August 9, 2010

Images

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

Read the rest of this entry »

August 1, 2010

High Fidelity

This is a week old, but amazing nonetheless: Atlanta-based prop designer Harrison Krix spent 17 months crafting the helmet that Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo dons to become one half of Daft Punk.

Truly brilliant.

Core77 / HB

Homem-Christo also recorded as Le Knight Club in the late 90’s:
» Le Knight Club – Mirage (7:08) – 8.2MB mp3 @ 160kbps

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 25, 2010

Periodic Update

I’ve recently come across several periodic table-style infographics lately, though none of them seem to do justice to the Periodic Table of Elements, which is organized, well, scientifically—by nuclear protons and valence electrons. Thus, the biggest problem with arranging curses, typefaces and Mad Men trivia in the iconic castle-shaped schematic is simply the fact that Mendeleev’s original diagram is organized by the realities of the physical world—where the empirical properties of the elements dictate their atomic numbers and layout—while none of the data tabulated in the following infographics has a similar logic flow.

One more for good measure (I guess this trend dates back to this March): The Periodic Table to End All Periodic Tables

July 11, 2010

World Cup 2010, Visually

All in all, I thought that the both sides played well in the final—I’m tempted to draw a comparison to the NBA finals, which was equally physical, not to mention prolonged for the teams’ defensive prowess and perhaps even grueling to the point of ennui, yet entertaining nonetheless. Contrary to the subtext of recent imagery, I was hoping that David Villa, the Creative Force in Spain’s Attack, would pull through with the epic overtime clincher, though Iniesta’s execution was also worthy of, say, Donovan.

• Boston.com’s Big Picture photoblog documented the excitement over four dramatic chapters. The well-curated selection of superlative photos is coherent (and readily minable) with a palpable narrative arc: in a word, beautiful.

• Hyperakt’s excellent (and portentous) radial bracket (click for full size). (via Notcot; win one through Dezeen)

• Michael Deal infographics for Umbro

• Where Players Are From (via FlowingData)

O'Keeffe-esque

Plus:

• Mashable has more (in the vein of social media / real-time / mobile app visualizations); the Guardian’s Twitter bubbles are kind of interesting, while the productivity infographic is also worth checking out.
• WC2010’s massive carbon footrprint (via Inhabitat)
• Qualitative data: highlights.

May 31, 2010

Bespoke vs. Velo

Bike porn from the book Velo: Bicycle Culture and Design and Bespoke: The Handbuilt Bicycle.

Bespoke: The Handbuilt Bicycle
Museum of Arts & Design
2 Columbus Circle (SSE Corner)
New York NY 10019 [map]
212 / 299-7777
May 13, 2010 – August 15, 2010

Via Designboom, Coolhunting, PSFK, DB again & Gestalten; click image for original source.

Much more after the jump: Read the rest of this entry »

May 22, 2010

Rick Owens on Nowness

“I can’t think of anything more glamorous than working on making beautiful things.”

Nowness has an interview with Rick Owens and an image gallery of his current furniture exhibition, “Pavane for Dead Princess,” at Salon 94.

Again, check out his Rules of Style for Details to get an idea of what he’s about:

1. I’m not good at subtlety. If you’re not going to be discreet and quiet, then just go all the way and have the balls to shave off your eyebrows, bleach your hair, and put on some big bracelets.

2. Working out is modern couture. No outfit is going to make you look or feel as good as having a fit body. Buy less clothing and go to the gym instead.

3. I’ve lived in Paris for six years, and I’m sorry to say that the Ugly American syndrome still exists. Sometimes you just want to say “Stop destroying the landscape with your outfit.” Still, from a design standpoint, I’m tempted to redo the fanny pack. I look at it as a challenge—it’s something to react against.

4. When a suit gets middle-of-the-road it kind of loses me—it has to be sharp and classic and almost forties.

5. Hair and shoes say it all. Everything in between is forgivable as long as you keep it simple. Trying to talk with your clothes is passive-aggressive.

6. There’s something a little too chatterboxy about color. Right now I want black, for its sharpness and punctuation.

Read the rest of this entry »

May 4, 2010

Images: Super Deluxx Follow Up

More on the Images (below), as well as several new ones; as always, too much, too much. But seriously, how often do you see something like this.

Hyères, France, 1932 / Magnum

First of all, the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibit at MoMA is really quite remarkable, and I echo Kottke’s rave review (he mentions the image above, which was the first of many that caught my eye).

What he excelled at was seeing things in a different way from most other people.

–A Father of Modern Photography: A Hunter and His Prey, The Economist, April 15 2010

The retrospective has a personal resonance on several levels: I’ve become increasingly interested in photography, journalism and photojournalism in the past couple years; his photographs of early and mid-century China are vaguely nostalgic (probably because I recently spent a couple months living in Beijing with my grandparents, who lived through it); and I recognized HCB’s portrait of Sartre from a book cover.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Discovered while eating a turkey hoagie and contemplating the meaning of life at a roadside stand. Also, admit it: he’s cute as a goddamn bug!

–Mike Sacks, Famous Philosophers and How They Were First Discovered,
McSweeney’s, May 2010

(More on HCB at Vanity Fair via 3qd.)

