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April 29 2011

RADAR NYC 4.28.11

WATCH

Eliza Skinner – The Oscar Party

Eliza Skinner (RADAR ep 2 – I Eat Pandas) returns to the world of Internet videos with this short about a couple going through an angry breakup just as their friends arrive for an Oscars party. Hijinks ensue, guests are weirded out, and movie puns are thrown around—and for some reason movie puns are so much funnier when shouted in a fit of rage. Movie nerds will either cringe or chortle. Or both. Either way, Eliza is quite hilarious as a pissed off ex-girlfriend.

LISTEN

Morningbell – Lovefool

Before I watched this video, I thought the title was just a coincidence—surely they weren’t covering that classic 90s radio mainstay? But that’s exactly what Morningbell (RADAR ep 33 – Unnatural History) did. And they did it gloriously. They stayed true to the original while giving it a bit of their own odd flair. And the breakfast-tastic video definitely ups the weirdness factor. You know, for those of you who like your 90s nostalgia with a side of scrambled eggs.

Download the mp3 for free HERE
Morningbell’s website
Morningbell’s MySpace

READ

Sophie Blackall – The Crows of Pearblossom

Sophie Blackall has to be one of our busiest contributors. When she’s not creating beautiful blog posts about her father’s adventures or the Missed Connections of complete strangers, she’s creating amazing illustrations for children’s books. Her latest work is the illustrations for The Crows of Pearblossom, a short story originally written in 1944 by the legendary British author Aldous Huxley. Her vivid artwork gives a modern and whimsical flair to the classic tale.

You can buy the book HERE.

GO

The Digitour & SLAM Theatre

The Digitour feat. The Gregory Brothers

Have you ever wanted to see Internet memes live on stage? As it turns out, the Gregory Brothers (RADAR ep 27 – Auto Tune the News) are among the many YouTube musicians performing as part of the DigiTour—and they’re playing New York on May 1. Go see the show, and then spend the rest of May with musical current events stuck in your head.

Sunday, May 1 · 7:00 pm
Gramercy Theatre
127 East 23rd Street
New York, NY 10010
$18
EVENT INFO

Slam Theatre week 1

SLAM Theatre (RADAR ep 6) is back this spring with another round of their fast-paced playwright and actor competition. It will be going on for the next four weeks, but Sunday is the first round of eliminations for this series, and you don’t want to miss the beginning.

Sunday April 24 · 7:00 – 12:00 am
Sunday, May 1 · 7:00pm – 10:00pm
The Tank NYC
354 West 45th Street
New York, NY
$5 suggested donation
EVENT INFO

FOLLOW

@LukeGWilliams

Luke Williams is a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business who specializes in disruptive innovation—a constant stream of unexpected changes and challenges to the old status quo. And in this world where “recession” is the word on everyone’s mind, new, disruptive ideas are more important than ever. While his blog (and book), DISRUPT may have been written with businesses in mind, the ideas he gives in his posts are surprisingly applicable to anyone.

DISRUPT blog
Luke Williams on Twitter

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March 10 2011

RADAR NYC 3.10.11

Image by Natasha Allegri

LOOK

Diana Eng’s new line

Diana Eng’s profile (RADAR ep 31 – Fairytale Fashion) just keeps rising and rising in the fashion world. And now she’s released her first line to the public—a collection of Smart Scarves, and they each showcase what she does best: combine hip fashion with science geekery. Using inspiration from things like Fibonacci numbers and the biometric Miura Ori structure, she’s once again created beauty from brains. Who says geeks can’t be fashionable?

Diana Eng’s website

LISTEN

The Gregory Brothers and Charlie Sheen – “Winning”

In the lightning fast world of Internet memes, no one can seize on a cultural phenomenon quite like our friends at Auto-Tune the News (RADAR ep 27). And in terms of satirizing potential, Charlie Sheen’s spectacular crash and burn is a gold mine. So it was only inevitable that the Gregory Brothers would take on the task. The above video does not disappoint. Even if you’ve been following the news and are suffering from Sheen overload, this could be the Sheen video to end all Sheen videos.

