Liar Town Usa: An alternate USA where our products, signage, headlines, and fads are all slightly more surreal, sinister, and threatening.
posted by The Whelk
on Mar 7, 2013 -
93 comments
Horse-egifs: A tribute to the surreal poetry of Horse_Ebooks, Horse-egifs takes a randomly selected video and makes a gif from a randomly selected chunk of that video.and then it gets posted to tumblr. [via
mefi projects]
posted by The Whelk
on Feb 17, 2013 -
10 comments
Georgian-born Armenian,
Sergei Parajanov (
1924-1990) was a controversial director in the Soviet era. At first he followed the state mandated style of
Socialist Realism, but in 1964 he broke out into his own style with
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (YT),
a dream-like film that combines expressionistic camera techniques, ethnography, and the logic of folktales. The film
won almost every, award in sight on the 1964 film festival circuit, but it was also of the restrictive Soviet approach to the arts. The film was banned by authorities, but Parajanov did not return to realism, and instead paid tribute to the
Armenian troubadour Sayat-Nova ("King of Songs" in Persian).
The Color of Pomegranates (1968) is a
film that sought to portray Sayat-Nova through images inspired by his life and poetry.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Dec 5, 2012 -
9 comments
From the mid 40s to the mid 50s
Coronet Instructional Films were always ready to provide social guidance for teenagers on subjects as diverse as
dating,
popularity,
preparing for being drafted, and
shyness, as well as to children on
following the law,
the value of quietness in school, and
appreciating our parents. They also provided education on topics such as the connection between
attitudes and health,
what kind of people live in America,
how to keep a job,
supervising women workers,
the nature of capitalism, and
the plantation System in Southern life. Inside is an annotated collection of all 86 of the complete Coronet films in the
Prelinger Archives as well as a few more. Its not like you had work to do or anything right?
[more inside]
posted by Blasdelb
on Nov 1, 2012 -
41 comments
35 full-length Viennese Actionist films 1957-1969. *NSFW* (Extreme graphic & scatological situations.) "The term
Viennese Actionism describes a short and violent movement in 20th century art that can be regarded as part of the many independent efforts of the 1960s to develop 'action art' (Fluxus, Happening, Performance, Body Art, etc.)." Previously:
1,
2. [more inside]
posted by Skygazer
on Jul 14, 2012 -
29 comments
Kevin J. Weir is an artist, making ads (
1,
2,
3,
4,
5), and more interestingly, not ads. In the latter category, he has made 3 stand-alone sites:
the Flux Machine, a tumblr of public domain images turned into animated GIFs, ranging from amusing to surreal (with an extra dash of Lovecraft), which
Cartoon Brew likened to
Terry Gilliam and
Stan VanDerBeek;
Nyan Waits, another spin-off of the
Nyan Cat meme/theme, now with more Tom Waits; and
Loud Portraits, an interactive portrait gallery.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Apr 4, 2012 -
9 comments
"You are invited to the fantastically flamboyant final performance of
The Fabulous Screech and His Trained Humans." A whimsical, surreal, and surprisingly touching little point-and-click game from the maker of The Book of Living Magic and Infinite Ocean (
previously and
previouslier).
posted by Dojie
on Feb 23, 2012 -
5 comments
"
Rescue Pet" a comic about the effects of horrible mutating mimic blobs on a strained romantic relationship.
posted by The Whelk
on Feb 21, 2012 -
14 comments
One day at breakfast, a man's soul bursts out of his eyeball. While the soul roams the earth eating everything in sight, two wild deer bathe and dress the man's catatonic body.
It's Dr. Breakfast.
posted by schmod
on Dec 13, 2011 -
10 comments
cactus (aka Jonatan Söderström) is a prolific independent videogame developer. His games are known for playing against genre expectations and their surreal storytelling qualities (as in David Lynch surreal). His latest effort (a collaboration with
his brother and
FUCKING WEREWOLF ASSO) is called
KEYBOARD DRUMSET FUCKING WEREWOLF. It's about an eskimo that that turns into a werewolf and the events that follow. Sound weird? It is. Available in pc and mac flavours.
posted by pancreas
on Nov 5, 2011 -
22 comments
Haw Par Villa, also known as
Tiger Balm Gardens, was quite possibly the
weirdest theme park on the planet. The first park was built in Hong Kong in the 30s, soon followed by another in Singapore. Built by brothers Aw Boon Haw and Aw Boon Par, who made their fortunes selling
Tiger Balm, the park was really a sculpture garden devoted to all aspects of
Chinese mythology. Weirdest and most surreal of all was the section of the park which depicted the the
10 levels of
Buddhist hell, featuring demons
dismembering sinners, and is best described as "if Heironymus Bosch built a putt putt course."
posted by puny human
on Jun 20, 2011 -
30 comments
Babylon:
Surreal Babies "Babies hatch from eggs, bubble from cauldrons, are fished from rivers, emerge in the cabbage patch, sit atop clouds, and ride in zeppelins. They play instruments, drive automobiles, fly in balloons, harvest the fields; an anarchistic world of baby heaven. The postcards were a source of inspiration to many artists in the 1920s and '30s, in particular to both the Dadaists and the Surrealists. They were collected by Paul Éluard, André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Hannah Höch, Herbert Bayer, and Man Ray. The popular images excited inspiration in these artists because of their boundless inventiveness."
posted by puny human
on Mar 17, 2011 -
10 comments
Biome Terrain Mod is a modification for Minecraft that allows tweaking the world generation parameters for the regions in the game. The Minecraft Forums are running
a contest to find cool generation settings. Some of the results are quite striking....
[more inside]
posted by JHarris
on Dec 17, 2010 -
94 comments
"Kavus has got into an irritating habit of holding up his middle finger at you when you speak to him." In 2005, the
Alphabet Business Concern announced that
Cardiacs, its cult-favorite prog-punk outfit, would maintain
an online diary chronicling the band's daily goings-on. The result is a surreal, hilarous interplay between the band's personalities — childish, whiny Tim Smith, pandering narcissist Kavus Torabi, contemplative Jim Smith, and the seemingly perpetually drunk Bob "Babba" Leith.
[more inside]
posted by Rory Marinich
on Oct 12, 2010 -
7 comments
In 1916,
Hugo Ball would fulfill his own
dadaist manifesto by reciting his own nonsense poetry at the
Cabaret Voltaire (not that
Cabaret Voltaire), while wearing a
Cubist costume or a
cylinder with the number 13 covering his face. Ball's poem,
Gadji Beri Bimba, inspired the Talking Heads song,
I Zimbra, but his most famous poem is
Karawane, a pioneering example of
sound poetry. Karawane has more conventional
avant-garde versions on YouTube, but none is more surreal than the
recitation from memory by Marie Osmond (yes, that
Marie Osmond) from a
1980s broadcast of
Ripley's Believe It Or Not!
posted by jonp72
on Mar 9, 2009 -
21 comments
You are interested in the
unknown... the
mysterious. The
unexplainable. That is why
you are
here. And now, for the first time, we are bringing to
you, the full story of
what happened on that
fateful day. We are bringing you all the
evidence, based only on the
secret testimony, of the
miserable souls, who survived this
terrifying ordeal. The
incidents, the
places. My
friend, we cannot keep
this a
secret any longer. Let us
punish the
guilty. Let us
reward the
innocent. My friend, can your heart stand the
shocking facts of a
flickr collection of old snapshots?
posted by gamera
on Feb 14, 2009 -
18 comments
