Hasta La Creative!

There’s always something good on Hulu starting at 7.99 a month. This is a fairly uneventful retail spot from Hulu, produced by Hulu. As a retail spot it does the job. As “original content,” it’s boring.

Did you know you can totally ignore the scenery in this great country and keep your eyes glued to your tablet and Hulu? It’s true. Hell, you might as well just stay home with a bowl of snacks, save some money, you know. You’ll need the money once your free trial of Hulu ends.

Stockholm Pride Festival is combating the violence in GTA by releasing its own ”Los Santos Pride” mod. This will allow gamers to have their own Pride Parade in GTA 5. It’s basically the same idea Coke had back in 2006 but they actually created the mod rather than just a spot. Question is, how many gamers who play GTA will download and use it? They should do one for Destiny next. There’s already dancing in it.

With Periscopista, Thijs Biersteker and Amp.Amsterdam won the first ever Grand Prix run by pioneering festival Down the Rabbit Hole, an award show to encourage artists to push the possibilities of festival art installations.

With this interactive installation the aim was to break down any boundaries between the festival and the crowd, by designing a mist installation that is as curious about you as you are about it. When you look at the installation, it “looked” back. If you pay attention to it, it would show off its psychedelic side. It was also triggered by sound and movement.

“Periscopista is an homage to curiosity. She is peeking from the lake at the festival world and bursting with enthusiasm into a misty cloud, inviting interaction from the crowd through periscopes on the shore, now every visitor can influence the festival surrounding” says Thijs Biersteker, artist.

The installation was designed to be sustainable and with room for annual expansion, as new pieces can be added to the framework indefinitely. The installation was built by the Better Future Factory using old plastic bottles and even car dashboards to 3d print the elements of the installation. Furthermore, they designed it in a modular fashion, so it can live on and be edited during the years to come.

The Periscopista installation was chosen as G RAND PRIX winner of the Down The Rabbit Hole Festival in Amsterdam.

The visuals morphed according to the movements, recorded by motion capture cameras, of festival goers; the audio was an ambient bed that subtly changed as crowd noise picked up by several microphones increased and diminished. Together with partner Univate, the sensors, hidden in poles around the festival terrain, provoked the interaction between the installation and the people, with live streams giving video input on the screen, and motion sensors and audio input influencing the animations. In charge of the beautiful illustrations, were the in­house illustrators of Down the Rabbit Hole Festival, the two talented brothers Merijn and Juriaan Hos.

I wish I would have been there to see it.

Studies from the National Kidney Foundation show that due to high rates of diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease, the African American community has an increased risk of developing kidney failure and suffer from kidney failure at a significantly higher rate – more than three times higher. This unfortunately is what has happened to Blackalcious’ Timothy “Gift of Gab” Parker.
In this powerful short documentary that first premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival from Strike Anywhere, Gift of Gab describes the moments he first became ill, mistaking it for really bad flu, following by the discovery of having kidney failure and subsequent endurance of being on dialysis three days a week which he continues to this day. Rather than is being a soul-crushing experience, he used that time in the hospital to work on a second Blackalicious album–the first one in ten years since the debut Blazing Arrow.
What is even more inspiring is that Gift of Gab rejected the offer of assistance, food stamps, etc, letting his need to work see him through. He soldiered on to create Imani Vol 1 which was released in September of last year. The album’s title suggests there is more to come from the band and the man. Gift of Gab hopes to be on the top of the donor list for a new kidney by the end of this year.
Follow Blackalicious on FB to keep up with their tour schedule, which amazingly they are still able to do.

A battle in the trenches between Germans and Americans. The sound of gunfire, explosions and screaming voices. The tension builds to a climax, as the combat intensifies, before the camera pulls out to reveal the entire “trench

Online culture meets real world in this Google Play spot that feels a lot like an adidas Originals spot from eight years ago. How many agencies does Google have, anyway?
Apps aside, there’s no difference between Google Play and any other curated site like Apple Music, or Spotify, except for names and UI. Also there’s no difference between those other sites and curating your own damn playlist because I really don’t need an algorithms help. Also, I’m not sure in what world Google lives in that thinks people are having dance offs in front of the school bus. My bigger fear is that bouncy castles have replaced the hanging out on a ratty sofa outside trope that seems to have defined youth for the past decade. By the way, I never saw grown up youths hanging out on ratty sofas outside, either, outside a commercial set. And I live in Venice which is basically west coast hipster central. But you know–sometimes advertising is as myopic as it is superficial.

P.S. 8tracks.com is much better. It’s curated by users. And it has a very simple app.

In Injustice 2 you build and power up your favorite DC legends so they can fight fight fight! In this trailer you see Batman, Superman, Supergirl, Ironman and the like squaring off and growing armor CGI style while Bryan Cranston (I think, anyway) reads some Very Dramatic™ lines leading up to the main thought: Evolve or Die. I’m not a DC Fanboy so it doesn’t do much for me in terms of making me want to pick up the game, but the claustrophobic direction is pretty sweet. I do wish they would have turned the lights up on the dimmer just a hair. Watching it in the morning light makes it seem a little too murky.

The thrill of the goat is gone. So you can trade it in. Except, we’re not talking about goats here, we’re talking about video games. It’s very strange that a farmer is in GameStop, I must be honest. But I applaud them for not making the goats scream as that’s been done.