the Arts looks like a 21st century version of Fame – it was founded by a group of parents, teachers and residents who recognized the need for quality education in the South Bronx, and opened to 162 pupils in 2003. The teachers believe that the arts are integral to academic learning, so […]
From Grid to Green
Mike Johnson is a 32-yr-old Florida-based mailman, music producer and tech geek, who has just decided to try to take his house and family off the grid. He’s going to be blogging about his experience on From Grid to Green, which he’s just started. His first task is to create an automatic zonal watering system […]
Do Lectures
Do Lectures – If you feel like you need some inspiration to get off your arras and do something head down to Cardigan Bay in West Wales on 3rd September for five days of inspirational talks in a woodland setting. Well, actually you can’t because you have to apply in advance and go into a […]
Credit Crunch Hotel Dining
British comedian George Egg takes in-room hotel dining to a new (unique?) level cooks tortellini in a kettle and English muffins on an iron. He says the equivalent meal would cost £15+ in the hotel restaurant and claims his version uses £2 of ingredients, ideal for the cash-strapped traveller – I’d like to know where […]
Damon Weaver Interviews the President
Damon Weaver got the interview many journalists would would give their right arm for: The President of the United States. What’s more remarkable than the scoop is that Damon is only 11-years-old. He was reporting for his school’s TV station and has now shot to fame courtesy of YouTube. He’s also received a scholarship offer […]
Undercover theatre
In Washington DC, unsuspecting shoppers, diners or park goers can find themselves suddenly witnessing what appears to be a shoot out or someone being chased by federal agents, but it’s all part of a new kind of street theatre, dubbed ‘threat theatre’ in which the audience are extraneous. The point is not to entertain, but […]
FREEDOM: Do It Yourself
Steve Lambert, the son of a monk and a nun, is an artist who likes to bring a little goodness to the world in an arty, subversive way. He founded the Anti-Advertising Agency, which was the lead developer of Add-Art (a Firefox add-on that replaces online advertising with art). He’s also made Lemonade Movie, a […]
Digital Playgrounds
The Danish Kompan Play Institute are dedicated to getting kids outdoors and are actively designing playgrounds that young people want to hang out in based on six principles. They’ve developed some interactive playground equipment that borrows gaming techniques from video games to entice the kids out of their bedrooms to get fit and have fun. […]
Fake Prison Break
Dutch Revu magazine has a special crime edition that they’re promoting with a video that shows four guys projecting an image of a man escaping from a prison onto the wall of a prison. Read more on PSFK. Watch the video (it’s in Dutch, except for the swearing which is in English): Here are more […]
The Healing Power of Death Metal
Slate magazine has published an article about how US war veterans are finding that death metal helps them recover from their horrific injuries. The Walter Reed medical centre has partnered with Musicorps to provide the injured, and often deeply depressed, vets with one-on-one intensive music therapy sessions. The musician in residence programme teaches the soldiers […]
G.I. Joes Fest
Get yourself to Austin, Texas in October 2009 for the one film festival of the year you can’t afford to miss: The 3rd Annual GI Joe Fest. See and celebrate a bizarre range of stop motion GI Joe films that reference action movies, such as Indiana Jones. Alternatively, you could enter your GI Joe stop-motion […]
Wedding Dance
It’s common, I think, for couples to have a couple of dancing classes prior to their wedding in order that they don’t trip up during their first dance; now it looks like you need get a choreographer for the groomsmen and bridesmaids too…and who knew it was possible to have so much fun in church? […]
Murder Most Foul
US officials who visited a house to evict the tenants in Washington, DC, discovered the decomposing bodies of four children, aged 5-17 years old; their mother had been living with their bodies for months. Benita Jacks said that her daughters had been possessed by demons and that they had died in their sleep one-by-one. Forensics […]
Social Media is the New Punk
Social Media is the New Punk by Lachlan Williams suggests that social media such as You Tube, MySpace and Facebook has a punk aesthetic in that it allows people to create whatever their level of skill – the quality of the outcome is less important than the enthusiasm of the participation. It also says that, […]
Offal Food
Food Tease is a gorgeous looking blog that features scary-looking food from a cute young Canadian couple, David and Nicole, who now live in Texas. Their lives revolve around food, and they love finding new things to cook, which they share in short videos. The site features such delicacies as: Pickled pigs feet tostadas Chicken […]
Iran Rooftop Project
Iran: The Rooftop Project has been collecting videos of the nightly protests held in Iran since the elections. Iranians, after nightfall, have been chanting Allah-o-Akbar from the rooftops, balconies and windows in a spirit of protest and solidarity, which The Rooftop Project calls “the soundtrack of revolution.” The project’s aim is to create a sequential […]
Inflatable Sculptures
Here are some pretty cool street sculptures by Joshua Allen Harris, which are made from plastic bags that attached to the subway ventilation grates – when a train goes by life is breathed into the creatures and they spring to life. See them grow on the video: Hat tip to London-based creative agency Everything Works
Top Five Music Videos in China
The good folks at PSFK have gathered together the top five music videos in China for your delectation and delight. Watch them here. Or learn about Mandopop (a sub-genre of commercial Chinese-language music) here.
