Collection - Quintron & Miss Pussycat

120 Megabytes - Episode 12

videos from Raleigh Moncrief, Capracara, Martyn, Lucid, Pictureplane, The Soft Moon, James Ferraro, & King Midas Sound

Curated by Mark Brown

Total Runtime: 0:26:27

12

120 Megabytescapracarajames ferraro& king midas soundlucidmartynpictureplaneraleigh moncriefthe soft moon120 Megabytes

Raleigh Moncrief
"Lament For Morning"
2011

Capracara
"King of the Witches"
Directed by
Tom Scholefield
2009

Martyn
"Viper"
Directed by
Tom Scholefield
2011

Lucid
"Closed Eye"
Directed by
Mark Brown
2011

Pictureplane
"Black Nails"
Directed by
Travis Egedy and MMCIII
2011

The Soft Moon
"Total Decay"
Directed by
Ron Robinson
2011

James Ferraro
"Adventures in Green Foot Printing"
Directed by
Ben Tabas
2011

King Midas Sound
"Earth A Kill Ya / Gang Gang Dance Rework"
Directed by
Yukutake Kato Shimpei
2011

This episode is also available via XXJFG
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Curated by Mark Brown

Collection - Future Housing and Cities

Idealistic and optimistic views of future housing and cities culled from science show footage and cartoons.

Curated by Emily West

Total Runtime: 0:27:27

Collectionarchitectureconcretedesignengineering

This collection starts with idealistic and optimistic views of future housing and cities, from science show footage and cartoons, and then looks at some of the architects and planners who took this on - people like Archigram, Erno Goldfinger and Buckminster Fuller. There's then a spot of gentrification of the kind of housing schemes that came out of these ideas - looking at how lovely they are when you have a spare few million to do them up and don't actually live in them for more than a few weeks per year, before looking at what the people who exist within them think.

So really it's about the disparity bewteen the intentions for cities and spaces, and how they actually end up being used by the people who spend every day in them, so there's a bit of class structure in there too - how space and use of space is generally imposed from on high, and those who need cities to exist find ways of subverting use of space away from its original intentions to fit with how they live.

Playlist:

Disney's Magic Highway

Dymaxion House

1999 A.D. (Kitchen of the Future

The Cars Of Tomorrow

Waking up like a Jetson

Dreamspaces - Archigram

N55 WALKINGHOUSE First Steps

Goldfinger's ideas on modern living: 60 second lecture

Britain's tower blocks - Dreamspaces - BBC

Colour of Concrete

Trellick Tower

Collection - Quintron & Miss Pussycat

A peek into the world of puppet-loving, drum-machine-making husband/wife duo Quintron and Miss Pussycat!

Curated by Whitney Weiss

Total Runtime: 0:37:18

Collectiondrum machinesmiss pussycatnew orleanspuppetsquintron

Quintron (real name Robert Rolston; born circa 1967, Germany^[1]) is an American musician and leader of the eponymous one-man-band, "Quintron". He is a celebrated nightclub organist and inventor, who has patented a number of his own inventions and often performs at his own private club, the Spellcaster Lodge, located on St. Claude Avenue in New Orleans’ 9th Ward. He frequently performs with his wife, fellow musician and puppeteer, Panacea Pussycat (also known as Miss Pussycat), co-founder of the 9th Ward's now defunct Pussycat Caverns. Quintron's most notable invention to date is the Drum Buddy, a mechanically-rotating, five-oscillator, light-activated drum machine.

Quintron is a multi-instrumental one-man-band. During performances, Quintron utilizes a custom-made Hammond organ/Fender Rhodes synthesizer combo which he has had custom outfitted to resemble the body of a car, complete with working headlights and a Louisiana license plate which reads "Quintron". Quintron is often accompanied by The Drum Buddy, a rotating, light-activated analog synthesizer, one of many which he has created and manufactured himself. Quintron frequently plays multiple instruments simultaneously, the Hammond organ acting as his primary instrument, and the Fender Rhodes supplying bass lines. He can often be seen keeping time on a hi-hat with one foot while toggling between a volume and wah-wah pedal with the other.^[2]Quintron is regularly accompanied by his wife Miss Pussycat, who sings backup and plays maracas.

