Håkan Lidbo TED talk

I think we can all agree Håkan Lidbo is a very strange person - although he often produces very high-quality techno and some excellent records, this talk sees him discussing some very complex ideas of music as a language. He asks whether music could be used to communicate with other civilisations, both human and otherwise. And monkeys playing synthesisers. Just because.

John Dee on the BBC

"New Science, Old Magic"

Attack The Block @ SXSW

Joe Cornish's debut feature Attack The Block had its world premiere at South By Southwest yesterday, and the reviews coming in so far are pretty good. It looks ace - a gang of inner city London yoof have to defend their tower block from an invading alien force. Coming from the man who is partly responsible for Quizzlestick, Toytanic, The Footie Song and much more, this promises to be good. No word yet as to when it will be released over here, but we'll keep you informed.

The Zeusaphone

So, I came across this company called zeusaphone who will sell you a musical Tesla coil.

Seriously.

If you don't believe me, here's the band Masters of Lightning in action with two zeusaphones.



I reckon that every piece of electronic music from now should be played exclusively on these instruments. If there isn't lightning at the next gig I go to I will be seriously disappointed.

Avatar

OMG have you seen Avatar yet?! The likelihood is that you have, as it is now officially the largest grossing movie of all time.

There is a great blog post over here (www.rifters.com) that discusses the scientific reality of the enviroment of Pandora, as well as some of the huge gaping plot holes that dent that credibility. From the sounds of it loads of money was put into researching and developing an authentic alien planet enviroment, much, much more so than into a decent script.

And here's something to make you really shudder - Twilight-meets-Avatar fan art. "Twivatar". Brrrrrrrrr.

Trippeeeeeee

This is pretty damn amazing - the effect of sound frequencies on salt grains:

Das Unheimliche Tal

New findings published in PNAS this September are putting some long-overdue experimental rigor behind the uncanny valley. Last spring at Princeton’s Neuroscience Institute, Asif Ghazanfar developed a computer model of a macaque monkey designed to interact with real macaques. But the monkeys weren’t fooled. Further testing revealed that, much to Ghazanfar’s surprise, his model was eliciting an uncanny valley response from the monkeys. It was the first time scientists had ever observed such a response in a non-human species.

Into the Uncanny Valley

(thanks to Mind Hack)