In this second talk from our short series filmed by Dutch design organisation Premsela during their January symposium Me Craft/You Industry, software developer and hacker Smári McCarthy uses music sharing platform Napster as an example to explain how in the near future he believes craft productions will move away from centralised industries and challenge their existing authority.
The first movie in this series saw a designer explain how he transformed the uneaten parts of a chicken into functional items – see it here.
In this movie filmed by Dutch design organisation Premsela during their symposium Me Craft/You Industry in January, Welsh designer Kieren Jones explains how he constructed a miniature factory to transform the uneaten parts of a chicken into a gold leather flying jacket and a bone china eggcup and spoon.
The skin of the chicken was tanned and dyed gold to make the leather panels for the jacket, while the eggcup and spoon were created using the leftover bones.
Paint takes on a life of its own and snakes across the human body in this stop-motion animation by French graphics studio Tenas. The project took three people five days and incorporates 1500 photos.
Little Printer connects wirelessly to the internet, and can be configured using a smartphone app to print a regular bulletin of subscribed online publications, as well as personal information such as to-do lists, memos or messages.
Rather than using ink, the printer uses heat to transfer an impression onto thermal paper, just like a till receipt.
A beta printer and app will be launched later in 2012 and will initially work with data from launch partners Arup, Foursquare, Google, the Guardian, and Nike.
Little Printer is the first product to make use of BERG Cloud, the company’s online service that allows wireless devices in the home to be controlled remotely via a smartphone, without the need to connect them to a PC.
BERG have their offices on Corsham Street near Old Street.
Designed in Hackney is a Dezeen initiative to showcase world-class architecture and design created in the borough, which is one of the five host boroughs for the London 2012 Olympic Games as well as being home to Dezeen’s offices. We’ll publish buildings, interiors and objects that have been designed in Hackney each day until the games this summer.
A darkly comic take on rural cults wins top honors at the LES Film Festival
If you think “new noir” sounds like the latest buzzword designed to put Lana del Rey on the map, check out “The Kook.” The short, made by two NYC directors known as Peking (full disclosure: also frequent Cool Hunting collaborators), won the Audience Award after a sold-out screening held by the LES Film Festival last night. The moment helps shed some light on why the shadowy genre continues to feel so relevant.
In just its second year, the festival celebrates projects made for $200,000 or less. In many cases, much less. Co-founder Shannon Walker explains this “special time” for filmmaking as one when “you can tell a great story for not a lot of money”, citing a film shot entirely on a Nokia phone.
But, Walker emphasizes, the focus is on great storytelling. The selection process comes down to whether committee members “audibly have a reaction to it,” as Tony Castle (part of the fest’s creative team) puts it. The Kook, the story of a cult of people who wear yellow sweatsuits and rock bowl cuts, inspired plenty of noisy reactions among the audience.
The film follows Fa, the naive protagonist and enthusiastic cult member played by T Sahara Meer, on her journey for the truth after finding evidence that the operation is a ruse. She stumbles upon the leader, Malcolm (played by Dan Burkarth), a lowlife who is suffering some unknown pressure that leads him to manipulate his followers. In the process of Fa’s discovery, we see her pull back the curtain, revealing an unsettling truth and in turn finding unknown strength within.
Art direction, consisting of thrifted costumes and borrowed locations, makes one of the strongest cases for low-budget filmmaking by creating a complete off-kilter world. Even something as incongruous as an ’80s-era control panel embedded in a tree is believable.
The finely-crafted piece springs to life through gorgeous noir lighting and subtle cinematography, made all the more compelling with precise editing and rich sound design. Under the helm of the skilled directors, the excellent performances help cement a cohesive tone.
The team, comprised of Nat Livingston-Johnson and Greg Mitnick, have a background in music videos, documentary (see Cool Hunting Video) and commercial work, but it’s The Kook that truly showcases their talent for dark comedy. They’ve already earned rave reviews and awards at independent film festivals coast to coast, and we’re looking forward to more success for the film and the filmmakers.
Dezeen Screen: this movie by Karen Eng shows a model built by MIT fellow Skylar Tibbits and molecular scientist Arthur Olson to show how components will assemble themselves correctly if allowed to collide enough times, resulting in the creation of larger and more complex structures. Watch the movie »
Dezeen Screen: in this second interview that Dezeen filmed for sports brand Nike at their new NikeFuel Station at Boxpark in east London, Nike’s global creative director Andy Walker demonstrates how the company’s new FuelBand wristband helps athletes monitor their activity across a range of sports and daily activities. Watch the movie »
Dezeen Screen: Nike’s global creative director Andy Walker gives us a tour of the new NikeFuel Station at Boxpark in east London in the first of two interviews that Dezeen filmed for the sports brand. Watch the movie »
Dezeen Screen: this animation from our series by architectural filmakers Factory Fifteen shows a swarm of equipment associated with British postal service Royal Mail colonising the sides of a building and configuring themselves into a temporary automated sorting office. Watch the movie »
Dezeen Screen: in this movie by Paul Nicholls of architectural animation studio Factory Fifteen, the world is conceptualised as a series of virtual interfaces, where people visit places and meet each other in simulated environments created by the houses that they never leave. Watch the movie »
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