think demux

I like sitting in the dark watching pictures move. Is that a crime?

It was a perfectly acceptable pastime until it became more modish to watch things on a tiny screen. To cut things together yourself and anatomise the image on Photoshop.

Here are two projects that might excite the old-fashioned film fan with a digital eye.

The Art of the Title Sequence is a wealthy resource and lets you unpick those dense intros. Often the best or most memorable bit of a feature film. I’ve been watching a few intact. You pick up a lot fast, because the best ones are so tight.

Brendan Davies’ Cinema Redux takes it in the opposite direction. Each of his painstaking works captures an entire film in evenly spaced screengrabs. I found this just as enriching. You can tell so much by a glance at one image.

By training the eye to deconstruct moving pictures, you learn how to build them better. Or it’s just an excuse to peer in close at expertly good cinema. Either way - get these sites up on your little screen and enjoy.

But what’s beneath the well-upholstered face of Cheshire?

One porcupine (hedgehog?). Dead. Roadkill. Did not puncture car tyre? Cartoons may be inaccurate.

Small boy said “thank you”. I stepped to curb to let him pass on scooter. Astonishment.

OUTRAGE. Coca-Cola at £1.15 per bottle? Emo cashier speechless when I handed him £1 coin. Although that may just be his “look”.

Best tombstone in graveyard? For couple who died two centuries ago. Their dates don’t match. But thoroughly modern stonework. Pimp my ancestry?

NORTHERN MEN. Cropped hair. Blunt tone. Constant threat of warmth. Tends to strike around the sixth pint.

Leather-skinned hags with silver bags. Jackets to match. What’s the catch? Internal organs. Poisoned by cocktails and bile.

So what’s the punchline, and can I get it with chips? There’s no conclusion to this miscellany. But I re-read T.E. Hulme’s Notes on Language and Style this weekend. And he was responsible for how I saw these incidentals.

All emotion depends on real solid vision or sound. It is physical.

A man cannot write without seeing at the same time a visual signification before his eyes. It is the image which precedes the writing and makes it firm.

The three poems Henry Stead performed at the launch night for London Poetry Systems.

In order, they are:

- The Love of Phlebas

- A Visionary’s Visionary Vision

- An Ancient Process

Thanks to Kaara for her design work on Phlebas. All three visual scores were outputted through an Edirol V4 mixer, performed with motion dive .tokyo, and pre-produced in Adobe Premier and Adobe After Effects.

You can watch all of the poets on our Vimeo group site.

Meant to share this a long time ago but I foolishly moved flat and left my internet behind.

I’ve been writing for a microsite all day and trying to get system language out of my head. Because it’s not how people speak, and it can take the fun out of playing with a website.

This is a slideshow by Erika Hall, co-founder of Mule Design Studio (via PSFK).

I think she hits several nails on their different shaped heads. Think of the websites you enjoy visiting most. You don’t even notice the interface language - it’s all part of the place’s personality. You’re playing, and you’re in conversation.

When it feels like a machine’s barking at you, you know you’re in the wrong place. And chances are you’ll leave pretty quickly. So the writer’s challenge? Help people play better.

Lovely work here by Marcelo Costa. Take something technological and simp it out.

It’s hugely satisfying to see such a beautifully simple idea done so well. Congrats, Marcelo! And a great choice of soundtrack - so crank your volume meter up.

Videos from last month’s London Poetry Systems launch night at the FleaPit are now online.

Here’s Henry Stead performing ‘A Visionary’s Visionary Vision’.

We spent a few weeks working together on each of his poems, and this live audiovisual performance is the product of those experiments.

Luchadors. Mexican wrestlers. They’ve all got a story - and a logo. Their mask.

Where does the mask come from?

Aztecs, if you’re being dreamy and distant. The need for self-promotion, if you’re being 20th century and consumerist.

But hold that disbelief for one second. There are stories behind those masks. There’s honour and history behind the luchadors, even when they’re fighting werewolves in comic books.

Can the same be said of the WWF (WWE?) loudmouth? The hard-selling capitalist breed of this noble and ridiculous warrior, changing identity and allegiance as the money takes him?

I’m not sure. But I know I prefer the underdog’s story. And it takes good storytelling to get millions transfixed by a single TV second, over and over.

Take it away, Santo…

Related: Brazilian logo mashing.

Event: Lucha Libre in London this July.

Remember: This is just cultural mash-up. But feel free to start a serious discussion if you want one…

Last year in Buenos Aires I was hungry-eyed on the streets. There was protest, performance, politicking and an implacable air of tango. Under the stern skies, always life and movement.

Now, after a winter of work by Blu, the walls have started moving (thanks Kaara for the link).

So what the hell’s happening out there?

You can keep a watchful eye on What’s Up Buenos Aires.

And if you need a motion refill, last month Buenos Aires hosted Punto y Raya (snippet below). Not the same ai ai ai! factor as Blu’s animation, but a bucketload of technique.

Back to basics: dots, lines, movement.

All core for VJs. But with HD and new(ish) sites like Vimeo - not to mention BBC’s iPlayer - everyone needs to stay sharp to movimiento.

It’s a language the whole world’s speaking in. You gotta catch its finer inflections.

Update: Blu, the artist who created the first video, is from Bologna. You can read his blog here. More info about the production here. And a well-gathered overview at Drawn!

No one cares that Superman’s dead. Did you spot him in Chris Ware’s illustration?

Foot on the ground in big city, there are millions of things you don’t notice. Most are banal. Some incidental. A few, tragic.

But you keep on keeping on. As long as it’s not your tragedy. Tough luck for Icarus (he’s kissing the fishes, bottom right).

No doubt cursing himself on a design oversight. Wax for wings? To the sun?

That’s not the style of a Renaissance man. Gotta see outside the grid to plough on in the big city.

George Glencairn Urwin wrote for Sparky comic in the 1970s.

In the 1990s, he made Teenage Mutant Hero Turtle weapons out of wood for me and my brother. He looked striking with a pipe, and was sharp with a pen.

I’m proud of my grandad.

The thumbnails above are his stories (a list at the end, if you want to see every comic he did). I got hold of the old annuals today, and it was a pleasure to see how his creative mind worked.