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No matter how you get there, the destination is always pretty much the same… Footage from the Yurikamome monorail line in Tokyo, ambient sound. The driverless trains are very tightly synchronized, even the announcements take place at the same time. Cast: Gian Pablo Villamil
Abstract video based on footage of New York’s midtown, taken from a car with a sunroof! I took special care with masking out the beginning and end of sequences, though my editing program seems to have left some hairline artifacts. Best cinematic moments are when the car turns – also the mirroring effect is visually satisfying. Music is automatically generated by Cinescore. Cast: Gian Pablo Villamil
The second in my One Minute Per Day series. It’s based on footage I shot for another project, all in Istanbul. I was trying to get a sense of rhythm going, and put together part of score using traffic noises from Istanbul. There is room for improvement – it’s not quite sync’ed with the beat of the music, and some of the clips are a bit jarring, they don’t have the same motion as the others. Cast: Gian Pablo Villamil Tags: art, istanbul and oneminuteperday As a way of keeping my video skills sharp, I’ve decided to edit and put online a one minute long video every day. (Much like what Bre Pettis is doing, but with a different kind of video.) I figure that after two months, I’ll have one hour of material! I’m putting them on my One Minute Per Day channel on Vimeo. My first video is based on footage that I shot in Tokyo:
First installment in my one minute video per day project. I’ll be uploading one minute videos every day for the foreseeable future. This first video is a walk through an alley in Tokyo (Shibuya-ku). The video is heavily cut to keep it interesting, but I’ve maintained continuity by keeping the sound un-cut. The color treatment is meant to complement the film-noirish setting, and focus attention on some of the striking graphic elements in the scene. Cast: Gian Pablo Villamil Tags: oneminuteperday, art and tokyo Birth of a meme? “I think American Airlines did not earn the new puppy today.” “Thanks for buying all that beer and cheese! You have really earned the new puppy!” This will be the exact opposite of not getting any ice cream.
This extremely thorough spoof of the New York Times was distributed today to over 1.2m people. It’s an elaborate exercise in creating an alternate reality – by getting people to think of these things, of the possibility of an end to the war in Iraq, free health care, etc. it makes them more conceivable, and hence more likely. I signed up through the project’s “secret” website, and distributed a few hundred of them in the East Village. Most people didn’t really notice anything different, but by about noon people had heard about the project and were eager to get their hands on the fake papers!  President Obama on the cover of the Daily News Huge crowds are celebrating in Union Square, in New York. Someone picked up copies of the first edition of the Daily News announcing the Obama victory, and they were paraded around to great acclamation. I have never seen such sheer unadulterated joy in New York in the time I’ve lived here. Later at a bar, watched an impressive acceptance speech by President-Elect Obama at Grant Park in Chicago. I was struck by the acknowledgement of the gay community, and by the story of the 106-year old woman, daughter of slaves, who voted for him in Atlanta. Given the size and emotions of the crowd, it would have been easy to for him to have been demagogic and triumphalist – instead, over and over, he insisted on inclusiveness and humility, in his trademark, slightly stilted and professorial style. Of course, that’s only the beginning. The next four years are going to be interesting. Up at 6:00am this morning, voted at 6:15am. Things were very busy at my polling station, a real sense of occasion. The lady next to me was congratulating a first-time voter, about voting in *this* particular election. I actually teared up a bit.  Billboard in the East Village Here is a picture of my local polling site. Lines have shortened a bit since the early morning, and everything seems to be going well.  Sirovich polling site in the East Village Afterwards I headed down to the Bowery Hotel, where there is an ongoing phone bank effort to call voters in Virginia. Apparently the McCain campaign is saying that voters have to be at the polls an hour before they close, which is not true. The phone banking campaign is all about convincing non-voters that they can still make a difference, and that they need to get to the polls. Interestingly, the intensity of calling operation has gone up a notch: in contrast to previous phone banks, here we are asked to keep calling voters on our list until we get through, instead of leaving a message or flagging them as “not home”.  Obama phone bank at the Bowery Hotel Initially we were calling voters in Virginia, urging them to vote. However, about an hour and a half before polls closed in Florida, we got an urgent message from the campaign HQ in Chicago that some precincts in Florida were not turning out in the numbers expected, and that we should drop everything and start calling Florida. I speak Spanish, so I was in the middle of a group of other volunteers, who would pass calls to me when the person on the other end didn’t speak English.  The sign stuck to my jacket says "I Speak Spanish" Things really picked up speed, with campaign staff urging people to keep calling right up until the polls closed. A couple of voters reported incidents of fraud, especially in nursing homes where patients were pressured to sign empty ballots. This was reported to the campaign HQ, which responded in a matter of minutes, calling the voter back and documenting what had happened.  Volunteers still calling Florida at 6:45pm |
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Economics is a mystery cult, not a science
The sudden (and inexplicable to a lot of people) collapse of the global economy has revealed that no-one really knows what’s going on, and as a result, people are turning to religion, directly pleading with supernatural entities to fix things.
I suppose, given that we’ve figured out the motion of heavenly bodies, and that weather is better understood, the economy can now become the focus of religion: it is chaotic and complex, hence not predictable, and it has occasional catastrophic effects on the lives of everyday people. Unlike astronomy and weather, economics is entirely man-made, the sum of the actions of people.
Here’s some examples of religion trying to solve economic problems: Detroit churches asked for “God’s bailout” for the auto industry:
Image from NY Times
And of course, who can forget the incredible sight of evangelical Christians praying to a Golden Bull? As numerous people have pointed out, the last time a bunch of people prayed to a Golden Calf to save the day, things didn’t work out so well… a “stiff-necked people” indeed.
Image from Wonkette