Same Hill, Different Day by Paul Octavious

© Paul Octavious

Same Hill, Different Day is a delightful photography project by Paul Octavious. He's been photographing the same hill in Chicago for the past few years, and he's also made a few short films of the same hill. This project goes to show, if you look hard enough, you will always find something new in what appears to be familiar. 

© Paul Octavious

© Paul Octavious

Here are three short clips of the hill filmed by Paul Octavious. They bring a smile to my face. I really, really love this project.  


Snow Day

 

"Time lapse of Sledders on the Hill after the first snow of the season." Paul Octavious

Kite Hill

 

"Maybe one of my favorite days." Paul Octavious

Ghana in Fog
  

"On a beautiful day in Chicago as I walked through the park, this insane fog rolled in! A soccer game started on one of the fields I was walking by. I photographed and took video of this experience. Later on after talking the video, I learned that the team was the Ghana World Cup Team! Amazing and random all at the same time." Paul Octavious





www.pauloctavious.com
www.samehilldifferentday.com 

Sixpenny Globe: The Round-The-World Web Series

Sixpenny Globe is a new web series following two friends Kelsey Ogden and Kristen Refermat travelling around the world on a very low budget, spending $30 a day. They travel to 12 countries (France, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, India, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Australia) in four months. 

The series will be available on Blip.TV, but no launch date has been announced. So make sure you follow the Sixpenny Globe website to get all the updates. 

I am really looking forward to this, I love to travel, in comfort I might add. So I'm curious to see how Kelsey and Kristen manage to do this by spending $30 a day.

Sixpenny Globe is a web series that follows Kelsey Ogden and Kristen Refermat as they circumnavigate the world on a budget of just $30 a day. They hitchhike, couchsurf, freeload, and street perform through twelve countries on four continents to prove that adventure, friendship, and broader horizons don't have price tags. 

There is no script. There is no cameraman. These are not filmmakers. They are two 22-year-olds 7 months out of college who set out with nothing but two backpacks, four cameras, and a tripod (which was lost the first day) to see the world on the cheap and bring the story home. 

www.sixpennyglobe.com 
www.twitter.com/sixpennyglobe
www.facebook.com/sixpennyglobe 

LIFECYCLE: 365 days in the life of a bike in NYC

Red Peak Group, a design and strategy agency conducted a year-long experiment where they set out to photograph the same bike in the same spot for a whole year. Check out the result. 

Get a bike. Lock it to a post. Take a pic every day for a year.

Last year, Red Peak Branding conducted a unique urban experiment for Hudson Urban Bicycles. On January 1, 2011 we chained a fully loaded bike - bells, basket, lights and more - to a post along a busy Soho street. We took a picture of the bike everyday for 365 days, watching it slowly vanish before our eyes. The photos we took were then turned into a daily calendar. We call this project LIFECYCLE: 365 days in the life of a bike in NYC.

www.redpeakgroup.com

[Hat tip to @Stillsearching4 for finding this.]

Trailer Tuesday - Moonrise Kingdom

There's only one trailer to share this week - Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom. 

Set on an island off the coast of New England in the summer of 1965, Moonrise Kingdom tells the story of two twelve-year-olds who fall in love, make a secret pact, and run away together into the wilderness. As various authorities try to hunt them down, a violent storm is brewing off-shore - and the peaceful island community is turned upside down in more ways than anyone can handle. Bruce Willis plays the local sheriff. Edward Norton is a Khaki Scout troop leader. Bill Murray and Frances McDormand portray the young girl's parents. The cast also includes Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, and Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward as the boy and girl.

And for the record, I want to live in Wes Anderson's world. 

www.focusfeatures.com/moonrise_kingdom
www.facebook.com/MoonriseKingdom

Music Monday - 2:54

© Maria Daun

Colette and Hannah Thurlow are two sisters that make up the band 2:54. Apparantly the name of the band comes from their favourite moment in The Melvin's song A History Of Bad Men when it goes from doomy to dreamy (according to Rob da Bank in this week's show when I first heard this song).

Join me and let's dreamily sway to this song.

www.twofiftyfour.net
www.mariadaun.tumblr.com

An Ode to the Bicycle by Rob Penn

I really enjoyed this talk from Do Lectures by Rob Penn, an author, a journalist and a man that is passionate about bicycles. In this talk he shares the reasons why he loves the bicycle, his pursuit of the perfect bike and the relevance of the bicycle in the past, present and future. 

I ride a bike to get to work, sometimes for work, I ride a bike to bathe in air and sunshine. I ride a bike to go shopping. I ride a bike to stay sane. I ride a bike to escape when the world is breaking my balls. I ride the bike to savour the physical and emotional fellowship of riding with friends. I rid for a moment of grace. I ride to skip bath time with my kids. I ride for fun. I ride to hear my boy laugh. 

To Rob Penn, finding his dream bike was about,  

Craftsmanship and not technology... A bike that had character, that would never be last year's model. I wanted to savour the process of acquiring this bike because im not going to replace it. I wanted the bike im going to grow old with, the bike I'm going to ride for the rest of my life.

It's wasn't about finding the lightest, sexiest, trendiest, cheapest or most expensive bike. Penn was "looking for the best made", he was looking for artisans to create this bike. He goes on to say, 

Not long ago, much of what we owned was alive with the skill and even the idealism of the people who made it. We retain possessions that are well made and in time they grow in value to us and they enrich our lives when we use them, and we seem to have forgotten this as a society. Almost everything we own begins to deteriorate the moment it comes outside the box.