Schmoyoho Youtube Page

READ

Missed Connections Interview

Personal anecdote time: I posted a Missed Connection once. I was at a Sleigh Bells concert and met a girl with awesome hair, kind of like the singer La Roux (I have weird taste, don’t ask). And while I never heard back on the ad, I did end up randomly running into her on a dating site. But there is something about missed connections—each one’s a tiny love story with mystery, humor, and artistic potential. In this interview, Sophie Blackall (RADAR ep 16 – Missed Connections) talks for a bit with NPR about some of her experiences with her Craigslist-based artwork.

Read the interview HERE
Missed Connections Blog

GO

Mother Mother at Knitting Factory

Many people, including a lot of our contributors, will be spending the next week in the Lone Star State for Austin’s South by Southwest Festival. But for those of us who can’t make it out, our own music supervisor JC Scruggs helped put together a show at Brooklyn’s Knitting Factory. Mother Mother is an amazing Canadian indie rock band with some awesomely catchy and crazy songs that should get you dancing wildly this Friday night. And make sure to get there early for opening acts Elijah Bonfire (ex-Stars of Track and Field) and Bajzel, a one-man Polish act who Newsweek calls the Polish Beck, “only better.”

Friday March 11 · Doors @ 8:00/Show @ 8:30 pm
Knitting Factory
361 Metropolitan Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11211
$10.00 – $12.00
EVENT INFO

FOLLOW

@natazilla

A few years ago, Natasha Allegri drew a journal comic on Livejournal that I followed pretty religiously. She discontinued it after a while, and kind of disappeared for a few years, only to return pretty recently as an artist on the show Adventure Time, of all places. Now she has a Tumblr, where her original artwork and comics have returned to the Internet once again, and it’s all come full circle. Expect to see some gorgeous portraits, cute cartoony drawings, and more hilarious journal comics.

natazilla on Tumblr
@natazilla on Twitter

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July 14 2010

June 05 2010

June 03 2010

RADAR NYC 6.3.10

WATCH

Robots – Eclectic Method

The Brian Eno-approved Eclectic Method (RADAR 003 – Eclectic Method) have to be one of the more innovative acts out there right now. Yeah, they’re mashup artists, but the guys do more than simply juxtapose Notorious B.I.G. with Elton John, they add live video editing/sampling to the mix. Picture YouTube getting drunk and hooking up with Girl Talk and you’d come close to describing them. The group is amazing to see live and is currently on tour, but in case they’re not coming to a town near you, check out their latest video featuring R2D2 and a few of your other favorite robots.

Eclectic Method – Robots from Eclectic Method on Vimeo.

LISTEN

Caleb Burhans

Before we release our Season 3 episode showcasing a song by Caleb Burhans, we wanted to give you guys a heads up on the music he’s been making. Sounding like a more classically minded Owen Pallett, Burhans is a violinist whose resume is too long to list here, having collaborated with everyone from Aphex Twin to The Hold Steady. Listen to his tunes, look for the upcoming RADAR episode from Season 3, and keep an eye on him. Burhans is one talented dude.

Caleb Burhans website

READ

A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge – Josh Neufeld

Next Door Neighbor is a webcomic series we’ve featured before (RADAR 001 – Next Door Neighbor) and it’s still worth more than a few curious clicks from your mouse, if only to read about some ridiculous neighbors as told by comic’s best writers and artists. While Josh Neufeld has contributed art to the project – check out his charming “Beekeeper” story – he’s more notably the brains and brushstrokes behind the critically acclaimed A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge. Part journalistic Op-ed, part comic book documentary, A.D. tells the story of post-Katrina New Orleans through the eyes of real people who survived the storm and its aftermath. If you’re a fan of creative non-fiction, curious about what it meant to live in N.O. after Katrina, or even dig David Simon’s Treme, then Neufeld’s book is a must read. You can find it in print or in its original webcomic form.

