The Loris Bite

AntiVJ - Live Painting: Shackleton from AntiVJ on Vimeo.

 Crazy optical illusions and light movements that make you doubt your own perceptive abilities are Joanie Lemercier's specialty.

When the Lemercier, a frenchman, moved to Bristol, UK in 2004, he quickly became a big part of the video jockey, or VJing scene. He moved up quickly and began networking online and locally within the "underground."

Bristol's underground scene is much like any other underground scene. A lot of artists and musicians collaborated to spread their message, which was basically anti-establishment, like every other anarcho-punk group. Bristol's underground is for the most part trip-hop deejays, drum and bass deejays, graffiti artists, and others associated closely with that line of work, like video jockeys.

Lemercier quickly made a name for himself with his exceptional skills as a video jockey. He now organizes for the VJschool, a place where people can go to get an overview of the art from professionals and learn to better their skills. He also books visual art performers to participate in the Cuisine which is sort of an underground collaboration of artists in Bristol that promote events in clubs, parks, and even caves and beaches.

Along with Lemercier's abilities to create amazing visual shows with projectors, he is also a designer, flash programmer, webmaster, and communications manager. He has worked for major designers such as Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Paco Rabanne. He also helped build the website for Juniper Blue, one of the more successful creative agencies out of Bristol.

The thing that he takes the most pride in is VJing. Lemercier, or stage alias AntiVJ, has just finished touring in Brazil, where he introduced his new approach to the trade. He and Simon Geilfus and Desaxismundi, members of Principles of Geometry, used stereoscopy to produce a 50 minute long journey through space. Stereoscopy is IMAX technology that allows visuals to be seen in 3D using special glasses.

 Lemercier uses a mapping technique and a program called Arkaos Grand VJ to utilize the effects to make the visual art seem more bound to the unusual backdrops that he uses.

He is now exploring the links between projected light, optical illusions and perception. He has played at a few different festivals this year including: Clubtransmediale [Berlin], Glade [UK], Printemps de Bourges [France], Mapping [Geneva], and Electric Picnic [Ireland].

Principles of geometry + AntiVJ: a stereoscopic show from AntiVJ on Vimeo.

Lemercier is hoping to spread his influence around the world and make his profession more popular by teaching others his trade while encouraging their individuality.

Earlier today in Ankara, Turkey, a van transporting beehives crashed into a parked truck, leaving one dead and 20 injured, said Cihan.

When the van hit the truck all of the beehives were smashed, leaving their unhappy inhabitants in a rage frenzy in which the insects tried to kill whatever they could see.

The swarm of bees engulfed the injured crash victims, 2 in the truck and 4 in the van, stinging them and injecting them with their venom.

Rescue work was made very difficult by the swarm and it was necessary for the police and the fire department to call in local beekeepers to help with the efforts.

Despite the stinging insects, the rescuers were able to free the crash victims from their vehicles and get them to the hospital in just a little over an hour. 

Fifteen of the rescuers were sent to the hospital from the amount of bee stings that they received during their work. 

One of the victims from the van died but it is unsure as to which it was, the crash or the bees, that killed him.

All in all it made for a pretty ridiculous situation. 

Here is the footage of the accident provided by Dogan News Agency. 

 My friend Brooke got me all hyper on photography today because she's been doing some shoots for people around her neck of the woods in Phoenix, AZ. I just started looking around and I went off on a couple tangents.

I really liked the long exposure shots, the night shots, and I was really impressed with some of the shots with the fisheye lens. I've decided to post a couple of the photos I ran across today, hopefully you guys will enjoy them.

Extended Exposure:

 
The extended exposure blurs the clouds and flattens the water, giving this image a seriously surreal look.

Night Shots:

 This is a great shot of Osaka, Japan taken from the observation deck of the Umeda Sky Building. I love the city lights.

This is a great picture of the Freddy-Sue Bridge in Rochester, New York. 

A nighttime shot of the Marina at Dubai 

 Fisheye Lens:

 
With some careful cropping and a pretty cool program called PanoramaPlus, its possible to make a really neat all-capturing panoramic landscape.

