How does jealousy snuff out creativity? A stop-motion film written and directed by Ainslie Henderson (previously) follows three furry, felted creatures struggling with each other’s success.

“Shackle” centers on the gremlin-like trio as they conjure the forest’s magic to make music. As pinecones spin like a top, dreamy sounds emerge, and slowly, the creatures add other objects to the woodland symphony. Shape-shifting sticks offer a rhythmic line, while autumn leaves provide a soothing melody.

When one envious character tries to steal the unusual instruments for himself, though, a cloud of darkness reveals that greed is incompatible with art.

The short film is a BAFTA nominee and was recognized as the Best British Film at the London International Animation Festival in 2022. Henderson has also been awarded numerous Vimeo honors for his work, which you can watch on the platform.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article A Trio of Woodland Sprites Vie for Creative Control in an Ethereal Stop-Motion Animation appeared first on Colossal.

Many cities around the U.S. use a microphone-powered system known as ShotSpotter to help law enforcement detect the location of gunshots. In Chicago, for example, the controversial program was implemented a little over six years ago, then turned off on September 22 when the contract expired.

A study found that the app had unintended consequences like slowing police response times to 911 calls and causing them to arrive on scene later. Meanwhile, a number of shooting deaths in Chicago neighborhoods where ShotSpotter was turned off have given rise to calls for it to be installed again.

For Riley Walz, who utilizes digital tools and apps to illuminate our tenuous relationship with technology and information, the security system inspired a different a type of data collection—what Walz calls “culture surveillance.”

Bop Spotter is a real-time collector of songs played by passersby in San Francisco’s Mission District. Installed inside a box high up on a pole, a phone runs Shazam nonstop. The music discovery app allows users to look up an artist and song title by simply recording a few seconds of sound.

Solar powered with a microphone pointing down on the street, the phone pings every few minutes, detecting music and automatically integrating the tunes into a diverse and ever-growing playlist on the Bop Spotter site. So far, more than 1,400 songs have been collected, ranging from rock to hip top to meditation sounds.

Walz shrewdly taps into the nature and prevalence of surveillance, questioning its efficacy and who notices or consents. In the case of Bop Spotter—just like its influence ShotSpotter—no one does. “But it’s not about catching criminals,” Walz says. “It’s about catching vibes.”

In addition to this project, Walz has also created apps that generate random routes for runners, tested Twitter’s blue-check verification process, and built an archive of global newspaper front pages. Explore more on his website.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Bop Spotter Catalogs Beats and Rhythms Played by Passersby in San Francisco appeared first on Colossal.

As a graphic designer and graffitist who has been making work since 1989, German artist neck, who also goes by Oliver, is a big fan of the “beauty and (sometimes) weirdness” of common audiotape design. His ambitious archive project, tapedeck, aims to document the wide range of cassettes produced throughout the latter half of the 20th century.

The cassette tape, invented in 1963, entered the market with a lukewarm reception as it competed with reel-to-reel and 8-track technologies. The suitability for recorded music along with its portability eventually put it on top of its competitors, and sound quality continued to improve in the 1970s. By the following decade, the cassette was a favorite among consumers, overtaking vinyl and continuing to dominate until the 1990s, when CDs superseded the technology.

Audiotapes, beyond their use for music and performances, were tools with which anyone could make basic recordings using a home stereo. The medium catalyzed social change thanks to its small size, durability, and copying capability. For example, underground punk and rock tapes communicated facets of Western culture among young generations behind the Iron Curtain, a political and physical boundary that divided Eastern and Western Europe between 1945 and 1991.

Celebrating the cultural legacy and aesthetic of a technology still admired by sound enthusiasts, tapedeck takes the form of a searchable visual database of nearly one thousand examples. The name derives from the deck, or machine, that tapes were played on. Searchable by playing time, color, material, and brand, the collection highlights the distinctive look of the double reels and recognizable shapes—a microcosm of graphic design from the 1970s to the 1980s.

