W3V2

Some of the freshest and most innovative talent in the arts is often produced by students in college and graduate programs. When these artists collaborate across mediums, such as music and animation, wonderful new pieces are created. Music videos are the perfect short, easily shared medium for young new talents to try out cutting edge animation techniques.

I was drawn to this music video for Solar Powered People’s song Commercial Flight because, although it is created with computer programs (Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects) it has an old fashioned, paper-cut feel. The band had their friends, animators Cesar Almanza, Janelle Falcone, and Joel Berroteran create the video for them. Videos like this one are a great opportunity to see fresh new design and computer animation created by young new talented artists.

Thanks to websites like YouTube and MySpace, bands have a place to create and broadcast their music videos. Often, these “DIY” videos that launch the bands into national recognition. This was the case with OK Go and their now infamous treadmill video. The band was relatively unheard of until their video of the band members dancing on treadmills went “viral.” The video has been on YouTube since July 31, 2006 and has had 36,442,402 views. They even performed their “treadmill dance” live at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards show.

Solar Powered People - Commercial Flight by Cesar Almanza, Janelle Falcone, and Joel Berroteran

OK Go - Here it Goes Again

These two video highlight some cool new touchscreen technology that is being produced today. It may not be accessible for everyone yet, but, considering the first personal computer was introduced in 1981, we have made amazing advances in that time.

The first video, created by Perceptive Pixel, shows an ordinary wall transformed into a touchscreen computer. According to their website, “Perceptive Pixel, Inc. was founded by Jeff Han in 2006 as a spinoff of the NYU Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences to develop and market the most advanced multi-touch system in the world.”

Autodesk Design on Jeff Han’s Perceptive Pixel Multi-Touch

This video, a promotion for Microsoft Surface, shows how a coffee table-like surface can become a place to share and transfer data using their new “digital interaction” technology. Although the in-home applications of this technology are still cost-prohibitive this is quite possibly something you will see in a bar or restaurant in the near future. This is what Microsoft has to say about this new product,”Microsoft Surface™, the first commercially available surface computer from Microsoft Corp., turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, interactive surface. The product provides effortless interaction with digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. Surface is a 30-inch display in a table-like form factor that’s easy for individuals or small groups to interact with in a way that feels familiar, just like in the real world. In essence, it’s a surface that comes to life for exploring, learning, sharing, creating, buying and much more. Soon to be available in restaurants, hotels, retail establishments and public entertainment venues, this experience will transform the way people shop, dine, entertain and live.”

Microsoft Surface - The Possibilities

Now that we are in the full throes of summer, I thought I would add a couple videos to our flatscreens to let our patrons have a “virtual vacation” of sorts (without the high gas prices). What says summer fun more than theme parks?

Hard Rock Park, the brand new theme park (created by the same Hard Rock that has rock-and-roll themed cafes and hotels all over the world) just opened in Myrtle Beach, SC and is making national news as a great destination for this summer’s vacation. To bring a little taste of the park to the Virtual Village, I added a short “rider’s-eye-view” video of the Led Zeppelin - the Ride roller coaster.

Another exciting addition in the world of theme parks is that Disney just added a 3D models of their Orlando and parks (Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, Disney’s Animal Kingdom and Disney Resorts) in Google Earth. The following video is a tour of Disney World in 3D in Google Earth.

Led Zeppelin The Ride at Hard Rock Park Myrtle Beach

Disney World 3D in Google Earth

Imaginon, the children’s library of PLCMC, has a cutting edge music and animation station called Studio i. In this studio, children and teens create videos and music using the newest software including iMovie, I Can Animate and GarageBand3. Since Imaginon’s opening in October of 2005, kids have been using these tools to create some amazing animated and live-action videos. The flatscreens in Virtual Village were a natural fit to showcase some of the wonderful creations coming out of this unique library experience. It’s also a great way for the library to expose adults who have never been to Imaginon to the great creative experiences that are available to their children, grandchildren or nieces and nephews. Imaginon even has their own YouTube channel where you can check out more videos made by talented teens in Studio i.

This video, called “The Making of an M&M” was made by one creative kid in Imaginon’s Studio i using stop motion animation.

The Making of an M&M by Ben Berg

One of the great things about YouTube is that it allows people to take old movies or tv shows and change them in some creative way to create a video that is unique and original. Artists have been doing this with collage art and musicians have been doing this with sampled beats and songs for many years. To make an interesting YouTube video, you don’t even need to record any new information. By simply taking already existing film footage and creatively altering it, you have made your own video. However, as librarians, we are always concerned with copyright issues and this brings up the question of legality. Is it legal to use another person or company’s work in your video? In most cases, the answer is “yes.” As long as you are altering to make it your own, it’s okay. The Media Education Foundation put together a video on the Fair Use copyright law using clips from the notoriously copyright-stingy Disney. It is both entertaining and does a great job of explaining what you can and can’t do under the Fair Use law.

Media Education Foundation Challenging Media presents: A Fair(y) Use Tale by Eric Faden

The video that I used on the flatscreen TVs, called High Tech Noon, is a scene from an old, black and white cowboy movie with 50’s type sci-fi effects added. Fun!

High Tech Noon by Daryyl Gold

CGI, or Computer Generated Imagery, is both an art and a science. Due to the innovation and artistry of individuals and studios such as 1st Ave Machine, this amazing technique is producing lifelike results. According to their website, this successful company “is an NYC based CGI VFX/Animation studio and Production Company working the advertising, broadcast, music video and feature film industries. 1st Ave Machine creates high end design work by employing 3D in ways that blur the line between what we perceive as real and impossible.” This company was founded by Arvind Palep and Serge Patzak. There is a current AT&T commercial now airing that I remember seeing and thinking “wow, that’s cool.” You can view Quicktime movies of all their projects on their website: 1st-Ave-Machine.com.

