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The painting, called Portrait of Edmond Belamy, was created by a Paris-based art collective called Obvious, has sold at auction for $432,000. Via the Guardian:

From a distance, Portrait of Edmond de Belamy, which has just sold at Christie’s in New York for $432,000 (£337,000), looks almost plausible. Up close, however, the paintwork becomes a grid of mechanical-looking dots, the man’s face a golden blur with black holes for eyes. Look into those eyes. They show no sign of feeling or life. Did a computer make this?

The answer is yes. The first artwork generated by AI to be sold at Christie’s, its impressive price would seem to suggest that in future we will get computers to make art for us. Robot van Gogh will harmlessly cut its ear off and robot Picasso will be a genius, minus the misogyny.

Is this the future AI art visionaries such as the French collective Obvious, which programmed this “painter” by getting it to compare its own work with 15,000 pre-20th century portraits, have in mind? Or are they just, God forbid, making a fast buck from gullible art collectors? Because believing the algorithm that knocked this up to be in any meaningful way an “artist” is like thinking your voice-interaction programme is out to get you. Dream on. Computers would need to replicate human consciousness before they could replicate the funny thing humans do called “art”.

Art is a way in which human consciousness expresses itself, and is equally true of the earliest cave art, Rembrandt’s portraits and Duchamp’s urinal. And that is what is missing from Portrait of Edmond Bellamy. Art is a way humans communicate ideas, perceptions and feelings to each other. It has no existence outside the human passion to communicate. So in what meaningful sense can an AI replica of certain physical traits of old master paintings be called art?

This amazing Levis ad features the use of Braille on their customisable denim — and a heartwarming story about a father’s love for his son. Via Esquire:

Every so often, the Filipino public gets a dose of some heartwarming, intentionally tearjerky advertising materials—almost as if they’re part of some tradition. They usually come in the form of a video or a short film, with a sad or poignant or beautiful story to tell about love or family. But always, it seems like the goal is to bore a hole into the left side of your chest and empty its contents onto your office desk while you look around to see if anyone can hear your uncontrollable sobbing. I’m not crying—you’re crying!

And if the persistence of this type of advertising is proof of anything at all, it’s that Filipinos love getting our heartstrings plucked. Ads that resonate in a sentimental way are obviously quite effective in these parts. Maybe they get us to buy french fries or hamburgers or hand soap or maternal milk, because we keep seeing ones that seem to have that same intention.

The latest of this lot is, if you would believe, an ad for a denim jacket. And not just any denim jacket—it’s an ad for the denim jacket.

The Levi’s Trucker Jacket, a straightforward take on the Type-3 by the brand that basically invented blue jeans, is right up there beside the Converse Chuck Taylor All-Star in the pantheon of all-American menswear icons. To bolster its Trucker Jacket customization campaign and its headlong push into the Christmas season, Levi’s Philippines just dropped an ad that shoots straight for the heart.

This video about drones saving wildlife was made by Andy Fackrell and Sam Coleman of Giant Films to raise awareness about the poaching crisis. Via Lonely Planet:

A stunning short film has been produced that highlights that role of drone technology in the war against the poaching of Africa’s wildlife. Over and Above Africa, a Los Angeles charity, collaborated with writer Andy Fackrell and director Sam Coleman to create the 90-second film called “A Guardian,” to demonstrate how drones can help protect endangered animal groups. The video is completely shot by drone and it shows amazing aerial footage of the movement of groups of wild animals in their natural habitat. As the groups are featured, they are captioned with their respective and charming collective nouns, so we get to see a dazzle of zebras, an implausibility of gnus and a wobble of ostriches.

While that’s adorable, the film takes a sinister turn when ‘a gang’ of poachers is tracked on the drone’s night vision camera. It shows the poachers armed with weapons fanning out in the game reserves, and then cuts to the remains of young elephants, presumably butchered for their ivory tusks. All of Africa’s animal groups are threatened by poaching,” the film says. “Drone surveillance increases their chance of survival by 80%.

