Rungy Chungy Cheese Bees

Andy James works with Chautauqua students, including Shayla Malm, left, during a recent music class. Photo by Elizabeth Shepherd

My friend Andy James teaches elementary school on Vashon Island, a rural community a short ferry ride from Seattle. He’s got a real passion for teaching, and my conversations with him about it always leave me inspired. His latest project is no exception: faced with a new role as music teacher, he decided the thing to do would be to get the kids to compose, perform and record an entire album. And they did it. Not just any album, mind you: a concept album made entirely of original songs written by the kids, based on a South American folk story called “The Whistling Monster”. Now they’re selling the CD to raise funds for the school (and in the process help save Andy’s job, which like many teachers’ is on the chopping block). I haven’t heard the music yet, but if I know Andy it’ll be worth a listen!

The whole operation is pretty low-tech, so as of now you can’t buy the CD online. Update: Chautauqua Elementary School has made the CD available online! You can order it here in MP3 form or as a physical disk. Take a listen, and leave a comment below if you’ve got anything to say!

Eric Rodenbeck just pointed me to this gorgeous little game for the iPhone: Drop7. It combines the best elements of Tetris and Sudoku, but somehow transcends them both. While most games start out interesting and then plateau, this one actually gets better with time. It tempts you to come up with ever-more-creative ways to set up the domino-like chain reactions that yield the highest scores. The design is also solidly appealing (hey, with two nice weights of Helvetica, how can you go wrong!) And is it addictive? Ohhhh man, is it ever. The first time I played it, I was on a hard-seated chair. I don’t know how long I was sitting there, but when I tried to stand up, I couldn’t feel my toes. Both of my legs had gone to sleep. It’s that addictive.

My only critique is that every single number is the wrong color. Consult a synesthete next time, ok guys? :-)

Encyclopedia Pictura has just released the video for my favorite song on Bjork’s latest album… and the video’s as good as the song! Apparently the video was shot in stereoscopic HD. Don’t know how we’ll ever get to see it that way, but in the meantime, here’s a not-too-shabby quicktime. (Don’t bother with YouTube’s version, it’s intolerably compressed.)

Thanks to Guido for the link! See also Cartoon Brew for a making-of video and other links…

More billboard remixing by Jason Eppink: The Pixelator. I love the tongue-in-cheek description of the project. It’s like an inside-out version of “The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal”:

Pixelator is an unauthorized on-going video art performance collaboration with the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority, Clear Channel Communications, and its selected artists.

Previously

(via Wooster Collective)

This may be the coolest thing I’ve heard on the radio since Joe Frank. It’s a show called Radio Lab. It’s hard to pin down exactly what kind of show it is: is it straight-up science documentary a la “Nova”, or a “My Dinner with Andre” style conversation, or a Negativland-influenced audio collage? I’ve listened to two of the first five shows (Emergence and Time) and I can’t make up my mind. Here’s what they say about themselves:

Radio Lab

Jan van Raay, Xerographic Fishwork, 1977.

Jan van Raay now has an official website. Over the years she has been a photographer, a painter, a writer, a performance artist, and an early innovator of photocopier art, among other things. She also happens to be my mom. Welcome to the web, Mom!

Okay, this may be the coolest little hack I’ve ever seen, and simple enough that even a non-engineer like me could do it: LED “Throwies”, brought to us by Make Magazine. They’re basically little LED lights connected to a battery and a magnet, which you can attach to any ferromagnetic surface simply by tossing it at it. Ever wanted to see your name in lights? Now’s your chance! Be sure to check out the excellent video by Resistor and Fi5e.

(via BoingBoing.)

Okay, here’s something that hits all the right buttons: a timelapse map of the world made using webcams from everywhere on the planet. I could do without the elevator music in the background, but the video itself is just fascinating! Eureka moment: seeing the wave of daylight spread from east to west across the whole globe.

Related to this: the Google search activity map. (Both links via infosthetics.)

The Groove Tube. What an improvement over regular TV!

(via spot blog.)