Image cred: Kickstarter.

Andy Baio, of Waxy.org and web heroism fame, is looking to orchestrate an 8-bit re-recording on Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue.

Judging from the 8-bit Hip Hop Medley and Ocarina of Rhyme (!) tunes that were passing around a few months back, this project could yield an album that sounds pretty sweet (in small doses).

PAX 2008 : Chiptunes on Pike Street by nmhull on Vimeo.

Is this all just a global excuse to create hip retro websites and low-fi graphics?

Indonesian Chiptunes @ Urbanfest 2008 by vish on Vimeo.

Could it go the ugly way of autotune?

Auto-Tune the News #2: pirates. drugs. gay marriage. by schmoyohoon YouTube.

We could sit and speculate all day.

But if you like the idea of an 8-bit Kind of Blue, you can pay to hear the results.

That’s the model used on Kickstarter (another Andy Baio project).

Come up with an idea, see if people will fund it.

In Baio’s words, Kickstarter is:

“…a site that lets other people pre-order your dreams — an easy way to get the people you know to fund your ideas into reality.”

264 people have pledged $5,555 to make Kind of Bloop a reality, and there are still 67 days to go [at the time of writing].

Now how’s that for some smart, efficient economics?

Along the way I met Clément, aka Pikilipita, and witnessed 8-bit VJing for the first time.

Photo credit: Ne1co

I’ve talked before about the fact that you don’t need a laptop to VJ.

Pikilipita is polemical about a ‘No Laptop’ policy. He’s a developer and designer, and over a year ago developed a VJ app for the Game Boy Advance.

On Friday, as we switched over between sets, he seemed pretty light on equipment. Just a PS2 and PS2 controller. He stood behind the Braindrop DJs and played his visuals like a console game using the PS24VJ software he finished developing earlier in 2008.

I was impressed by Pikilipita’s minimal set and the ease of his interactions. I’m even more impressed that you can get his apps through a “shareware” business model that only asks for voluntary donation.

On the subject of 8-bit/ ‘No Laptop’ – there’s Gijs Gieskes, aka strobovj. Take a look at the video below:

strobovj makes his animations with Gameboy camera then plays them through his stroboscope – a truly old school device (via). The animations can be synched to the clock of Game Boy musical app LSDJ.

There’s a heap of hacking, tinkering and repurposing going on. And the long and short of it is this – you don’t need a laptop to VJ.

Although it helps to be a developer.

Previous How to VJ:

- #6 Pixel-per-pixel: a history

- #5 Making layers: an example

- #4 Types of VJ: an overview

I don’t know where you live. But I live in London. And I’m seeing more colour on the city walls every day.

Street artists are embracing happytalism (no need for a dictionary, just click it). We’re getting Space Invaders and 8-bit written bright. Decayed pillars restructured with Lego bricks. Buildings transformed into cartoon monsters.

It’s happening globally, which is the most exciting thing about it. I’m sure Os Gemeos must have set much of the paint in motion. But bucketloads of what’s happening now is new and transformative – going well beyond “graffiti” and exploring all the senses. Using every material to hand. Even balloons.

These pictures come from Washington D.C. and are the work of D.BILLY. I’m massively impressed.

Puts a whole new, and knowing, spin on a huge visual trend. Are we kids again? Or clowns?

For more on D.BILLY, posts at Designboom, And I Am Not Lying and PSFK.

Plus check out D.BILLY’s Flickr photostream.

And if you’re feeling the artier side of this new wave of street art, Ian Tait’s written a nice post about sculptural graffiti in Brighton.