Studio Smack | Paradise

Vimeo

From the press release:

PARADISE, [is] a contemporary interpretation of The Garden of Earthly Delights.

Studio Smack, best known for their music video Witch Doctor by De Staat, have released a new animation: a contemporary interpretation of one of the most famous paintings by the Early Dutch master Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights.

In their latest work, the group cleared the original landscape of the middle panel of Bosch’s painting and reconstructed it into a hallucinatory 4K animation. The creatures that populate this indoor playground embody the excesses and desires of 21st century Western civilization. Consumerism, selfishness, escapism, the lure of eroticism, vanity and decadence. All characters are metaphors for our society where loners swarm their digital dream world. They are symbolic reflections of egos and an imagination of people as they see themselves - unlike Bosch's version, where all individuals more or less look the same. From a horny Hello Kitty to a coke hunting penis snake. From an incarnate spybot to headless fried chickens.

These characters, once precisely painted dream figures, are now digitally created 3D models. All of them have been given their own animation loop to wander through the landscape. By placing them altogether in this synthetic fresco, the picture is never the same. What the animation and Bosch’s triptych have in common is that you’ll hardly be able to take it all in, you can watch it for hours.

‘Paradise’ was commissioned by the MOTI Museum in The Netherlands for the exhibition New Delights, which is part of the Hieronymus Bosch 500-year anniversary. A gigantic video installation of this work is exhibited in the Museum until the 31st of December.

Jessica Valenti | A Letter To Her Male Relatives

Dear cousin/nephew/second-cousin,

It’s generally a real pleasure to have you as a friend on Facebook. I appreciate that I can keep up on what the kids are listening to these days on Spotify and I thoroughly enjoy eyeing pictures of high school ragers. But I’ve noticed that lately your taste in “likes” has changed. It’s out with Bieber, in with Tosh.0. 

You’ve indicated that you will be attending “Booty Slap Day” and have started to share videos of young men running up to women they don’t know in order to grope their behinds, run away and laugh -- videotaping it all for hilarious posterity.

Now, I hate to get all Aunt Feminist Killjoy on you -- but I love you and it’s my job. And I imagine you care about me too, at least enough to read on.

Here’s the thing: those guys running up to women just to grab their ass? Stuff like that happens to women all the time. It’s happened to me. When I was your age, guys -- from boys in school to men on the subway -- used to grope and touch me against my will too. I don’t know if any of them videotaped it or if they did it as a “joke” -- all I know was that it was really scary.

Once it happened on my way to school on the train. I was wearing a dress because it was my seventeenth birthday. The subway was crowded and a man -- I never saw his face -- put his hand up my skirt and grabbed my ass right over my underwear. The memory of it still makes me feel like vomiting. This was just one incident -- it’s happened to me at least a dozen times. The girls you know at school -- girls you’re friends with? -- I’m betting it’s happened to them, too.

Being touched against your will has become a twisted rite of passage for American females. It’s a reminder that you’re never safe anywhere. That your body is not really yours -- but instead public property, there to be rubbed against by an old man or pinched and videotaped by a young one.

I know that a quick click on the “like” button may not seem like a big deal to you -- but it scares me to think about the larger implications. I think about the high school kid in Steubenville, Ohio, joking and laughing about the unconscious teen girl in the next room who had just been raped by two of his classmates. That may seem a million miles away from “liking” a video -- but it’s all part of the same world, the same culture that devalues women. Even laughing at a joke about rape supports the idea that women are less than and makes rapists think that you are like them. And the more you laugh at this stuff, the easier it becomes to take the ideas you’re laughing at more and more seriously.

Listen, I don’t think you’re an asshole who thinks it’s funny to do something that women find scary. You’ve been raised to think that this sort of stuff is all in good fun. Not by your parents necessarily, but by culture. You’ve grown up in a country where a Super Bowl commercial for Audi suggests that girls your age actually like it when a guy they don’t really know grabs and forces a kiss on them. (Seriously -- they won’t like this.) You’ve been raised in a culture that positions women as existing just for sex, for humiliation, for objectification.

So please understand that I don’t blame you for partaking in the only kind of culture you’ve ever known. At least, I don’t blame you yet. Because here’s the thing -- if you didn’t realize before that this kind of stuff is harmful and hurtful to women, now you do. So think of this as a chance to make a decision about what kind of man you’re going to be.

