Relentless

 Our friends at lifestyle mag Huck, took a bunch of Relentless with them to the uber cool Ispo board sports exhibition in Munich - and we looked pretty good on their stand even if I do say so! The usual late-night parties and early morning exhibition starts have left most of the industry in pieces, fortunately we could provide a little pick-me-up to the party-hard masses.

Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth - Theodor Adorno.

Putting to one side larger, more philosophical arguments, art in its simplest form is about self-expression; the medium this is delivered through is of little consequence. This point has never held more weight than in the modern world. Whether you are a snowboarder punctuating the air with incredible visual spectacles or a street urchin scribbling in subways with marker pen, it’s all art.

Banks Violette provides a snapshot of the human psyche in situ.

In light of our own Rev recently going live, we wanted to share some points of reference of the project. The Rev is an abstraction of a complex idea, as much as it is a dynamic portrait of anybody's favourite music.

An influence that spans far beyond evolutionary biology. The timelessness of Darwin’s work is continuously being reinforced in modern days - it is being applied as a methodology to disciplines spanning from economics, to behavioral studies.

Even more impressive is Darwin’s almost ascetic devotion to his work and his unparalleled level of conviction to his ideas. Confessing murder is a bit strong, but we accept the analogy.

For more info and a collection of Darwin's complete works try The Complete Darwin.
For an in-depth look at Darwin's legacy try The Guardian.
 

The Canadian metal outfit excel at being outsiders.

Rarely are there moments in pop culture when obscurity is as conspicuously celebrated as in the triumphant ‘Anvil! The Story of Anvil.’

The film was screened February 15 at the Sheperds Bush Empire as part of the Secret Cinema series, with a surprise performance by the band, and a guest appearance by Anthrax’s own Scott Ian. ??

For the uninitiated, Anvil is a thrash metal band, that has been simmering under the mainstream radar for nearly 28 years, with 17 hard-boiled albums in their repertoire. They hail all the way from Canada - a country that is already a rich source of under-appreciated metal icons like Voivod, Annihilator and Disaster Area. ??

Edgar Müller’s street artscapes bend all kinds of perspectives.

An apocalyptic abyss opens up on a suburban German street and a shark rips through the pavement of Hong Kong, while the earth splits, leaving a 250 square-metre chasm in Dun Laoghaire, Ireland.??

News of the world? Not entirely. The German street artist Edgar Müller has been hard at work in a quest to reshape pedestrian mundanity in his ambitiously grand streetscapes.?

The result is both monumental and intricate in the level of detail it achieves. His artwork is expansive and noble and often carries all the stylistic sophistication of a Caravaggio. What he does surpass the masters in, is his artistic generosity and his willingness to let go of his art, once his canvas is reclaimed by commuters.

For more info check Edgar Müller's website.

The Renaissance's master technologist.

It has taken us nearly 400 years to start coming to grips that one of Renaissansce's great masters may have been using an early form of photography to inform his sketches.

Image-capturing devices are nowadays more than just cameras - they help us communicate, feel secure and often entertain us. As a result, we have such a high level of visual awareness, that we often take the technology for granted or we ironise it. The roots of photography, however go much farther than we might have imagined.
 
According to Roberta Lapucci from the prestigious Studio Art Centers International in Florence, the artist used a spotlight that would illuminate his subject and react with light-sensitive substances that he applied to his canvases. Taking into consideration the craftmanship that becomes immediately evident when confronted with one of his masterpieces, it actually comes a bit as no surprise. 

He just strikes us like the kind of person that would invent photography, if he had to.

The nature of competition in tooth and claw.

We all know that the fittest survive, that is the evolutionary premise for everything living. But evolution is a game of both appearances as well as functionality, and nature is quite the gifted designer.

A recent paper, published by University of Montana looks into the development of animal armament, and particularly the how it is actually utilized in battle. The examples are endless, ranging from the surreal horns on these dung beetles, to the sadly extinct Irish Elk.

Apparently, the weapons (be it claws, antlers or horns) would actually be used for battle at the very beginning of the species' evolutionary development. After evolutionary pressures diminish, they grow to become a signaling device, that would essentially cause animals to resolve conflict by sizing up their opponent's armory, rather than battleing it out.

