Steven Spielberg, 1988, USA
2 min 42 sec
It tells the story of Roy Neary, an everyday blue-collar worker in Indiana, whose life changes after an encounter with an unidentified flying object (UFO). Close Encounters was a long-cherished project for Spielberg. In late 1973, he developed a deal with Columbia Pictures for a science-fiction film.
David Bollier, Smart City Expo World Congress
2016, 32 min 59 sec
A new type of citizen economy is emerging – the City as a Commons. This is not a tech platform or economic strategy as such, but a bold re-imagining of the city as a living social organism that invites everyone to co-create, open-source style. Through FabLabs, data sharing, platform co-operatives and many participatory systems, innovative urban commons are transforming city governance, commerce, design, social services, and everyday life.
Terence McKenna,
4 min 24 sec
Terence Kemp McKenna was an American ethnobotanist and mystic who advocated for the responsible use of naturally occurring psychedelic plants. He spoke and wrote about a variety of subjects, including psychedelic drugs, plantbased entheogens, shamanism, metaphysics, alchemy, language, philosophy, culture, technology, environmentalism, and the theoretical origins of human consciousness. He was called the “Timothy Leary of the ’90s”, “one of the leading authorities on the ontological foundations of shamanism”, and the “intellectual voice of rave culture”.
Anonymous
2012, 2 min 17 sec
As a response to the TrapWire scandal, a variety of tips of how to keep your identity private in the presence of a surveillance camera are being listed in this video. Simply wearing a hat, sunglasses or even a mask does little to prevent facial recognition by today’s sophisticated video surveillance systems and security cameras utilising facial recognition software.
Bruce Pascoe, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Australia
2016, 53 min 32 sec
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute Reconciliation Seminar Series 1 June 2016 Mr Bruce Pascoe http://www.wehi.edu.au
Bruce Pascoe (born 1947) is an Aboriginal Australian writer of literary fiction, non-fiction, poetry, essays and children’s literature. As well as his own name, Pascoe has written under the pen names Murray Gray and Leopold Glass. Since August 2020, he has been Enterprise Professor in Indigenous Agriculture at the University of Melbourne.
Pascoe is best known for his work Dark Emu: Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident? (2014), which reexamines colonial accounts of Aboriginal people in Australia and cites evidence of pre-colonial agriculture, engineering and building construction by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
BBC News
2011, 3 min 29 sec
Here’s a new viral video that came from a BBC interview. In an interview on BBC News this morning that left the hosts gobsmacked, Alessio Rastani outlines in a mere three-and-a-half-minutes what we all know and most ignore. This is the famous quote “Governments don’t rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world.” Though some tried to debunk it as a prank, he is in fact a real trader. He was later quoted as saying he thought it was obvious and wasn’t really shocking at all. Apparently most people were stunned by his blatant honesty.
Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, USA
2004, 5 min 06 sec
Extract from the 2003 Canadian documentary “The Corporation” Overview of contemporary patent dispute and usage related to emergent CRISPR gene editing process.
Professor Chakrabarty wanted to get a microbe that eats oil spills patented. He claimed he had modified this microbe in the laboratory and therefore it was an invention. The patent was denied, living things can’t be patented. Then he appealed to the US Customs Court of Appeal and overruled the patent office. This case was a major turning point in history.
It led to a one sentence decrete of the patent office: you can patent everything in the world that’s alive except a full birth human being.
Roy Villevoye, 2010, Netherlands
4 min 38 sec
In The Video Message Omama talks about what happened to him after he collaborated on the development of the life-size, realistic statue that Roy Villevoye made of him: Madonna. The core of the story is that by participating in the project he sold his soul. Not in the figurative sense as we mean it, but literally. By selling this reproduction of his likeness he lost himself. Moreover, the further consequence was that his bond with the community and his family were broken. According to Omama his recent illness was also the result of this. Not only what he says, but also how he tells it leaves a strong impression. Omama is completely himself and is in no way influenced by the camera. In fact, it is as if the eye of the camera – and therefore our presence as a viewer – does not matter. That, whilst creating an image, is exactly what the story of Omama is about. It is this symmetry in particular which gives this video its strength and clarity.
Six Drummers,
2011, 11 min 04 sec
A gang in a Volvo have staked out a flat; when its occupants leave to walk their dog, the six break into the place. One keeps his eyes on a stopwatch: they have only ten minutes before the couple returns. Instead of stealing things, the gang goes from room to room making fascinating percussive music with found objects: first in the kitchen, then the bedroom, the bathroom, and the salon. Cabinet doors, pot lids, light switches, a pill dispenser, a lamp, books, and a vacuum cleaner hose all add to the suite in four movements. The drummers keep the first three rooms tidy, but what will the flat’s occupants make of the hurricane that hits the living room?
Bartholomäus Traubeck
2011, 2 min 13 sec
A tree’s year rings are analysed for their strength, thickness and rate of growth. This data serves as basis for a generative process that outputs piano music. It is mapped to a scale which is again defined by the overall appearance of the wood (ranging from dark to light and from strong texture to light texture). The foundation for the music is certainly found in the defined ruleset of programming and hardware setup, but the data acquired from every tree interprets this ruleset very differently.