As you continue to grow up, you’re going to have plenty of opportunities (too many) to laugh at women’s pain, embarrassment or the sexual harassment and assault we face. These moments will define you. Will you laugh along? Share a video, like a status, laugh at a joke? Or will you say “no,” tell a friend that’s a fucked-up thing to say, and walk away?

Yes, if you choose the latter -- the undoubtedly more difficult path -- your friends may give you a hard time. They could laugh, call you a “pussy” or accuse you of not being able to take a joke. I’m sure that will be a pain. But it’s still the right thing to do. And you can be secure in your decision to stand with women -- to stand with me -- because you’ll know that you’re better than all that. Media, sexism, misogyny -- all of these structures are depending on the idea that you won’t think deeply about the messages that are sent to you, that you’ll just accept them without consideration or critical thinking. But you’re better than the culture says you are. You’re smarter than that and you’re kinder than that. I know you are.

So please, the next time you’re considering sharing a video or laughing at a joke or saying something unsavory about a female peer -- take the action seriously, think about what it really means. And consider your Auntie Feminist who loves you very much.

The Nation

Monkey Monday | Oxytocin May Be The Secret To Strong Societies

In the first study that non-invasively measures oxytocin levels in wild animals, researchers have found that in chimpanzees this hormone likely plays a key role in maintaining social relations among both related and non-related animals. The bond goes beyond genetic ties – it could be the very glue that holds societies together.

Published Jan. 23, 2013, in Proceedings of the Royal Society, "Urinary oxytocin and social bonding in related and unrelated wild chimpanzees” reported findings resulting from an international collaboration of researchers from the United Kingdom, Uganda, Germany, the United States of America, and Switzerland.

Toni Ziegler, Ph.D., senior scientist and head of Assay Services at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, conducted the team’s hormonal analyses for the past three years after researchers collected urine samples from a troop of chimpanzees in Uganda’s Budongo Forest. Urine was collected from plastic sheets or leaves following episodes of grooming among the animals, and then transferred with sterile pipettes into sample vials before shipping to the WNPRC for measuring and analysis.

Lead authors Catherine Crockford, Roman Wittig and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, interpreted the data. They reported that oxytocin levels spiked after grooming among cooperating partners in contrast to non-cooperating partners or after no grooming, regardless of genetic relatedness or sexual interest. This suggests that, in chimpanzees, oxytocin plays a key role in maintaining social relations beyond genetic ties and in keeping track of social interactions with multiple individuals over time. Furthermore, the researchers found that when a chimp engages in grooming with another chimp, if there is no previously established friendship, oxytocin levels do not increase in either animal.

“We developed the assay methods used in this study for measuring urinary oxytocin in human children and nonhuman primates,” Ziegler said. “This is our first report of its role in social bonding in a totally wild primate. This technique will allow field researchers and human researchers alike the opportunity to learn about the importance of social bonding in primates.”

Wisconsin National Primate Research Center

David Simon | Barack Obama And The Death Of Normal

I was on an airplane last night as the election was decided. As the plane landed after midnight on the East Coast, I confess that my hand was shaking as I turned on my phone for the news. I did not want to see dishonesty and divisiveness and raw political hackery rewarded. It is hard enough for anyone to actually address the problems, to move this country forward, to make the intransigent American ruling class yield even a yard of the past to the inevitable future. But going backwards last night would have been devastating. I read the returns in silent elation; a business trip had me traveling in business class and the gnashing of corporate teeth all around precluded a full-throated huzzah on my part. I abhor a gloat.

But the country is changing. And this may be the last election in which anyone but a fool tries to play — on a national level, at least — the cards of racial exclusion, of immigrant fear, of the patronization of women and hegemony over their bodies, of self-righteous discrimination against homosexuals. Some in the Republican party and among the teabagged fringe will continue to play such losing hands for some time to come; this shit worked well in its day and distracted many from addressing any of our essential national issues. But again, if they play that weak-ass game past this point, they are fools. 

America is different now, more so with every election cycle. Ronald Reagan won his mandate in an America in which 89 percent of the voters were white. That number is down to 72 percent and falling. Fifty thousand new Latino citizens achieve the voting age every month. America will soon belong to the men and women — white and black and Latino and Asian, Christian and Jew and Muslim and atheist, gay and straight — who can comfortably walk into a room and accept with real comfort the sensation that they are in a world of certain difference, that there are no real majorities, only pluralities and coalitions. The America in which it was otherwise is dying, thank god, and those who relied on entitlement and division to command power will either be obliged to accept the changes, or retreat to the gated communities from which they wish to wax nostalgic and brood on political irrelevance.