Even though they end up losing their feasibility, these variegated outcomes of evolutionary forces all of a sudden become works of natural art. Ones of strange, almost baroque appeal.

Christian Fennesz's nautical music soundscapes.

With spring ripe in the northern hemisphere, time comes to align our music library to something more representative of the impending long days.

Austrian ambient artist Fennesz is quite possibly the most fittingly appropriate example of spring music. And even though his work ticks all the right boxes for a pop musician, its delivery does not fit many popular music conventions.

Fennesz's music is minimal, but the result is quite the opposite. He amplifies the minutae of feedback and seemingly arbitrary noise occurrences into a loud, organic aesthetic. ??His legendary 2001 album Endless Summer is one of few examples, where the work's title has a direct relationship with its content. It is an album that is a veritable modern classic - an enduring example of an artist picking up vernacular sounds and converting them into something that is as far away from the ordinary as it gets. A masterful ebb and flow of textures, incrementally layered patterns that supercede some of the most colossal rock riffs ever written.??

Fennesz’s nautical aesthetic is further accentuated in his most recent outing - Black Sea which it is out now on Touch, and is equally remarkable. You can also catch Fennesz at the Southbank Centre’s Ether Talk on April 20, or live the following day.?

Jane Austen's Regency romance is getting the gore treatment.

Jane Austen's legendary Pride and Prejudice gets quite spectacularly resuscitated by the Los Angeles-based film and television writer Seth Grahame-Smith in what he proclaims would become the advent of 'murder-lit.'
 

Claiming the mash-up nature of pop music as inspiration, the author suggested that the novel was already an easy target. The 1813 classic is conveniently out of copyright, and if you look at it with the critical eye of a film connoisseur you begin to see all the buiding blocks of classic horror bonanza - a country estate, heroines in distress and the misleadingly idyllic landscapes of Longbourn and Meryton, with a gaping lack of gore.

??Going into more detail will probably not be doing any justice to this suspenseful stylistic marriage. At the moment, however, it is subject to a ferocious Hollywood bid, in which we are sure it will make a killing.

Pun absolutely intended.

The book is currently out in the United States, with a UK edition in the works.

Artist Brian Dettner's take on a medium that to many begins to feel obsolete.

We recently had a look at a postmodern adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic Regency romance Pride and Prejudice, which brings to mind another closely related, and similarly bizarre personage - Brian Dettner.

?Artist Brian Dettner’s medium of choice is once again literary, but his approach and reinterpretations take a different form. He intervenes in a rather more physical way, and the result is fittingly striking.

According to Numerati author and technology analyst Stephen Baker, we are closing in on a definitive new era.

What do you think happens when you submit a search query in Google? Apparently as reality moves into digital territory, it adopts the form of code and archives. Would the Internet slide down yet another conspirational slippery slope? Thankfully there are voices of reason.

Pretty much everything that happens on the Internet stays on the Internet - where we go, what we do and generally what we are about. Everything is archived, tagged and sorted. There are entire software suites designed to manage such information.

As dreary as it may sound this is quite an exciting time for us. Now, more than ever, we have the resources to model forecasts with incredible precision, simply because of the accuracy and completeness of this data. It is gathered around the world in near real time and it is archived very quickly and efficiently.

Such a daunting task, of course, requires a new level of competence that surpasses the somewhat antiquated model of social sciences. Author Stephen Baker argues that this will form the basis of a new era of literacy – a numerical one.

In an upcoming talk at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, himself and James Harking – the author of Cyburbia, will be covering the topics of privacy, optimizing decision-making and forecasting. The speakers will be adressing the nature of metrics gathered online, as well as the moral and practical implications of the subject.

The talk takes place at the Institute of Contemporary Arts on Tuesday, May 14 2009.
 

Simon Schubert’s art puts perspective to paper.

At a glance, Simon Schubert’s art appears completely ordinary, simply because paper rarely manifests itself as white, pristine, and uncrumpled. And when it does, we are probably staring, rather than looking at a blank page, in preparation to work on it.

And this is exactly why the artist’s work succeeds - he very skilfully confronts our past experiences. The amount of detail that he achieves by simply folding and creasing is almost incomprehensible. This is further compounded by the pure surprise at just how expressive a sheet of paper can be, without having ever had contact with a brush.

