Stanley Kubrick was an amazing talent, an artist working in the medium of moving pictures. The film Paths of Glory marked the beginning of a nearly 30 year period of continuous greatness ended only by death, not by failure of his vision or ability.

I’ve wondered from time to time what made him great at what he did. This article offers a partial answer to that question. Absolutely fascinating peek into the mind of a master.

KYTV: Company Profile

Kill Your Television (KYTV) formed in early 2002 as the brainchild of Aaron Kao, Jeremy Sharma and Rizman Putra. In order to explore other artistic interests other than music and visual arts, hence, the formation of the collective.

The concept of KYTV is exploring the boundaries of various art forms like visual arts, installation, writing, movement, music/sound, and multi-media. Essentially, KYTV is a collaborative effort of artists with different aptitudes and experiences each time a new work is created.

Under the direction of co-artistic directors RIZMAN PUTRA and CHOY KA FAI.KYTV is moving towards hybrid territories of contemporary arts, whereby boundaries are constantly disappearing. Interactivity and experiences are now the main focus of KYTV’ works constantly experimenting and exploring regardless of forms.

KYTV seeks to create works that relates to our spontaneous and complex structures of urban existence, communicating with people within the ever-changing landscape of time, space and cultures.

This is super cool:

The design of these devices is very elegant but is it sculpture?

Happy Birthday Mozart!

One of the most prolific and highly influential composers of Classical music; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. His music can now be heard online anytime at this Swedish station; SR Mozart. Tune in and listen in awe.

Isn’t modern technology wonderful?!

Oh yeah, if you havn’t seen it yet, check out the fictional movie based on his life. It’s really good.

Or if you are so inclined & have the time:

If you walk into my office and turn hard to the right, you’ll see some pictures on my bookshelves. One of those pictures shows me with someone you likely wouldn’t have recognized until recently.

Oh, there it is: a picture of me arm and arm with the then relatively under-known President of the 30-million-member National Association of Evangelicals, and Senior Pastor of a 15,000-member church in Colorado. We were both smiling, brimmingly.

Now if you follow the news, you know who I was arm and arm with: None other than the now-famous/infamous Ted Haggard.

I’m not gay.

But I do love Ted Haggard. When news broke of his sexual misconduct exposed through a politically-motivated male prostitute, I was crushed, and yet I must admit, one of my first personal Pharisaical questions was: Should I take the picture off my bookshelf? Was Ted still worthy to consume valuable real estate on my bookshelf? Sure, it was never a question before. But now?

Then I thought about my arm—you know—the wholesome one around Ted. Is even my arm any more “wholesome” than Ted’s, or Ted’s accusers’, or Barney Frank’s or George Bush’s or Bill Clinton’s or Billy Graham’s? Does anyone, anywhere, have truly wholesome arms? Or hands? Or brain? Or heart?           

Seriously, I’m not gay.

But here’s what I’ve learned, not just from Ted’s failures, but from mine: (1) You likely will get more “famous” for the bad you do than for the good you do; and, (2) way down deep, you really aren’t any better than Ted.

So, for now, my picture with Ted stays. Unless you can offer any really compelling reason it shouldn’t. I think it deserves real estate on my precious bookshelf—as a monument to grace, mercy, and compassion for people with arms different than mine, but not unlike mine.

Did I mention I’m not gay? But for all my attempts at imitating Jesus, I am still a crappy sinner in need of the God of James, who declares: “Mercy triumphs over judgment.” Is this your attitude? Or are your arms, hands, brain, heart, any better than Ted’s?

Artist M.F. Husain has been condemned from his homeland in India, for his painting “Bharatmata” (below), depicting the Hindu goddess in the nude.

His artwork seems highly influenced by Pablo Picasso, if not taken his style. This artist is living outside of his homeland and appears to be continuing his work. While outside of India he may not be able to directly influence it, but he can continue with his radical thinking (according to India) to push his artistic point. Not sure where the beef is. Revolution does not usually happen without the spilling of blood, and his artistic point is not progressing western art. This style has been played with for a number of generations & brings little to the artist community.

Weird Al has a nack for not only parodies, but tapping the vein of our pop culture.

For those of you unwilling or unable to download Skyland from iTunes, as suggested in the earlier post, I submit the following pictures with commentary.

Click to Expand

The environment of Skyland is unique and compelling - though unrealistic. The concept in its basic form is chunks of a shattered earth floating around a gravitational core. These chunks have small farms and residences on them. Travel between chunks is handled by flying vessels that in some cases bear a strong resemblence to ships and in other cases to airplanes and even motorcycles.

Example of a flying vessel of the ship variety. This one looks much like a trawler or something. Note the backgrounds and the atmospheric effects. Because the whole scene is done as CGI before it is converted to cell shading, the backgrounds are very detailed and organic, while still retaining the hand-drawn look.

Another example of lighting, background, atmosphere and technology. The “bikes” in the foreground have a strong retro look to them and are detailed in such a manner as to show wear and aging, though not really visible in this shot. The haze of the atmosphere is well rendered as the engines of the ships in the background recede in the distance.

Shots like this, that frame the bike in the atmosphere casting a shadow against in the haze of light, underscore how well the lighting effects can be pulled off.

A still image doesn’t translate the surreal sense you’ll get when watching tracking scenes like this. The CGI by itself would lack warmth and realizim by itself. Yet combined with cell shading the effect is really quite good. Though the scene is obviously stylized animation, there’s a sense of the scene being organic, alive. The natural settings are quite nicely done, in contrast to the:

Characters are rendered flat, unrealistic. Though motion captured, certain things such as mouth movements and sightlines don’t seem right. The characters movements and gestures are good as would be expected from motion capture but there is little subtlety to facial expression. Pretty much the only part of the face capable of expressing emotion is the eyebrows. Lame.

Another really fantastic example of the use of lighting effects and compositional capabilities made possible by rendering in computer.

Overall the artist vision of Skyland is outstanding. I suspect the choices made regarding the characters themselves have more to do with technical limitations than with directorial dictation.

What does this show us about media in general? There is the ability now to produce animated media that contains quite extraordinary visuals, in fresh and compelling environments. This makes it possible for visions that would have been difficult and expensive to realize just a few years ago to be turned into reality at a realitively low cost.

I’d like to think that as techniques such as those used in Skyland improve and become more mainstream, more directors will be given the opportunity to express their vision in this manner.