An introduction to the "Daft" viral world, for those of you left out. Daft Punk is an electronic music band that has been around since the early 90s (most famous in the U.S. for the songs "Around the World" in 1997 and "One More Time" in 2001). Also included on the 2001 album was a song called "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger," which most of the U.S. missed. It was re-released as a live version in 2007 (where I found it on iTunes) and subsequently bastardized into a hip-hop song by one of the numerous rappers I can't tell apart (where it saw wider U.S. airplay, so if you heard that version first . . . I'm sorry).
The "Daft" viral videos took off in mid-2007, beginning with the original "Daft Hands." The videos are an example of musical kinesthesiology, of a sort; the motions of the performers create the lyrics of the song, and as the lyrics speed up, the performers speed up into more intricate patterns. This works because the song has a grand total of 19 words, and several of them share most of their letters (our/hour, ever/never) which lowers the total number of letters required even further.
"Daft Hands" was the original and most popular (with something like 28 million YouTube views). It spawned dozens of "hands" copies (all of these start slow, by the way; the impressive choreography isn't until later in the song).
It was followed about four months later by "Daft Bodies," which featured two women with silver boxes on their heads (which were later parodied in numerous other viral videos). A plethora of other "bodies" videos appeared not long after.
The next step, of course, was multiple people. A rugby team did a presentation of it and posted it online, followed by a student council somewhere (which has my favorite choreography):
I find the interplay of music and motion and the translation of motion into music an interesting subject and I think this is a good example of it. I'd have done a choreography like this in school as a presentation.
I read an article on some of the practical consequences of quantum mechanics today. Consciousness is a common example, but in addition the article discussed how the antioxidants in green tea may use quantum tunneling to eliminate free radicals. The most interesting example to me, though, was the suggestion that photosynthesis may utilize quantum mechanics to achieve 95% efficiency when transmitting collected solar power from the surface to the inner cells (in comparison to our own power transmission methods, which lose 20%).
Then came the revelation: Instead of haphazardly moving from one connective channel to the next, as might be seen in classical physics, energy traveled in several directions at the same time. The researchers theorized that only when the energy had reached the end of the series of connections could an efficient pathway retroactively be found. At that point, the quantum process collapsed, and the electrons' energy followed that single, most effective path.
I actually blinked after reading that paragraph and said "Holy crap" out loud at Cici's. To clarify, the paragraph suggests that a plant or bacteria collects solar energy at the surface and then sends that energy in terms of "probability" down every *possible* path at the same time to the core cells, and once the most efficient route is determined, it drops all of the inefficient routes and *all* of the power goes the most efficient route, as if the organism knew the most efficient route to begin with and the less-efficient routes were never even considered. This is *phenomenal.* As an analogy, imagine if you could drive every single possible route to work each morning, determine which one took you the least amount of time and then go back in time and drive *only* that route.
One post of annoyance:
As I was finishing reading this article, I heard a crash and was suddenly splashed with a shower of pink lemonade (which splattered my pants, my magazine, my table, my glasses and the wall behind me), caused by a small girl knocking her glass off the table across the aisle and one booth back from me. It was an accident. Things happen. But the parents' reaction? Complete apathy as they continued to watch the Super Bowl on one of the wall-mounted televisions. They ignored the staff member who came to mop it up and never said a word to me. My god. I wish I could revoke parenting rights.
Points to Cris for pointing me to Kina Grannis. Grannis is a "Web 2.0" musician, someone who has embraced the Internet as a component of her art rather than simply a way to distribute it. While she has released a few CDs to iTunes, her biggest presence is on YouTube, where she releases a new homemade video each week, featuring either an original song or a cover and concluding with several minutes of "video blog," where she updates her fans on what's going on in her life, answers questions and rambles in general. The effect is that her music and personality come packaged together, in addition to spotlighting a path that is open to any aspiring musician.
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Saturday, October 18
Uncovered
WARNING: The following link contains nudity and is not work-friendly. Repeat, nudity, not work-friendly. Also, possibly not "my mother"-friendly, although maybe it will help her understand my artistic nude portfolio better (but I gave you the warning ahead of time in case you don't want to look anyway, mom).