Quintron has invented a number of innovative musical devices. His first invention was called the 'Spit Machine' a hand organ which used saliva as a tuning conductor. Describing how the apparatus works, Quintron explains that "You had to spit on a stick, like a paint stir stick, and you had two metal leads that you would touch to either end of the line of spit and then you would move the leads closer together - higher pitch - and farther apart - lower pitch. The weird thing is that, the way I built the oscillator, spit was the only thing that I could use as a conducter (sic). Lemon juice was too conductive, water not enough, etc. You actually had a lot of control over the pitch with spit - it wasn’t too sensitive - and could really play it in tune like a real organ. There was also some resistive quality to human spit that gave the oscillator some weird overtones too." ^[3]

His next invention was called the 'Disco Light Machine,' a device which, in his own words, was a "system of pick-ups that you would attach to a drum kit and the sound of the drums would light up a light inside a darkened box and this light would activate electronic sounds to go along with the drums - the harder you played the drums, the brighter the light and the louder the electronic sounds." ^[3]

His most notable instrument, however, is the 'Drum Buddy'. The Drum Buddy is a mechanically-rotating, five-oscillator, light-activated drum machine which can either be set to play automatically, or manipulated to create a number of different sound effects. The drum buddy has its own informercial, The Drum Buddy Show, which includes a number of guest appearances and performances by artists such as Quintron, Miss Pussycat, Ernie K-Doe, MC Trachiotomy, and the Drum Buddy Dancers.^[4]

Quintron is very enigmatic about his personal life and rarely grants interviews. It is known that he was born September 15, in Bitburg, Germany,^[5] where his father was stationed in the military. He grew up in Mobile, Alabama, and St. Louis, Missouri, before completing high school and moving to Chicago at the age of seventeen. He attended Loyola University and was an active member of the Theatre Department before transferring to DePaul University. While in Chicago he played in a cover band called Idol Chatter, and eventually joined the legendary Chicago experimental outfit MATH (which also featured Jodie Mechanic and Michael Colligan). During his time in Chicago he opened his first club, Milk of Burgundy.^[4]

It was in New Orleans that he first met Panacea Pussycat, then-owner of the now-defunct Pussycat Caverns. While in New Orleans he founded his own club, the Spellcaster Lodge, which was severely damaged by hurricane Katrina. 9th Ward Breakdown, a song he had written several years prior to Katrina, predicted the human cost of the disaster with uncanny accuracy. The Spellcaster Lodge was reopened in September 2006.

Mr. Quintron is known for his eccentric behavior. In 1996, during an interview for a Times-Picayune article, he told interviewer Bill Grady that he and his wife were first cousins.^[4] He also conducted the interview in a wheelchair, explaining that he had fallen from a roller coaster while at Six Flags over Mid-America. In an interview with Odyssey Magazine, Quintron qualified his unusual demeanor and explained his attitude towards the press, remarking; "I am aware that this interview is a game and I can step outside of this page to see it for what it is. You know, I may never say what I have just said in another interview ever. I can be inconsistent, unreliable, contradictory... like electricity or plumbing." ^[3]

-Wikipedia

Collection - Russian Animation

A collection of Russian animated shorts.

Total Runtime: 0:30:08

Collectionanimationrussia

HIPNEROTOMAHIA

directed by Andrey Svislotsky

1992

The muddle of different dreams of a man, a woman and a dog. Every dream is full of melancholy in the evening, sensuality at night and nightmares before the sunrise.

POOR LIZA

Director: Ideya Garanina

1978

a tragic story about poor girl Liza's unhappy love to Erast, a rich nobleman who lost all his money playing cards and had to marry a rich widow. He left Liza alone, so the poor betrayed girl commited a suicide.

HEDGEHOG IN THE FOG

directed by Yuriy Norshteyn

1975

In 2003 "Hedgehog in the Fog" won the "№1 Animated film of all the time" at "All time animation best 150 in Japan and Worldwide" contest in Tokyo, Japan.

HIS WIFE IS A HEN

directed by Igor Kovalyov

1990

...his wife is a hen!

