From the monthly archives:

January 2011

Nilbog Milk

January 30, 2011

Special milk. High in vitamin content.

Most of what can be said about Troll 2 has already been said. To the virgin readers, I simply implore you to add this film to your Netflix queue immediately. It’s available on Instant!
In taking the screenshot, I noticed an easter egg on the label. Check [...]

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Fauxvism: The Gamescapes of James Barnett

January 30, 2011

Like me, James Barnett is interested in the degradation of images as they’re translated from one medium or incarnation to another. On his website, he likens the process to a visual “game of telephone”.
For the above painting, Barnett explored the expansive world of Half Life 2 for compelling landscapes and characters, took a screenshot, [...]

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Nart on the Walls

January 24, 2011

Above is a painting that rests on a wall within the game Call of Duty: Black Ops. I’ve always wondered whose job it is to create this sort of thing. Most modern games have wall art hanging in residential or commercial settings in order to flesh out the environment. In Black Ops, [...]

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Version .87

January 21, 2011

Appropriated from the user-interface of “that venerable photo editing tool”, this piece of wall art from Meninos is the digital equivalent of a painting of a paintbrush. The Wallbar is crafted from medium-density fibreboard, and features a 3-D relief of the Hand tool.

Designing a software package’s UI is a skill that blurs the lines between [...]

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Unbranded in P-Town

January 20, 2011

It looks like the new IFC series, Portlandia, will be keeping Gladys at Product Displacement plenty busy.

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Beat up the Bits

January 16, 2011

I wonder how much of the music for this mock-up of The Jersey Shore RPG is original, and how much was taken from 16-bit SNES titles.
I definitely recognize the main theme from Mario Paint at 2:15, and I’m fairly certain that the victory music at 1:12 is from Pilotwings.

Do you recognize any of these [...]

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Recruited by the Star League

January 12, 2011

All gamers, whether they’ll admit it or not, entertain the fantasy that the skills they (or their thumbs) acquire in the video game world will one day prove useful in a real-life situation. Whether it be fishtailing their Honda Civic around a corner to evade capture by a squad of goons, or having the [...]

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Materials and Religion

January 8, 2011

As I mentioned in a recent post, an old friend of mine named Wispin Larkspur recently hand-delivered a plaque to me which he called The Treachery of Images. The piece seems to synthesize two ideas I’ve explored in blog entries on this site, which is an indication that he’s been following along. I’d [...]

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Wrestle Jam

January 7, 2011

Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler features an amazing scene that highlights the throwback nature of the tragic protagonist. He’s shown trying to convince a modern kid (accustomed to the PTSD-inducing high-def sensory bombardment of Call of Duty 4) that playing the old Nintendo game Wrestle Jam is actually worth his time and attention. Predictably, [...]

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The Treachery of Objects

January 6, 2011

Il n’y pas de pipe. (There is no pipe.)
The Treachery of Objects was created by an old friend of mine named Wispin Larkspur. I have a couple of his other pieces around the house, but this is the only one that’s even remotely tethered to anything culturally identifiable. Specifically, this synthesizes Magritte’s The Treachery [...]

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Not a Real Tongue

January 3, 2011

Being markedly un-Scandanavian, I’ve always assumed that the Icelandic-sounding lyrics of the Icelandic band Sigur Rós were… well… Icelandic. Apparently, however, a good portion of the songs are sung either exclusively or partially in a language known as Vonlenska.

Vonlenska (named for the first song in which it appeared) is actually an idiosyncratic “language” made [...]

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