Brain Pickings

Lynching Moby

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The antidote to selling out, or what a 6-year-old has to do with a Beatles reunion.

Despite a certain eponymous equation, we like Moby. The man is a solid live performer, a smart businessman, and just a nice guy who, like us, likes tea and lowercase. And his is new video, Shot In The Back of The Head, makes us like him even more — because it was directed by none other than David Lynch, and done so brilliantly.

Somehow, in 3 minutes and 15 seconds, Lynch manages to unleash all his neo-Renaissance personas — film director, screenwriter, producer, painter, cartoonist, composer, and sound designer. The video is part Mulholland Drive, part German Expressionism, part reckless 6-year-old on the run with a black crayon.

The song itself, a dreamy instrumental departure from Moby’s usual commercially licensable fare, is a free download on Moby’s website. It comes from the forthcoming album Wait For Me, out June 30th.

As unlikely as the Lynch-Moby pair may be, the two already crossed paths at Lynch’s Change Begins Within benefit earlier this month. (Yep, same one where the closes thing to a Beatles reunion took place.)

And given Lynch’s history of casting musicians in his films (Sting in Dune, David Bowie and Chris Isaak in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Billy Ray Cyrus in Mulholland Drive), we won’t be too surprised to see a Moby cameo in Lynch’s forthcoming My Son, My Son, What Have You Done, or maybe even a surprise one in the already-in-pre-production King Shot, out later this year.

Plus, there does seem to be a running theme there with all the shooting.

Exactitudes: Cultural Photo-Anthropological Data Viz

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Why you aren’t nearly as unique as you think, or what 12 Japanese school children have to do with 12 homeless people in Rotterdam.

Since 1994, photographer Ari Versluis and profiler Ellie Uyttenbroek have been trekking the globe together, recording Exactitudes — “exact attitudes” captured in people’s peculiar dress code as an attempt to differentiate themselves from others or identify with a group.

Each “exactitude” consists of twelve distinct portraits structured in a grid. Think of it as street fashion meets cultural anthropology meets data visualization — a visceral exploration of subcultures, group identity and individualism.

French Touch - Bordeaux 2006

Pin-ups - London 2008

Backpackers - Rotterdam 2008

The series is also an ethnographic and temporal portrait of our collectively individual identity across time and space — the big bags of 2008, New York’s yupster girls, the tracksuits of Japanese schoolkids, the soccer jersey fetish of European teenage boys, even “street style” at its rawest in the face of the homeless.

Gabberbitches - Rotterdam 1996

Miss Shapes - London 2008

We see the Rotterdam-based duo’s work as a collage of contradictions — between individuality and uniformity, between street style and studio setting, between self and group — that make you question our cultural givens and our self-conception as unique personas.

For a condensed version of the 15-year-long project, check out the hardcover book, which features a selection of 60 hand-curated exactitudes. Or, save yourself $261.20 and explore Exactitudes online for a fascinating glimpse into the cultural crowd of selves.

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Creative Pause: Todd St. John & HunterGatherer

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What preschoolers have to do with a dancing robot and Jack Johnson.

They had us at the brilliant Buckminster Fuller portrait for Mined Magazine.

In 2000, NYC-based designer, animator and filmmaker Todd St. John founded HunterGatherer — a bleeding-edge design, illustration, animation and production studio. Their shtick is combining experimental and hand-built techniques with more complex methods. And they do it brilliantly.

From a phenomenal stop-motion music video for preschoolers, to an incredible visual interpretation of Nike’s “Considered” manifesto of sustainability, to a delightful poster for Jack Johnson’s music label, their work is nothing short of stride-stopping.

They even collaborated with our favorite magazine in the educational Transparency series.

Take a look at the entirety of HunterGatherer‘s portoflio or quick-sample their showreel, and be sure to check out Todd St. John‘s personal site for some compellint experimental and noncommercial work.

You’re bound to find radically new ways of doing — of combining materials and techniques, of animating, of visualizing the expected in unexpected ways.