Explore hundreds more on the tapedeck website, where you can also find information about submitting pictures of tapes not already in the archive.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Take a Nostalgic Dive Through a Visual Cassette Tape Archive appeared first on Colossal.

What happens when an odd but good-faith search and rescue turns terribly wrong? The music video for Nick Leng’s “beetlebugs” follows the uncanny story of an insect who asks a “Private Investigator For Creatures” for help in locating a missing loved one. Vacillating between a human and bug perspective—the latter is filtered through thousands of tiny receptors in compound eyes—an overly earnest and absurd hunt ensues, only to end in a dark, Kafka-esque twist of fate.

“beetlebugs” is directed by Brooklyn-based filmmaker Josh Sondock. Find more of his work on Vimeo.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article A Missing Beetle Sends an Investigator on an Uncanny Quest in a New Nick Leng Music Video appeared first on Colossal.

Bernie Krause is a soundscape ecologist, having spent nearly six decades traveling the globe to record the vast range of noises emerging from tropical rainforests, antarctic tundras, deserts, and more. His work has taken him from the Muir Woods north of his home in the San Francisco area to the beaches of the Galápagos to the lush ecosystems of the Amazon, where he captures unique sonic tapestries of natural life.

A playful stop-motion animation by Marine de Francqueville visualizes one of Krause’s soundscapes through a series of abstract shapes. Against a backdrop of pebbles in a vintage typecase, small components pop up, twist, and spring across the space as birds and insects chime in. When human chanting joins the chorus mid-way through, the lively elements grow even bolder.

Watch “Cuicuicui,” which translates to “tweet tweet tweet” and can also refer to the ambient sound of a passing crowd, on Vimeo. Find more from de Francqueville on Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Abstract Shapes Dance to a Lively Soundscape by Bernie Krause in a Playful Stop-Motion Animation appeared first on Colossal.

Thick, expressive brushstrokes come alive in the form of slithering snakes, cascading vines, and leaping goats in the music video for “Sunever,” a track featured on singer-songwriter Chris Cohen’s newest album concordantly titled Paint a Room. Los Angeles-based artist Lilli Carré meticulously animated each frame with gouache on paper, compiling immense stacks of painted compositions into seamless movement.

Beings and objects morph into one another throughout the video as Cohen’s lyrics and Carré’s visuals call to the beauty of different phases, transitional moments, and fluid reshaping that we experience as we grow and walk through life.

A description of the song on Bandcamp explains, “Cohen wrote ‘Sunever’ for a transgender child in his life while considering the violence that hard-and-fast categories can create. This song reminds us that we are ‘always in between,’ that transitions are just a part of life. With the hook, he sweetly sings his vow: ‘You’re gonna find a way.’”

Paint a Room is set to release on July 12. Follow Cohen on Instagram for updates, and find more of Carré’s work on her website, Vimeo, and Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article In a New Music Video, Lilli Carré Animates the Beauty of Transitional Moments with Gouache appeared first on Colossal.

Taking the concept of pet portraits to a new level, artist and composer Noam Oxman expresses distinctive animal personalities in his Sympawnies series. Beginning with a photograph of a beloved pet or favorite animal, ranging from dogs and cats to badgers and snakes, Oxman creates original musical arrangements that also boast an impressive presence on the page.

Playful puns nod to musical terminologies, like “divertimento”—a lighthearted 18th-century genre—transformed into “Dogvertimento in C” or “Toc-cat-a in B (Latte),” a play on a type of composition usually written for keyboard or plucked string instruments for a cat named Latte.

Learn more about commissioning your own pet’s portrait on Oxman’s website. At least 20 percent of all proceeds are donated to help feed and give medical treatment to stray cats. He performs all compositions on his YouTube channel, highlighting pieces as unique as their subjects.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article In Noam Oxman’s ‘Sympawnies,’ Pet Personalities Come to Life in Distinctive Musical Portraits appeared first on Colossal.

If you were anywhere near a radio in the early 2010s, odds are you’re familiar with Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know.”

