Video of a debate between Christopher Hitchens
Video of a debate between Christopher Hitchens and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on the topic of “Does God Exist?”
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kottke.org posts about video
Video of the world’s fastest clapper. What
Video of the world’s fastest clapper. What a showman!
Update: And this guy can do the hambone (“a rhythmic knee and chest slapping motion”) pretty damn fast. (thx, alesh)
A collection of time-lapse movies of people
A collection of time-lapse movies of people playing Wii. One fellow plays for quite some time while holding a newborn baby.
Time merge media
Someone made a video overlay of the 134 times it took him to get through one level of hacked version of Mario World. (Note: the original video was taken down so the embed is a similar video.)
Oh, and how that relates to quantum mechanics:
But, we can kind of think of the multi-playthrough Kaizo Mario World video as a silly, sci-fi style demonstration of the Quantum Suicide experiment. At each moment of the playthrough there’s a lot of different things Mario could have done, and almost all of them lead to horrible death. The anthropic principle, in the form of the emulator’s save/restore feature, postselects for the possibilities where Mario actually survives and ensures that although a lot of possible paths have to get discarded, the camera remains fixed on the one path where after one minute and fifty-six seconds some observer still exists.
Some of my favorite art and media deals with the display of multiple time periods at once. Here are some other examples, many of which I’ve featured on kottke.org in the past.
Averaging Gradius predates the Mario World video by a couple years; it’s 15 games of Gradius layered over one another.
I found even the more pointless things incredibly interesting (and telling), like seeing when each person pressed the start button to skip the title screen from scrolling in, or watching as each Vic Viper, in sequence, would take out the red ships flying in a wave pattern, to leave behind power-ups in an almost perfect sine wave sequence. I love how the little mech-like gunpods together emerge from off screen, as a bright, white mass, and slowly break apart into a rainbow of mech clones.
According to the start screen, Cursor*10 invites the you to “cooperate by oneself”. The game applies the lessons of Averaging Gradius and multiple-playthrough Kaizo Mario World to create a playable game. The first time through, you’re on your own. On subsequent plays, the game overlays your previous attempts on the screen to help you avoid mistakes, get through faster, and collaborate on the tougher puzzles.
Moving away from games, several artists are experimenting with the compression of multiple photographs made over time into one view. Jason Salavon’s averaged Playboy centerfolds and other amalgamations, Atta Kim’s long exposures, Michael Wesley’s Open Shutter Projekt and others. I’m quite sure there are many more.
Dozens of frames of Run Lola Run racing across the giant video screen in the lobby of the IAC building.
The same kind of thing happens in this Call and Response video; 9 frames display at the same time (with audio), each a moment ahead of the previous frame.
Related, but not exactly in the same spirit, are projects like Noah Kalina’s Noah K. Everyday in which several photos of the same person (or persons) taken over time are displayed on one page, like frames of a very slow moving film. More examples: JK Keller’s The Adaption to my Generation, Nicholas Nixon’s portraits of the Brown sisters, John Stone’s fitness progress, Diego Golberg’s 32 years of family portraits, and many more.
Update: Another video game one: 1000 cars racing at the same time. (thx, matt)
Update: More games: Super Earth Defense Game, Time Raider, and Timebot. (thx, jon)
Update: Recreating Movement is a method for making time merge photos (thx, boris):
With the help of various filters and settings Recreating Movement makes it possible to extract single frames of any given film sequence and arranges them behind each other in a three-dimensional space. This creates a tube-like set of frames that “freezes” a particular time span in a film.
How You See It overlays three TV news programs covering the same story. (via waxy)
Update: James Seo’s White Glove Tracking visualizations. The Slinky one is mesmerizing once you figure out what to look for. Seo also keeps a blog on spilt-screen media.
Several very cool animations, graphs, and photos
Several very cool animations, graphs, and photos of Northern Hemisphere sea ice coverage are available from The Cryosphere Today. Among them: ice coverage time-lapse from 1978-2006 and 2007’s ice retreat (the greatest ever recorded). (via ben saunders)
A series of four lectures on physics,
A series of four lectures on physics, specifically quantum electrodynamics, by Richard Feynman. Only Part 1 is available on Google Video and the rest are in streaming Real format (blech)…hopefully they too will make their way onto Google Video.
Update: Another lecture by Feynman, this one about Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics.
Update: I got an email from the nice folks at Vega Science Trust asking me to change the wording of this entry with regard to encouraging people to put these copyrighted videos up on Google Video. Fair enough…what I really meant by that is I wish the videos were presented in a more useable manner than RealVideo format. If there’s one thing that YouTube has shown us more than anything, it’s that people find watching video in embedded Flash players really convenient.
This video is too long and come
This video is too long and come frontloaded with too much explanation, but like a jelly doughnut, there’s some goodness in the middle.
Basically, I simulate clocks as living organisms. Selective pressure is focused on their ability to accurately tell time. NO goal is imposed on the design (you can tell this because every simulation ends with a differently constructed clock). And it works. Clocks evolve through a series of transitional forms: Pendulum, Proto-clock, 1-handed Clock, 2-handed Clock, 3-handed Clock, and 4-handed Clock. Gradually the complexity is built up.
