What's All This Then?
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What's All This Then?
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Saturday Edition
Can you really clean your computer keyboard in the dishwasher?
Michele finds out in Shift Option Rinse.
Coudal Partners
A CP Film In 5 Parts
While we were in Los Alamos, New Mexico, looking for locations for one film project, we discovered a lot more about the town and its people than we bargained for. So we made a different film and called it Laboratory Conditions. It's being shown here in five pieces and is also available on DVD.
Poetry After the Beep
Verse By Voice
On a whim, we asked people to read their favorite short poems into our answering machine for a project we called Verse By Voice. And they did, creating maybe the first-ever poetry meme. Make sure to listen to novelist Zadie Smith reading Frank O'Hara's Animals and Laura Demanski reading Gerard Manley Hopkins' Spring and Fall. Note: we didn't include what is surely not Christopher Walken reading EE Cummings, but that's worth a listen too. Jim talked about this project during his appearance on Public Radio's Hello Beautiful! and the photos are courtesy of Sam Javanrouh's Daily Dose of Imagery.
A Short Film Series From SD
She Said We Said
We realize that it's sometimes difficult for the common man to understand the goings-ons in the political landscape. So in the interest of education, we sought to strip down the messages of the Hillary Clinton campaign into short parables, just like how the Bible does it. This parable helps to explain Clinton's incredible political experience. We also illuminate five other concepts here. The films were written and directed by our Steve Delahoyde with the help of the cast of Schadenfreude who volunteered to help us spread this important political information.
A CP Labs: Film
Shift Option Rinse
Can you really clean your computer keyboard in the dishwasher? With the help of the RinseCam 9000, Michele created a short film to find out.
Lowercase Tee Rides Again
Junior’s Senator
From Illinois
For the first twenty minutes Jim's kids were singing this it was hilarious. By eight-thirty this morning it was embedded in his wife Heidi's brain. Sometimes things are just supposed to happen. So, here's the latest fashion statement for politically active kids from our Lowercase Tee brand.
An SD Film Regrets
Easily Distracted
If you're at all like us and are better suited for starting things than you are for finishing them, you ought to pay attention to the fifth film in Steve's "Regrets" series, Hobbies.
Nobody Asked Us But...
Livin’ the Brand
Michele posted a link to a video produced by agency.com as a way to promote themselves in pursuit of landing the coveted "agency of record" status on the Subway fast-food account. We thought it was pretty much asking for someone to respond in kind. You ought to watch as much of theirs as you can stand before checking out our unsolicited response.
I brake for quasi-religious symbols
Vehicle Identification System Update
We have word that recently two readers in New York, who followed our guidelines for updating their vehicle identification systems, pulled up alongside each other at a traffic light and celebrated their common bond by honking and pointing. Excellent. Our plot is beginning to take hold. Write for yours free today, but hurry, we only have tens of thousands left. Thanks to C for the pix above and here's his suggestion for adding a bike to the fleet.
How To Explain The Rules of Cricket
13 Points
Originally written for a collection of essays, we thought this informative essay by KG deserved a home on the web, as well. The internet, after all, is the number one reference for both potential cricketers and pie eaters.
What you read where
Screening Documentaries
To accompany our first biennial summer reading feature we asked Jay Ryan of The Bird Machine to design and hand-screen a limited run of posters. We visited Jay and Mat Daly at the Bird Machine Shop and spent some time poking around in their flat-files. We also watched as they went through the process of hand-screening prints. There's an improvisational nature to the building up of layers of color over time, and we can tell you that the whole thing is refreshingly analog and deliciously slow. Check 6 Colors, 1,800 Pulls and 2 Dogs.
For a subsequent Field-Tested Poster we asked Dan and Mike of Aesthetic Apparatus to make something great for us and then Steve buzzed up to The Twin Cities for a visit that resulted in the mini-doc Found & Reused.
Get ready to book a trip because the 2008 edition of Field-Tested Books will be bigger and better than ever.
Puzzler: Einstein’s Fish
Is This Your Sander Vitreus?
One of our most popular projects ever was Michele's Einstein Fish Puzzle, see if you're in the two percent of the population that Albert Einstein purportedly said could figure it out. More puzzlers: School of Government, Da Vinci's Other Code and One With Everything, which asks the question, "Which porn star ate the most hot dogs?"
Not Quite so
Fresh Signals
For the day, "a drinker with writing problems."