The ballad rose to popularity as it topped international charts and won awards, and today, the complicated love song boasts more than 1.6 billion streams on Spotify alone. Over a decade after its release, CDK Company revisited the hit,  choreographing a dance performance that’s just as iconic as the track’s original stop-motion music video.

On a single stage, the Netherlands-based collective showcases a wide array of sequences and movements in under four minutes. Dressed in ’70s business casual complete with blazers, vests, embroidered blouses, and flared pants, the troupe incorporated ripple effects, tutting, and sharp jolts to bring forth a sense of urgency and intensity, creating a satisfying visual contrast against a rather mellow song. Wide-angle shots and cohesive color grading enhance the performance, evoking a heavily stylized environment that could be part of a Wes Anderson film.

Watch the number along with the company’s other works on Youtube.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article CDK Dancers Deliver a Mesmerizing ’70s Inspired Performance to Gotye’s Iconic 2010s Hit appeared first on Colossal.

Behind the hammers and pins of most upright pianos is a hard mass of spruce, maple, or mahogany, what artist Maskull Lasserre (previously) refers to as a “secret volume of solid wood.”

“I always thought this (component) had a dormant potential beyond its basic supporting role in securing the tuning keys for the piano strings,” he tells Colossal. In one of his most recent works, titled “The Third Octave,” Lasserre investigates this prospect by carving directly into the back panel of two instruments.

The resulting sculpture connects through a tangled, textured knot of octopus tentacles, of which the eight arms correspond to the eight notes of the octaves available within the keyboard. Chiseled into the bodies of both pianos—the right features a lively Minoan-style marine illustration on its surface—the mollusk camouflages a miter joint, or an angled cut between two pieces of wood, that tightly fastens the instruments together.

Underneath one set of pedals, Lasserre slotted two books to keep pressure on the joint: On Growth and Form by D.W. Thompson and The Quadruple Object by Graham Harman He selected the texts, which detail biological and philosophical systems, respectively, for both their size and subject matter, which relate to the conceptual framework of his sculpture.

“Most subtly, the octopus dwells in a submerged depth beyond easy human access and remote from the stories we tell of it,” the artist explains. “This could equally describe that hidden volume of matter below the surface of a musical instrument that we think we know but actually holds other strange and beautiful potentials.”

“The Third Octave” also evokes his 2015 sculpture “Improbable Worlds,” which carved a tiny wishbone into the center of a piano. “Like all of my work, this (new) piece was made to answer some question (through a physical syntax) that written/spoken language simply cannot,” the artist says, sharing that his pieces are often dubbed nostalgic. He explains further:

When I have the opportunity, I gently emphasize that working, in a contemporary sense, with reclaimed material—and revealing something enduring and eternal in that—offers an intentional counterpoint to a society preoccupied with finding answers outside what we are and what we already have (see AI, new tech., etc).

Lasserre is currently working on a large public work in Squamish, British Columbia, which you can find preliminary photos of on Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article A Knotted Octopus Carved Directly into Two Pianos Entwines Maskull Lasserre’s New Musical Sculpture appeared first on Colossal.

The Los Angeles public school system is one of few administrations in the U.S. that still provides instruments to its students for free. Tens of thousands of young musicians learn to play the saxophone or tuba on borrowed equipment, a program running since 1959 that offers greater and more equitable access to the arts.

A short documentary directed by Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers visits the unassuming warehouse where more than 80,000 student instruments are maintained. “The Last Repair Shop” shares the stories of how the four craftspeople came to their roles, punctuated by testimonies from students who’ve benefited from their work. Glimpsing their mending techniques and skill at repairing even the smallest cracks, the documentary is both a testimony to the necessity of public services like this program and the indelible impact music has on people of all ages and backgrounds.

“This is not just a musical instrument repair shop. When an instrument breaks, there’s a student without an instrument,” says Steve, a piano technician and the workshop supervisor. “No. Not in our city.”

Watch “The Last Repair Shop” above, and find more from the directors on Vimeo. 

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article The Last Repair Shop: A Heartwarming Documentary Visits the Warehouse Servicing 80,000+ Instruments for L.A. Students appeared first on Colossal.