© Hannah Sun (via Vimeo)
The animation explores the topic of screen addiction, the new norm of our life today with digital technology, and the feeling of isolation and distraction a lot of us share but often neglect.
This short by Hannah Sun is addictive in itself, I could watch this all day. Superb colors, buttery smooth animations, amazing sound design, and a spot-on concept on a relevant topic. Brilliant.
© A24 (via YouTube)
Directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as Daniels, the film is a hilarious and big-hearted sci-fi action adventure about an exhausted Chinese American woman who can’t seem to finish her taxes.
I have no context on this movie beyond its description, but once again A24 got me hooked with an amazingly crafted trailer, this time for Everything Everywhere All At Once.
This interpretation of the idea of a “multiverse” looks really charming, I would love to watch it unfold on the big screen.
Related: Why movie theaters aren’t dead yet (a video-essay on YouTube from Vox)
The Internet has been monetised by social media, by big tech, by search engines. Fuck, it’s been monetised by pretty much everyone. The whole concept of netizens and a community around the web, from the late 90s and early 00s, have been lost to the sands of time.
As made clear before, I think the world wide web –or at least social media, which unfortunately replaces the real web for way too many people now– is in a bad state this day and age. Or, to put it in the flowery language of Kev Quirk; The Web Is Fucked.
Don’t worry, there’s some positivity within his “manifesto”, too.
In the unlikely case, that you missed the current furor;
The Facebook Files and the insights shared by Frances Haugen made it clear once again how ruth- and wreckless –at best naive– Facebook (now Meta) operates and how well researched the negative ramifications of the social network internally really are.
Probably a good occasion to bring up Mike Monteiro’s talks from 2013 respectively 2018 again, addressing us, the people within the industry: ‘How Designers Destroyed the World’ (vimeo.com/68470326) and ‘How to Build an Atomic Bomb’ (vimeo.com/268704084).
© ANTI / Fleet Foxes (via YouTube)
me by myself on the longest night of the year… honoring the loneliness of 2020 with a nylon string and some songs new and old.
In December 2020 on the winter solstice —just a few days after New York declared a state of emergency because of COVID-19 and forced a wide lockdown, Robin Pecknold performed acoustic arrangements of “some songs new and old” from various albums of his band Fleet Foxes as well as a Nina Simone cover (‘In The Morning’) and a traditional tune (‘Silver Dagger’) at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn. The recording of the live stream finally got a proper digital release –on Spotify for example– with physical formats to follow in Spring 2022.
A Very Lonely Solstice is a haunting depiction of the isolation a lot of us experienced in one way or another throughout the last two years and another beautiful cultural-historic document of our time. Furthermore, it’s the perfect score for dark winter days and a wonderful alternative to the more traditional –and often cheesy– Christmas time songs.
When you create a difference in someone’s life, you not only impact their life, you impact everyone influenced by them throughout their entire lifetime.
No act is ever too small.
One by one,
this is how to make an ocean rise.