July 3, 2011
‘Eminence Front‘ is a song written and sung by Pete Townshend of The Who. It appears as the sixth track on the group’s 1982 studio album, ‘It’s Hard.’ It is the only song from the album that the band has opted to play live after the initial post-release tours. Lead singer Roger Daltrey, vocally critical of the album, described ‘Eminence Front’ as the only song on it that he felt was worthy of being released.
In the song, Townshend sings about the delusions and drug use of the wealthy and hedonistic. The lyrics describe a party in which people hide from their problems behind a facade. Townshend has introduced the song in live performances with: ‘This song is about what happens when you take too much white powder; it’s called Eminence Front.’
Posted in Art, Drugs, Money |
1 Comment »
July 3, 2011
The Subservient Chicken is a 2004 advertising campaign created to promote international fast food restaurant chain Burger King’s TenderCrisp chicken sandwich and their ‘Have it Your Way’ campaign. On its website, a man in a chicken costume performs a wide range of actions based on a user’s input, showing pre-recorded footage and appearing like an interactive webcam. The site takes literally the advertising slogan ‘Get chicken just the way you like it.’
There are more than three hundred commands that the Subservient Chicken will respond to, including: Moonwalk, Riverdance, and pick your nose. When told to perform sex acts, take off his mask, or do anything the Subservient Chicken considers offensive, the chicken walks up to the camera and shakes a scolding chicken finger in disappointment.
Posted in Food, Humor, Money |
Leave a Comment »
June 30, 2011
RoboCup is an international robotics competition founded in 1997. The aim is to develop autonomous soccer robots with the intention of promoting research and education in the field of artificial intelligence.
The name RoboCup is a contraction of the competition’s full name, “‘Robot Soccer World Cup,’ but there are many other stages of the competition such as ‘Search and Rescue’ and ‘Robot Dancing.’ The official goal of the project: ‘By mid-21st century, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robot soccer players shall win the soccer game, complying with the official rule of the FIFA, against the winner of the most recent World Cup.’
Posted in Games, Technology |
Leave a Comment »
June 30, 2011
Action origami is origami that can be animated. The original traditional action model is the flapping bird. Typically models where the final assembly involves some special action, for instance blowing up a waterbomb, are also classed as action origami., More rarely models like paper plane and spinners which have no moving parts are included. Some traditional action origami involved cuts but modern models typically are built with no cuts.
Action toys include birds or butterflies with flapping wings, beaks that peck, and frogs that hop, as well as popular traditional models like the fortune teller. Bangers are models that make a nose when flicked down hard. Some models are far more complex than can be classed as toys. They are built to amaze and astonish. For instance Robert J. Lang’s ‘Bassist, Pianist, and Violinist’ is a set of action models where each one plays an instrument when pulled on appropriately.
Posted in Art, Games, Language |
Leave a Comment »
June 30, 2011
Liquid and digits is a type of gestural, interpretive, rave and urban street dance that sometimes involve aspects of pantomime. The term invokes the word ‘liquid’ to describe the fluid-like motion of the dancer’s body and appendages and ‘digits’ to refer to illusions constructed with the dancer’s fingers. Liquid dancing has many moves in common with popping and waving. While some argue that the dance evolved spontaneously in the 19902 rave culture, others contend it originated in the break dancing culture of the 1970s. With the decline of the original rave scene, liquid has become a standing part of a worldwide club culture and the underground street dancing movement.
B-boys and funk stylists generally contend that liquid dancing is a development of waving, a technique in popping. Liquid dancing covers many of the same fundamentals as popping and it is fully possible (and common) for dancers to combine the styles, further blurring the distinction between the two. The defining difference is liquid dancing concentrating on smooth movements while popping is characterized by jerky pops (hits) and contractions. Some liquid practitioners accentuate their dance with light emitting gear such as glowsticks, LED keychain lights, or white gloves under black light. When a dancer specializes in glowsticks, the dance often ceases to resemble liquid and is then referred to as glowsticking.
Posted in Art, Games |
Leave a Comment »
June 30, 2011
Tutting is a contemporary abstract interpretive street dance style modeled after Egyptian hieroglyphics. It is performed with attention to the musics’ rhythm by altering the position of the body and limbs in a synchronized, robotic manner. The size of poses, or tuts, varies from large body tuts to intricate finger tuts. The transitions between poses can be elaborate and expressive. Moreover, certain sub-styles have emerged such as boxing (creating and manipulating box-like or rectangular shapes predominantly with ones arms) and a liquid-influenced style that some tutters use to make the joints appear as hinges that can then be manipulated by another body part.