 
This is a really cool picture of the WFCAM at the UK Infrared Telescope on Mauna Kea. I just thought it was cool how it was such a cool fisheye picture of a camera.

Today after reading Kurt's post I was thinking about how people that behave a little funny, a little goofy or whatever... sometimes they make the best music. Kurt was talking about how this guy Lang Lang seemed a little off, but his music is brilliant. This guy is pretty much the same way. He's a little strange looking/sounding, but his music really is impressive. His name is Ronald Jenkees and he's a youtube musician. He's had millions of views and apparently his new album is actually doing pretty well. 

I really wonder how she does it. I mean... what? I don't see how it would really matter how good her genetics are if she's just a "Sperm Robinhood," stealing from the men, and giving to those less fortunate women who are having problems conceiving with their significant others. I think I've given this too much thought. $5000?!?!?!! that's way pricey. Who does this lady think she is? I guess it is kind of a risky operation for her... I mean it seems like she goes about obtaining her product in a sketch way. 

 A little while back I wrote a blog post on how Nomura's Jellyfish are swarming the seas of Japan. Since then, the Japanese have been trying to figure out what they can do about the jellyfish problem and how they can use the goliath cnidarians.

 
Echizen kurage Jellyfish

Every year when the Echizen kurage swarm the seas they halt fishing operations, causing serious frustration to the industry. One group of highschool students has been cooking with the jellyfish since 2003 in their efforts to battle the jellies.

These students from Obama Fisheries High School have developed a way to make jellyfish powder by boiling the creatures down into a paste, drying them out, and then grinding them up into a fine powder.

Students that developed candy at Obama Fisheries High School 

The students have developed a caramel candy made out of sugar, starch, syrup, and of course, jellyfish powder. They have requested from JAXA, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, that their jellyfish caramel candies be available to astronauts aboard the International Space Station. According to Chunichi  there is a representative from JAXA going to the school today, Sept 17th. to evaluate the candy. 

Apparently there is a caramel candy trend going on in Japan, so the students are hoping to catch that ride with their new recipe. 

Since the powder has been developed other local companies have put it to use in their recipes. One local company made jellyfish cookies with the powder. The powder is said to have a salty taste which compliments the cookie's sweetness.

Ekura-chan saku-saku cookies, sold in boxes of 10. 

Its great that people can turn lemons into lemonade and jellyfish into space candy.

I found these pictures on the web of some miners over in Afghanistan. It really is sad the conditions that these people work and live in. These people have been mining for generations with no real modern equipment. The men mine much like their ancestors did, with simple hammers. Afghanistan's underground is rich with natural resources. They find wealths of coal and other minerals, but the main gem that they are searching for is lapis lazuli, which has been being sold legally for the last fifty years from Afghanistan. Pay on a good day is about $10 USD, but they do it because there is no other work available. Take a look at what these people have to go through every day.

Spike Jonze rendition of Maurice Sendak's book Where The Wild Things Are looks absolutely mindblowing.

After meeting with Sendak and getting his blessings, Jonze set out to take the classic children's book and make it his own, developing characters out of the wild beasts that populated the pages of the original 1963 illustrated work.

While Jonze was eating dinner with Karen O. of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Julian Gross of Liars his two friends suggested a mutual friend of theirs, Sonny Gerasimowicz for the job of designing the characters and building their appearance on the personalities depicted by the script, according to Chris Lee of the LA Times. 

Sonny Gerasimowicz was told to capture personality as opposed to copying Sendak's style.

The movie looks like its going to be another excellent Jonze work and the special effects look fantastic. It seems as if he's really captured the mischief and the little struggles of childhood that the book is really about.

"What I've seen him do, he turned it into his, but without giving up mine, but embodying mine with Spike Jonze, and its astonishing me at how it maintains its peculiarness as a work," said Sendak.

Jonze wants to keep the message of the book in the movie. He wants to keep the movie about a child that uses his imagination to conquer his emotions and feelings.

"He [Maurice Sendak] said 'you have to make it dangerous, make something that respects kids, and doesn't talk down to them' or it wasn't worth doing" says Jonze.