Ever found it difficult to look away from a wreck? Try looking away from these.

The ocean has been the focus of all sorts of enquiry from the very ancient of times. There has always been a sense of danger and mystery, a conflicting relationship.

A relationship based on both gratitude for what the ocean has given us, as well as anguish at how impenetrable and dangerous it can often be. There is no shortage of stories that document the tragedy and hopelessness of these aquatic disasters. After all, one of Hollywood's largest-grosing films is pretty much just that (with a tiny bit of romance and human tragedy, of course.)

Avant-garde drone titans Sunn O))) are back and it’s not a pretty picture.

They have no rhythm, they have no soul. Sunn O)))’s guttural, primitive sound can be so unrelentingly monolithic, that most listenining experiences are a pure test of human will.

How much longer can this torturous chord last? What will the next one sound like? Seattle’s dark ambient mavericks are not particularly keen on providing answers.

There is nothing conclusive or cathartic about their sound. They will delay, distort and deny the listener a melody, and that is simply how it is.

As we mentioned in an earlier post, Sunn O))) are not just any rock band – their work may be loud and abrasive, but it is also extremely well considered and crafted. All It really takes for an uninitiated listener is a moment of distraction to really appreciate the dynamics of their composition.

An experience similar to squinting your eyes in order to grasp the scale and purpose of detail in a painting -  once you are no longer fixating on the vast choral plateaus of their sound, the melodies become much better defined, and all of a sudden you are struck by the large picture and the realization that this is a band that is a good step above the rest.

Sunn O)))’s most recent outing Monoliths and Dimensions came out very recently and is out now on Southern Lord.

A series of subversive readings of Disney’s animated fairy tales.

Fairy tales have traditionally had a tremendous task on their shoulders. They have to function as a moral corrective, a convincing emotional vignette, and more than often lull their audience into slumber.

Adhering to the “happily ever after” principle and all its prerequisites is the tried and tested way of softening the narrative crescendos to a palatable final line, in order to cue our audience to rest.

Disney’s modern interpretations of the classical Grimm narratives are the dominant form of the traditional fairy tale. The multi-million dollar animated features have essentially idealized a lot of what was at first cautionary tales - rife with betrayal, peril and often an ominous conclusion. The resulting product created a misbalance with both reality and the original creative edge of fairy tales.

Andres Amador's race against the tide.

There is something incredibly fulfilling and near-perfect in the way wet sand can be leisurely shaped into all sorts of intricate forms.

It only takes a handful of seconds and a dash of imagination - we can swiftly emulate nearly any shape, destroy it and create another one. Nothing is lost or gained, except perhaps, an afternoon at the beach. But that is what summer’s for.

From what we can tell, Andres Amador has spent quite a lot of his time on the beach, exploring the seemingly limitless potential of what can be done with sand.

The balloon count peaked at the staggering 329 on 26 July, a sight that would have made old Jean-François shed a joyful tear, before hopping off on a balloon of his own.

Photo credits:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/danimages/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gbatistini/

Buildings aren’t supposed to produce sounds, are they? David Byrne begs to differ.

Surely if a building makes a sound, it’s either a sign of something going wrong, or in the case of the Roundhouse, it is being used as a musical instrument.

David Byrne, lead Talking Head and one of the most courageously eccentric figures of the post-punk movement has seen it all. He helped the Talking Heads sneak in their musical agenda onto the pop radar in a convincing, Trojan horse of a musical format – a loose-limbed blend of post-punk, afrobeat and new wave.

And whilst the Talking Heads stood for a tasteful balance of eccentricity and experimentation, David Byrne consistently sought out other creative outlets to nurture some of the most more game-changing sounds of the 1980’s along with Brian Eno and Robert Fripp.

Here is a video of Les Paul introducing the Les Pulveriser - further proof (if any is really needed) of his incredibly infectious enthusiasm. Makes Steve Jobs look like a complete hack.

More on Les Paul can be found in the upcoming Sound Issue of This Is The Order, which can be obtained by signing up for The Order. We will also be running an exclusive competition for members of The Order to win a custom Gibson Les Paul, so be quick or be denied.
 

Parkour leaves the city.

