Some fun videos from 2010

This year I enjoyed some amazing videos on the web. I want to mention the interactive "Wilderness Downtown" film you can see with the Chrome web browser application for the Arcade Fire song "We Used to Wait" (www.thewildernessdowntown.com/). Also, check out the OK GO! translation party page (http://blog.universalsubtitles.org/translation-party-ok-go/) for some amazing videos. My sons especially like the "White Knuckles" and "This Too Shall Pass" videos, which I also like, but my favorite is "GPS Parade (Back From Kathmandu)" video, as it seems more inspiring to me. A great year for interactive art.

Videos with Baha'i Themes.

I've decided to share some Baha'i-themed music videos today. I'll start this one from the Pacific Ocean Islands, featuring a song about gossip.

And then here is one from Merz. I'm not sure if it has a Baha'i theme, but Merz did some great Baha'i songs in the past.

Here is a Baha'i Prayer with a slide show:

Here is some dancing and music, including Kevin Locke playing flute.

Thao Nguyen

I was listening to an end-of-year favorite songs program on KDHX this past week and heard something by Thao Nguyen (and the Get Down Stay Down Band). Wow! I immediately bought her 2008 album on iTunes ("We Brave Bee Stings..."). This is great stuff. Here are some videos I thought clever and cute.

State Capitals

Arthur was studying his states and state capitals last week, and he's still studying those this week.  Sunday afternoon I put together a slide show for him with some photographs we've taken when we visited various state capitol buildings.  I've put these up so anyone can download them. 

  Here is the State Capitols slideshow in m4v format [21.3 MB] (good for iTunes and iPod).

  Here is the silent slide show of state capitols in mov format [32.6 MB]. 

These are huge video files, so even with a fast connection you'll have to wait a few minutes to download them.  Almost all the photographs were taken by me or someone in my family, but there are a few I took from the Wikipedia Commons and a few I took from government websites where the images were in the public domain.  

Videos I've encountered on the Internet and enjoyed

Today I'll post some videos from YouTube that I like.

First, here is a cute cartoon about Critical Mass.

Here is an amazing music video for a song from one of my favorite albums (and the book is good, too), My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. This is for the song Mea Culpa.

A nice peace video.

One of the best attempts I've ever encountered of trying to capture or induce a mystical experience through video. This 2006 film by Sonja van Kerkhoff is worth watching.

A music video I somewhat like, more for the message than the music, although the music isn't bad, this is World on Fire by Sarah McLachlan.

I love The Fall, and this video for Plastic Man shows a series of images related to Plastic Man while you can listen to Mark E. Smith sing Plastic Man.

And here we have an interpretation of a Captain Beefheart song. Well worth study.

My favorite art videos are animations of abstract works by my favorite artist, Kandinsky. You can see this one or this one.

One of the greatest short films ever made, Jan Svankmajer's 1966 Punch and Judy (Coffin Maker) is available to be seen, and everyone should view it. To me, this is one of the greatest commentaries on the vanities of this life. Greed and jealousy are lampooned, and this material world is portrayed as deeply disturbing and yet somehow tragic and funny. Any Baha'i who knows the about Baha'u'llah's youth cannot forget how He too was inspired by a puppet play when He saw the great Shah puppet thrown in a box after the show.

In the Lawhu'r-Ra'is, Baha'u'llah announced as his aim the unification of the peoples of the world. In the Persian Lawh-i Ra'is, written upon his arrival in Akka and also addressed to Ali Pasha, Baha'u'llah compares the ephemeral pomp and circumstance of the Ottoman court to the elaborate puppet shows he saw as a child at court in Tehran, at the end of which the royal puppets in all their finery were unceremoniously packed into a trunk. - Juan Cole