Their work is amazing and this video never fails to catch our patrons’ eye.

Sixes Last

Today Google announced the winner of their Doodle4Google contest. This contest invited “K-12 students to reinvent Google’s homepage logo.” Sixth Grader Grace Moon won the contest with this illustration which will be the Google homepage logo for today, May 22:

Google has always (or since I can remember) tweaked their logo to represent the current day’s holiday.  They have recently taken this concept one step further with this contest and by asking famous current artists to create artwork for their iGoogle pages. Using iGoogle, you can personalize the look and content of your iGoogle page. To let users know about these new features, Google created two videos highlighting these services. I added these videos to our flatscreens to pass along these fun options to our patrons. iGoogle is an easy and fun way for our computer users to have their own “home page” on a public computer.

iGoogle: A Mini Product Tour

Introducing Artist Themes for iGoogle

On a related note, I also added a fun little video on Gmail that is a “compilation of clips submitted by Gmail fans as part of our collaborative video project. Selected from over 1,100 clips from fans in more than 65 countries.” - Google. All of these videos were produced by Google and made available through their YouTube Channel.

Gmail: Behind the Scenes (Final Cut)

and I think I’m okay with that.

Can you think of any other company who’s name is a verb? Noun? Sure, that one is easy: Kleenex, Coke, XEROX, Saran Wrap, etc. But no other company (that I can think of) has ever been used as a general verb. In library world, Google and it’s uses is a hotly debated topic. Is its federated search engine as accurate as a catalog search of Library of Congress subject headings? For the scholar doing research, maybe not, but for the average gal looking for a cheesecake recipe or anything else in the world, its fast, accurate and does anyone really use anything else?

Google also happens to be an amazing place to work if you’re one of the brilliant and lucky who were chosen from the 3000 applications they get A DAY! They were also named Fortune magazines #1 “best place to work” in 2007. You get all the free food you want, free massages, haircuts and doctor checkups on site, you can bring your pet to work with you, and they bring in authors, musicians and electoral candidates to speak just for the staff. I just the other day ran across the authors@google page on YouTube (over 300 full length author speeches) and, while these videos wouldn’t work on our flatscreens, they are an amazing resource. To view the NBC Today Show’s tour of Google and catch a serious case of workplace envy, watch this video: Google-The Best Place to Work

Google has a channel on YouTube and periodically they post videos highlighting products such as iGoogle, Google Earth, Gmail. I have chosen several of these videos to show our patrons the many ways that they can use Google. The three videos (of the six Google videos playing) in this post feature Google’s mapping abilities: Google Maps, Google Earth and Sky.

Aliens find businesses with Google Maps

New Features in Google Earth 4.3

Google Sky, Mars and Moon

The internet and sites such as YouTube and aniBOOM are making it very easy for animators to share their animation in all of its forms (stop motion, claymation, computer graphics) with others. There are many websites devoted to animation and these sites serve as a place for community, contests and forums. I ran across an Aniboom video on Youtube and have been broadcasting several from this site on our TVs because they are short, humorous and translate very well without music.

Aniboom is a worldwide animation website and forum where animators can upload their work and participate in contests.In their current contest, animators create videos using songs from Radiohead’s new album, inRainbows. The winner gets $10,000 to create an actual video for Radiohead and marketing support for the video from aniBOOM. Serious business. To view the videos that have been submitted for this contest so far, go to http://www.aniboom.com/radiohead/.

These are the videos that I have chosen to display on our TVs:

Cheese by Peter Harakaly (Vancouver Film School)

Lolly Poo Lee by Sushant Dholakai

Peas by Vincent Prijent

Bananas by Zach Parrish

Space Alone by Ilias Sounas (Aniboom awards finalist)

It amazes me how a little video created by an average person can suddenly, with the phenomenon that is YouTube, go “viral” and be seen by thousands (sometimes even millions) of people. The TV channel VH1 even has a “top 10 viral videos” show. If you have not heard of the “dramatic chipmunk” or “rickrolling” then you are missing out on some funny-wierd internet pop culture (or maybe I need to spend less time on the computer).

When Karl Fisch, the Director of Technology at Arapahoe High School in Littleton, CO created his “Did You Know” Powerpoint presentation for a faculty meeting and then posted it on YouTube, it went viral. This means that it was viewed and reposted by many different people. The original YouTube video was posted on 1/19/07, has had 966,462 views. It was edited by Scott Mcleod to remove references to the high school and reposted on 2/08/2007. This version has had 3,802,451 views and has been reposted about 131 times.

After the original video became so well known, a professional visual communications company named XPLANE offered to create new graphics for the video and, with some different information, new music and a new look, “Did You Know 2.0″ was created. This is the video that was shown at PLCMC’s Staff Day 2007. This version has been on YouTube since June 22, 2007 and has been viewed 1,782,889 times and has been reposted 12 times.

On Karl’s blog The Fischbowl http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com (”a staff development blog for Arapahoe High School teachers exploring constructivism and 21st century learning skills”) you can read all about his sources for this video and download both videos.

I think that this video is successful because it is as surprising as it is thought-provoking. Every time it runs on the TVs in Virtual people stop and watch. Even though it is really just a simple Powerpoint presentation, it’s power is in the information it communicates.

Here is both the original Did You Know and Did You Know 2.0 (they are also sometimes called “Shift Happens”)

Did You Know

Did You Know 2.0