As we mentioned in a previous entry, parkour, or ‘the art of movement’ originated in France and has spread over the globe at an astonishing rate, latest evidence found in Kazakhstan.

Parkour is commonly known for its heart-stopping, high-flying, danger-tempting movements and is ordinarily linked to urbanites who have easy access to roof tops, skate parks and multi storey parks. As of recently, however, the sport has surprisingly hit the coast lines of the former Russian republic Kazakhstan.

The highly-commended documentary will be an exclusively screened tonight, and followed by Q&A with the man himself, for those who manage to muster the strength to confront him with a question.

For more info:

The ICA London
Martin Strel

Henry Wellcome’s medical artefacts on display.

Henry Wellcome’s collection reveals a man fully invested in his dream, and showts just how far he went.

The rigours of a strict religious upbringing must have had a profound effect on Henry Wellcome. It is not difficult to imagine how his vision fuelled his ascent in becoming one of the world’s pre-eminent and most famed medical entrepreneurs.

His passion infiltrated many aspects of his personal and professional life. Driven by an insatiable desire to bring clarity both to the subject of medicine, as well as its role in the human psyche, he began a collection of medical artefacts. The collection grew, as did his company. In the process, he produced many firsts in the history of modern medicine (like for example the tablet), and certifiably the only one with nearly a million items of medical history in his possession.

And what a collection it is. It maps out the development of medicine and healing through history and cultures. It unfolds from the apocryphal, through anecdotal to analytical. Amulets against malevolent spirits, Napoleon’s toothbrush, and specially commissioned art by Richard Tennant Cooper are but a snapshot of the variety available on offer.

His extraordinary vision and commitment produced perhaps one of the most peculiarly curated exhibitions to date - part culture, part art, part technology – all of which, is housed at the Wellcome Trust in London, and available to view for free. Henry Wellcome’s collection is also the subject of a new book – An Infinity of Things by Frances Larson, published by Oxford University Press.

The evidence surrounding the action.

We are suitably fixated with the nature of sports - the drama, drive, tension, the often animalistic competition all play an indellible part of our infatuation with spectator sports.

Our fascination is well-documented. There are books, studies, and a matter of thousands of years of human history that position sports as a central element to our cultural move forward.

American photographer Howard Shatz has taken things to a completely different level, far more peripheral to the concept of sports. In an astounding series of boxing portaits he compares side by side before and after images of fighters. The vivid, almost forensic approach,allows for a sober perspective on what is otherwise a testosterone-driven and intensely brutal spectacle.

Photos: World Press Photo
http://www.howardschatz.com/

The world's chess titans clash.

The two titans of chess Gary Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov will be playing 12 games of chess between 21 and 24 September this year, commemorating 25 years of their legendary rivalry.

Chess carries some of the most openly exotic permutations of competition out there. The art of chess and the decision-making process that supports it has stimulated a heated discourse - one that even includes computers.

Controversy and idiosyncrasy seem to be nearly prerequisite for becoming a dominant chess player. Being Russian, apparently also helps. Most chess players are often entangled in mystery – they begin as prodigal youths that graduate through a sheltered life of chess tournaments and find comfort in pursuing obscure, and often deeply personal causes.

The world’s top two are no exception. Anatoly Karpov has left aside the spoils of the world of chess dominance and has recently gotten involved in promoting the use of iodised salt. Not one to be outdone, Gary Kasparov has taken to becoming one of the most vocal critics of Russia’s former president - Vladimir Putin, which has resulted in his arrest and numerous life threats.

For a precious three days, however, these two will put their considerable hobbies aside and will clash in 12 games of raw, unadulterated strategic action in Valencia, Spain. We are sold.

Sand Painting saves the day.

The world appears to be immersed in a culture of reality TV that entertains the viewer through hilarity, conforming to the latest trends and the general misfortune of others. 'Ukraine's Got Talent 's most recent winner is a breath of fresh air. 

It is rare that a television audience can become so completely enamoured and emotionally moved purely through an artists.

TV talent contest “Ukraine’s Got Talent” has discovered an exception to this rule - Kseniya Simonova. The young Ukrainian is now fast gaining broad popularity way beyond the confines of her home country, for having conquered the infamous format with such an unparalleled grace.

Viale's monuments to the absurd.

