» I, pet goat II by Heliofant

It's name comes from the short story George W. Bush was reading along, on the morning of September 11 of 2001, with a group of schoolchildren at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota County, Florida. "The Pet Goat" from the book Reading Mastery II: Storybook 1 by Siegfried Engelmann and Elaine C. Bruner. 

This great short film is a "surreal" symbol orchestra on today's human condition. It’s packed with symbols of spiritual, philosophical and conspiracy matters remixed with our recent history and culture. The story is less of a narrative and more like an interpretive dance on America’s war on terror, religious fundamentalism, militarism, totalitarianism, deceitful media, exploitation, etc. If you are interested in a brief description of some characters you can visit the gallery section in Heliofant's site. 

Motion capture was used for about half the animation adding a much needed real touch to the surrealism and it's theatrical staging.

Heliofant is a new animation studio based in Montreal.

"HELIOFANT IS A NASCENT INDEPENDENT COMPUTER ANIMATION STUDIO FOCUSED ON CREATING EXPERIMENTAL AND CHALLENGING CONTENT. BRINGING TOGETHER ARTISTS FROM THE FIELDS OF DANCE, MUSIC, COMPUTER ANIMATION AND VISUAL ARTS, THE COMPANY IS VERY INTERESTED IN EXPLORING THE COMMON GROUND THAT UNDERLIES MANY SPIRITUAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITIONS IN A LYRICAL FORM."

The great driving score was created by Tanuki Project.

» Croix Gagnon, 12:31

Project 12:31 reassembles the corpse of Texas killer Joseph Paul Jernigan, who was put to death by lethal injection in 1993. Jernigan’s body was documented using computed tomography and magnetic resonance imagery after his execution. Images from the National Library of Medicine’s "Visible Human Project".

The animation above represents the entire data set (1,871 slices) of the male cadaver. The resulting images are long-exposure "light paintings" of the entire cadaver. 

Concept and Art Direction: Croix Gagnon, Photography: Frank Schott, Post Production: Alex Katz/Blinklab, Digital C-prints: Dickerman Prints.

This reminds me of this Dentsu London's project.

» James Alliban, Konstruct, Augmented Reality App

James Alliban is an augmented reality specialist and media artist. His work is regularly featured or mentioned in design magazines. He is the founder of the company knowned as Augmatic.

His projects include installations, mobile art apps and online tools that employ a variety of computer vision and image processing techniques. His main tool of choice is the open source arts based programming toolkit openFrameworks.

This iphone app is a sound reactive "AR" experience that allows the user to create a virtual sculpture by speaking, whistling or blowing into the device’s microphone. A variety of 3D shapes, colour palettes and settings can be combined to build an endless collection of structures. Compositions can be saved to the device’s image gallery.

Konstruct is a free app available on iPhone 3GS and 4 running iOS 4+. A version for the iPad 2 is planned in the coming months.

» ScanLAB

The Bartlett School of Architecture runs ScanLAB, a series of research projects exploring 3D scanning in architecture and design. This projects are run by Matthew Shaw and William Trossell, in 2010, they produced 64 scans of the Bartlett Summer Show 2010 using a Faro Photon 120 laser scanner. These have been compiled to form a complete 3D replica of the temporary show which has been compiled into a navigable animation and a series of architectural drawings. These drawings represent the closest record of the exhibition. The process of 3D scanning captures full color spatial data of the models, drawings and exhibition spaces and allows them to be revisited long after the show has finished.

» Field, Muse

Field is a studio for digital art and graphic design based in London. Led by Marcus Wendt and Vera-Maria Glahn. Their projects take shape in illustration and animation, interactive installations and realtime generative visuals. Field has created work for global brands and cultural institutions, while their experimental films and installations have been shown at festivals and galleries around Europe and in the U.S. This experimental short film, "Muse", was commissioned by Netfilmmakers gallery. Their concept is based on how inspiration is now digitally delivered or acquired by taking a deep breath under the vast digital ocean of data and information, at least is what I understood, and that it's know a whole different process to filter such data and reflect its input. Beautifully done. Soundtrack by David Kamp. Chect out this other video in which they used mocap to create a digital choreography here, making of here.

» Andrei Muratov, GTLK

Andrey Muratov is a director and prodcuer based in Moscow, Russia. There is no much info about him out there, except hi runs a company named Proxell. He made this piece for Gosudarstvennaya Transportnaya Lizingovaya Kompaniya, a finacial company in Moscow. He directed and produced it, the sound was made by Nebulo. The images are quite rythmic and beautiful, sure he's talented.

» Visiophone, Kinect dancing with swarming particles

Visiophone is Rodrigo Carvalho, a portuguese graphic designer and new media artist born in Porto. He studied design at University of Aveiro and he is now based in Barcelona where he studies a masters degree in digital arts at Pompeu Fabra University. 

This video is a demo of "Dancing With Swarming Particles", an interactive installation and performance that intends to explore the relationship between a physical user and an “avatar” which has the physical characteristics of morphing flocking particles.

It was made in Unity3d, using Kinect and Osceleton.

