Fresh from its success at the 2010 Aberdour Festival’s first ever ASBO Awards where it picked up the gong for ‘Best Directed Short’, the trailer for the modern horror classic The Devil’s Buttermilk is finally available to view on the world wide interweb!

Now, for the first time, the full story behind this classic piece of celluloid nonsense.

My friends Iain and Aileen live in the picturesque village of Aberdour in the Kingdom of Fife, where they have a Festival each summer.  This year was the first ever Aberdour ASBOs short film competition and Iain decided it would be a good idea to enter.

Using some quite spectacular powers of persuasion Iain managed to rope in Aileen, Mel and myself and our friends Blythe and Malcolm for an afternoon of filming during July. All we had at our disposal was Aileen’s posh HD DSLR, various fancy dress costumes and some vague ideas of how we could pay homage to our favourite horror films such as The Wicker Man and The Shining.

After a few dodgy moments trying to convert and edit the footage, we managed to get the final version of the film burned to DVD and hand-delivered to the event organisers on the eve of the competition deadline.

A Night at the ASBOs

The awards ceremony was on Monday night in a marquee beside the shore, and we arrived anticipating an entertaining evening. Little did we know that out of the 14 filmmaking teams who entered, around 10 of them were aged 16 or younger!

Slightly embarrassed, we took our place at the top table alongside our young competitors, a humbling experience indeed, as the standard of films was surprisingly high given the average age of the entrants.

Indeed, although we came second in the audience vote for overall best film, the runaway winner was a young schoolgirl who’s film had a cast entirely made up of lego figures and was a satirical take on the recent failed attempt by channel 4 to film a reality TV show in the village. Her win was thoroughly deserved both for its local relevance and because it was a cracking wee film which definitely got the biggest laughs of the night.

However there were also awards for the various categories and we were delighted when it was announced we won the best directed short award.

Whilst I was proud to be credited as the director,  the whole thing was most definitely a joint effort, and only came about because of Iain’s sterling work as producer and location scout, Aileen’s excellent leading lady performance and high quality camera/camera work, Malcolm’s touching performance as a mourning Sea Captain, Mel’s mysterious performance as a mysterious masked lady and special effects know-how, and of course Blythe’s era-defining performance as a zombie pig with a home-made man-bag (not to mention his show-stopping acceptance speech).

A special mention also has to go for the completely original soundtrack, produced by Iain and performed by himself and Aileen with cellos by his brother Allan.

Here’s the film itself – or go direct to YouTube to watch it in glorious HD!

And here’s a lo-fi grainy black and white video diary of what happened on the night:

After reading about Cybraphon everywhere, including  wired.com, and seeing footage of him everywhere including US TV, I finally got to see “him” last week at the inspace gallery in Edinburgh, and was blown away. It reminded me of when ASIMO, Honda’s humanoid robot, visited the city back in April as part of the Science Festival.

At first the link may seem quite tenuous, as I’m not even sure if Cybraphon could be termed a robot in the strictest sense of the word, but what both share is their human qualities. In ASIMO’s case this is “his” physical resemblance to the human body and his ability to walk in a similar way (something which took Honda’s engineers years of testing to achieve). In Cybraphon’s case it is his huge ego. His emotions, as anyone following him on twitter or facebook will be well aware, fluctuate wildly from dismay to rapture – and it’s all driven by how popular he is on a variety of internet search engines and social networking sites (believe me, I know the feeling).

When we saw him I’m pleased to say he was well at the upper end of the scale, varying slightly from outright rapture to bliss. The music he plays is of course excellent, being programmed by Edinburgh band Found. I missed the event where Found played with their (and Prof. Simon Kirby’s) creation but I asked my friend Iain Radcliffe to report back from the event and he had this to say:

“The other night I went to see a lecture about and performance by autonomous, emotional, robot band Cybraphon at the Inspace Gallery on Crichton Street (free entry and free beer too). Created by fantastic Edinburgh band/art/film collective FOUND, Cybraphon blends the old fashioned with the ultra modern, combining the look of Victorian mechanical orchestrions with the modern musician’s need to be noticed. “Image conscious and emotional, the band’s performance is affected by online community opinion as it searches the web for reviews and comments about itself 24 hours a day.”It has been described as “the barmiest object ever conceived by anyone” – what better recommendation than that?

Highlights were the incredibly complicated wiring diagram of Cybraphon’s brain, comparison of web stats for cybraphon and FOUND (cybraphon much more popular) and the video of cybraphon on Dallas TV news show/pictured in Italian magazine. Its popularity seemed to soar after being picked up by Wired magazine. But Prof. Simon Kirby explained that after all that attention, its ego has been designed to crave more, so can slump from delirium to depression pretty quickly. It probably didn’t help when Found frontman Ziggy Campbell slagged off his creation, saying, “I personally don’t rate it…you can’t play along with this thing.”

What was most surreal about my own experience visiting Cybraphon was when we were asked to applaud him when he finished each song. Though it wasn’t clear that this would have any affect on its mood, what we were doing was applauding a wardrobe. But it was a wardrobe with human qualities – the ability to make music, and to have a range of emotions.

I got the same strange feeling at the ASIMO event earlier in the year and as you can see from the short video below there was also much applause for this amazing robot. Just watching it walk across the stage I hope you get an idea of just how eerily human it’s movements make it seem. During the presentation ASIMO delivered a round of drinks, walked upstairs (which was another massive challenge to its creators due to the unique way the human body works) and even danced while the audience clapped along.

Now obviously Cybraphon is a fantastic and innovative piece of art, whereas Asimo is a masterpiece of scientific progress with huge amounts of funding behind it, and designed by Honda strictly with consumers in mind. Let’s face it he’s designed to fulfil rich people’s desire to have a butler/servant that they don’t have to feel too guilty about. But in both cases the humans present, myself included, treated the robot as if it were a human – and we were thrilled to see the robot act in a very similar way to ourselves.

Were we in fact applauding prototypes of our future masters? Were we celebrating the early stages of the encroaching singularity? Are these the ancestors of the robot uprising of 2174? Only time will tell. All I know is, these robots are seriously fucking cool.

Robot Love in Edinburgh – Vimeo version

Robot Love in Edinburgh – YouTube version

Visit Cybraphon

Visit Asimo

Update – the full video footage of the Cybraphon vs Found event is now online:

I missed the impromptu set by The Three Craws at Homegame earlier this year, so I was delighted when my friends Iain and Aileen, who live in Aberdour, got Mel and I tickets to go see them at the Aberdour Festival.

As it turned out, we were already heading to Fife that weekend to visit my mum and her partner, who were renting a little holiday house in Lower Largo, so we were able to head to Aberdour on the way back and catch the set.

In case you’re not aware, the Three Craws are James Yorkston (James Yorkston), King Creosote (Kenny Anderson) and the Pictish Trail (Johnny Lynch). Now individually these are three of my favourite songwriters/performers, so to see them all together at the same time was a joy.

They played a wide variety of stuff – at the beginning they took turns to play one of their own songs but they soon went off into what was obviously an improvised set of great folk songs and tracks by their friends including by Kenny’s brother Gordon, who has recorded so many great songs under the name of The Lone Pigeon and with the Aliens and the Beta Band. The highlight for me though was an absolutely storming version of Adrian Crowley‘s Walk-On Part.

I have to admit I didn’t know this song previously but on my return I immediately bought his album Long Distance Swimmer so I could listen to it on repeat whilst furiously knitting my brow and wringing my hands at the pointless absurdity of life, drinking whisky and smoking crack (er ok, whilst having a nice cup of tea).

What’s so great about the Three Craws, in addition to the silly banter and improvised nonsense, is their harmonies. Their voices complement each other so perfectly it was stunning to hear.

So, yes – I couldn’t resist making another wee video. I hope the Craws don’t mind me including some personal footage of my visit to Fife with clips from their performance – and I suppose this is a bit of a companion piece to my Homegame video seeing as I missed them at that. I have to admit, and this is coming from an avowed city lubber, I think I’m starting to fall in love with Fife a little bit. Hope you enjoy it.

Vimeo:

YouTube:

 At the beginning of the video James Yorkston is referring to a gift he was given of a crocheted tortoise, hare and fox – go the fence forums to get a closer look..

If you’re lucky enough to be heading to the Green Man festival this year in Wales, you’ll see the Three Craws there, along with various other Fence Collective peeps.

Also worth checking out are these live acoustic performances by King Creosote in Hyde Park for the website www.bandstandbusking.com especially if you want to find out what the actual words to ‘Rims’ are… hint: it’s not “let me remind you that you had a menu”

An iPhone ponce, yesterdayFinally, by popular demand (well two people expressed a vague interest), I present my ultimate guide to Steve Jobs’ expensively addictive hand-extension for show-offs. This has been a long-time coming because to be honest it was turning into an incredibly dreary piece of slavering apple fanboi tedium, but I think the finished piece is a bit more entertaining than your typical self-indulgent tech-wankathon. At least I hope so.

Obviously if you are one of the strange breed who turns into a growling, foaming-mouthed tornado of rage at even the mention of Apple products, then this post isn’t for you, and I suggest getting back to your latest 3-hour virus scan (joke!)

The apps I include are some of the ones you might not have heard of, as opposed to the more obvious ones I use every day like Tweetie, Facebook, Tumblr, and the stuff that comes with the phone itself like email, the native notes app and google maps/GPS (which has so far been utterly invaluable as a sat nav stand-in).

Also below I’ve included a wee list of other resources for finding out about more apps if you are so inclined. Let me know what apps you use if you have one of the shiny time-wasting futurephones, and if you have any sources for finding out about the good uns, please leave a comment.

Watch the whole 12 minute video via Vimeo:

Or if you’re on an iPhone or have a short-attention span, watch it in two exciting installments via YouTube:

Part one 

Part deux

Other useful iPhone App links:

Daring Fireball No one outside of Apple’s Cupertino HQ knows more about what they’re up to than John Gruber. He frequently has the inside scoop on what will be announced at the likes of WWDC and often highlights interesting new apps.

Just Another iPhone Blog I’ve had some good recommendations from this blog, which is well worth subscribing to – it’s got more of the feel of a personal blog than something that’s just there to get lots of traffic.

App Advice’s App Awards Found this on the above blog, not saying I agree with the results but it’s a good place to start for an overview of the popular apps out there.

“Geek Rock Stars favourite Apps” ReadWriteWeb have this summary of what some of the top tech geeks use.

Planet of the Apps The Guardian had a decent piece in today’s G2 section about the “app economy”

TechCrunch on the Spotify app Spotify are waiting to see if Apple will approve their game-changing submission to the app store, and thus make their premium account worth paying for. But because it competes directly with iTunes, they may not.

And of course there are hundreds of other sites pumping out an endless barrage of iPhone related trivia – with augmented reality the new exciting trend for those fuckers with 3GS and its built in compass.  And on that note, I can only quote my better half from the video above when she says “enough about the iPhone already!”