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Something to Watch: Discs

TV has The X-Files: The Event Series, also called Season 10 coming out this week, the long awaited return to the small screen. Movies bring us London Has Fallen, and while I can’t decide if it belongs in the science fiction or fantasy category I know it has to be in one of them. We also get 10 Cloverfield Lane, which I would have written off as Horror if so many critics hadn’t referred to it as a Sci-Fi Thriller and given it great reviews.

In Anime Sword Art Online: Extra Edition is the four Summer Special episodes that took place between seasons 1 and 2. As with previous disc releases from this title, I feel it is overpriced at $10 per episode when the normal going rate is 1 to 2 dollars per episode. Until someone releases this at a realistic price point I will continue to watch it streaming rather than adding it to my permanent collection.

frederic

This week a few additional tracks from J-Pop band frederic (no, I have no idea why their name is un-capitalized). The first is Tomei-ningen (Invisible Man) posted last October, the second is Only Wonder, posted online on May 12th of this year.

VR: BBC Taster

BBC Taster is the experimental site for the development of digital content and emerging technology, and it is chock full of both 360 degree videos as well as true VR experiences, which are well worth exploring. In my mind, the difference between the two is interactivity; if you can click on icons to change the presentation in different ways it is VR, if not it is a 360 movie. As a single instance of what is on offer at BBC Taster, The Kraken Wakes 360 started with the radio play and musical score they created from John Wyndham’s science fiction novel of the same name. They layered the 360 degree video on top of a piece of that and made it available for public viewing, with the request that once you watch it (or any of their VR/360 pieces) you rate it. They are trying to get an idea of what works and doesn’t work for people with different kinds of presentations before they crank it up to full production mode, and unlike all the developers using focus groups and test audiences in secret or restricted environments, they are making the public part of the decision making process right from the beginning. They are also taking it on tour across the UK to events like the Sheffield Doc/Fest 2016 which begins today, setting up VR presentation areas complete with the hardware and headsets, so people who don’t have the gear at home can give their feedback. Nor are they the only ones; the Alternate Realities: Virtual Reality Arcade at the Sheffield Documentary Festival has a range of presentations, including the ones from BBC Taster, organized and implemented by Site Gallery and supported by the Arts Council of England. As the year progresses there will be more and more of these kinds of organized public VR gatherings all over the world, so keep your eyes out for the ones happening in your neighborhood.

4 New Elements get Names… Almost

It is rare when a new element is discovered, so we are having a bit of a bonanza at the moment. There are 4 new elements in the Periodic Table, elements 113, 115, 117 and 118, and the discovering teams have put forth names for each of them. The rules for naming an element say you can use Mythology, a place, a scientist, a property of the element, or or a mineral which includes the element as the basis of the name. In this case the names proposed include Nihonium (Nh) for element 113, discovered in Japan (Nihon is the name of the country English speakers call Japan, named in our language after the excellent lacquer-ware that was Europe’s chief import from Nihon starting in the 1600s; China suffered a similar fate for its equally amazing ceramics at about the same time). Two teams working in tandem, the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research in Moscow and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee working in conjunction with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California came up with the other three. They chose Moscovium (Mc) for element 115, Tennessine (Ts) for element 117, and Oganesson (Og) for element 118; Yuri Oganessian is a giant of superheavy element research, and lead the Moscow team who synthesized element 117. Thanks to Scientific American and the Royal Society of Chemistry for the heads up on these exciting new discoveries!

Fishman Embassy Series Jazz 2016: Japan

The Fishman Artist Embassy Series is a presentation of the DC Jazz Festival, which celebrates Jazz from around the world. Each participating embassy hosts a concert of one of their countries most celebrated Jazz artists in a series that runs from April to June, with this years contributors including Spain, France, Italy, and Japan. The Japanese contribution this time is the Mika Mimura Group with special guest Warren Wolf on Thursday, June 16th, playing at the Japan Information and Culture Center, which is the theater in the Japanese Embassy in Washington, DC. Tickets to see this (literally) world class band are only $15 a person, which is about half of what the valet would normally be tipped at such a concert in a major metropolis, so if you love Jazz and are close enough to make the show, do yourself a favor and be in the audience.