Both techniques are special applications of the mime concept ‘fixed point.’ Much as a mime conveys a wall by always keeping one hand on the wall, or shows a rope by always keeping one hand on the rope, a tutter shows a shape by always maintaining at least one side of the shape. To do this, a tutter will use his body parts to assemble a shape segment by segment and disassemble it in the same piecemeal fashion. The electronic dance community has played a large role in the increasing robustness of tutting due to the more abstract nature of its own predominant style, liquiding. Tutting is highly regarded in both the electronic and popping communities for its technical depth and distinctiveness.
Posted in Art, Games, Language |
Leave a Comment »
June 30, 2011
Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) is a Japanese electronic music band consisting of principal members Haruomi Hosono (bass and keyboards), Yukihiro Takahashi (drums and lead vocals) and Ryuichi Sakamoto (keyboards and vocals). The group began under the name ‘Yellow Magic Band’ in 1977, and then renamed itself as ‘Yellow Magic Orchestra’ in 1978.
The band’s former ‘fourth member’ was music programmer Hideki Matsutake. They are regarded as influential innovators of popular electronic music. They helped pioneer synthpop and ambient house, ushered in electronica, anticipated the beats and sounds of electro music, laid the foundations for J-pop, and influenced the house, techno, and hip-hop movements.
read more »
Posted in Art, Technology, World |
Leave a Comment »
June 30, 2011
A chiptune, also known as chip music, is synthesized electronic music often produced with the sound chips of old computers and video game consoles, as well as with other methods such as emulation. In the early 1980s, home computers became cheaper and more accessible; this led to a proliferation of personal computers and gaming consoles that were abandoned as users moved on to the next generation of software, and the hardware to run it. Small groups of artists and musicians continue to use these forgotten computers to produce audio and visual work.
The game technologies that are typically used in chip music production are those produced from the 1980s up until the early to mid 1990s. These systems, including the NEC PC-8801, Commodore 64, Nintendo Entertainment System, and Nintendo Game Boy, were aimed at the domestic consumer market. These systems were unique in that they marked a period in the technological development of game audio in which dedicated hardware sub-systems or sound chips were used to create sound.
read more »
Posted in Art, Games, Technology |
Leave a Comment »
June 29, 2011
Sun Ra (1914 – 1993), born Herman Poole Blount, was a prolific jazz artist and philosopher known for his ‘cosmic’ music and philosophies. His eclectic music and unorthodox lifestyle made him controversial. Claiming that he was of the ‘Angel Race’ and not from Earth, but from Saturn, Sun Ra developed a complex persona using ‘cosmic’ philosophies and lyrical poetry that made him a pioneer of afrofuturism. He preached awareness and peace above all.
He abandoned his birth name and took on the name and persona of Sun Ra (Ra being the Egyptian God of the Sun), and used several other names throughout his career, including Le Sonra and Sonny Lee. Sun Ra denied any connection with his birth name, saying ‘That’s an imaginary person, never existed … Any name that I use other than Ra is a pseudonym.’
read more »
Posted in Art, Humor, Philosophy |
Leave a Comment »
June 28, 2011
The iBOT is a very stable and mobile powered wheelchair developed by Dean Kamen in a partnership between DEKA and Johnson and Johnson’s Independence Technology division. It is a medical technology, made to help people with severe mobility problems.
As of 2006 the iBOT retailed for approximately $26,100 and required a prescription in the U.S. As of 2009, it is no longer available for sale from Independence Technology, but support for existing units will be available until the end of 2013.
read more »
Posted in Health, Technology |
1 Comment »
June 28, 2011
Stop Snitchin’ refers to a controversial 2004 campaign launched in Baltimore, United States to persuade criminal informants to stop ‘snitching,’ or informing, to law enforcement. Public officials, activists and media outlets say that it is a campaign used by criminals to frighten people with information from reporting their activities to the police.
Some Stop Snitching activists say they are not opposed to concerned citizens going to the police with accurate information and don’t consider them snitches. They say that snitches are people who give the government favorable testimony in exchange for a plea bargain, money, or some other kind of reward.
read more »
Posted in Politics |
Leave a Comment »
June 27, 2011
Zombie Nation is a German techno and electro project of the Munich based DJ and producer Florian Senfter (also known as John Starlight). The first Zombie Nation five track EP was released in the spring of 1999 on DJ Hell’s label, International DeeJay Gigolo Records.
A remix of the song ‘Kernkraft 400’ on this debut release landed in high chart-positions all over the world, including number 2 in the U.K. ‘Kernkraft 400’ was a 1:1 melody copy from the Commodore C64 computer game ‘Lazy Jones.’
read more »
Posted in Art, Money, Technology |
Leave a Comment »
The Daily Omnivore 