Pax AUS 2018, the Penny Arcade Expo, is on today and this weekend — the biggest video gaming event in this part of the world. It’ll be in the Melbourne Convention Centre. Not sure what Pax is? Via Games Radar:

Everyone knows about Penny Arcade–the gaming webcomic that is somewhat responsible for the legitimacy of gaming webcomics–but for as big and important as Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik’s online comic is, it’s really their convention that has, more recently, become an astounding success. Starting in 2004 with a relatively strong showing that included the likes of Rooster Teeth and Microsoft, the convention has grown exponentially, with each year adding new exhibitors, new guests, and thousands of new attendees. By 2011, PAX Prime had 70,000 attendees–not bad, considering tickets were sold out weeks in advance.

The reason we said “PAX Prime” up there is because, now, there are actually three PAXs. There’s Prime in late August, the Seattle-based show that is, as of now, the largest of the conventions, as well as April’s PAX East in Boston, which has also grown by leaps and bounds over the past few years. In 2011 it was also joined by PAX Dev, a developer-exclusive pre-show to PAX Prime that continued in 2012.

Hybrids is a short film that’s also an Oscar contender, a gorgeous CGI film about a science fiction future, and it’s hard to believe that it’s a grad film. Via Short of the Week:

Yes, Hybrids really is that good. A contender for the 91st Academy Awards for Best Animation, the 6min grad film was created by Florian Brauch, Matthieu Pujol, Kim Tailhades, Yohan Thireau and Romain Thirion during their final year at CG animation school MoPA. Using exceptional craftsmanship, the 5 students have created a breathtaking world of hyperreal detail, but what lurks beneath the dazzling production is a sobering cautionary tale, the effects of which will stay with you long after the credits roll.

In the near future, our legacy forces marine wildlife to adapt to their surroundings with unimaginable consequences. Hybrids is a 3D animated film, set in the oceanic depths, revealing the brutality of survival and the catastrophic effects of pollution on our environment. The idea for Hybrids was born when Romain Thirion, an experienced diver, started noticing a drastic increase in ocean pollution, which in turn was causing an equally alarming decrease in the marine life population. On one particular occasion, during a dive, he spotted something shiny buried in the sand. What he thought was a small fish turned out to be a bottle cap, igniting the first spark which inspired the film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3DDjKMWkTw

Director Show Yanagisawa’s latest ad for Shiseido is a beautifully shot romantic short film that takes place on the back of a party bus. Via Little Black Book:

Director Show Yanagisawa is back with another gorgeous film for cosmetics brand Shiseido – this time a romantic tale that takes place on a ghoulish – but very stylish – party bus.

The film showcases Shiseido cosmetics via the unusual medium of animation. As the main character is torn apart from her crush by an unsympathetic boyfriend, time stops and the girl’s makeup comes to life, dancing across her face. As the story unfolds, the protagonist finds herself drawn to a mysterious zombie samurai and compelled to escape her domineering boyfriend. The short ends with a sweet twist. As with all of Show’s work, the level of craft and in-camera wizardry is eye-popping. The stunning animated makeup was created using a clever blend of CG, mapped onto the actor’s face, and time-lapse photography, which gives the segment a stop motion feel. The creative director was Shiseido’s Masoto Kosakawa and the film was produced by Tower Film – with companies Digital Eggs and My working on post production. The film is not the first that Show has created for Shiseido. 2015’s High School Girl? was an awards circuit hit. He is also the director behind the reality-warping PS4 ad Gravity Cat, an ambitious spot that used a huge, spinning set to play with gravity in-camera.

Luke Hemsworth, aka “The Original Hemsworth Brother”, stars in this Tourism Australia “behind the scenes” ad that follows their Superbowl hit. Via The West Australian:

Step aside, Chris Hemsworth. The “original Hemsworth” Luke is the new star of the Federal Government’s multimillion dollar Dundee campaign. Dressed in Crocodile Dundee-esque khaki, the Westworld star, who is the older brother of Thor’s Chris and The Hunger Games’ Liam, describes Australia as one giant unexplored movie set.

“The movie almost took the world by storm and now you can visit the set, all three million square miles of it,” he said. “I’m no stranger to movie sets but even I haven’t been on a set like this before.”