I now invite you to watch the talk An Ode to the Bicycle and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. 

Rob Penn rides a bicycle to get to work, sometimes for work, to keep fit, to bathe in air and sunshine, to travel, to go shopping, to stay sane, to savour the physical and emotional fellowship of riding with friends, for fun, to scare himself and to hear his boy laugh. He’s ridden a bicycle most days of his adult life. In his late-twenties, he gave up a career as a lawyer and spent three years cycling round the world. His latest book, It’s All About the Bike: the Pursuit of Happiness on Two Wheels has been translated into eight languages. Rob lives in the Black Mountains, South Wales with his wife and three children and commutes to work across a heather moor on a mountain bike.

www.robpenn.net
www.dolectures.com

Trailer Tuesday - PS Your Mystery Sender

I LOVE the this story about unwrapped objects being mailed to Paul Smith by a mystery sender. This has been happening for the past 20 years and I wonder if Paul Smith will ever find out who's sending him these gifts. Maybe it's better for it to always remain a mystery. 

About PS Your Mystery Sender, directed by Benjamin Wigley:

For the past 20 years Paul Smith the world renowned fashion designer from Nottingham has been receiving an avalanche of odd and quirky unwrapped objects which have had a remarkable effect on his life, and all have been sent from a Mystery Person. 

This film takes us on a 'Magical Mystery Tour' in and out of Paul Smith's 'fashion factory', as we discover the secret behind his endless inspiration and worldwide success.

  

www.artdocs.org
www.benjaminwigley.co.uk 
www.paulsmith.co.uk 

Music Monday - The Naked and Famous

Was watching a bit of television last night and there was a show that featured The Naked and Famous from New Zealand. I like their songs and videos, so here they are in this week's Music Monday. 

All of This

Young Blood

Girls Like You

Punching in a Dream

No Way

 
www.thenakedandfamous.com

Sharjah Biennial 10: Film and Audio Commissions Exhibition

Karim Aïnouz, Sunny Lane (Sonnenallee), 2011, film still.

The Sharjah Biennial 10: Film and Audio Commissions Exhibition has been on since 10th November 2011 and there's a few days left for this, it will end on 14th January 2011. 

I've been meaning to share this for a while and told myself I must make sure I don't miss this, particularly because the exhibition includes the screening of Rania Stephan's The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni which I wrote about a few months ago and I'm dying to watch. 


About the exhibition: 

This exhibition will present seven films and three audio works commissioned for Sharjah Biennial 10. Six filmmakers were invited to create a new short film inspired by the Biennial’s title Plot for a Biennial and the key words–Treason, Affiliation, Corruption, Necessity, Devotion, Disclosure, Translation and Insurrection–that constituted its conceptual framework.

Also on view is Rania Stephan’s Sharjah Biennial Prize winning film The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni.

Rania Stephan, The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni (Ikhtifa’aat Soad Hosni el-Thalaathat), 2011, Lebanon/UAE, film still.

In addition to the films, this exhibition will present audio works created by filmmakers for Sharjah Biennial 10.  These works reflect the content of the commissioned films and resonate with the energy of the Arab Spring.

Artist List

Karim Ainouz
Rania Attieh and Daniel Garcia
Hicham Ayouch
Ali Essafi
Sean Gullette
Bahman Kiarostami
Rania Stephan

Must get myself to Sharjah before 14th January.

Event details
Date: till 14th January 2012
Venue: Bait Al Serkal, Sharjah (location map)
Phone: +971 6 568 5050
Free Entry

www.sharjahart.org

[images via sharjahart.org]

Mine - exhibition of films at DUCTAC

Robin Rhode - Untitled (Air Guitar), 2005. Super 8 film transferred to video. 

The Gallery of Light at DUCTAC will be hosting Mine, an exhibition of films by 17 South African including internationally-renowned artists William Kentridge and Robin Rhode. The exhibition will open 18th January and will run till 4th February.

Mine is curated by South African artist, photographer and curator Abrie Fourie, who explains the concept behind the exhibition: 

The title refers not only to the idea of deep level mining, but to the concept of personal ownership. The works featured have been chosen for their diversity, with the common denominator that the artists make reference to themselves in their work, either in person, as actor, model, observer, interviewer or instigator. Mine seeks to explore the myriad ways in which we identify and position our ‘selves’.

List of artists:

• Berni Searle
• Bridget Baker
• Cedric Nunn
• Dineo Seshee Bopape
• Donna Kukama
• Doris Bloom
• Gregg Smith
• Jacques Coetzer
• Johan Thom
• Lerato Shadi
• Michael MacGarry
• Nandipha Mntambo
• Penny Siopis
• Robin Rhode
• Simon Gush & Dorothee Kreutzfeldt
• Teboho Edkins
• William Kentridge

Robin Rhode - Untitled (Air Guitar), 2005. Super 8 film transferred to video.

Robin Rhode - Untitled (Air Guitar), 2005. Super 8 film transferred to video.

Event details
Date: 18th January - 4th February 2012
Opening night: 18th January, 7.30pm
Venue: Gallery of Light, DUCTAC, Mall of the Emirates (location map)
Free entry.

www.ductac.org