Bananaz

Bananaz is a 2008 British documentary film directed by Ceri Levy about Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett's alternative rock virtual band Gorillaz.

Information

During the years from 2000 to 2006, the director Ceri Levy filmed the creators of the Gorillaz behind the scenes, from the very first drawings and animations, to the music and the musicians, as well as the faces behind the voices of the characters and other content such as interviews with various Gorillaz collaborators and backstage footage of live concert performances. This documentary features 92 minutes of behind the scenes footage of the creators making the visuals and recording the music for the Gorillaz albums Gorillaz and Demon Days that was recording over the course of six years.

2008 screenings

Bananaz premiered to the news media on 7 February at the Berlin Film Festival and to the rest of the world on 9 February. The documentary was shown in the festival until 15 February

The documentary had its first North American premiere at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas showing at Wednesday 12 March and Saturday 15 March at Texas' Paramount Theater.

Ray J

William Ray Norwood, Jr. (born January 17, 1981), known by his stage name Ray J, is an American singer, songwriter, record producer and actor. Born in McComb, Mississippi and raised in Carson, California, he is the brother of recording artist and actress Brandy Norwood and the first cousin of rapper Snoop Dogg.

Life and career

Early life

William Ray Norwood, Jr. was born in McComb, Mississippi to Willie Norwood and Sonja Bates-Norwood. His older sister Brandy is an award-winning, multi-platinum recording artist. Early in his life, he moved with his family from McComb, Mississippi to Los Angeles, California, and in 1989 started appearing in television commercials for different companies. In 1989, at the age of eight, Norwood began auditioning for and appearing in television commercials; he played the foster son in The Sinbad Show, from 1993 to 1994. This period in Norwood's life would shape his acting career. According to Bradley Torreano of allmusic, "his easygoing image and boyish looks appealed to the producers of Brandy's television show, Moesha, giving him a role on the UPN series as Dorian "D-Money", a role he played from 1999 until the show ended in 2001.

Tierra

Astronomy

Computing and games

Film

Music

See also

Tierra (computer simulation)

Tierra is a computer simulation developed by ecologist Thomas S. Ray in the early 1990s in which computer programs compete for time (central processing unit (CPU) time) and space (access to main memory). In this context, the computer programs in Tierra are considered to be evolvable and can mutate, self-replicate and recombine. Tierra's virtual machine is written in C. It operates on a custom instruction set designed to facilitate code changes and reordering, including features such as jump to template (as opposed to the relative or absolute jumps common to most instruction sets).

Simulations

The basic Tierra model has been used to experimentally explore in silico the basic processes of evolutionary and ecological dynamics. Processes such as the dynamics of punctuated equilibrium, host-parasite co-evolution and density-dependent natural selection are amenable to investigation within the Tierra framework. A notable difference between Tierra and more conventional models of evolutionary computation, such as genetic algorithms, is that there is no explicit, or exogenous fitness function built into the model. Often in such models there is the notion of a function being "optimized"; in the case of Tierra, the fitness function is endogenous: there is simply survival and death.

Tierra (band)

Tierra is a Latin R&B band, originally from Los Angeles, California, that was first established in the 1970s by former El Chicano members Steve Salas (vocals) and his brother Rudy Salas (guitar). The other original members were Bobby Navarrete (reeds), Joey Guerra (keyboards), Steve Falomir (bass guitar), and Philip Madayag (drums) and Andre Baeza (percussion). Their biggest hit was the 1980 remake of The Intruders' 1967 hit "Together", written by Gamble & Huff, which reached #18 on the Billboard Hot 100, and #9 on the US Billboard R&B chart.

Background

Tierra has the distinction of being the first Latino band to have four songs on the national chart with two of them in the Top 100 at the same time.

Around 1973, Rudy and Steve Salas formed Tierra and their self-titled debut album was recorded. By the mid-1970s the band consisted of the Salas brothers, Rudy Villa on reeds, Kenny Romain on drums and latin-percussion, Conrad Lazano on bass, Aaron Ballesteros on drums and vocals, Alfred Rubaclava on bass and Leon Bisquera on keyboards. Around that time they recorded the album Stranded for the Salsoul records label.