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The link of the day is clearly Crystalline: Bjork’s new video with Michel Gondry. What can you say? It’s very Bjork, very Gondry, very beautiful stop frame animation. It’s lovely, but I’m not so sure about her Bjorkness jiggling about inside the disco glitter ball.
The Awl’s take on it was typically wry:
“This takes me back to a simpler time! It is pleasant to see two people—Björk and Michel Gondry!—have fun in a form they know and like so much. Miss you, the 90s.”
Here’s an article on Billboard about the making of Crystalline.
Gondry:
“We shot it frame by frame, and we shot it by recranking the camera and re-exposing the film many times,” Gondry says. “I decided for this that the shower of meteorite would hit the ground and produce a sound . . . The idea that a beam of light can have the impact to make these things move is something that intrigued me. Later on, they create some ripples-like rain. At the third verse, they create bubbles in which the metallic objects appear. All of those are the result of multiple conversations with [Björk] that were going in many directions.”
If that’s not enough Biophilia for you, here’s the new Wired feature:
How Björk’s ‘Biophilia’ album fuses music with iPad apps
That’s my evening’s reading sorted then. Now, if only I could read it on an iPad. Hmmm…
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The final thing I’d say about optimism is this. If we took the loopiest, most moonbeam-addled Californian utopian internet bullshit, and held it up against the most cynical, realpolitik-inflected scepticism, the Californian bullshit would still be a better predictor of the future. Which is to say that, if in 1994 you’d wanted to understand what our lives would be like right now, you’d still be better off reading a single copy of Wired magazine published in that year than all of the sceptical literature published ever since.
@cshirky on optimism, the futility of paywalls, social media + culture in the Guardian.
Great positive outlook, + useful historical perspective, on social, cultural + intellectual innovation online:
“So even with the sacred printing press, the first things you get serve the basest human urges. But the presence of the erotic novels did not prevent us from pressing the printing presses into the service of the scientific revolution. And so I think every bit of time spent fretting about the fact that people have base desires which they will use this medium to satisfy is a waste of time – because that’s been true of every medium ever launched.”
Looking forward to downloading Clay Shirky’s new book into my brain: Cognitive Surplus; Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age
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