In my experience, current forms of digital magazines either (a) slavishly ape print conventions or (b) overwhelm the reader with gizmos, animation, too many links, and disjointed fragments of digital stuff.

Mag+ is an elegant model for future digital magazines that seems to overcome the weaknesses of both approaches.  It’s logical, simple, but also interactive.  It also looks like a perfect fit for the rumored Apple “Tablet” (now supposedly due in March 2010).  Here’s an interesting video illustrating the Mag+ concept:

Ideally, the design, formatting, and user interface could be adapted to existing blogging/content management systems like WordPress or Drupal.  Then we’d be in business!

[via @themediaisdying]

Hat tip: @ettagirl

See some more interesting videos here.

You will probably enjoy this snappy little fable created by some talented young artists:

On September 14, 1814 the sun rose over Baltimore’s Fort McHenry to reveal a tattered American flag still flying after a night of intense bombardment by British warships. In response, Francis Scott Key wrote a stirring poem set to an unsingable tune. Here is a very lovely short film shot at a Fort McHenry “Fife & Drum” ceremony.

Josephine Baker in Pathecolor, shot in 1927 for the french silent movie La Revue Des Revues.

[Hat Tip: Bliss Blood]

This is a short film exploring the Phillips Exeter Academy Library, a masterwork of the modernist architect Louis Kahn.  It’s a lovely piece of filmmaking.  What I can’t quite get my head around is that this video is entirely computer generated imagery.  It is a segment in Alex Roman‘s ongoing project to explore architecture through CG animation: The Third & The Seventh.

Despite the jaw-dropping beauty, this particular segment also contains an element of horror for bibliophiles… this rendering of the library contains no books!*

[Hat tip: Hilobrow]

*There are indeed some digitally-besotted visigoths already dispensing with school library books as “an outdated technology.”

Definitely use the HD viewing option for this featured work from the Imagine Science Film Festival’s Vimeo Short Film Contest:

Glenn Marshall, an Irish computer artist and musician, created this work by filtering music through a series of formulae using an open source tool called Processing. He writes at length about how he created this “generative animation” at his website.  A taste:

Nearly everything is controlled by multiple oscillators which when offset and multiplied by each other create an organic, continually changing pathway for the snake body to follow.  The camera z depth is also hooked onto an oscillator, and also tracks a fixed point close to the head of the snake.

He has created some beautiful art using these tools–from a forthcoming iPhone app to an award-winning Peter Gabriel video.  Marshall’s work is one of many beautiful short films blending artistry and science at the Imagine Science Film Festival group in Vimeo.  The 2009 festival will be held in New York in October.

[See also this previous post on the ISF project and other "Interesting Videos" highlighted at The Occasional.]