Sarah Silverman would like her boyfriend Jimmy
Sarah Silverman would like her boyfriend Jimmy Kimmel to know…well, just watch. (via davenetics)
Big Think has a series of interview
Big Think has a series of interview videos with New Yorker editor David Remnick.
Fireball in your hand
How to make a fireball you can hold in your hand. Sweet Jesus, that’s cool.
Update: According to the commenters at Boing Boing, this may or may not be a hoax. As usual, use caution when attempting to hold fire in your hand. (thx, seuss)
Beautiful, beautiful slow-motion skate video intro by
Beautiful, beautiful slow-motion skate video intro by Spike Jonze. The video it’s taken from isn’t too shoddy either…here’s a typical glowing review. (via avenues)
If you’re curious as to what designers
If you’re curious as to what designers mean when they talk about design, check out Paola Antonelli’s talk from last year’s TED conference. (BTW, TED has made publicly available a great number of talks from their conferences…like 40-50 hours of material.)
Short teaser for Generation Kill, David Simon
Short teaser for Generation Kill, David Simon and Ed Burns’ next project for HBO about the Iraq War. It’s from October but I hadn’t seen it until now so maybe you hadn’t either? The 7-hour miniseries is based on Evan Wright’s book of the same name. This video discusses the book and its subject matter. (thx, david)
The I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE!!! scene from
The I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE!!! scene from There Will Be Blood. If you haven’t seen the movie, don’t watch this…it’s from a scene near the end. (P.S. DRAINAGE!!!)
I have finally found the guy I
I have finally found the guy I want to marry. Seriously, this is my favorite YouTube video right now, and I’m not even sure that I can explain why. Something about the soft color, and the quiet. And he’s so sensitive. (I sure hope he’s 18 or older or I’m gonna feel real bad inside.)
Lawyer-Dance
Dying to see this video now showing in Chelsea of a dance performed by lawyers, including John Sloss, a film attorney, and Scott Rosenberg, who I think is with Legal Aid. It’s playing with another video, of four day laborers hired to create an earthwork on the beach; both are by Ann Carlson and Mary Ellen Strom.
Eugene Mirman reports from the New Hampshire
Eugene Mirman reports from the New Hampshire primaries in front of Wal-Mart’s, Burger Kings, and other live locations.
I saw Mitt Romney speak yesterday and at the time I was, like, I don’t really like this and then when I woke up, I HATED it.
(via mr john hodgman)
Graffiti Research Lab built their own camera
Graffiti Research Lab built their own camera rig to capture bullet time photography (a la The Matrix) for $5000-$8000. Here are the instructions to build your own and the music video they made using the rig.
Todd Gallagher explores the myth of grabbing
Todd Gallagher explores the myth of grabbing a dollar bill off the top of a basketball backboard and tries to find someone who can do it.
The legend of touching the top of the backboard has gone on for years, and it has been excitedly attributed to so many different players that it’s commonly assumed any number of guys in the NBA can do it. But in a sport where any individual achievement is promoted ad nauseam, we’ve never seen any proof of it actually being done.
Check out these videos of his leading candidate, James White: White doing a between-the-legs dunk from the free throw line and his dunks from the 2006 NCAA dunk contest.
Video interview with Michael Bierut about typography
Video interview with Michael Bierut about typography and design. (via typographica)
Video of people describing their split-screened counterparts.
Video of people describing their split-screened counterparts. Give this one a shot…it’s better than I made it sound. Simple, restrained, and thoughtfully made. (via snarkmarket)
Demo of VideoTrace, “a system for interactively
Demo of VideoTrace, “a system for interactively generating realistic 3D models of objects from video — models that might be inserted into a video game, a simulation environment, or another video sequence”. Starts off slow but gets interesting with the one-click truck cloning. (thx, lance)
The last part of this video featuring
The last part of this video featuring Conan O’Brien singing The Beastie Boys’ Sabotage as Edith Bunker from All in the Family makes me laugh over and over and over.
David Lynch does an iPhone commercial, not really. (via andre)
David Lynch does an iPhone commercial, not really. (via andre)
Hilariously bad knockoffs of Pixar’s Ratatouille and
Hilariously bad knockoffs of Pixar’s Ratatouille and Cars called Ratatoing and The Little Cars. (via waxy)
Burton is offering a $5000 prize for the
Burton is offering a $5000 prize for the best snowboarding video taken at one of the three remaining US ski areas (Alta, Taos, Deer Valley, Mad River Glen) that don’t allow snowboarding. The intro video is the perfect explanation for why these four areas don’t allow snowboards.
Sean Ohlencamp works at Chiat Day and
Sean Ohlencamp works at Chiat Day and recorded his computer desktop once a day for the past year. (via le monoscope)
Video compilation of the brightest frame from 1500
Video compilation of the brightest frame from 1500 different movie explosions. Turn up the sound for this one.
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