Read the entire essay here. It's not long. Read it. Really. It's good.

Implicit Bias And Sexism Is Alive And Well In Academia

Study after study finds that many women feel unwelcome in laboratories and science departments, even after considerable progress in encouraging women to study science and technology fields. As these studies come out, there are almost always skeptics who say that whatever gender imbalance exists could well reflect different choices made, on average, by men and women, or who say that individual men are rising on their merits, not sexism.

But a new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers evidence of bias among scientists -- male and female scientists alike -- against female students. The study was based on evaluations by scientists of hypothetical student applications for a lab manager position, with the application materials identical in every way, except that half of the pool received applications with a male name and the other half received applications with a female name. The faculty members surveyed -- 127 professors in biology, chemistry or physics -- were told that their analyses of the applications would be used to help the students. And they were asked to evaluate the students' competence and "hireability" and to consider how large a salary they would recommend and how much mentoring they would offer the student if hired.

The scientists evaluating these applications (which were identical in every way except the gender of the "submitter") rated the male student more competent, more likely to be hired, deserving of a better salary, and worth spending more time mentoring. The gaps were significant. Female scientists were as likely as male scientists to evaluate the students this way. For instance, the scientists were asked to rate the students' competence on a 5-point scale. Male faculty rated the male student 4.01 and the female student 3.33.

Female scientists rated the male student 4.10 and the female student 3.32. On salary, the gaps were also notable. The average salary suggested by male scientists for the male student was $30,520; for the female student, it was $27,111. Female scientists recommended, on average, a salary of $29,333 for the male student and $25,000 for the female student.

Read more at Inside Higher Ed. Find an article on implicit bias here.

Via Gawker

The Subversive Message Of "Gangnam Style"

YouTube

Max Fisher in The Atlantic:

Park Jaesang is an unlikely poster boy for South Korea's youth-obsessed, highly lucrative and famously vacuous pop music. Park, who performs as Psy (short for psycho), is a relatively ancient 34, has been busted for marijuana and for avoiding the country's mandatory military service, and is not particularly good-looking. His first album got him fined for "inappropriate content" and the second was banned. He's mainstream in the way that South Korea's monolithically corporate media demands of its stars, who typically appear regularly on TV variety and even game shows, but as a harlequin, a performer known for his parodies, outrageous costumes, and jokey concerts. Still, there's a long history of fools and court jesters as society's most cutting social critics, and he might be one of them.

Now, Park has succeeded where the K-Pop entertainment-industrial-complex and its superstars have failed so many times before: he's made it in America ... "Gangnam Style" [above], has earned 49 million hits on YouTube since its mid-July release, but the viral spread was just the start. Of course, no one here in the U.S. has any idea what Psy is rapping about.

I certainly didn't, beyond the basics: Gangnam is a tony Seoul neighborhood, and Park's ... video lampoons its self-importance and ostentatious wealth, with Psy playing a clownish caricature of a Gangnam man ... it turns out that the video is rich with subtle references that, along with the song itself, suggest a subtext with a surprisingly subversive message about class and wealth in contemporary South Korean society.

Read the rest of Fisher's article here.

The Last Meals Project

Read more here | Metafilter

Robots Of Brixton

Brixton has degenerated into a disregarded area inhabited by London's new robot workforce - robots built and designed to carry out all of the tasks which humans are no longer inclined to do. The mechanical population of Brixton has rocketed, resulting in unplanned, cheap and quick additions to the skyline. The film follows the trials and tribulations of young robots surviving at the sharp end of inner city life, living the predictable existence of a populous hemmed in by poverty, disillusionment and mass unemployment. When the Police invade the one space which the robots can call their own, the strained relationship between the two sides explodes into an outbreak of violence echoing that of 1981.



Kibwe Tavares on Vimeo

Via Kuriositas

The Animation School of Hamburg | Dystopia

Vimeo | Kuriositas

Dystopia – a grey, bewildering and repressed place, ruled over by an unseen elite. Yet in to this dark place a little color somehow finds it way. It has an effect on one individual who begins to express himself using forbidden colors. This wonderful piece of animation is by Daniel Leyva, Esteban Fernández Dagach and Dieter Schindler at the Animation School of Hamburg.

Kuriositas