I've been a fan of Malcolm Sutherland for some time - his Astronomers Dream short and Star Wars Uncut scenes incur epic enjoyment. That being said, I don't really know anything about the guy so I was happy to read through this Directors Notes interview that sheds some light on his past and his process. Enjoyable.

I think I'd encountered it before but Rachel highly endorsed the full-length record from The Revival Hour, Scorpio Little Devil and I dove right in. The album is a collaborative undertaking between DM Stith and JM Lapham; with the result being a captivating swirl of macabre revival and indie pop. It's catchy and it's spooky - possibly my favorite combo.

Throughout any given day Chad sends me a number of links; all of which are great. I am indebted to him for that. Especially when the goods are as compelling as the work of Andrew Archer. His illustration, Little Ghosts Haunt my Stomach should grab you immediately. If not, there's plenty more goodness filled with a variety of styles and subject matter to take in. Follow along if you find yourself as intrigued for more as I am.

Yesterday, LT was showing me Cardiio - an iOS app that claims to "turn your phone into a biosensor." Being the eternal skeptic I assumed the app was a well designed piece of BS. I mean, read this!

Every time your heart beats, more blood is pumped into your face. This slight increase in blood volume causes more light to be absorbed, and hence less light is reflected from your face. Using sophisticated software, your iPhone's front camera can track these tiny changes in reflected light that are not visible to the human eye and calculate your heart beat!

My knee jerk is to doubt it but based that paragraph is based on actual science, not marketing mumbo jumbo.

In summation, Cardiio is unbelievable magic.

listen to the entire new album

Shaktar

sxsw

Bianca Giaever

Gillian McCain and Megan Cump - talented folk in their own rights - joined forces for HELP ME, a collection of found photos. As you may know, I am a huge fan of Found Photos, so this was right in my wheelhouse. There's a small sampling of photos from the exhibit here and, supposedly, a limited edition book floating around out there.

Jason and Joshua Moore have been in a number of bands that I've enjoyed but the latest, Bright Age, seems to the perfect storm of lessons learned from all previous endeavors rolled into one. The album, In Red, is tagged with #Space Rock on Bandcamp and I think that's an apt bit of labeling - as the influence of the likes of Pink Floyd, Failure, Lusk and their ilk is definitely present.

There's something undeniably macabre about the work of Janux Miralles - the color palette, the thick paint globs, the melting or exploding presentation of the subjects all depicts a decidedly dark picture. That being said, as soon as I saw she had a blog of regularly updated works, I was in. You don't want to miss pieces like this.

Twitter tends to catch a lot of flak - the entire service is shallow, the updates are lame, their treatment of third-party developers is less than stellar, the Fail Whale could sneak up any moment, the advertising schemes are awful, etc - but they've done a fairly phenomenal job of providing tools to the Web Development Community for seemingly no reason at all. There's the Bootstrap HTML Framework and the iconic Font Awesome that no one can deny are strange releases for a tech company looking to sell you something. Add to that Twitter Flight, a component-based Javascript framework that utilizes event bubbling to make it worthwhile. Maybe Twitter will pivot one day into a proper tech company while none of us were looking... they've certainly got the products for it.

Gatorrock787

A GIF Search Engine seems like such a brilliant idea that I can't believe it hasn't existed already. If it has, then I wasn't privy to it or it wasn't done this well. I'm particularly enjoying perusing the #animation and #cats tags but there's plenty of other stuff to discover.

Send all thanks to Eric for unearthing this phenomenal time waster.

So, yesterday, My Bloody Valentine released their first record in 22 years. They'd been hitting at its existence for a long time but no one thought it was actually going to be released. You can hear the whole album or just go ahead procure a copy. I've given it a handful of listens so far and it is exactly what you'd hope for from the band. It's shoegaze done by the band that, pretty much, invented the genre.

I know I mentioned her work fairly recently (in the grand scheme of things) but if you haven't been keeping an eye on the work of Lucy Driscoll you're missing out. There a number of great new works that I can't stop staring at.

I know it's silly but this This Knitting Calendar amused me for some reason. I love the style restrictions for the portraits and the idea of encountering any of these in the wild is delightful. Be sure to see the Sylvester Stallone depiction as it is particularly good.

RhinoEntertainment

I realize I am obnoxiously behind the times when it comes to embracing the goodness that is GroupMe but it's possible that you are as well, so it's worth a quick share. Basically, it's an ultra deluxe, free, messaging system that works across all platforms - iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows, Web - and degrades gracefully for those that don't have the supported tech. It's what you imagine group texting should be (and probably will be in 5 years time). If you've ever sent a text to more than one person at a time, this is essential.

projectabsurd