"There will be controversy, but the film has an entire emotional spiritual visual life which is as valid as the book, he's done it like me whether he's doin it or not, but in a more  brilliant modernand fantastical way which takes nothing from my book, but enhances and enriches my book," says Sendak, showing how happy he is with Jonze's work.

Controversy has surrounded the book since it was first published. The book was banned from many libraries and schools upon publication as the illustrations scared some children and the book had undertones of rebellion towards parents and at one point the protagonist is even telling his mother that he is going to eat her.

Spike Jonze is a great director and everyone should be very excited to see how this movie turns out! It will be released on October 16th in theaters around the United states.

An interesting fact: The first draft of the book was called "Where The Horses Are," but when Sendak started working on the illustrations he realized that he couldn't draw horses, so he just changed it to "Things." Sendak didn't like horses when he was growing up, so he used them as the Wild Things that Max would end up taming. 

Another interesting fact: At the beginning of the book the illustrations do not take up the entire page, and text tells the story. As Max begins to use his imagination, the pictures get larger and the lines of text get smaller. When max begins to tame the creatures, the opposite happens and by the end of the book the illustrations are back to their original size. 

A year and a half ago in March, Paul Karason came on the Today Show to talk about his abnormally blue skin color due to his use of colloidal silver.

Mr. Karason started taking colloidal silver around the time of his father's death because of some stress induced skin problems.

When he took the colloidal silver, he noticed that the skin problems actually didn't go away, but the inflamation went down.

He kept taking colloidal silver after this because even though his skin problem didn't go away, his arthritis, sinus problems, and acid reflux dissappeared.

At the end of his segment on the show, Dr. Nancy Snyderman sort of calls him out and says that it would be a good idea to get a heavy metal check and a physical.

He went and got his blood work and his physical done and came back within the normal ranges of every test.

Now, Paul Karason is back on the Today show a year and a half later to talk about how everything has been going for him.

This science kit lets you sample bacteria from anywhere and culture them! Its a pretty cheap kit, only $20 from ThinkGeek, and it's educational for the kids.

The science kit was actually featured in Realscience.net's video of the day. Its pretty hilarious.

The video is an experiment that answers the question: "Which is dirtier: A computer keyboard or a dog?"

Guess which one it is. 

DJ AM was found dead in his SoHo home on Friday evening, authorities said.

 Toxicology tests must be performed on the deceased DJ to find out the exact cause of death, and that might take  weeks.

According to the New York Daily News, the DJ was found with 8 undigested OxyContin pills in his stomach and one in his throat, leading them to believe that an overdose was a cause of his death. 

DJ AM, or Adam Goldstein offstage, has openly admitted to having a problem with addiction over the years. He even did a show with MTV that was scheduled to air in October called "Gone Too Far" in which he and the families of addicts would do kind of an intervention for the addicts in need.

He even said that the show reminded him of his own addictions and even scared him sometimes.

"I have to constantly remind myself why I'm here and remember what it was like," he said. 

Dr. Drew Pinskey, from the VH1 show "Celebrity Rehab" said this about painkillers, which is what he believes brought DJ AM back to his addiction:

"It very slowly and subtly reawakens addiction, I'm not saying it was inappropriately prescribed, I'm saying he didn't know the risks." 

DJ AM had been prescribed to pain medication ever since his critical injury that he suffered in a plane crash with Blink 182 drummer, Travis Barker.

He was burned very badly, and though he began to perform again within a month of the crash, he was prescribed to some pain medication for the skin grafts he had received.

Many of his friends are very distraught about his death. Travis Barker, the other member of their group TRVSDJ-AM, commented on twitter about his loss.

"Don't know how i am gonna play 2night but i am for AM," wrote Barker. "My brother is gone. i love u and miss u, i'll never forget all the good times we had." 

Goldstein's body was found in his apartment when a friend called the police after not being able to get into the home. 

Paramedics had to break down the door, and upon entering the house found Goldstein's body, dressed in only sweatpants, in his bed without a pulse.

Addiction is a very real and scary thing, and any kind of drug can set it off. 

Here is a great piece from DJ AM and Travis Barker: