August 9, 2010

Images

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July 31, 2010

Continued

• Nice interview with Raf Simons (WWD via HB)
• Lengthy inverview with David Andrew Sitek (BV)
• Awesome interview with Bill Murray (GQ)
• Telling interview with Penn & Teller (Telegraph)
• Decent interview with Ari Marcopoulos (Dossier)
• Hip interview with Pedro Winter (Busy P of Ed Banger) (OC)
• Strange interview with Spike Lee (Gothamist)
• Passable interview with Rafael de Cardenas (S×H)
• Brief interview with Tara McPherson (PSFK)

China:

• Urban China, ever the work in progress (NYT)
• China’s Banks: Great Wall Street (The Economist)
• Bad PR for the nouveau riche in the PRC (WSJ via Gawker)
• The other oil spill (NYT / Salon)
• A green movement grows in China (The Economist)
• The Economist also draws an ophidian metaphor for China’s growth / lack thereof.

Music:

• That’s Cool But Can You Make It More Shit?—short James Murphy interview (Nowness)
• The Antlers were amazing at Pier 54 last week (pics / video / new song @ BV)
• Why Music Is Good for You (via 3qd))
• Lil’ Wayne on a typical day in the clink.
• (More on) the Gaga Effect (NYT)
• Trent Reznor scores David Fincher’s The Social Network (NIN via Pitchfork; trailer)
• Inception, musically (NYT)

Media & Technology:

• When cars fly: Wired / n+1 / Bits (Recommended)
• Pure CSS Fail Whale
• Meta-commentary on Old Spice’s post-racial social media marketing.
• Paywall doesn’t pay (The Guardian)
• Apple’s Antenna(e)gate (The Economist / Daring Fireball)
• AWAD items: Frenemies by tongue (NYT); Tech-neology (NPR)… also, autocorrect in theory and in practice.

Food:

• 101 quick grilling recipes. (NYT; Bittman also talks watermelon)
• From table (or kitchen, at least) back to farm; also, a pig in a blanket, six feet under, etc.
• Salon asserts that Top Chef is in top form this season, though I find that the casting and challenges for D.C. have been less-than-inspired.
• Um. (AdFreak)

NYC:

• The High Line, continued (Revs!) (Highly[ne] recommended)
• Diller Scofido + Renfro’s Culture Shed (PSFK)
• The Economist marks George Steinbrenner’s passing with a rough analogy between the man and the city he came to represent.
• The Times wants to know how we do in Brooklyn.
• Hotels host Manhattan’s nouveau nightlife (NYMag); compare and contrast to : “It is part of the legend of New York, real or imagined, that vastly different cultures can thrive quite separately on the same block.”

Random:

• An older article on Messi. (Wired)
• Do Typefaces Really Matter? (BBC News) (Yes; highly recommended)
• Um. (NYT)
• Yoko D is back (Racked)
• Galen Strawson on moral dilemmas; it’s another version the ‘Original Choice’ (which is not chosen but embraced, or ‘owned’) in Sartrean ontology… (The Stone)
• Moral dilemmas, again (3qd), which (sort of) leads to…
• Lebronicles: He got game theory; the China factor; Cavs owner Dan Gilbert is tragic sans his two-time MVP (is the original online anywhere?), but perhaps not as bad as some outspoken critics might suggest.
• What Caravaggio means to me (The Guardian)
• Where America Really Came From (via 3qd)
• 52 architects choose the 21 most important buildings from the past 30 years. (VF)
• Denzel Washington on Wesley Snipes (who is going to jail): “Wesley is like a mighty oak tree… Many who know him have witnessed the fruit of his labours. I have sat in his shade and even been protected by his presence.”

July 27, 2010

Backlog

…a.k.a. link dump / linkage /clickage from the past month; more to come…

• Very Bushwick and very fabulous (NYT)
• You know how we do in Brooklyn (Inc.)
• Pitchfork is Times-worthy.
• I managed to avoid reading any commentary on Inception until I actually saw it for myself yetserday, though at this point, I cannot possibly hope to catch up with all of the bandwidth that has been spilled (not to mention plot spoiled)—in theory and in practice, for example—over Nolan’s polarizing masterpiece. Also: A.O. Scott on film criticism in the digital age in theory and in practice; Dileep Rao (who plays Yusef) gives us the straight dope; Jonah Lehrer speculates on the neuroscience behind the film. Plus, Jonah Lehrer on LSD (in a manner of speaking)
• Am I guilty of “a breezy writing style”? (The Economist; related: China’s microblog macro-crackdown)
• Amid all the talk of his new book Imperial Bedrooms, Bret Easton Ellis also finds time to reflect on American Psycho (The Guardian)
• Sasha Frere-Jones endorses music in cloud form (The New Yorker)
• Tom Vanderbilt included a link to Dave Horton’s unabashedly self-righteous five-part essay on the fear of cycling in his own musings on bicycle highways for Slate. Definitely required reading for anyone who chooses to bike for transportation (as opposed to simply for leisure), with the caveat that it feels a bit too much like justification for my sense of entitlement that I feel when I tell pedestrians to get out of the bike lane. Still, the car culture of the US is easily worse than that of the UK (where Horton’s expertise lies; at least London has congestion pricing) and the essay actually affirmed my fear that cycling still has a long way to go.

• Deitch’s new projects (NYT)
• Brillo: from design to art (Print via BoingBoing)
• An amazing tale of art forensics (highly recommended) (New Yorker; cf.)
• Brion Gysin at the New Museum (NYT); interview with curator Laura Hoptman (AnOther)
• Graffiti prosecution in the Bronx vs. abroad
• Rhizome visits Babycastles.
• Wu Guanzhong, Chinese Artist, Dies at 90 (NYT)
• Why the Art World Hates “Work of Art” (Salon)
• Why Saltz kind of likes “Work of Art” (NYMag); he’s been recapping the show lately. (GQ, for their part, has been interviewing guest judges lately, but New York, not to be one-upped, has exit interviews, including why token outsider Erik kind of likes Jerry Saltz.
• Saltz on the Whitney as it should be (NYMag); Christian Marclay reviewed by his significant other (NYT); plus, the Whitney as it might be and Whitneys that never were; last but not least,  The Future Is Stupid: Jenny Holzer × Keds × Whitney = Bloomingdale’s Live Art

June 24, 2010

Assorted Videos

June 19, 2010

Itemized

“I’m the best thing to happen to typography since Johannes fucking Gutenberg.”

This should keep you busy while I take a couple days off:

Click through for more of Hans Van der Meer's amazing photos of European football pitches

• Dave Eggers’ very funny essay on soccer in America is a must-read; highly recommended.
• Equally anecdotal and insightful, less humorous: T Magazine has an eye-opening feature on the Netherlands’ Ajax, who give “Highlight Factory” a new meaning. (Also from my T Mag backlog: Freeganism in practice. Curiously enough, many aspects of freegan culture echo that of the poverty-stricken underclass in China.)
• In defense of digital media; Pinker’s case; how culture shapes language and cognition
• New York Times‘ elitist lexicon (via Buzzfeed)
• Kind of intense political/feminist analysis/defense of M.I.A./Maya as a political/feminist martyr/pariah in the face of Lynn Hirschberg’s decidedly anti-political/feminist exposé in the New York Times. (Sady also analyzes “Alejandro” vis-à-vis Madonna)

Thanks Zach; related article below

• Highly recommended: “I’m Comic Sans, Asshole.” An instant classic if there ever was one. (McSweeney’s)
• Justin E.H. Smith rhapsodizes about palindromes. (3QD)
• “Closing the Digital Frontier,” via The Atlantic‘s 14¾ Biggest Ideas of the Year.
• GQ has a fascinating profile of Lakers’ owner Jerry Buss
• China, ever the land of eternal contrast & disparity: home to a tech-savvy labor movement (NYT via Evan Osnos on the New Yorker) and (adopted) home to fake white businessmen (The Atlantic via PSFK)
• Robert Hass on Chinese poetry in the second half of the 20th Century. (The Believer)

Bluechips & Theory:

• Jonathan Jones on Anish Kapoor and Damien Hirst.
• Chuck Close: Life. As with art, music, film, etc., I hate reading book reviews instead of the books themselves, but sometimes secondary sources suffice… at least until I can justify throwing down $25 for it…
• Danto, part two—I’m still ambivalent about his definition of art as “embodied meaning,” which I first encountered a few years ago, but this is a good place to start if you’re not familiar with his work (which I can’t say that I am).

• In accord with the New York Times review, I found Bravo’s “Work of Art” surprisingly watchable, living up to its pseudo-Warholian premise more than the SJP branding and Bravo production tropes might suggest. (I was mostly curious because I met Trong, pictured above, a few days prior.) If nothing else, “Work of Art” affirms that artists’ egos are particularly suited for the magnifying glass of reality television.
• Hyperallergic looks at the show inside and out. The former article wisely points out that the reality TV formula of themed ‘challenges’ all but precludes any possibility of artistic growth, as well as the insular—if idealized—working conditions. In other words, it’s hard to take the show for a window into the art world (not that “Top Chef” does any better) when television necessarily imposes a distance between life and work.
• I’ve never watched “Project Runway,” but apparently WSJ does, drawing parallels between the two shows in their recap of the first episode.
• GQ talks to Bill Powers (“Work of Art” judge & NYC gallerist)
• Related: The current state of the Brooklyn Museum (where the winner of “Work of Art” will get a solo show).
• Inverted: Googleheim?

June 7, 2010

Unsorted Links

UPDATE: Rearranged with respect to the next post; trust me, it’s better for everyone this way.

• Digital decay, visually.
• So-so Theophilus London music video.
• Not that you’d ever need an excuse to watch this video…
• Nice analysis of Nike’s “Write the Future” World Cup ad (which I like better than Adidas’ almost-as-star-studded Star Wars spot.)

Richard Barnes - Murmur 8, December 14 2005

June 6, 2010

Items

I’ve mentioned tilt shift photography before, but it continues to blow my mind.

…it gives the viewer a sense of being in a smaller world, a bit like the way the world looks to a kid.

–Bryan Solarski, GOOD Picture Show, June 2 2010

Equally amazing: photos of the semi-dystopian ruins of Kowloon & Battleship Island & Kowloon (below) (Dark Roasted Blend via Boing Boing)

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The “How Our Laws Are Made” infographic above is well-executed and fairly clear, if a little busy (GOOD); the Pulp Fiction one below is neat but, as one commenter points out, the story makes more sense the way it unfolds per Tarantino’s script (Flowing Data).

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Art vs. Art:

Greater New York at PS1: I only got around to seeing about half of the exhibit when I stopped by PS1 last week, but I’m sure I’ll have many opportunities to revisit and engage with the work over the next few months, especially once Warm-Up is underway. Nevertheless, I would imagine that Greater New York stands for everything that Jeff Koons’ BMW Art Car (below) is not. (NYT)

That said, I thought that Koons’ art car (unveiled at the Centre Pompidou) turned out fine, though I was a little disappointed to learn that “the design isn’t actually painted on the car; it’s a vinyl wrap covered with two layers of clear coat. BMW says the wrap was lighter than paint and it could be applied much more quickly. That was a key consideration because Koons had just two months to complete the project.” (Wired)

See also: Image gallery of previous BMW art cars via Wikipedia.
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May 26, 2010

Assorted Links

UPDATED, one last time before midnight.

Os Gemeos & Blu (Works in Progress) in Lisbon

Street art’s symbiotic relationship with the Web makes you wonder whether the genre’s broad popularity stems from the fact that its characteristic features—swift execution, quicksilver response to pop culture and politics, the dominance of quotation and commentary, snarky attitude, fragmented statements embedded in the world rather than meant to stand apart from it—actually reflect the way that plugged-in people process information, more so than “traditional” art. There is something particularly contemporary about street art’s whole M.O., in this sense.

–Ben Davis, Is Street Art Over?, Slate, May 26 2010 (Highly recommended)

Fresh Stuff from Ron English in Queens

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Two perspectives on Marina:

She and MoMA have brought some magic back into art—the sort of magic that all of our courses in art history and appreciation had encouraged us to hope for.

–Arthur C. Danto, Sitting with Marina, The Stone blog on NYT, May 23 2010

There are euphoric moments and then intensely sad feelings of heaviness. Whatever you’re feeling becomes intensified. Certain truths about things I need to fix in my life are revealed to me. Marina says that in her own life she’s not so disciplined—that the performance gives her structure.

–Deborah Wing-Sproul, The Performer Made Bare, NYMag, May 23 2010

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• Bill Simmons’ awesome Guide to Mikhail Prokhorov. (Recommended; thanks Tony)

[As Prokhorov] explained to “60 Minutes,” “I don’t use a computer. We have too much information and it’s really impossible to filter it.”

You know what? He’s not necessarily wrong. Do we REALLY need all this information? Like, right now—you’re reading this column and hopefully enjoying it, but ultimately, could you have survived the weekend if you missed it? I say yes. Just about everything online fits that mold—you have to sift through loads of bad writing and irrelevant information to find the occasional entertaining/funny/interesting thing, and even then, it’s not something that’s making or breaking your week. Ever been on a vacation and had little-to-no Internet access that week? You survived, right? Maybe the big Russian is on to something.

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Candy reminds us of the postmodern notion of self-creation—the way we don social signifiers with the same ease as clothing, constructing our selves bit by bit from cultural cues and images. Rather than the solid frameworks we cast them as, our selves are more like sweaters we put on and take off. When it comes to social identity, we’re all a wee bit in drag.

–Caroline Hagood, New Documentary Tries to Solve the Riddle of Andy Warhol’s Candy Darling,
The Huffington Post, May 21 2010

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• With the 2010 World Cup just 16 days away, Nick Hornby and Sean Wilsey debate the U.S. vs England match on June 12. (GQ)
• Five Bold Predictions for the 2010 French Open.
• Jamie XX’s [dubstep] mix for Colette.
• Play Me I’m Yours: public pianos in NYC this summer. (Animal / BV)
• Michael Pollan on the Food Movement, Rising.
• Eddie Huang of Baohaus on Foodies and Hypebeasts.
• Carl “A.C.” Newman of New Pornographers fame talks maple syrup with T Magazine.
• The First Yardstick for Measuring Smells.
• Alber Elbaz of Lanvin on the Future of Fashion.
• Magritte’s Missives (The Economist)
• McSweeney’s via Salon: 20 Fascinating Self-Portraits.
• Sony’s roll-up digital display (Bits)
• Don’t Ice Me Bro! When Memes Meet the Marketplace. (Thanks Em)
• AT&T / BBDO Worldwide vs. Christo & Jeanne-Claude. (Media Decoder)
• Pay what you want to see the Whitney Biennial for the next 48 hours (Artsbeat)
• Wired has a feature on traffic theorist Charles Komanoff, who makes an ironclad case for congestion pricing. (Highly recommended—seriously, I love shit like this.)

The problem of negative externalities [refers to] costs that accrue when the self-interested actions of one person leave bystanders worse off. The biggest example of a negative externality is global warming: When we burn carbon-based fuels, we benefit ourselves while imposing a great cost on billions of other present and future inhabitants of the planet.

–Felix Salmon, The Man Who Could Unsnarl Manhattan Traffic, Wired, May 24 2010

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GOOD Picture Show has a gallery of J. Bennett Fitts' incredible photos of Middle America

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May 20, 2010

Imagery

Like Images… but, you know, ending with “-ry” instead of “-s”

• Andrew Kuo’s “My Wheel of Worry, May 2010″ (Tiny Vices via TWBE)

• Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle is screening in full at IFC through June 3rd 10th.

• Matthew Barney and Björk also had their pictures taken (opposite Marina Abramović, of course).

• Abramović fanboy Paco Blancas has sat with her 14 times (and counting), which is apparently enough times to get MoMA to interview you for their blog.

• Roy Lichtenstein at Gagosian

When we think of still lifes, we think of paintings that have a certain atmosphere or ambience. My still life paintings have none of those qualities, they just have pictures of certain things that are in a still life, like lemons and grapefruits and so forth. It’s not meant to have the usual still life meaning.

–Roy Lichtenstein.

Roy Lichtenstein
Still Lifes
Gagosian
555 W 24th St (at 11th)
New York NY 10011 [map]
212 / 741-1111
May 8, 2010 – July 30, 2010

• The new Banksy work in downtown NYC have already been, um, vandalized by the likes of IRAK and Poster Boy (supporters).

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May 15, 2010

Items

“A low moan of agreement escaped Ellis’s mouth.” –Bret Easton Ellis

Once again, it’s too nice out to sit in front of a computer screen, so we’re going with assorted links today… A few interesting stories, including an article on the future of digital journalism. *UPDATED on 5/16 with even more recommended reading.

• Bryant Urstadt on the astronomical rise of Uniqlo (NYmag) [See also: Christian Boltanski's No Man's Land installation at the Park Avenue Armory]
• James Fallows on How [Google Might] Save the News (Atlantic) [Compare and contrast with Uniqlo's business model, above.]
• Andrew Rice on new models of digital journalism (NYT)
• Eliot Von Buskirk welcomes us to the Age of Curation (Wired) [Not to sound too snarky, but didn't the Long Tail come out in 2004?]
• Douglas Adams’ fascinating, prescient take on “How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet” from 1999 (!) (via Kottke)

• I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I’ve never read any Roberto Bolaño, but I’d never seen a picture of him before—is it just me, or does he look a lot like Keith Haring? (GQ)
• Alastair Harper on “George Orwell, Patron Saint of Hacks” (Prospect)
• Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s “Theory, Literature, Hoax” after Borges. (NYT)
• Claudia Roth Pierpont on Duke Ellington (New Yorker)
• Nick Carr on the new New York license plate (below) (Huffpo)

Also worth reading, if you’re so inclined:

• The current state of NBA point guards (GQ)
• Kareem sounds off (ESPN)
• The China Model (Economist)
• How the Web Is Changing the Way We Eat (Salon)

• Interview with Rick Owens (above) (Artinfo via Slam×Hype; images here)
• Interview with Damien Hirst & Michael Joo (WWD via Slam×Hype; images here—the log piece reminds me of Ai Weiwei…)
• Interview with Bret Easton Ellis (Vice)
• Interview with Gorillaz (Wired)
• Gus Van Sant catches up with Madonna (Interview)
• Adam Kimmel raps with David Blaine (Interview)

• Greg Miller on Karim’s Nader’s theory of mutable memory (Smithsonian)
• Ryan Bradley on “Sex, Lies and Nature Documentaries” (GOOD)
• Malcolm Gladwell on WWII espionage (New Yorker)
• Gary Wolf on the Data-Driven Life (NYT)
• Richard Lewontin on Jerry Fodor & Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini’s What Darwin Got Wrong. (The New York Review of Books)—I’d heard a lot of the arguments before until I came to this bit:

Individual organisms are surrounded by a moving layer of warm moist air. Even trees are surrounded by such a layer. It is produced by the metabolism of the individual tree, creating heat and water, and this production is a feature of all living creatures. In humans the layer is constantly moving upward over the body and off the top of the head. Thus, organisms do not live directly in the general atmosphere but in a shell produced by their own life activity. It is, for example, the explanation of wind-chill factor. The wind is not colder than the still air, but it blows away the metabolically produced layer around our bodies, exposing us to the real world out there.

Plus, a short, sweet video for good measure: