AN INTERVIEW WITH PAUL NIELSEN OF TYMPANIK: Artists like r.roo and Access To Arasaka say, represent more of the type of material I tend to gravitate towards when considering new releases for the label; a darker, more cerebral and complex electronic sound that can still manage to sound beautiful and inviting.
Upstream Color is the first masterpiece of the year: But Upstream Color is way less of a puzzle than Primer was — it’s much more about burrowing inside your head with the weird lovely pictures, and making you identify with two characters who are fatally dysfunctional. Also, where Primer was a film about technology, with lots of sequences of the main characters geeking out about their invention, Upstream Color is about biology, and the ways in which it shapes us beyond our understanding.
This New Camera Stabilizer Could Change Cinematography Forever: Shots like [the iconic Goodfellas scene] are based on a counterweight system, where heavy weights are suspended below the camera, which sits on a low-friction gimbal. The new system gets rid of the counterweight completely, allowing the camera person to move around much easier. For added control, the camera’s movements can be operated remotely via joystick.
It’s Almost Impossible To Believe There’s a Robot In This Suit and Not a Real Human: Boston Dynamics—the folks behind the brick-tossing BigDog—has released some new footage of one its other incredibly unsettling robotic creations. Petman’s designed to serve as a testbed for hazmat suits and other military garb, and is so realistic it’s hard to believe there’s not a real dude inside that suit.
The Knife Made The First Social Justice Goth Album: Shaking the Habitual is not dry and academic, or strident, or overly cerebral. It’s actually one of the most physically and emotionally evocative records in recent memory: a collection of songs that explores issues of identity and gender with the visceral urgency of a great horror movie.