Christophe Szpajdel is Lord of the Logos, the black metal band ones anyway. Via @paukee.
For the day, !8 minutes of The Pogues, live from 1985.
Just what we need, America's leading 11 year-old film critic hates Alice and loves Extraordinary Measures.
"Essentially, it is a camera that - using a mobile communication device - takes other's photos. Photos that were created by someone who pressed a button somewhere at the same time as its own button was pressed." Via Jan Chipchase.
"A sequence of 500 'illuminations' at 250-metre intervals will roll westwards from Segedunum fort, Wallsend, at 5:45pm, reaching Carlisle three quarters of an hour later and ending on the final, largely fragmentary stretch of the wall above the Solway." The public participates in a large scale work of art, lighting up Hadrian's Wall. Check the video here.
From an occasional series, Great Moments in Fresh Signals History. Richard Nicholson's survey of London's remaining professional darkrooms. Cameron Booth's reinterpretation of the U.S. Eisenhower Interstate System Map. Peter Guthrie's 3D renderings of van der Rohe's Farnsworth House. Stéfan Le Dû's Star Wars Stormtroopers in various situations. J. D. Salinger's letter to a producer interested in filming Catcher in the Rye.
140.
Field Notes in Action.
A new timelapse HD film from Philip Bloom Sky, filmed over five days in Dubai. Here's some background and Bloom's copious production notes.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Maintaining Dignity in Online Advertising, a chat I had with Wendy Mitchell.
Chat Roulette piano improv.
An interactive infographic showing the difference between the quakes in Haiti and Chile.
For DW, the Periodic Table of Sci-Fi film and television.
Trailer for Please Give.
A History of Argentinian Transportation Tickets. Via The DDC by way of Wicked Cobra.
Aegir Hallmundur's illustration for Wired is money.
Wow, that Gina Trapani seems really cool, and she has a killer sense of style too.
Newsweek, Dan Pink and Gawker like our Rove-ing of Rove too.
If you'd subscribed to FIELD NOTES COLORS…
Ezra Klein from WaPo and Ben Smith of Politico have linked up the video we did for 37signals' REWORK. Thanks for that.
We can all be our own broadcaster now, both scary and amazing. The Staff Room is one of my current faves.
A letter from a hero to Alfred A. Knopf. Norman Maclean to Charles Elliott, 1981. That cinches it, I officially love every word he wrote. Via @UChicagoPress.
Transforming The Tate. Watch as this is built. Via Things Magazine.
Every time you make a Powerpoint, Edward Tufte kills a kitten.
The DDC posts a very sad before & after picture.
What Jessica Hische did today, drew type with 1000 thumbtacks. Via Faceout Books.
Simple and simply perfect, The Exchange a short by Baptiste Sola. Via Aqua-Velvet.
Dan chats with Merlin Mann on this week's The Pipeline.
Sunshine starts shipping today! A limited number of 3packs and COLORS subscriptions are still available.
Sketch group Elephant Larry's pilot episode of The WOW. "Like those 20-minute 'entertainment' shows that you have to sit through in the theater before the movie comes on. Only better, because it's fake."
Bigassmessage.com.
I am very sorry I didn't link this earlier. Please forgive me.
Sam O'Hare's "The Sandpit," a day in the life of New York City, in tilt-shift and time-lapse. Spectacular. Via John Nack.
So you know. Practical advice on how to disassemble and clean the aluminum Apple keyboard, machine translated from Applesfere. And some perhaps not so practical advice from MS.
Back to the Cover Page.
Icon Key
What all those little square icons in Fresh Signals mean.
A post from our monthly guest editor. The complete
listing af all the people we owe favors can be found here.
We love these products so much we even paid for them.
A post with this icon may well end up in our Museum of Online Museums.
About Depth of Field.
Not to be missed.
A Friday Drink Link. Hic.
Film feed. Short attention span video theater.
A Thing We Made:Jewelboxing
We hated the options available for custom packaging DVDs and CDs so we created a brand that gives creative professionals and hobbyists the tools to make great stuff. Here's a bit from the latest Jewelboxing weblog entry:
"If you want something that isn't available or doesn't exist, there's no reason not to just make it yourself." Read the entire post.
Another Thing We Made: The Show
Limited-edition, professionally mixed and mastered, custom-designed live performances on CD. That's The Show. With partners like The Pixies and Dead Can Dance. More news soon.
