Not sure why there’s so much Williamsburg because he lives in Fort Greene…

Ridiculously amazing photos of WC2010 buildup on Boston.com's Big Picture

• (UPDATE) First things first: The World Cup, Translated into American.

• Slate has the scoop on the secret history of American soccer in the first quarter of the last century (i.e.,the Roaring Twenties), featuring the Boston Wonder Workers, the Brooklyn Wanderers, and, of course, the infamous Fall River Marksmen.

• Even the New Republic has a soccer blog, where you can find gems such as Tom Vanderbilt’s on-point “Meditation on Loyalty.”

I hope I encounter this in real life at some point in the next month...

• Coolhunting aggregates World Cup 2010 merchandising.

• 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

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.

For some reason, the ’speed lines’ remind me of this classic Simpsons bit:

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World Cup Buildup:

Sweet concept jerseys. (Fubiz via Notcot)

The Nike Shaman × Project Zoltar collaboration was unveiled over the weekend (Slam×Hype posted the cryptic teaser last week), but I’m still not clear as to what it is, exactly.

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Plus:

• A History of Cool (NYT)
• “A Scene from the Upcoming Film The Elements of Style.” (McSweeney’s)
• The Visible Hand (Freakonomics Blog on NYT)
• Dan Ariely teaser (TED Blog)
• U.S.-China relations over Yves Klein Blue (below); the painter is the subject of another article in the very same issue of the Economist. Coincidence? I think not.

Full press release at Slam×Hype; metacommentary (re: Facebook) on the Times’ Media Decoder

Nike has also opened two pop-up spaces in NYC, which are just around the corner from each other in Nolita (click on images for more details):

Henri Cartier-Bresson's portrait of Sartre is currently on view in his retrospective at MoMA

As with his entire body of work, Sartre’s theory of imagination refers to—and, naturally, affirms—his ontology, in which he explores Husserl’s tenet that “all consciousness is consciousness of something” in the context of the ‘detotalized totality’ of being-in-itself / being-for-itself dualism. Sartre postulates an admittedly underdeveloped notion of image consciousness in his early work The Imaginary (1940), though these writings are largely eclipsed by his later political [viz. Marxist] proclivities; nevertheless, his theory of imagination is a sufficient foundation of a phenomenological aesthetics.

Notably, Sartre implies that the imaginary (or ‘irreal’) has the same ontological import as the real: if the real is never beautiful, it is simply because beauty is, by definition, imaginary, where imagination is a permanent possibility of consciousness. A painting, photograph, film, song, performance, etc., necessarily transcends perception—i.e. consciousness of oil on canvas, ink on paper, a projection, an actor, etc.—as an object of image consciousness, which overflows with the meaning of the portrait (etc.): a particular arrangement of brushstrokes or sounds immediately presents itself to consciousness as an image or melody. The abstract, then, is that which escapes us in experience qua perception; colors transcend pigment to conjure mood or geometry.

Hence, Images (in no particular order):

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KEY:

1. Liu Bolin opening in Soho this weekend (I used one of his pieces to illustrate my very first blog post). (ArtCat)

Liu Bolin
On Fire
Eli Klein Fine Art
462 West Broadway (between Houston & Prince)
New York NY 10012 [map]
212 / 255-4388
April 30, 2010 – June 4, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, April 30, 6-9pm

2. Scott Campbell’s first solo show in NYC (OHWOW via S×H; also on Nowness)

Scott Campbell
If You Don’t Belong, Don’t Be Long
OHWOW
109 Crosby Street (at Prince)
New York NY 10012 [map]
April 29, 2010 – May 30, 2010
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 29, 6-8pm

3. Skye Parrott of Dossier curated a photography show at BAM

Younger Than I’ll Be
Curated by Skye Parrott
Natman Room
BAM Peter Jay Sharp Building
30 Lafayette Ave (between St. Felix & Ashland) [map]
Brooklyn NY 11243
718 / 636-4100
April 7, 2010 – May 23, 2010

4. Michael Joo & Damien Hirst: Have You Ever Really Looked at the Sun? (S×H) [A: Yes.]

Michael Joo & Damien Hirst
Have You Ever Really Looked at the Sun?
Haunch of Venison
Heidestrasse 46
10557 Berlin, Germany [map]
+49 (0) 30 39 74 39 63
May 1, 2010 – August 14, 2010

Hirst also has work at the Oceanographic Music of Monaco.

