Entries tagged “zidane”

Those who know me know that I'm pretty much inept at any kind of artistic endeavor. Which makes it all the more amusing that I've recently had the chance to pretend to be a real artist a bit lately.

First, the AIGA Collaborate/Celebrate Holiday Party last month featured an auction of a number of pairs of customized boots. Alaina and I were asked to contibute, with proceeds from the auction benefitting the AIGA NY Mentoring Program and First Book, which helps low-income families get their children their first books.

Despite my lack of artistic ability, I'm pretty pleased with how the final results turned out. Picking up on the theme of "pairs", we went with the pair that we probably spend the most time with -- Mario and Luigi. You can see a shot of the results at right here, and Khoi Vinh has another nice shot.

You might also remember the Zidane World Cup Headbutt Animation Festival from last year. It was featured in the Time Shares exhibition at the New Museum of Contemporary art, presented by Rhizome.

Starting today, a redone higher-resolution version of the animation (Zidane Special Edition!) will be shown as part of Avant Gaming, where Cory Archangel will be discussing his Super Mario Movie and the use of video games as an artistic medium in general. If you've never seen Cory speak and you're in Ohio on Wednesday, I can't recommend attending highly enough. Or take a look at the source code yourself.

I'm flattered, somewhat amazed, and more than a little amused to point out that I'm part of Time Shares, a series of online exhibitions presented by Rhizome and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Alongside the works of geniuses like Golan Levin and Warren Sack is my own silly Zidane World Cup Headbutt Animation Festival.

As much as I've enjoyed the entertainment that people have gotten from the little clip (somewhere around a quarter of a million people have played the movie), I can't help but feel like it's a little unfair to have my silliness alongside some really great work. So to atone for it, I beseech you to check out the Time Shares site and look at all the other items, each of which is pretty amazing. In the meantime, I'll put this alongside the wacky t-shirt hijinks in my list of inappropriate appearances in places where I don't belong.

Marisa Olson of Rhizome has a brief description of the Faultlines program that Time Shares is part of, and I can't wait to see where the series goes next.

Zinedine Zidane's savage headbutt of Marco Materazzi in the World Cup final has touched on many things: Race, family, country, terrorism, sportsmanship. But more than anything else, it's united the entire Internet around the most important thing. Wacky animations!

In light of this historic moment, and thanks to the efforts of citizens of MetaFilter, Something Awful, b3ta, and other online communities, I sifted through dozens of the best/worst Zidane-related animations online. All this to bring you the following movie I made last night, dedicated to the head-first fight against alleged racism, the grand tradition of ridiculous memes on the net, and the premise that "Yakety Sax" is always funny.

Feel free to leave your own animated .gifs inline in the comments; If you aren't signed in, I'll have to approve your comments before they appear.

Update: This little movie's turned out to be pretty popular! It's been featured in the Time Shares Exhibition at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City, as well as the Avant Gaming Exhibition at the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University.