After the Deluge at Smith Magazine

GO

Brooklyn International Film Festival

The Brooklyn International Film Festival is about shedding light on independent filmmakers, while at the same time showcasing Brooklyn as a first class center of cinema. This year’s 13th Annual BiFF is no exception. Featuring one hundred films from twenty-four countries (whoa), the festival has a little something for everyone. This year’s theme is Stunt. What does that mean exactly? Well, the festival “intends to take a snapshot at some of the hottest issues affecting our times while emphasizing weight and gravity of being on a critical collision path with history.” Think of it as acknowledging your own independent butterfly effect on the world around you, both locally and globally. Things kick off this Friday and run until June 13th. Their website is chock full of useful goodies, everything from ticketing to the film schedule.

Friday, June 4th – Sunday, June 13th
Brooklyn, NY
Tickets: $10 single admission – $100 full festival pass
http://www.brooklynfilmfestival.org/
FOLLOW

@JahFurry

If you’re not already following friend of RADAR Jah Furry (aka Jeff Newelt), you need to be doing so ASAP. Not only has he curated a few RADAR episodes himself, but his Twitter feed is essential following for anyone interested in comic books, music, or cool events around the city. He is also the Comics Editor of SMITH, Heeb, and Royal Flush magazines, and is Harvey Pekar’s (American Splendor) editor on Pekar’s webcomics series THE PEKAR PROJECT. It’s also worth noting that Jah Furry has a wicked reggae baritone that he busts out from time to time – a must see.

@JahFurry

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April 02 2010

Quick Hit: XKCD’s April Fool Points Us To A Really Cool WordPress Template

Update: The April Fool’s version of the site has been moved to a permanent page.

For April 1, my favorite webcomic, xkcd, switched over to a new interface: unixkcd.  The site now emulates a UNIX terminal.  You navigate by typing in commands, and the terminal responds, one line at a time.  There are also tons of command-based easter eggs to find.  It’s more awesome than pranksterly, really.

The experience is powered by Wordpress and doesn’t require flash.  A little link hunting at the bottom of the site and we discover that the prank is an adaptation of a free WP template called CLI2, which is part of a whole family of bash-like templates made by Rod McFarland .

Why does a free terminal-like WP template matter to transmedia?  Well, for one, you can write text-based games for it.  (The xkcd prank includes one.)  But more to the point, a terminal-style web site is Alternate Reality 101.  I’m looking at you, Jejune Institute, and you too, Project Abraham.  And I haven’t forgotten about you either, Exoriare.

The emulated terminal is a great storyteling tool that gets your audience in a game-playing mood, and its something that most indie ARG developers don’t have the time or resources to execute.  I don’t know if CLI2 was intended for storytelling, but it seems like a natural next step.

Presumably, xkcd will return to it’s normal site design later tonight, so I highly suggest you poke around with this prank while it’s still live.

Lest I seem to be leaving out anyone, the xkcd adaptation of CLI2 was done by chromakode.  The source code for his variation is available here.

Rod McFarland

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April 01 2010

Quick Hit: XKCD’s April Fool Points Us To A Really Cool WordPress Template

For April 1, my favorite webcomic, xkcd, switched over to a new interface: unixkcd.  The site now emulates a UNIX terminal.  You navigate by typing in commands, and the terminal responds, one line at a time.  There are also tons of command-based easter eggs to find.  It’s more awesome than pranksterly, really.

The experience is powered by Wordpress and doesn’t require flash.  A little link hunting at the bottom of the site and we discover that the prank is an adaptation of a free WP template called CLI2, which is part of a whole family of bash-like templates made by Rod McFarland .

Why does a free terminal-like WP template matter to transmedia?  Well, for one, you can write text-based games for it.  (The xkcd prank includes one.)  But more to the point, a terminal-style web site is Alternate Reality 101.  I’m looking at you, Jejune Institute, and you too, Project Abraham.  And I haven’t forgotten about you either, Exoriare.

The emulated terminal is a great storyteling tool that gets your audience in a game-playing mood, and its something that most indie ARG developers don’t have the time or resources to execute.  I don’t know if CLI2 was intended for storytelling, but it seems like a natural next step.

Presumably, xkcd will return to it’s normal site design later tonight, so I highly suggest you poke around with this prank while it’s still live.

Lest I seem to be leaving out anyone, the xkcd adaptation of CLI2 was done by chromakode.  The source code for his variation is available here.

Rod McFarland

Share/Bookmark
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