The ad includes footage of the Great Ocean Road, Sydney Harbour, Freycinet, the Great Barrier Reef and WA beauty spots Cottesloe Beach and Ningaloo Reef. Hemsworth champions the “epic” scenery and “incredible” catering before encouraging visitors to “come say g’day”.

The video marks stage two of a campaign launched at the US Super Bowl in February with a mock trailer for a Crocodile Dundee film. Federal Tourism Minister Simon Birmingham said the reaction to that was “huge” and the video was view by more than 100 million people. “It drove massive hits to the Australia.com website. This is about building tourism visitation from the US,” he said.

Luke is the eldest of the Hemsworth brothers, which include Thor star Chris and Hunger Games star Liam, who all hail from Victoria.

Yes there is going to be a live action Disney Aladdin film, starring Will Smith as the Genie. We’re not sure about the effect on our childhood memories. It’s been controversial so far. Via Screenrant:

Terry Rossio, one of the writers from the original animated Aladdin movie, isn’t particularly thrilled with Disney’s upcoming live-action remake. In recent years, the Mouse House’s flagship Walt Disney Pictures production house has been busy remaking and reimagining iconic fairy-tale stories, many of which they’ve already told in animation form throughout the 20th century. But bringing these characters and stories, like Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, to life on the big screen in the 21st century has proven enormously successful – financially – for them.

So, it isn’t particularly surprising that Disney would want to devote the vast majority of their resources to make more of those remakes. Next year will see three major live-action remakes (not including adaptations of other children and/or young adult stories) – Tim Burton’s Dumbo, Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin, and Jon Favreau’s The Lion King – of which one of them, Aladdin, is currently making waves in the news for having released its first teaser trailer earlier this week. But not everyone is excited about the remake.

Guardsman is a short fanmade film for Warhammer 40k, following a lone member of the Imperial Guard in an unsurprisingly bad day. Via Gizmodo:

After all, it’s still the grim dark future of the 41st millennium. It’s still going to be very miserable either way.

This fun short comes from Richard Boylan, who previously wowed us with a visually inventive take on Games Workshop’s infamously, practically comically dark Warhammer universe for an animated short series. This time, he’s turned to live action rather than animation for a short simply titled Guardsman.

As 40K fans might have gathered from the title, Guardsman follows a lone member of the Imperial Guard (Erik Steffens), a grunt on the front lines of the Imperium’s never-ending wars against alien threats.

Being just a dude with an infamously terrible laser rifle in a world of daemonic horrors, violent alien hordes, malevolent space-elves and other wild nightmares is already a tough time, and it seems as though our titular hero’s time is about run out… until a small flickering of hope arrives in a rather large package. It isn’t an epic look at the world of Warhammer, but a more intimate one that really hammers home the micro-scaled hell the ordinary soldiers of this setting are meant to go through (so think about that the next time you send a poor squad of Cadians to their dooms in your next tabletop game).

But it also does a great job, in a short time, of getting across what sets apart the over-the-top, extraordinary figures of Warhammer 40K too — reminding us of the literal epic scale of figures such as the Space Marines in all their glory.

Someone invented a Tamagotchi Life Support machine, because of course they did. This dystopian stack looks a little like the Matrix… Via Gizmodo:

Tamagotchi toys were less about simulating the fun of having a pet, and more about the stresses of keeping your pixelated responsibility alive for as long as possible. I’m still no good at it, and presumably neither is Dmitry Morozov, because he built a machine that automatically cares for a Tamagotchi’s every need, keeping it alive and powered forever.

Umbilical Digital looks like a creation straight out of The Matrix, and in a way, it isn’t that far off from the machines that kept humans alive in that fictional universe.

A series of five Tamagotchi toys are hard-wired to an Arduino control board that uses evolving algorithms to care for the creatures, continually pushing the requisite buttons to keep the digital dependants fed, nurtured and perpetually alive. But unlike The Matrix, where humans were kept alive as a source of heat and power, keeping the Tamagotchis alive doesn’t have much benefit for this machine. The only thing it produces is a long thermal tape printout of every interaction between the algorithm and the creatures, documenting the evolution of the family and what keeps them content.