GONE WITH THE WIND
directed by Alexander Tatarsky
1999

poultry comes to life

GLASS HARMONICA

directed by Andrey Khrzhanovskiy

1968

A craftsman builds a glass harmonica that enlightens him. He travels to a town where the people are obsessed with money. A bureaucrat smashes the glass harmonica which leads to chaos and eventually to social reform.

MASHA IS A LAZY GIRL NO MORE
Director: Lev Milchin
1978

Little Masha loses controle

Movie - Shadows Of Forgotten Ancestors (1964)

1964 film by the Soviet filmmaker Sergei Parajanov is based on the classic book by Ukrainian writer Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, happens to be a masterpiece.

Curated by Whitney Weiss

Total Runtime: 1:31:31

Movie

"The Ukrainian film “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” won almost every, award in sight on the 1964 film festival circuit. But it’s become even more important in recent years, as a reminder not only of a talented director - Sergei Parajanov - but also of the restrictive Soviet approach to the arts.

After making a film that won awards in London, New York, San Francisco, Mar del Plata and Montreal, you see, Parajanov didn’t go on to become one of Russia’s leading directors. He went on to become a political prisoner, charged with the usual things Soviet dissidents are sent away for. He’s in the fourth year of a five-year sentence, which he more or less brought upon himself with a fiery address to an artists conference at which he called for an end to socialist realism and the beginning of more subjective, personal Soviet films.

“Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” could stand as an example of the sort of film he was calling for. It’s one of the most unusual films I’ve seen, a barrage of images, music and noises, shot with such an active camera we almost need seatbelts.

In the Soviet Union, nationalism and regional identities are still highly charged forces. And Parajanov’s film is overtly regional: He celebrates the births, marriages, deaths and folk customs of the people of the Carpathians. Their holidays and festivals seem filled with the energy of countless Zorbas, but then there are the long days of labor, and Parajanov follows them through long winters, storm-swept springs and blistering summers.

His story follows the life and death of Ivan, whose childhood sweetheart slips from a mountain trail and drowns in the river below. Ivan grows morose and secretive, but finally does settle down and marry a strikingly beautiful woman. Even then he’s not happy: They can’t have children, and in their superstition they consult witches and the supernatural. Ivan himself becomes obsessed with the notion that his first sweetheart will be miraculously restored to him, and there is a tense scene while he’s praying with his wife and adds the words “…and the drowned” after the prayer for the dead.

Parajanov’s visual style is sometimes burst¬ing with life, sometimes merely overwrought. A point-of-view shot, for example, has the camera swooping straight down as a tree falls on young Ivan’s father. Other shots zoom in and out of forests and barnyards and celebrations, and during violent scenes he sometimes interrupts shots with freeze frames and tints his film; during a death scene, blood-drenched horses leap across the screen. A few of these pyrotechnics can go a long way, and there were times in “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” when I thought they went too far.

But Parajanov has a genuine gift. He has the kind of heedless energy you glimpse in some of the early work of Martin Scorsese, pounding camerawork so filled with itself it can hardly contain the story. And for anyone who’s interested in the Ukrainian culture and customs of perhaps a century ago, “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” is a treasure, a repository of costumes, masks, superstitions and beliefs, courtship customs and the suffer¬ings of short lives with too much work in them."

-Roger Ebert

Movie - The Tale of the Fox (Wladyslaw Starewicz, 1930)

Ladislas Starevich's first fully-animated feature film from 1930.

Curated by Whitney Weiss

Total Runtime: 1:02:36

Movie1930sblack and whitestop-motion animationwladyslaw starewicz

The Tale of the Fox (French: Le Roman de Renard, German: Reinecke Fuchs) was stop-motion animation pioneer Ladislas Starevich's first fully animated feature film. It is based on the tales of Renard the Fox. Although the animation was finished in Paris after an 18-month period (1929-1930), there were major problems with adding a soundtrack to the film. Finally, funding was given for a German soundtrack by the Nazi regime (Goethe had written a classic version of the Renard legend) and this version had its premiere in Berlin in April 1937.

Released eight months before Disney's Snow White, it is the world's sixth-ever animated feature film (and the second to use puppet animation, following The New Gulliver from the USSR). The film was released in France with a French language soundtrack in 1941; this is the version which is currently available on DVD.

-Wikipedia