Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries

I've been meaning to blog this, one of my favourite bits of web art, since I started blogging. Somehow I never got around to it.

Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries Presents is a collection of simple Flash animations. Each consists simply of text synchronized with some jazz. You'd think that this would be only a clever little gimmick, but it achieves one of the classic goals of art, creating a rich range of effects with a very simple formal vocabulary.

Samsung Means To Come is the best-known YHCHI work; it was circulated a lot a few years back. The use of music is particularly fun, and the story it tells is funny, witty, and spicy. My personal favourite is Dakota, a sort of Beat tale of adventure that would have made Kerouac proud. But I think that the hightest acheivement in the collection is Bust Down the Doors! It starts out being about something painful and timely, but be patient with it—it turns into something different, something timeless.

As I said, there's spicy and painful stuff in there, so depending on the tenor of your workplace, some of it may not be work-safe.