---- --- -- - -- --- ----

Liu Bolin at Eli Klein: an excellent show despite the blue-chippy crowd at the opening. It might be more of the same and it probably has a certain loaded cultural content that can only be appreciated as someone who has recently spent time in China, but I would still say that the pieces in On Fire are visually compelling even without the political subtext.

His works have been communicated via emails, blogs, magazines and journals on a massive scale.

Liu Bolin’s earlier Hiding in the City photography series, in which he paints himself into the urban landscape, was inspired by the Chinese government’s demolition of the Suo Jiacun Artist Village in Beijing in 2006. He drew attention to great landmarks in China, both old and modern, while highlighting the lack of recognition which was paid to the citizens that built them. He portrayed the tragedy of the increasing insignificance of the individual in China as the government focused on presenting a modern commercial and industrial image. Rather than trying to fight, people attempted to hide and adapt to these forced changes.

–Liu Bolin’s On Fire press release & additional images via Eli Klein.

Click images for larger versions.

索家村 – Suo Jiacun [Artist's Village] (apparently, Liu Bolin reps it); 中国当代 – Contemporary China

折 – fold, discount, break, bend, snap, lose, roll over, convert, rebate, twist, double up, be convinced, turn back, turn over, lose money in business, change direction, be filled with admiration, suffer losses (Google Translate)

Dude's shirt (bottom right) matches the photograph...

Liu Bolin
On Fire
Eli Klein Fine Art
462 West Broadway (near Houston)
New York NY 10012 [map]
212 / 255-4388
April 30, 2010 – June 4, 2010

---- --- -- - -- --- ----

I didn’t make it to the Scott Campbell opening, but it made it into other “emails, blogs, magazines and journals on a massive scale”: TBWE has a nice gallery of the work and the opening; OC has a gallery of the work itself; HB recap; Interview studio visit via HB; Terry stays relevant.

I did make it to Faile & BAST’s DELUXX FLUXX NYC opening (after stopping by Liu Bolin), but my photos didn’t turn out so well. Again, you can find more/better coverage elswewhere.

---- --- -- - -- --- ----

Keith W. Bentley – “Cauda Equina” (1995-2007)

The New York Times has an interesting article on the kind of organic art that is currently on display at the Museum of Arts and Design.

Jan Fabre – "Skull" (2001); Fabián Peña – "The Impossibility of Storage for the Soul I (Self-Portrait)" (2007)

Of course, people have always used natural materials to make their art, for the simple reason that until recently nature was all they had, said Ellen Dissanayake, a scholar on the evolution of art [who notes that] from the beginning, art demanded transformation. “Even in hunter-gatherer societies, they tend to make their stuff look not organic,” she said. “When they’re painting, they’ll use geometric shapes, make a row of triangles or circles, as though to show humans are more than nature.”
…
As Ms. Dissanayake sees it, when people make art, or “artify,” they follow several “aesthetic principles,” whether they know it or not. “They simplify, repeat, exaggerate, elaborate and manipulate expectations,” she said.

–Natalie Angier, Of Compost, Molecules and Insects, Art Is Born,
The New York Times, May 3 2010

Billie Grace Lynn – "Mad Cow Motorcycle" (2008)

---- --- -- - -- --- ----

I didn’t particularly regret missing the Shepard Fairey opening until I saw this:

Classic.

Animal / TWBE

More Shepard Fairey and many more after the jump… Read the rest of this entry »

April 22, 2010

The Second Tallest Building On Earth

This super-tall, 632-meter tower will be sited in the heart of Shanghai’s Lujiazui Finance and Trade Zone, adjacent to the Jin Mao Tower and Shanghai World Financial Center. As the most prominent icon on the city’s skyline, Shanghai Tower’s transparent spiral form will showcase cutting-edge sustainable strategies and public spaces that set a new standard for green community. Within its 128-stories, Shanghai Tower contains Class-A office space, entertainment venues, retail, a conference center, a luxury hotel and cultural amenity spaces. The tower will be registered for a high level of building certification from the China Green Building Committee and the U.S. Green Building Council.

–Gensler, Shanghai Tower

For reference: the Burj Khalifa in Dubai is 828m. Wikipedia has more on the Tallest Buildings in the World, if you’re so inclined.

DB

April 7, 2010

New Bike Tech

Hypebeast.tv has a new interview with the guys behind Outlier, who craft cyclable basics.

---- --- -- - -- --- ----

Benedict Radcliffe Graffiti Bike = The Art of Going Brakeless / Instant Morris Louis

Viktor Vautier via Juxtapoz.

---- --- -- - -- --- ----

I’m not surprised to hear that electric bikes are all the rage in China: I remember seeing countless two-wheeled contraptions that had some kind of ad hoc outboard motor strapped to them. In fact, I passed an old Chinese dude riding an electric bike across the Manhattan Bridge just the other day…

Of course, besides legal issues, GOOD points out that electric bikes represents a stepping stone between traditional transportation (bicycles) and an emerging middle class aspiring to Western ideals of status (electrics automobiles)—an intermediate space in a rapidly developing economy that is nonexistent in our car-dominated nation.

The Economist via GOOD. Also on NYT.

 Read the rest of this entry »