Jordan Matter is a New York-based photographer who did a just splendid series of photos that I Stumbled upon last night. The series portrays a variety of "real" (not paid fashion models) women topless in New York (where apparently it's a little-known secret that such is legal) with commentary either from the women themselves or from the discussions of the people interacting around the shoot. The topics range from the unrealistic expectations of feminine beauty in American society to breast feeding to breast cancer and mastectomies to growing old without being discarded. The pictures show a world where women are women regardless of their body dimensions and are accepted for being individuals instead of objects, a world where nudity does not equal sexuality (in fact, one of the opening quotes is "In the city, nudity means something. In the wild, it just exists."). I think Mr. Matter came pretty close to knocking Lois Greenfield off as my favorite professional photographer with his synthesis of art and human commentary, something I've tried to express in my own portfolio.
My journey from the arctic wastelands of the west to the slightly less-arctic wastelands of the east was a perilous quest of beauty and wonder, certainly worthy of a Tolkien ballad or an ABC after-school special.
The majestic sight of Orion rose before me for nearly an hour, giving the impression that the Interstate was driving directly into the mighty hero's belt. Not long after, a lumpy, potato-shaped but brilliantly orange moon laboriously climbed above the horizon, at first mistaken for a truck stop sign or billboard thanks to its unusual color.
Around Kearney, the journey became more surreal, wrapped, as it was, in what the radio called "freezing fog." This, as I soon learned, meant that the thick, tendril-like fog (cloaking the Interstate so closely that in places only the white lines on the concrete were visible in the headlights and in others forming an "artificial ceiling" a scant thirty feet above the ground from which light reflected) condensed into a thick frost on any surface it touched. For vehicles traveling through it, that meant the hood, windshield and front fenders (leaving the doors and trunk of every car untouched). The fog stayed with me, clearing in patches only to return again, all the way to my house.
On the bright side, I averaged close to 48 mpg on this trip. Not bad for a non-hybrid.
Although I've never actually seen the show, Nip/Tuck has had some fascinating promos lately. This one in particular has me inspired to do a photo shoot with the same concept (and it being close to Halloween and all, prosthetic stitches should be easy to come by).
- An article in the most recent Discover announced that a team in England successfully extracted stem cells from adult bone marrow and coaxed them into becoming sperm cells. Some biologists are dubious the process would ever work, but it opens the door to, in order from least- to most-questionable by society, infertile men having children, two women having children (always girls, as women don't carry a Y-chromosome) and one woman having children using her own eggs and stem cells. I'd already read that the number of men needed to maintain the species is a shockingly low 100; perhaps in the not-too-distant future the number will be zero.
- Another article on the physical composition of the Universe reminded me of why I love science, and why I'm banned from talking about it in certain places (some guys hear "I have a headache" in relation to sex; I hear it when I'm talking about quantum indeterminacy). Everything we can see, the entire Earth, the sun, all the stars, every comet, asteroid, gas cloud, planet and black hole, everything we can see through a telescope or detect with instruments, makes up a practically minuscule 4% of the Universe (that's not a typo). Another 23% or so, and most of the actual mass of the Universe, is something called dark matter, a substance we can't see but can only infer from its gravitational effects on galaxies. The majority of the Universe, on the other hand, almost three-quarters of everything, is an even more mysterious "stuff" called dark energy, a force that fuels the expansion of the Universe. It sounds like science fiction, I know.
- Thanks to an intriguing episode of Doctor Who (titled, to Lane's delight, "42"), I'm now familiar with the concept of "happy numbers." I doubt I'll ever be able to incorporate them into anything practical, but they're still interesting. (42, I'm afraid, is not happy, Lane.)
I've been collecting a few choice trinkets from friends over the last few weeks:
From Mull comes this fantastic artist who creates sculptures representing mathematical constructs and etchings of DNA and other biological components. Make sure you click a couple of the links (the Sculpture and Math Models ones, at least). Wow.
Susannah took me to UNL's Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery on Sunday, where I was fascinated with Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison's The Architect's Brother. Absolutely stunning work. The technique used to make them (dozens of photos hand-cut and arranged into single photos without digital manipulation) makes for a "vintage" feel that I love, but on top of that each photo tells a story. My personal favorites are this one and this one.
Displaying a penchant for discovering fascinating things, Susannah also sent me the link to this video. Wow.