» Norman Fairbanks, Kraftwerk geo location based music generator app

Norman Fairbanks is a conceptual audio artist.  He says his mission is to freely alienate, process and melt artefacts from the panopticon of American mass media with found noise, selected field recordings and specifically generated electro-acoustic elements. His purpose is to investigate new tonalities in sound and create a context free, unbiased, neo-expressionist audio witness and reflection of contemporary American culture. While all this, he developed an interactive 24hrs music generator as an iphone app for Kraftwerk. It’s a system that creates music and sound based on realtime data depending on your geo location, the Kling Klang Machine No 1 differences from other generative music apps because most of them use preprogrammed algorithms and in this particular app they are continuously feeding. He says that for now the functionality is still basic but the original concept will be more and more implemented in future updates and releases. You can watch a demo here.

» NOVA documentary, 75min online premiere

A documentary film on new art and the young artists behind it. Directed by Isaac Niemand, and produced by Rojo, an independent creative organization, founded in 2001 by David Quiles Guilló, in collaboration with BossaNovaFilms, it was all filmed at Nova Contemporary Culture which happened in July and August 2010, in MIS-Museum of Image and Sound, and SESC Pompeia, in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Starring: Yoshi Sodeoka, Rebecca Ward, Tofer Chin, KRINK, Base V, Yochai Matos, Max Hattler, Lucy McRae, Kit Webster, Jimmy Joe Roche, Flavio Samelo, Matt W Moore, Zeitguised, Mulheres Barbadas, Gustavo Gagliardo aka Defi, Filippo Minelli, Quayola, Javier Longobardo, Renaud Hallée, Mark Jenkins, Ljudbilden & Piloten, Sosaku Miyazaki, Anna Taratiel aka Ovni, Robert Seidel, B. Fleischmann, Koen Delaere, Taras Hrabowsky, Cristopher Cichocki, Yusk Imai, to name a few.

Music by: Bradien, Roll The Dice, Fuck Buttons, to name some.

» Petra Mrzyk & Jean-François Moriceau

Working collaboratively since 1998, France based artists, designers and animators, Petra Mrzyk & Jean-François Moriceau are known for their detailed black and white ink drawings, their work surrounds the absurd, humorous, and even the perverse. With an ironic connection to commercial stuff, comics, and design, they have created their own vision on the contemporary visual culture. In their work, anything is possible and the surreal is their emblem. The have exhibit their work in several solo and collective shows around the world. You can watch some of their art works here. This is their latest music video, Sebastien Tellier´s "Look" clip, it's been a while since this but in case you haven't watched it or haven't heard about them I decided to make this post. I also recommend to watch Air's "Sing Sang Sung" and "don't be light" clips, some clever and detailed pieces. They also created this iphone app in collaboration with Sam Vermette for Recordmakers anniversary, it's free and it's fun.

» Kim Holm, Matta - Release The Freq

This is the official video for ¨Release The Freq" by Matta, from the album "Prototype" under AD Noiseam label. Kim Holm did direction, design, cinematography, editing, 3D and animation, pretty much everything. He created a poetic and  dreamy look, some great images, very beautiful to watch, unfortunately I had to watch it on mute.

» Solaris, Low-Rez Stories by Manuel Schamlstieg

This work is part of the project Low-Rez Stories by Manuel Schmalstieg, it´s a semi-narrative video installation based on the use of remote webcam feeds which are tracked by spider-bots, captured and combined into a self-generating cinematic video landscape. Solaris is an exercise of dynamic camera motion in google street view, inspired by a sequence of the motion picture Solaris (Tarkovsky 1972), you can watch the sequence here. Manuel Schmalstieg studied in Geneva and Krakow. In 2001 he was nominated as artistic co-director of N3krozoft Ltd, an international art and technology research group.

Check out the video installation here.

» Clemens Wirth, Macro Kingdoms

Clemens Wirth, Salzburg, Austria, is a multimedia art student at the University of Applied Sciences FH-Salzburg. He created this videos playing and exploring with a MP-E 65mm Canon lens, Macro Kingdom I, II and III are visual ongoing poems showing us the unseen micro world.

» Situationist

Situationist is an iPhone app that attempts to make your everyday life more experimental and unpredictable. Inspired by the Situationist International of the 50′s, who advocated experiences of life being alternative to those admitted by the capitalist order, for the fulfillment of human primitive desires and the pursuing of a superior passional quality, the app takes on the “situation” element of the movement, attempting to create random rendezvous and interactions with strangers to induce the unpredictable. Using the iPhone and it’s geolocation features, the app alerts members to each other’s proximity and gets them to interact in random “situations”. These situations vary from the friendly “Hug me for 5 seconds exactly” or “Compliment me on my haircut”, to the subversive eg “Help me rouse everyone around us into revolutionary fervour and storm the nearest TV station”. Members simply upload their photo and pick the situations they want to happen to them from a shortlist, in the knowledge that they might then occur anywhere, and at any time. If you want to go out to the streets everyday and expect the unexpected, maybe this app can help you. Situationist was created by Ben Carey and Henrik Delehag aka Benrik.