If you work all day in front of a computer then you will without a doubt relate to this Modeselektor video  where two figures battle it out in a world full of videos within videos. I myself am always in a battle with my computer monitor where one window is closed only to reveal another window full of work and information that I have to digest.  The entire scenarios takes place on a computer monitor with the figures jumping back and forth from screen to screen creating a clever and playful effect courtesy of director Dent de Cuir.  Watch the full video after the jump!

(via 10 by jon)

As a part of Rhizome’s Seven on Seven, Ryan Trecartin and David Karp created riverofthe.net, a collection of 10 seconds or less community submitted videos. Trecartin, probably today’s most important video artist, and David Karp, creator of tumblr, were brought together, along with several other artists and technologists, by Rhizome back in 2010. Anyone can easily submit, and the more videos the better, because one of the only negative aspects is seeing videos you’ve already viewed before. It’s an incredibly simple and effective idea, which showcases videos that are typically more interesting than most video art out there.

Ever since I was a little kid I remember flipping through the L.L. Bean catalog. I never really bought anything from them but I always thought of them as a heritage brand and a classic symbol for Americana. To celebrate their 100th anniversary L.L. Bean tapped famed photographer Randal Ford to recreate their popular  Spring 1933 catalog cover using local residents from Maine’s Acadia National Park. L.L. Bean documented the entire photo shoot in all its outdoorsy glory with a short behind the scenes documentary. Witness how a vintage painting gets transformed into a modern photograph after the jump!

(via laughing squid)

Monica Cook’s animation Volley, along with new sculptures are on view at Postmasters in NYC from now til February 7th . Her stop-motion animation fully exploits the uncanny potential of the medium. Cook’s laser-like attention to every millimeter of surface was developed during her years as a painter, rendering meticulous depictions of flesh. Her sculptural sensibility is attuned to surface texture, opacity and luminosity. These sculptures have the extra duty of performance in creating her animated work.

Volley is a love story, a beautiful and painfully honest one. Its protagonists are candy- colored primates who dwell in otherworldly crystal caves. This environment, and the bodies of its inhabitants, are colored, adorned, and vivified by powerful fantasies. Wordless yet eloquent, the monkeys dream of love. A skull-faced monkey seduces his darling in a blacklit reverie of efflorescent fluid. A beloved mother-monkey is envisioned as a levitating goddess. Here, love is the power to ennoble and elevate the beloved.

But the illusions of sentiment are not completely convincing. The stark workings of physical necessity are ever-present, revealed in the mechanistic pumpings and ejaculations of breast milk, the eruptions of diseased skin, the exaggerated sexual organs. The monkeys are ‘visible,’ as are anatomical diagrams. Bones, musculature, and reproductive systems are exposed, re-inscribing our childhood experiences of shock upon learning that our own bodies are stuffed full blood and squirming tubes. The creatures’ crude innards – ribcages constructed of telephone cording, inflatable plastic stomach membranes – stand in contrast to their rigorously lifelike faces, with their soulful eyes and perfectly modeled teeth.

Paradoxically, for all the visibility of their artifice, Cook’s sculptures are unmistakably alive. Painstakingly constructed from scraps of skin and fur, complete skeletons and organ systems, the figures have all the marks of an organic origin. They exhibit all the unexpected plasticities of having lived and been affected by life, growing, acquiring idiosyncrasies: scars and pustules, preferences, mannerisms. The creatures aren’t slick representations of a species or an idea, and they refuse to be reduced to mere sigils. They are particular, individual beings, animated through a deeply evocative process. Cook has an unconditional regard for her creations, and she gives them secrets, hidden interiors, unnecessary mechanisms that constitute a sort of private life. In all their tenderness and grotesquerie, their imperfection is perfectly human.

Like we humans, these monkey-creatures are incomplete, deluded, faintly ridiculous. The squeamish feelings aroused by Cook’s work may be the anxiety of recognition. They show us how our very make-up is a leashing-together of implacable oppositions: Violence and desire, sweetness and aggression, devouring lust and untiring devotion. They show us, as well, how lovely and how fragile is the tissue that holds us together.

21 year old French video editor Romain Loiseau recently set out to create a music video using a short extract of the movie Bye Bye Birdie which was recently seen in a Mad Men episode. The rules of the project were simple.

1.Do not take other sound than this are in the extract.
2. Do not use other software (like MAO software : Ableton live, logic…)
3. Do not use effect except the pticher  and the slow motion effect (in
order to harmonize )

The final product is a mesmerizing 3:35 minute music video created on Final Cut Pro 7 and made entirely out of a few seconds of footage and without any of the usual editing tricks you are so used to seeing.  Watch the full video after the jump.

Ever wish you could have a nice private chat with one of the biggest artists in the world where he would give you some valuable advice? Well here is your chance. Hear painting icon Chuck Close discuss why it’s best to make art during a recession and find out what his favorite era in art was. All this and more after the jump!

In a bizarre turn of events a 36- year old woman faces charges for going to the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, walking up to up to Still’s “1957-J-No. 2” painting which is worth around $40 million dollars and scratching the painting, pounding her fists against the wall next to it, and in a grand finally pulling her pants down and urinating next to the historically significant painting. We’re not sure if this was a bad performance piece or jus the work of  someone gone mad but based on the mug shot we’re going with the lather.  Watch the full news video after the jump!

I’m loving this completely bizarre music video by Luci Schroder for Melbourne based electronic group Alpine where young girls make out with axes, themselves, the tv, watermelons, fish in swimming pools, and eat ice cream floats in jacuzzis. Watch the full vid after the jump.