MOON TUNES
August 31, 2009
by VBS Staff
Motherboard
One thing uneducated people like to say about famous works of art they don’t understand is that they/their kids/arbitrary beast suffering from arbitrary neural affliction could make that. While this statement is generally a gross overestimation of their own creative faculties, exceptions abound, with a major one being the serialist works of Pierre Boulez where the beast/child/dunce in question is the Moon.
ITP WINTER SHOW
August 31, 2009
by VBS Staff
Motherboard
NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program is yet another liberal graduate-studies program tasked with “empowering” its participants. Before you start in with the chorus of groans, rather than making their students feel good about having fallopian tubes or curly hair or a lot of melanin, ITP has gone the opposite route and is teaching them to apply the latest cutting-edge advances in technology to quotidian ventures like art and music and drinking. It’s basically a crazy inventor school for artsy types, so in a way it’s like they’re literally empowering their students, as in giving them the ability to create crazy powers for themselves like robot wings or radioactive jism. Or at least the ability to piece together a piano that will mix you a different drink based on what song you play.
In this edition of Motherboard we travel back in time to ITP’s 2008 Winter expo and sip a drink from that very piano.
THIS MOVIE WILL MAKE YOU CUM
August 27, 2009
by JUAN CARLOS & VICTOR PIÑEIRO ESCORIAZA
Motherboard
This week marks the release of Second Skin, a documentary about virtual worlds and the gamers who live in them and probably the single best movie of this year. It’s gotten a bunch of rave reviews and a lot of press so far, but I think the public at large are blind to the colossal, Brobdingnagian implications this movie brings to the table.
BEHIND THE CERNS
August 24, 2009
by TOM LITTLEWOOD
Motherboard
If you haven’t hit your nerd limit with today’s episode of Motherboard, here are some more pictures from our trip to the CERN Gigantic Earth Destroyer—sorry, Large Hadron Collider…
WE LOVE THE STYLOPHONE, BUT FUCK ROLF HARRIS
August 17, 2009
by VBS Staff
Motherboard
A few months ago, we decided to make a series of short films on one of the silliest, most iconic synths on earth, the result of which is today’s episode of Motherboard, directed by William Fairman (who also directed The Deer Hunter episode of Rule Britannia). The Stylophone was originally invented as a children’s toy until it fell into the hands of Rolf Harris, who called it “the biggest little instrument of the century” and brought it to global fame. After that, Bowie used it on “Space Oddity.” It also pretty much invented Kraftwerk.
A MESSAGE FROM STEPHEN LEA SHEPPARD, HOST AND CHIEF MAGISTRATE OF THE GAMING HOUR
August 10, 2009
by STEPHEN LEA SHEPPARD
Motherboard
Anybody who knows anything about my acting history knows I don’t actually care about acting much. It’s not that I don’t care for it—of all the jobs I’ve ever had, it’s probably my favorite, and not just because acting for Hollywood entitles one to ridiculous paychecks. (I say “probably” because I like writing a lot, too. Like all people who were picked on as children, I’m a huge megalomaniac, and so love garnering praise for my intellectual output. On top of that I always found acting more like being the director’s modeling tool.) But I never put much effort into acting—I was first cast as Harris in Freaks & Geeks while attending an open casting call on a whim, one I almost didn’t attend because it felt like a waste of a day (seriously, you know who gets cast in those things? Nobody, that’s who). Then I was cast as Dudley in The Royal Tenenbaums on the strength of my F&G performance. Essentially, I fell backwards into the profession. And then I fell out again, because, as it turns out, I suck at playing anyone other than myself.
JESUS MENDOZA'S CROSS OF STATIC
July 27, 2009
by JOHN MCSHANE
Motherboard
About a month ago, we aired an episode of Motherboard about electrophobes (or, more PC-ly, people suffering from electro-hypersensitivity) in the UK. They’ve taken drastic measures to combat the overwhelming levels of electrosmog in our environment coming from our ever increasing reliance on technology and gadgetry, and while there are those in the medical establishment who accuse them of faking, something is definitely screwing with their innards. Anyways, we don’t mean to recap the whole show or imply that we don’t think that you’re keeping step with each and every video that goes up here, loyal viewer. But this is all relevant to today’s ep.
LEAFLABS ARE MIT'S FINEST FUCK-UPS
July 20, 2009
by NADJA OERTELT
Motherboard
I first met Jon Williams in 2003 at a party in a graffiti-spattered dorm at MIT. We shared a family-size jug of OJ and vodka and he whispered in my ear that he was from Oklahoma. After trying to pull a move that should have led me to punch him in the face, I instead christened him “Goddamn Okie,” a name which has stuck to this day.
THE DOG-HEAD-TRANSPLANT GAP
July 08, 2009
by VBS Staff
Motherboard
Did we ever show you this? It’s a 1940 Soviet documentary about “reanimatologist” Sergei Bryukhonenko’s critical work in the field of keeping disembodied dog heads alive. There was a long-standing mini-Cold War in the medical community on whether Dr. Bryukhonenko’s advances were on the level or just part of some insidious Commie psy-op campaign to convince us the USSR had outstripped our dog… head… keeping… capabilities, but the general consensus these days is shit’s real. You may be thinking, “Yes, lopping the head off a dog and hooking it up to a mechanical lung-and-heart device called an autojektor is pretty awesome and, yes, that would be a pretty great name for a Kraftwerk parody, but what good does this do me, John Q. Bloglic?” Well, not a whole lot on its own, but bear in mind that Bryukhonenko’s cyborg puppyhead went on to inspire his countryman Vladimir Demikhov’s two-headed dog, which in turn led American Catholic Robert J White to pick up the scalpel and swap the heads on some monkeys, which could very well be our ticket to some sort of brain-in-a-jar, eternal-android-life type arrangement a few years down the road. Oh what, that sounds like a pipe dream to you? Actually it’s already possible. We just have to get all the anti-head-transplant Nazis off our case.
Anyhow, you can download your own copy of Experiments in the Revival of Organisms from the Prelinger Archives. We recommend queuing the video to the four-minute mark, taking a few deep hits of DMT, then having your buddy click play.
DIY NUKES
June 29, 2009
by VBS Staff
Motherboard
Despite the fact that even Pakistan has worked out how to make their own nukes by this point, the blueprints for America’s first atomic bombs remain a closely guarded state secret, available only to high-ranking officials in the Department of Energy. At least they were until a truck driver from Waukesha, Wisconsin figured them out on his own and built an exact replica of the bomb that leveled Hiroshima in his garage.
Most commented
this week
- 11 GRAND OLD BRITISH CONFLICTS
- 9 SHAMROCK SHAKES AND HONEY
- 8 WOMAN BLOCKS LHC
- 8 DRUG BUSTS
- 8 REAL VAMPIRES OF FLORIDA
