Most music boxes can only play one song, but why not make a music box that is fully programmable? The Muro Box can play any song by using computer-controlled wheels to pluck the metal forks. You can program it using a mobile app or a MIDI device. It has a 40-note chromatic scale, and more than 50,000 songs in a downloadable library.
Beware is an in-development demo by Ondrej_Svadlena. At a glance, it’s an open-world driving game that first appeared in May 2018. In it, you are a driver in what appears to be a rainy, foggy eastern block country in the 70’s. What makes this thing stand out is the atmosphere of tension, disorientation, and paranoia it creates. It’s really fantastic. The player is dropped into anonymous, listless locations, hampered by dense fog and rain-slick backroads. The player encounters various solitary landmarks—as well as mysterious and menacing events.
It’s definitely worth checking out. His Patreon page has the latest information about development and supporters get access to extensive additional content. It seems he is up to version 13 and it appears to maybe even support VR now.
Otaku no Video is a cult classic that every classic anime fan should see. It was partially based in the personal life of the original creators of Gainax, who started their careers as otaku during the late seventies and the beginning of the eighties. Anime was in its infancy. Anime was a very niche and tiny subculture – largely unknown to most people and considered a very nerdy past time.
The 80’s and 90’s were definitely the wild west days. Just about anything went and there was everything from animation, manga, garage kit models, costumes, military enthusiasts, martial art fans, and just about any other activity and product you can think of. Anime houses developed tons of these kinds of materials and products to see what would become a hit, and which would fall flat. It was an exciting era of great highs and tragic lows.
This is where Otaku no Video shines. It captures the rag-tag glory of those days. It does this brilliantly through the main character – a regular guy named Ken Kubo who is socially active, plays tennis, practices martial arts, has a girlfriend, has good career prospects, and is an all around ‘normal’ guy. He runs into his former friend Tanaka who is into animation along with some other odd characters. Ken gets sucked in and becomes less and less ‘normal’ and more infatuated with becoming the ‘King of Otaku’. In his quest to become the king of otaku, we watch him develop his garage company into something bigger by producing all kinds of new characters and products – all of which were things anyone of that era would recognize. Through the narrative format of following his journey, you get to see the insiders view of the business environment and working with those passionate coworkers.
Otaku no Video references TONS of culture of the time. The people, themes, and references were almost directedly related to anime culture and developments of the time. For those who found anime in the 80’s and 90’s, it gave an industry insider view into these events. Everyone at the time would have known just about every event that happens.
Recently I learned a few new things. One of the themes I picked up on related to the character Ken Kubo creates with his company: Misty May. It turns out, that too was related to a trend of the time: the incredible spinoff madness of magical girl shows started by Minky Momo. These deals created huge franchises that resulted in albums, merchandising deals, spinoff series, manga, garage and model kits, video games, fan creations, and just about anything else you can image. They were cash cows, and every studio wanted to try their hand at them.
So, it’s no wonder Ken’s company tries to do the same with their character Misty May. In fact, Misty May (above) bears a striking resemblance to Magical Emi – one of the many actual Minky Momo spinoffs:
Definitely give Otaku no Video a try if you want to see what anime culture was like in the 80’s and early 90’s before it became mainstream. Also check out some other videos by Kenny Lauderdale to learn more about the era as well.
Hoshizora Camping demonstrates a cool way of making your camp stove super cool. He first angles the holes in the secondary combustion layer and then adds a fire ring to an ordinary, boring camp stove. With some tweaking, the flame coming out of your stove will be tornadoed into a cool braid-like effect. I like how he shows how he experiments with different configurations to get the best effects.
I think this would be a great way to add a luxury touch to your camp stove and give you something cool to watch at the end of a long day of hiking or climbing.
Luke Edwin shares this video collection of cool and often very simple tricks to get some interesting effect shots. Motion controlled greenscreen, shots that zoom in and out through objects, slow-motion effects, product shots and lots of little effects used in many modern videos. It’s pretty incredible these techniques and equipment are achievable by just about anyone for a very limited budget.
Signal Festival is a festival of artworks from light design, visual and digital art, artificial intelligence, as well as conceptual art. It occurs in several locations in Prague and has reached it’s 20th year.
FLUX was one of most cool looking entries for 2023. It’s a fascinating interactive light installation from Ksawery Komputery. The installation is 6 meters tall, 13-meter diameter on the ground, 4 high-speed cameras, 8-speaker sound system, 4 800 meters of LEDs strips, 144,000 pixels running at 100 frames per second, with custom software and hardware. As people approached the installation, it would display them on the strands of led lights.
It also made an earlier debut at Miami Art Week Dec 2022:
AI trends pop up just about every week. The latest is knolling photos. Knolling photos are pictures of arranged objects so they are in parallel or 90-degree angles. The images create an organized and clean portrayal of many related things. They often look like exploded parts lists.
Tokenized AI by Christian Heidorn walks you through how to craft prompts to generate what you’re looking for. It’s a great example of how a prompt engineer sorts through creating what they want.
“It’s like a child’s backyard project”. The cool looking unibody design shakes and rattles, only goes about 12mph, has no heater/AC, isn’t practical, but there it is and it turns heads since it’s basically an art car.
