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Arty Awesomeness Cautionary Tales Entertainment Featured

The Story of Oedipus, Performed by Vegetables

Sigmund Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex says that a certain neurosis where a male child unconsciously desires to kill his father and have sexual relations with his mother. His theory is based on the legend of Oedipus.

In his creative short film, Jason Wishnow tells the tragic tale of Oedipus using the most unlikely actors—vegetables. The stop-motion film took two years to create and starts in medias res where the adult Oedipus, played by a potato, is travelling to Thebes and encounters a piece of broccoli driving a chariot. Neither wants to let the other go first and a fight breaks out. Oedipus kills the offending floret and unwittingly fulfils the first part of a disturbing prophecy. See what happens next below, but be warned, the film contains scenes of vegetable sensuality.

[via Vimeo]

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Arty Awesomeness Featured

Versus/Hearts

Tom and Jerry. Alien versus Predator. Android versus iOS. It’s these rivalries that are at the heart of the cute illustrations by Dan Matutina, an illustrator based in the Philippines. Matutina depicts the love/hate bond between characters from popular culture in the shape of a heart, with each rival making up a symbiotic half of the heart/relationship.

Have a look at some of Matutina’s Versus/Hearts after the jump.

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Awesomeness Video Clips

Growing Knowledge: Zack Matere’s Inspirational Google Search Story

Often times I take the Internet for granted. I LOL at mundane things like 2 Hamsters 1 Wheel and Gangnam Style and easily forget about the profound effect the Internet can have.

When his potato crop kept failing, Kenyan farmer Zack Matere turned to the Web for help. He cycled 10 KM to his local Internet cafe and a simple search for “potato disease” produced some life-changing results. Since his discovery, Matere has helped his neighbours and friends gain access to information that they would not have had before. As he says, “Information is powerful but it is how we use it that will define us.”

Matere’s story is told as part of a series called “Google Search Stories”. See it below.

[via Huffington Post]

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Entertainment TV Video Clips

Stirling and Hollens Cover Game of Thrones

Musicians Lindsey Stirling and Peter Hollens weren’t fiddling around when it came to their cover of the Game of Thrones main title sequence. The 140 separate tracks that make up their cover are made up solely of vocals and violin. Hollens recorded over 100 vocal tracks and is seen mouthing off as Stirling plucks her violin like a fiery Targaryen. Have a look at their stirring rendition below.

[via Geekologie]

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Arty Awesomeness Entertainment Featured Video Clips

The Instructional Guide to Dating

Today was the last day of Short & Sweet, a six-week celebration of the short film genre at the Wunderbar Theatre in Cape Town. I don’t know how I didn’t find about it earlier, but I clearly have a knack for missing the obvious.

Graphic designer and filmmaker Siobhan Bowers has a knack for creating fun and relevant instructional videos. Presented in the style of a retro in-flight safety talk, her short film The Instructional Guide to Dating provides ten useful tips for a successful touchdown on the landing strip of love.

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Awesomeness Entertainment Music Video Clips

Horseplay, Gangnam Style!

South Korean rapper Psy (real name: Park Jae-Sang) is a viral sensation. The music video to his song Gangnam Style about a yokel who tries to impress a lady by pretending to be a dapper man-about-town has been viewed over 90 million times on YouTube.

The infectious charm comes from his comical equestrian-inspired dance move, which has been aptly titled “the horse-riding dance”. If you’re yet to experience it and are in need of a feel-good song, check out Gangnam Style below.

[via @thejessness]

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Arty Awesomeness Photoworthy

You Won’t Believe It’s Fireworks

In the right light, the long exposure photographs of David Johnson might be mistaken for beautiful sea anemones or flower heads. The photographer was at a fireworks festival in Ottawa, Canada and fiddled with his camera settings to produce some rather unusual photos of the pyrotechnic display above his head. Johnson explains his process:

The technique I used was a simple refocus during the long exposure. Each shot was about a second long, sometimes two. I’d start out of focus, and when I heard the explosion I would quickly refocus, so the little stems on these deep sea creature lookalikes would grow into a fine point. The shapes are quite bizarre, some of them I was pleasantly surprised with!

Have a look at a few of Johnson’s photos after the jump.

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Arty Awesomeness Entertainment Featured TV Video Clips

Mad Skills, Yo! The Breaking Bad Remix

If Breaking Bad ever needed a dance theme, this would be it. YouTuber user placeboing uses a selection of sound bites from seasons one and two of the award-winning show to create a catchy ditty that involves some of our favourite characters.

With support from the unhinged Tuco Salamanca, Skinny Pete who can’t spell n’ shit, and the sounds of Don Héctor’s service bell, Walter and Jesse show off their mad skills in the Breaking Bad Remix.

[via Boing Boing]

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Awesomeness Featured

We Review: Sleeping Dogs

I know Vancouver-based studio United Front Games for its less-cuter-than-LBP racer, ModNation Racers. They show that they’re nothing if not versatile with their latest game, the open-world action-adventure game Sleeping Dogs. With many of the game’s mechanics reminiscent of Grand Theft Auto, Batman, and Assassin’s Creed, does the developer combine these ingredients into a hearty tale of crime and punishment? Or is it more of a dog’s breakfast? Find out as my review continues after the jump.

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Cautionary Tales Useful/Useless Info

Infographic: The Internet a Decade Later

Some of us spent an obscene amount of time on the Internet, so much so that we won’t come to bed because someone is wrong with the Internet.

An animated infographic from Bested Sites shows how the addiction has grown in the last 10 years from the sheer numbers of Internets users, to the time spent browsing, to what some sites looked like then and now.

See The Internet A Decade Later after the jump. If your Internet connection hasn’t improved in the last 10 years, it may take a while to load.