A studio rendering of Sony MDR-7506 headphones

This is a studio rendering of my Sony MDR-7506 headphones. I adore them quite a lot, so this work is an homage and patronage to it and the team behind the creation of these wonderful cans! This product design is so beautiful, I had to model them. The delightful angles, curves, proportions, and neat, subtle tricks, like the different materials of plastic used, shows the dedication of the design team to excellence. 

Furthermore, one of Sony's product line's slogan "make.believe" is so great and delightful, I had to include it in here. I think it quite fits with the... let's say "interesting" subject matter.

Here's a couple of places I accidentally found these (or similar) headphones. First photograph is of Szjerdene live from KEXP studio with Bonobo, the second is of Jodie Foster from the movie "Contact". Also, I noticed Simon Ostrovsky, a veteran VICE reporter, wearing those, too.

New media festivals with projects in the video games medium

There are aplenty of biennials around the world, which are dedicated to or feature new media art projects. Quite a few of them use some part of video game technology. Microsoft's Kinect is a sure favourite, but there are a lot of other video game tools being used by artist. Here I will list a few art festivals which are worth checking out and keeping tabs on for future projects - which just might touch upon gaming. Most festivals offer on-line archives of their prior projects, so even if you missed the event, you can find those interesting experiments up on the web.

futureeverything.org

Based in Manchester, United Kingdom, FutureEverything is an annual festival of ideas, digital invention, conferences and art projects. They cover a lot of bases, and their focus is new media, new ideas, new connections. As they describe themselves on their official website: "FutureEverything is about innovation in all forms, be it in research, digital media or contemporary arts and music."

Kallisti

This is the video part of the installation. When you roll the golden 

apple into one of the furrows, you elect the corresponding goddess.

This video shows the selection screen and all of the goddesses.

Kallisti
Almantas Šukelis

Installed in Kaunas faculty of the arts, Muitinės st. 2, Kaunas

Vilnius Art Academy

2012-12-07

"Kallisti" (greek : to the most beautiful) was inscribed upon the golden apple by Eris, goddess of discord, who was not invited to the heavenly banquet in celebration of the marriage of Peleus and Thetis. This apple was thus meant as a chord of arduous dissent to ruin the banquet. Eris rolled the apple onto the table and witnessed its induced calamity. Hera, Athena and Aphrodite claimed the golden fruit. Unable to come to an agreement, they came to Paris as the fairest mortal. Each goddess undressed before him and then offered bribes. When he elected Ahprodite and won the heart of Helen, unbeknowst to him, Helen was already the wife of the Spartan king Menelaus. Paris sailed to Sparta and through force claimed Helen, which enacted the tragic Trojan War.

Pajūrio pjūvis

 Pajūrio pjūvis

Almantas Šukelis

Įdiegta Aukštųjų studijų fakulteto koridoriuje, Muitinės g. 2, Kaune

2012-12-07

Kas žingsnį paimtas pajūrio akmuo, atvežtas namo yra laiko ir erdvės memorabilium. Namuose jis tampa kažkuo daugiau, nei dekoracija ir kažkuo daugiau, nei jisai buvo, gulėdamas tarpe daugybės kitų savo brolių. Uždaroje erdvėje jisai it rakto skylutė, pro kurią galima pamatyti smėlį ir putas, išgirsti žuvėdras ir bangas, matyti tolimus horizontus, kurie esti už daugybės kalnų ir slėnių. Akmuo siekia priminti, pasakoja apie savo tėvynę, kilmę ir jūsų abiejų pažintį.

Is the development of some social games unethical?

Jonathan Blow: Video Games and the Human Condition, September 27, 2010

This is a response or supplement to some key points, which Mr. Jonathan Blow delivered in a lecture  at William Marsh Rice University, Texas, United States at 2010 September 27th. He is an independent video game developer and has made the hugely successful video game Braid (XBLA, PSN, PC, Mac OS, Linux). His personal website can be found here and The Atlantic has done a profile of him here.

He is an ardent proponent of ethical game design and has been known to preach about some contemporary games as being immoral due to their mechanics in more than one or two lectures. Examples provided were World of Warcraft, FarmVille, FrontierVille and the like. A lot of scope of this lecture had been delegated to this issue and I would like to add some of my own ideas to this affair of whether such games are ethical.

Untitled / Be pavadinimo 2011

'Untitled'

You can experience this project by clicking here.

Or download it to your hard-drive here. 20 MB.

It is an art piece made in the media of video games. It is an interative virtual installation, which is designed to allow you to have a walk in a virtual urban environment. Currently, that is, during June 2012,  a branch of the Lithuanian National M. K. Čiurlionis Art Museum is having it on display. 

Drawings on the relation of modern man to classical arts

This is a series of drawings on approximately A1 sized paper with Chinese ink. This series dwells on the relation of modern man to the classical arts.

Is it preposterous for an old man, disfigured by a trauma at an early age during fitness training, to stand strong in a toga? He was an athlete, and still at a senior age he is a champion in his respected field - with such athletic prowess, is this an incompatible concept with the beauty of man, so prevalent in Greek antiquity? Is an adolescent's rejection of classical beauty a childish mockery, which presents a melancholic situation where unbeknownst to them, they disassimilate, supposedly, the deeper and more natural truths about themselves? Or is the heritage of those times, albeit being so highly regarded as even apotheosizing numerous philosophers, artists, mathematicians, without any use to us? If so, we therefore could brutally sever our connection with the beautiful and dramatic part of our history. We could say goodbye to Seneca, Plato, Polykleitos, Phidias and many others...