Before Tony Robinson played Baldrick in Blackadder and hosted Time Team and The Worst Jobs in History, he did a great little kid’s story show called Fat Tulip’s Garden. Imagine my delight to find a few of the episodes on TouTube. It’s interesting to see it described as a cult classic – I thought it was just me!
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The hero that is Fail Whale
My little kinetic sculpture of the lovely Twitter Fail Whale, based on the image by Yiying Lu that is used when twitter.com is over-capacity. The image is called ‘Lifting up a Dreamer’. I’ve wanted to make this since I first saw the image some weeks ago.
This is a short video of it in action, complete with twittering birds!
More photos here. (Update: fail whale widget here)
I remain optimistic and supportive of Twitter in the long term, because I think the real-time courier service rationale that was the founding impetus of the service constitutes a new branch off Doc Searls’ live web, and makes our online interactions a quantum step closer to Allen Searl’s original vision of ‘a Web where anybody could contact anybody else and ask or answer a question in real time’. Twitter’s track facility, presently down but still promised, provides the real-time search of people and and what they are talking about right now.
Maybe the progression of branching-off goes a little like this:
static web > live web > real time web
google > blogosphere > twittosphere
our property > our history in time > our real-time conversation
search by sending out bots> search by listening for pings > search by tracking people and words in real time
It may be that Twitter’s primacy will be usurped by some other real-time service that gets up ahead of them in the race; I hope not. But many great progressive ideas start off serendipitously or in fun without their full implications or potential being known, and in those circumstances it’s silly in hindsight to say the founders ought to have seen further, planned better and acted quicker than they did.
Now playing – strange trajectories
Now playing – strange trajectories, the 2007 ANU School of Art Emerging Artist Support Theme (EASS) award exhibition currently on at the Alliance Francaise in Canberra, is featuring the work of Michal Glickson (painting) and Anna Madeleine (photomedia). Anna is my daughter. She has two cool new video art pieces in this exhibition. She has also recently done the album art for Casual Projects new CD, No Rest, and is showing one of those images at PhotoAccess’s Open all areas 2008.
Previously:
Flesh and Blood
Mary Black and Shane Howard’s lovely duet version of his song Flesh and Blood. It was replayed on Rockwiz (SBS) last night.
A tiger by the tail?
(My favourite so far: Steve Gillmor)
Despite my own mixed feelings, I’m expecting Loren Feldman’s Shel Israel parody to become the hottest puppet video show around while it lasts. Feldman has caused mischief and grief by taking the piss, and nicking the real Shel’s domain. You can read about it at Techcrunch or Karoli’s Bang the Drum, and here Feldman explains his initial impetus.
But it’s funny. As Steve Gillmor says in NewsGang Live (04.02.08, about the 45 -55 min mark), it’s the kind of thing you feel guilty about laughing at, but you can’t stop yourself. At first I was nitpicking the lip syncing, but Feldman is a quick study, and seems a natural for what works dramatically. (Update May 09 : not quick enough – he still can’t lip sync.)
I’m not sure if it’s so funny if you don’t follow the tech scene, but it’s interesting to see such a connection drawn between the tech world and the online puppetry world. There are precious few of us that follow both. I am intrigued to see who is willing to be interviewed, their differing comfort levels, and of course the power that resides in the way a puppet can ask questions and go places that a real interviewer can’t. The tech world seems to take itself fairly seriously much of the time, and I think Feldman may have a tiger by the tail with his entertaining and cutting take (though I’m sure it’s also going to be unkind and is already feeding into personality feuds). No wonder he is buying more puppets today.
The GetUp Mob
I’m not usually especially affected by multiple-celebrity-cause videos, but this one knocked me for six this morning. It’s a mashup of Kevin Rudd’s apology to the stolen generations and the iconic Kev Carmody/Paul Kelly song From Little Things Big Things Grow, devised by GetUp’s Brett Solomon and inspired by the Will.I.Am video made in support of Obama in the US. I guess it tapped straight into my happiness that many things that would have been unbelievable a year ago are starting to happen.
I’m also happy to see Paul Kelly endorse that idea that recognises that zealous copyrighting impoverishes creativity and cultural well-being. Kev Carmody did the same at the From Little Things concert that we went to in the Sydney Festival in January:
From Little Things Big Things Grow has its roots in songs like Woody Guthrie’s Deportees and The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll by Bob Dylan. And those songs grew out of the soil of other older songs. The Get Up Mob just added another branch to the tree. Long may it fruit
Whoo-hoo!
It sure was a happy night last night – after all the nail biting of the last few days and the start of the count last night, the John Howard era has come to an end!
Shan sent me his last election puppetry video, Howard’s Way, yesterday, but I must admit it felt too much like tempting fate to post it then!
Shan might have the first Rudd puppet out there:
Of course, now I have to decide what to do with my own two Howard puppets. They are too toxic to burn (just like the real thing, really!). I’m going to close my Vigil blog, but the puppet, which started out as an anti-war one, remains, as does the scarecrow one I made as a protest against the Howard government’s refugee policies. Any suggestions?
Previously:
Mick Jagger of Australian politics
Shan Jayaweera’s John Howard has been pressing the flesh in Melbourne. I love this, especially where he describes himself as the Mick Jagger of Australian politics! Jemila McEwan made the puppet.
Previously:
Handy way of looking at the odds
This guy explains it well.
(via Mary Robinette Kowal)
