For those who are not familiar with the rock music in the 90′s, Rage Against the Machine is American alternative, rock, punk band, notable for revolutionary and political lyrics. If you grew up in the post-communist under sanctions country such as Serbia (former Yugoslavia), you’d probably heard for their popular song “Killing in the name” released in 1992. This song was explained as “a howling, expletive-driven tirade against the ills of American society”, but also it marked the music, political, social scene in Serbia in that period. Why am I writing about RATM and not  about new and so waited Massive Attack LP?

For those who do not live in UK, or do not watch TV (moi included!), there’s a TV reality competition show called X Factor (equivalent to American Idol or Talent), where one of the most unexpected turn outs and victories of this decade happened: RATM’s “Killing in the Name” beat out X Factor’s winner Joe McElderry’s “The Climb”, and became the U.K.’s Christmas Number One single.

This all happened thanks to social network site Facebook, campaign in the form of a group, launched by Jon Morter, a 35-year-old part-time dj and logistics expert from Essex, and his wife Tracy, as they had become jaded by the inevitable annual rise of Cowell’s judge newest pop star to the top of the charts and were determined to stop it, using the power of social networking and obviously a humor.

Facebook group gathered almost 1 million people and the band’s single sold 500,000 downloads gaining Christmas no.1 charts. Some interesting BBC chart analysis show how in short time (only a week of Internet campagne) this single won the charts. Beside Facebook activism, British comedian Peter Serafinowicz urged his 268,000-plus Twitter followers to join this campaign, as later on RATM’s guitarist Tom Morello twittered on this historic event.

The power of social Web created not only the public sphere in political, economic and global context after all, but is also influencing the music business industry where corruption’s time is coming to an end. I’m looking forward to see these kind of activities and campaigns in governmental sector where some policy and political issues can be changed on better if majority learn network and media literacy. It’s interesting video – interview of RATM’s leader Zack De La Rocha with Noam Chomsky. Here’s the video of BBC’s interview with RATM and their live performance.

Radiohead just released a new video for its song “House of Cards” from the album “In Rainbows”.

No cameras or lights were used. Instead two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes.

Watch the making-of video to learn about how the video was made and the various technologies that were used to capture and render 3D data.

For more information on data visualization (and how you can download it),  you can click on Google code page. It is interesting that this video is published under the mixture of copyrights/lefts: the code is open source licenced to Aaron Koblin, and the data (not the music)  used to produce the House of Cards music video is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

I hope that this wonderful Radiohead song and the video will inspire and gather other visual artists and IT people to use various technologies in making something innovative in the future.

Radiohead released today a video broadcasting globally, which aims to raise awareness of human trafficking. The lead singer, Thom Yorke, and his bandmates produced a music video together with MTV EXIT (End Exploitation and Trafficking) for “All I Need,” a song from their In Rainbows album. The video was filmed in Australia by Oscar-winning cinematographer John Seale and director Steve Rogers.

The United Nations’ International Labour Organization estimates that there are around 2.5 million people in the world who have been trafficked.

“They’ve produced a video of two parallel stories running, one of a little boy in the West and one of a little boy in a sweatshop in the East, and the boy [in the West] ends up buying the shoes from the sweatshop. It’s actually quite powerful,” Yorke said. “It’s the sort of images I have in my head anyway. Sometimes when you’re walking down High Street and you’re looking at the incredibly cheap [sneakers], you sort of think, ‘Hmmm, well how did they manage to make that so cheaply?’ It sort of reminds me of one of my preoccupations, so I’m touched that the music goes with that. I think it’s great.”

& once again Thom

“I think it’s important for everyone in the West or on High Street to understand the consequences of our economic activity. You must be aware of the level of exploitation that’s going on,” Yorke said. “It’s part of our Western life, and one we should accept responsibility for. There’s no such thing as a free lunch or a free ticket to another country.”

I hope this is just beginning of raising the awareness of this issue around the world and involving more people in the campaign against human trafficking.

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Belgrade is the main center of the art, culture, contemporary international scene this summer. This year’s Belef07 (Belgrade Summer Festival) offers diversity and richness of culture programe during the summer with lots of events from July 23 – August 12 2007. Program of Belef presents the greatness of events in music, theatre, visual arts, new intiatives and educational segment. The Belef is opening tonight at 21:00 – Victor’s Plateau – concert of the legendary Afro – Peruvian singer Susana Baca. Other music events at belefs that you shoudl expect are very interesting and bring us great performers, world music mustians: Lajko Felix Trio & Brooklyn Funk Essentials (USA), Belgrade Yard Soundsystem “Soudscapes”Jimi Tenor & Kabu Kabu (Finland), Antonio Chainho Trio (Portugal), a legendary Chicago soul-jazz artist Terry Callier.

…still, thank you. No official cameras, interviews, elegantly wasted or preserved in their sixties, as it was in THE 60′s. This time @ the beach, around 2 hours, pure energy, the wind, fire, pyrotechnics, jumping and lot of fans all over the region. With few sentences in Serbian – the show started and ended as it was expected in Rolling Stones perfect manner. This is how it was down there, and once more. Belgrade will be rocking and rolling this Saturday evening, 14th of July. Will Serbia get their satisfaction soon?

This is how Serbian people (and others from ex-YU and neighbouring countries) had great time last night in Serbia, Indjija, and hunger for good rock ‘n’ roll concert. Red Hot Chili Peppers landed to the field by helicopter, and started with this, playing one hour and fifteen minutes concert.

“White heat is screaming in the jungle”.

Music the great communicator!

When I was a little girl, it was family known thing that if someone asks me what is my favourite football team I should say Red Star. Even today  I am “Red Star” fan, although my knowledge of football is more than miserable. Then I grew up into teenager and I used to listen to grunge music, alternative and rock, and I was always, even before teenage years- the Beatles girl. If someone ask : Beatles or Stones? I would say Beatles of course. Now when I am old-er (hope this post won’t go via D.Day’s ‘Que sera-sera’ way), I know clearly that between Red Hot Chili Peppers or Rolling Stones concert, I would prefer RHCP. Why? I am familiar with very few of Rolling Stones tunes I love to hear and sing, but than I grew up with Red Hot Chili Peppers, and I can listen to certain songs over and over again. I follow their work since early 90′s, I am RCHP fan, as I know many kids and young people get into them in 2000′s, with their recent few albums. I was there from their beginning, not to mention physical transformations and  Anthony Kiedis love named after me (it is not only about Dani California, but those who know Danica was the name mentioned in some RHCP songs), and now seems I am really old, as old friend of mine (older older than me) bought tickets for Rolling Stones concert at Jaz beach, Montenegro, 9th July. Belgrade event is on July 14th. Anyway, why am I writing this? I am not able to go to RHCP concert. Today in the middle of downtown tropic shade I got phonecall from Montenegro just to confirm again, I am going to R.Stones concert. I am indifferent. Ok, I am not that enthusiastic as more than 70.000 people will come from all over the country and others (Italy, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, etc), plus I am not that into Mick Jagger and the gang, nowadays. Respect to them, but again I prefer to enjoy in RHCP. On 9th July, I will be here, getting bored I guess, mingling with crowds of people at this beach, and listening to Angie instead of Dani.

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[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=Joqf35Pn2cI]

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