Elephant Car Wash
Elephants at a wildlife park in Oregon are working for their peanuts by washing cars with their trunks. It costs visitors $20 to get their cars cleaned. See them in action in the video.
Fred on You Tube
Daisy Whitney (of New Media Minute) has been tweeting from the LA TV Festival and she says that “Fred on You Tube is the standard by which producers compare their web work now…does it look as good as Fred?” Fred Figglehorn is a fictional 6-yr-old character from a dysfunctional family played teenager Lucas Cruikshank from […]
How to Love a Landfill
“You are more likely to be killed in the line of duty working as a sanitation worker than you do as a police or fire officer,” says Professor Robin Nagle, who is Anthropologist-in-Residence at the NYC Department of Sanitation. She teaches “Garbage in Gotham: the Anthropology of Trash,” at NYU and has been known to […]
Window Dressers
The UK’s best window dressers have just competed against each other at the In Store show at London’s Olympia – each team had three hours to complete their perfect window. The winners were from Belfast store Avoca who staged a ‘fantasy teatime’ theme. Over in New York City, Housing Works Thrift Shops are famous for […]
Lord of the Dance
Here’s an example of the tipping point in action – a single guy dancing at a festival manages to start a rave. As my mother would say: If he jumped off a cliff would you do that too? Watch the video:
V Day – When Boys Need Sanitary Products
Tampax have come up with a novel way to sell their products – via a boy. Zack is an ordinary boy who wakes up one day to find that all is not right in the trouser department. In fact there’s something missing. But not to worry – he’s got something else instead: his period! His […]
Greenlit: There Goes the Neighborhood, CBS
There Goes the Neighborhood (7×60′) – Matt Rogers hosts a competition reality show that pits the inhabitants of eight neighbouring Atlanta houses against each other in order to win a $250,000. To keep their minds focused producers have built a 20′ wall around their homes so they can’t leave during the three weeks of filming. […]
Rubikcubism
If you’ve ever seen Space Invader mosaics in and around your city, you might want to check out what else the artist, Invader, has been up to in this video. His work is known as rubikcubism, so that should give you a clue what it’s all about. You can also catch a solo show at […]
Silent Library, MTV
Silent Library is one of my favourite segments in a Japanese show Gaki no Tsukai Arahende. Now MTV have made a version which transmits Mondays through Thursdays. It’s a cross between Russian Roulette and dare and is infectiously funny. But that’s the catch: the contestants are not allowed to laugh or they forfeit some prize […]
It Felt Like a Kiss
Adam Curtis has been at it again, this time in cahoots with Punchdrunk the theatre company that stages unsettling ‘promenade’ performances in vast urban spaces. Curtis’s has produced a documentary called It Felt Like a Kiss that is part historical comment, part fun fair ride for the Manchester International Festival (it will, says Charlie Brooker […]
The Fame Formula
In this short film from Current TV, Mark Borkowski, PR and author of The Fame Formula, disabuses a couple of lads of their dreams of fame. Perhaps he should have had a word with Susan Boyle. See him go head-to-head with Max Clifford in a series of videos on the Fame Formula website.
Banksy vs Bristol Museum
Bristol Museum has just opened an exhibition of works by Bristol’s favourite/most loathed artist, Banksy, which features 100 installations and paintings, integrated with the museum’s usual collections. The Times has reviewed it – but scroll down and take a look at the comments – people are planning to travel from across the country to see […]
Post-It Art
This is a pretty impressive work of art – the emphasis being on the work. Bang-yao Liu created it as part of his course at Savannah College of Art and Design. See the making of:
Seminal Moments
This video shows an interview with Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp talking about his life. He remembers going to his first Sex Pistols gig and watching David Bowie perform Starman. He recalls how the band was named and how he owned on of the first John Galliano shirts. As he talks about the seminal moments of […]
JCB music video
This song’s been around for a while, but it’s the first time I’ve seen this video – v. cute.
