Video: Leo Herrera Decodes 50 Years of Queer History

In a new short film bound to go viral this Pride, gay filmmaker Leo Herrera (of HomoChic) takes us back through time to revisit our collective queer past lives, both the heart-wrenching and fierce.

The Fortune Teller, Herrera writes on his website, “is a documentary and time capsule, paying homage to psychedelic films of the 1960′s and the modern art of the YouTube Montage film. From Mapplethorpe to Lohanthony, Uganda to Burning Man, Vogue to Sissy Bounce, AIDS to The Berlin Patient, meticulously edited clips create a kaleidoscopic five-minute journey through more than 50 years of gay history.”

Inspired by Lana del Rey’s “Video Games,” Ryan James Yezak’s “Second Class Citizens” and other archival footage retrospectives, The Fortune Teller goes a step further by fearlessly depicting tragedy in often explicit ways. However, the message that there is always a rainbow after the storm is very much at the heart of the new film. A still photo of the World War II Pink Triangle concentration camp prisoners in the 30s and video of homosexuals undergoing electroshock therapy in the 40s pave way to more triumphantly vivid images like the same-sex African wedding that took place earlier this year.

Herrera also includes video footage I had never seen before, like Mapplethorpe getting his nipple pierced in 1971 and RuPaul biting her fist in 1986. By far the most ingenious use of editing comes when the voiceover of Kid Fury explaining the subtly of “shade” is paired with video of Anita Bryan getting a pie tossed in her face by Tom Higgins in 1977.

Ira Glass on How to Make Your Creative Work as Awesome as Your Ambitions

Ira Glass’s now-famous interview on storytelling has been adapted into a video that resembles those preliminary music videos put out by pop stars to get their catchy lyrics stuck in your head.

For those non-visual types, below are Ira’s full comments on the need to work hard and go through volumes of creative output in order to close the gap between mediocrity and brilliance:

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.

How to Dance to Daft Punk

With Daft Punk’s highly anticipated new album finally out, its lead single “Get Lucky” is sure to become a summer staple on dancefloors all over the world. Instead of putting out the usual EDM sound of construction work on clockwork, the French duo’s new music is fresh, funky disco perfectly syncopated by custom built computer software.

Heavily influenced by 70s soul, “Get Lucky” sounds like something straight out of Soul Train. So for this summer’s dance hit, now you know where to steal some dance moves.

Video: SFMOMA Expansion Set to Become the Country’s Largest Modern Art Space

When the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art first announced plans to double in size in April 2009, the city shuttered at the thought of metal shards gashing up the downtown landscape. Well, urban planning traditionalists can breath for now – and soon in the museum’s new rooftop plaza. What is set to become the largest building dedicated to modern art in the country, will also blend nicely with the existing Mario Botta design.

In 2011, SFMOMA gave the first visual tease of what the 235,000-square-foot expansion is set to look like, and earlier this year more official renderings surfaced. The plan is to extend the existing building from Howard north to Minna with an open-air 18-foot-wide “pedestrian promenade,” a street-level gallery enclosed in glass on three sides and an elevated public plaza 195-feet above the ground.

Although the block-long project may sound drastic, the photos reveal the modest approach taken by Swedish firm Snøhetta, selected last year to design the new wing. Fortunately, Snøhetta knows better than to create a blocky, anchor-like eye soar in the city. If there’s one thing San Francisco residents are passionate about, it’s their skyline. Snøhetta is also the design firm behind the National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion at the World Trade Center site.

“We’re trying to minimize the mass of the building as much as possible. Every facade of the addition has to relate to the urban condition in a unique way,” Craig Dykers, principal architect at Snøhetta, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

This is not just a size complex for the SFMOMA. The museum is in serious need of exhibition floor space ever since acquiring Gap founder Don Fisher’s massive collection, which he loaned to the museum for the next 100 years.

Never ones to “Trump” their neighbors, the museum is also paying for the relocation of Fire House 1 on Howard to make way for the promenade. The replacement fire station will be a “state-of-the-art facility that will enhance emergency response time,” according to a press release. It will be constructed nearby on Folsom at a cost of $10 million, the museum’s gift to the city.

Perhaps the most controversial thing about the expansion is the addition of a new entrance on the east side that will align with the promenade and the new Transbay Transit Center being built two blocks away.

“Offering the public a choice when they approach a building is more powerful than saying, ‘Here is the (one) door,’” Dykers said.

But visitors will have to wait a couple of years before being confronted with that choice. The SFMOMA will close for expansion this summer and will re-open in 2016.

Cut & Fold: Erik Johansson’s Photoshop Wonders

Erik Johansson, photographer and retoucher from Sweden now living in Berlin, knows how to make an incredible photograph into a totally surreal illusion.

“I don’t capture moments, I capture ideas,” he writes in his artist statement. “To me photography is just a way to collect material to realize the ideas in my mind.”

The photographer has worked with Google and Microsoft and has been invited to give a TED talk on how to make the impossible happen. He’s  given us a glimpse of his photoshop magic in this behind the scenes video for how he made the Cut & Fold image (above). Fifteen hours of post-production hours later.

The music is by Justice – New Lands (Falcon remix).