5. Barzman’s “Pink Terror” = slow-motion video and Stephen Hawking over a hot beat. (Barzart via 3qd)

6. Faile & BAST bring their street artcade to New York (TBWE; interview on Gothamist; previewed at AM; previous [London] coverage))

Faile & BAST
DELUXX FLUXX NYC
158 Allen St (at Rivington)
New York NY 10002 [map]
April 30, 2010-May 27, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, April 30, 7:30-10:30pm

7. Maya Lin’s so-called last memorial What Is Missing at Times Square (DB)

8. Zaha Hadid for the 2012 Olympics in London (DB)

9. Longo-esque Trent Mitchell photography (ISO50 on FFFFound)

10. The Tribeca Film Festival saw the New York premiere of Tamra Davis’s documentary Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child (Nowness)

11. Bursts of Color in Public (KitsunéNoir via FFFFound)

12. Whistler’s Father (FFFFound via TBWE)

13. Dead or Alive at MAD (Animal)

Dead or Alive
Museum of Arts & Design
2 Columbus Circle (SSE Corner)
New York NY 10019 [map]
212 / 299-7777
April 27, 2010 – October 24, 2010

14. Marina Abramović Made Me Cry (via Marco Anelli’s flickr); for more on The Artist Is Present, Kottke aggregates so I don’t have to.

15. Shepard Fairey’s May Day marks Deitch Projects’ last hurrah. (Full mural image & coverage at AM (also on NYT); video and other news on Animal; listing on ArtCat)

Shepard Fairey
May Day
Deitch Projects
18 Wooster St (at Grand)
New York NY 10013 [map]
212 / 343-7300
May 1, 2010 – May 29, 2010
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 1, 6-8pm

16. Herzog & de Meuron Special (ArchDaily)

17. DQM Spring 2010 Lookbook (HB)

18. For the 13th-consecutive single-artist installation on the Roof Garden of the Met: bamboo. (NYT via Inhabitat)

…Twin brothers Mike and Doug Starn (born in New Jersey in 1961) will present their new work, Big Bambú: You Can’t, You Don’t, and You Won’t Stop, opening on April 27. The monumental bamboo structure, ultimately measuring 100 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 50 feet high, will take the form of a cresting wave that bridges realms of sculpture, architecture, and performance. Visitors will witness the continuing creation and evolving incarnations of Big Bambú as it is constructed throughout the spring, summer, and fall by the artists and a team of rock climbers. Set against Central Park and its urban backdrop, Big Bambú will suggest the complexity and energy of an ever-changing living organism.

–Doug+Mike Starn on the Roof: Big Bambú

Doug & Mike Starn
Big Bambú: You Can’t, You Don’t, and You Won’t Stop
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave (at E 82nd St)
New York NY 10028 [map]
April 27, 2010 – October 31, 2010

19. Peter Root’s Ephemicropolis; see also NYC in staples. (DB; making-of video)

20. Shanghai Expo 2010 Pavilions (Dezeen / ArchDaily)

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Not as coherent but also interesting:

Images from the earthquake in Yushu, China (Boston)

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Mother for Stella; see also: Fading Ads, Pickled in Pixels (NYT)

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Parting Shot: [the view from Brooklyn Bridge Park] Glowingly (Animal)

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Interpol goes in a new [art] direction. (BV)

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Nike Music Shoe revisited: it was Ableton all along. (Core77)

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fin.

via BoingBoing

Parisian turntablists Birdy Nam Nam are obviously the missing link:

Plus: Re-enter Sandman – Smooth Jazz or Dance Pop, take your pick.

Most commentators see the commercial as distasteful or exploitative—Colbert notes that Nike is selling Woods instead of vice versa—though ad execs are rather enamored with the 30-second spot, insofar as it offers a curiously intimate moment with the athlete.

Visible Measures charts the spinoffs; via Mashable

I can’t say that I’m particularly keen on golf, but I do love pop culture, celebrity, and Nike—not to mention the role of marketing in all of the above—and I’m curious if this is the epilogue to the whole sordid affair. As per the title of the post, did William Blake portend the meteoric rise of golf’s biggest star?

Cheap Shot (Reprise) after the jump—

The Lion King remix is also pretty good.

Common Projects at Gargyle

It’s high time to treat get a new pair of kicks for spring / summer… if only I had the cash to throw down for those Common Projects’ überpremium Vans…

Convertible Stan Smiths

Looks like Nike's also trying to give Vans a run for the money

Overkill x New Balance 577 - Berlin Wall

Related: The Choosy Beggar’s Footwear Fails, after GQ’s Men’s Worst Style Mistakes.

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