David’s arms covered in Russian tattoos, and The Big Bang in the form of a Popcorn kernel, expertly carved Styrofoam marble. Magic.

Fabio Viale’s sculptural work makes a very special kind of a statement. A typical example of the Italian artist’s subdued irrevence is how he has manipulated the quiet magnificence of Michelangelo’s ‘David’ into a disquieting statement of manhood – he takes what is famously under-represented, and magnifies it to absurd proportions.

We came across a recent example coming from two kite surfing daredevils who took advantage of the extreme winds to some very impressive results. The young gentlemen from West Sussex took the weekend winds in stride and performed an amazing stunt over the Worthing pier.

I think it is fair to say they have considerably... hmm, elevated the collective standard making the most of kite surfing.

How blending in can help you stand out.

Beijing-based artist Liu Bolin really makes one wonder just how much Photoshop actually achieves.

The meticulous detail of his camouflage art somehow casts a shadow on all the computer-generated effects in the world, whilst making a powerful political statement. Seeing Liu Bolin blend in with often disquieting images of power, symbols of the state, or the state's notorious neglect - like decrepit ruins, anonymous fields or a prison courtyard, creates a human-shaped void of sorts.

Michael Paulus gets to the heart of the matter.

The brilliant work of Oregonian artist Michael Paulus has a fabulous darkness to it.

He takes famous cartoon characters and adds a rather surreal dimension to their often exaggerated proportions. While quite grim sounding, his autopsycal drawings of Betty Boop, Hello Kitty and the Power Puff girls are more humorous than they are unnerving.

Another element of surprise is how recognizable these characters are even in skeletal form. You can actually own these unique pieces of pop art for some not unreasonable prices, right from the artists' website.

www.michaelpaulus.com

We never thought china got as exciting as this.

If there was one and only time when we would write about china, this is it.

We feel very appropriately excited by these tableware designs. An ambitious start up company called The New English will definitely convert a lot of people into china connoseurs - it feels like The Pistols finally reconciled their gripe with the Queen. Or could it be the other way around?

The New English have created a collection of tableware which is truly uniqe - ranging from skull and bone designs, through anatomical print and caterpillars - otherwise unappetising subjects turned in the perfect accompaniment for a roast beef.

This modern take on tableware feels horribly right - it has distilled 19-century British design and topped it off with a heavy serving of Damien Hirst. Something that we can truly stand by.

More Info: http://www.thenewenglish.co.uk

Performance art taken to yet another extreme.

Many a times we have extolled the riveting highs achieved by our Relentless artists. We are suitably proud of them.

'Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.' said the ever-wise Churchill and we couldn't agree more. Understandably, an indelible part of all of these dramatic stories of success is, of course the struggle in getting there.

This most spirited of principles best describes the work of Kerry Skarbakka. The performance artist's portfolio consists of blood-curdling moments of inertia, midway between peril and success. The daredevil artist has made an entire study of ordinary and not-so-ordinary situations of physical collapse, and has somehow managed to create some truly pertrifying photographic work.

For more info see: http://www.skarbakka.com/

Half-data, half-art, wholly fascinating.

Who would have thought infographics existed in such finely ornamented form?

Infographics is the general term for creating a visualisation of qualitative information (i.e. large amounts of data.) This definition of the term is perhaps misleadingly contemporary. Mapping dates back to some of the first-known cave drawings, which consisted mostly of primitive landscapes drawn in charcoal, much like the famous Lascaux cave paintings.

As science progressed, mathematics, physics and the natural sciences began to converge, and called for a better way to record the more abstract, and often little known corners of the world. So more sophisticated ways of visualising information emerged, much like these fabulous Victorian infographics.

Building peace in Afghanistan, one skate park at a time.

Welcome to Skateistan. Clumsy name aside, this has got to be one of the best piece of news to come out of the war-torn country we have ever heard.

To the naysayers this would appear a mere drop in what appears to be an ocean of disagreement and cross-cultural tension. But we firmly believe that this is a valuable first step to something much bigger, and so do the people behind the initiative. Under the disguise of a skate park Skateistan in Kabul provides workshops in teamwork, peace building, safety and social development for girls.

We fully support the initiative and hope to see more peace-building initiatives that engage people in actually doing something, rather than just the usual polemics.

For more info: http://skateistan.org/
Photos: Jan Chipcase
 

The world's best and brightest currencies.

You don't have to be an aspiring millionaire or a financier to be passionate about money.

The collection and scholarship of currency is pretty much a discipline in its own and it is called numismatics. We would dismiss it as perhaps one of the most boring things to get involved in, if it weren't for some of these spectacular finds we came across.

Who knew that hidden gems like the George Best fiver, and Zimbabwe's one hundred trillion note existed? Currency seems to be a strange documentary format for big, historical figures and events.

In the case of Mr. Best - a legendary and conflicted footballer, in Zimbabwe's case - a nation under tremendous economic strain, and in the case of the Polish zloty - the nation's treasured composer and pianist - Frederic Chopin. 

This is just a snapshot, though. There is an entire universe of designs and denominations out there, Google it at your own peril. Or just go to some of the meatier examples at darkroastedblend.com

The UK government has just released years of UFO files.

Feast your eyes on years upon years of UFO sighting reports.

The accounts range from the quite legitimate to the truly bizzarre, as one would expect from the nature of the subject matter.

Going through this (trust us, it's time well spent) explains the ambivalence of opinion on the subject. For every credible letter there are ten bizzarely illustrated encounters, suspiciously consistent with dated sci-fi films. The only difference is that these reports are far more interesting than the grand majority of sci-fi.

After all how many films carry the MoD seal? That's what I thought. For more info, go straight to the source: http://ufos.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

A film on paper and in 3D, and guess what - it’s not Avatar.

How often is it that we see a film turn into a book? It only really appears to work the other way around.

But architect Johan Hybschmann has done his best to reverse this misconception. He drew inspiration the film “The Russian Ark” - a single-camera 90-minute tour of the majestic St. Petersburg Winter Palace in glorious slow motion.

Committing this lengthy, ponderous cinematic affair on paper sounds flatter than an A4, and would demand the literary attention to detail of Nabokov to be put to words. Thankfully, we are spared all of this, because of the creator’s architectural flair. Mr. Hybschmann has rendered the key scenes as lazer cut-outs in the pages of the book. The result is an oddly cinematic take on the original in spectacular detail, a level of simple ingenuity no 3D film technology can achieve.
 

There is beauty everywhere. However, it’s not always present at first glance. The key is persevering when looking for it.

Proof of this is can be seen in photographer Kevin Bauman’s Abandoned Houses Project.

Bauman has taken a series of 100 photos of derelict houses, each one hauntingly beautiful in it’s own right, but each as easy to miss as it is enchanting.

Take a look for yourself

There was a piece in the paper the other day about the Yakuza. For those who don't know the Yakuza are Japan's traditional organised crime syndicate - like the Mafia in Italy.

The piece detailed how the journalist who wrote it was threatened. They, the Yakuza, and more specifically the men who made the threat, said if he went ahead and published the story, both he and his family would be killed - and not in that order.

The journalist decided not to write the story; he wrote a book about them instead. Not wise really, but passion rarely is.

His decision doubtless resulted in many years in hiding, and a great deal of emotional anguish and suffering for his family, but some things are more important.

Sometimes there are things inside you just have to get out because, come what may, keeping them in is worse.

Read more

Look at the above picture. Looks like a nice enough oil painting, right? Wrong. It's actually a photograph of a real life situation with objects, people and places covered in acrylic paint.

Alexa Meade has innovated a Trompe-L’Oeil painting technique that can perceptually compress three-dimensional space into a two-dimensional plane. Her work is a remarkable fusion of installation, painting, performance, photography and video art, and is a truly unique subversion of a centuries-old formula.

A picture is worth a thousand of them, and apparently actions speak much louder than them, but whatever your thoughts for us at Relentless, when we are searching for inspiration, there is nothing better than a good quote.

Here a few gems we unearthed online earlier.

Dare to dream seems to be the company’s single guiding thought. Want something? Then strive for it. If you do, you might find that the impossible becomes possible. The lab’s most recent piece of work addresses a far more mundane problem, but applies the same big-thinking approach. How do you make the shoe boxes, which account for millions of tonnes of waste every year, more sustainable? Answer: erm, don’t use them. Another chapter in Behar’s blueprint for modern living unfolds...

OK, so it's not a farmyard animal suspended in formaldehyde, and nor is it someone's dirty linen, but it is beautiful — like art used to be. It's a picture, of course, of the volcano in Iceland. It comes courtesy of Nasa, and it takes the breath away.

Why did the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland create so much ash? Although the large ash plume was not unparalleled in its abundance, its location was particularly noticeable because it drifted across such well populated areas. The Eyjafjallajökull volcano in southern Iceland began erupting on March 20, with a second eruption starting under the center of small glacier on April 14. Neither eruption was unusually powerful. The second eruption, however, melted a large amount of glacial ice which then cooled and fragmented lava into gritty glass particles that were carried up with the rising volcanic plume. Pictured above two days ago, lightning bolts illuminate ash pouring out of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano.

The short film below is a super slow motion close-up of Apollo 11's launch on 16th July, 1969. It fulfilled the young President's promise and demonstrated to the world just what mankind was capable of. The narration is interesting and informative, yet doesn't detract from the poignancy of the moment: 30 seconds in real world time that amounted to one of the biggest and most remarkable advances in human history — pure artistry, engineered.

Pre-Banksy street art was less about status and more about subversion. It was built on the foundations of graffiti, and its roots were in letting the world know you – the artist – existed, which fast became letting the world know what you – the artist - stood for. Now it has turned into a lucrative commercial opportunity there are many who are init for the fame and very few who are still pushing boundaries and pioneering. This is not true of Skullphone an artist who has persevered working through paste-up posters and spray stencils to something newer, more exciting and digital.

In the pre-Pixar days of making movies, post-production and special effects weren’t done digitally, they were pain-stakingly produced by hand.

Giant gruesome monsters were, in actual fact, beautifully made small models. Models that were made, manipulated, re-made and re-manipulated to make stop-frame animations.

The process was long, laborious and often very very monotonous. However, it often produced something exceptional.

In comparison to today’s blockbusters and big budgets, some of those same effects do look simplistic, clumsy and even unbelievable. But there is something genuine living in those plasticine models; something which is too often missing from today’s pixelated pictures.

The time taken, care and craftsmanship add an analogue warmth which no amount of digital wizardry can re-create.

A master of this lost art was Ray Harryhausen - the man behind the killer skeletons in Jason and The Argonauts and many other pieces of cinematic magic.

With his 90th Birthday approaching, Harryhausen is finally getting the recognition he deserves. The London Film Museum has launched an exhibition in his honour called Myths and Legends.

For more info click here

Tell No One is the blog of London based filmmakers Luke White and Remi Weekes, it’s the home of their Lo-Fi film experiments. All the videos on the site are made with some pretty basic equipment - a camera, a computer and a lot of patience.

They say it is a peek into their creative process and call it an "informal brainstorm". We call it proof that lo-fi doesn’t have to mean low quality when made with love.

To be honest it doesn't matter what it's called, the work is beautiful and worth a moment or two of your time.

See more here

More people now have tattoos than ever before.

What once was a marker of originality is now one of conformity. But, there are tattoos and there are TATTOOS.

At Relentless, when we talk tats, we are not talking about tramp-stamps or your average crotch dwelling cartoon character. We are referring to the latter. TATTOOS.

The type that adorned ancient warriors as symbols of superiority, success and sacrifice.

The type that were administered by hand with a tiny chisel in unsanitary conditions. Ancient markings that meant you have suffered and would suffer for what it is you believe in.

Whether you believe beauty is only skin deep or real only confidence comes from within, there is no arguing with how impressive can be.

We were reminded of this when we found this little gem online. It's a video about Japanese tattoo master, Horiyoshi III.

Is an series of shorts. Or as the website puts it - “Everyone Forever Now is an episodic motion-based media project. It is an examination of the collective wisdom and expression of human actions.”

The project originates from Everyone, an LA based video production company. Their work has a gritty, unkempt but truly authentic feel. Watching an episode leaves you with the kind of feeling you get when exposed to something very honest. They are disturbing in an insightful and not an emotional way.

If you’ve got 15 minutes to kill and fancy a bit of journey we recommend you check them out.

www.everyoneforevernow.com/