Tag Archives: Arts & Culture
Golden Dakinis: Buddhist iconography
Daniel Rozin “Mirrors”
THE FRINGE PROYECT
IKEA Club Flash Mob
To commemorate a local nightclub called The Sanctuary that got demolished in 2004 to make way for a new IKEA, 200 folks from the English town of Milton Keynes turned up to the furniture store recently and hold an impromptu rave.
[via]
© Piers Fawkes for PSFK, 2008. |
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From Rails to Roasts: Deptford Project Cafe
Studio Myerscough and Luke Morgan have transformed an old railway carriage into something of a local hotspot. The Deptford Project Café is a retired rail car that has been brightened up with licks of luminous paint, retro song lyrics, a bathroom dedicated to Elvis and endearing sayings like ‘I saved this for you’ on the seats of their stools.
As if that wasn’t friendly enough, they also serve locally sourced food and farmed coffee, along with putting on art shows, barbecues and a weekend creative market that showcases art, design, music and film. The Café is the first bold step in a regeneration project to inject some life back in the Deptford Train Station area.
Studio Myerscough are also known for London’s Largest Living Room at Somerset House earlier this year as well as exhibitions in the Science Museum, The Barbican and the London Design Museum.
© Ruby Pseudo for PSFK, 2008. |
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Slow-Motion Skateboarding
We just love this short video clip of kids skateboarding shot on a RED Camera and slowed down to 120 frames per second. From the subtle flick of a heel to the flexing of the board, every minute detail comes through in high definition bliss.
[via Trends Now]
The Power of Photography
In a fascinating New York Times article, Errol Morris explores the power of images, and how they can shape our thoughts. He starts off examining the infamous doctored Iranian missile photo, and goes on to talk about why we need to question the images we view. He finds that people will tend to believe what they see, even if it’s not true. Changing history can be as easy as changing the photo – either content, or simply the caption.
Morris interviews Hany Farid, a Dartmouth professor and an expert on digital photography:
(Farid) “And even like this missile one. You start putting it out there and saying, “Oh look, this picture? It’s a fake. This picture? It’s a fake.” But you know what people remember? They don’t remember, “It’s a fake.” They remember the picture. And there are psychology studies, when you tell people that information is incorrect, they forget that it is incorrect. They only remember the misinformation. They forget the tag associated with it. They did these great studies, especially with older people. They give them information about health, Medicare, Medicaid, that kind of stuff. And they say, “this information that you heard? It’s wrong.” And what ends up happening is, that information gets ingrained into their brains, and even if they are subsequently told it’s wrong, they end up believing it.”
NYT: “Photography As a Weapon”
Chemical Brothers Request Geo-Tagged Content For Music Video
For their forthcoming greatest-hits album Brotherhood, The Chemical Brothers have asked fans to submit short video clips (2 to 20 seconds) or photographs that celebrate the “insanity that goes on at the stoke of midnight.” The clips, which have been requested to be related to the specific point of origin and include geo-tags, suggest that the group are planning on creating some sort of crowd sourced montage video incorporating footage from around the world.
Footage for the The Midnight Madness global video project need to be submitted to Google Earth via The Chemical Brothers website by August 25. All submitted clips will be shown on a Google Earth and Youtube channel on September 1st, while a selection of the best clips will be used in the video itself.
[via Wired]
Is Hipster Homogeneity Killing Culture?
Adbusters has a controversial essay questioning whether or not today’s youth culture is inbreeding itself into oblivion. They use the dreaded word “hipster” which tends to make people argue about the definition and miss the point. The piece does raise an interesting question though -is the current cool/hipster/youth culture just an empty mash of previous cultures? Like westernization killing off indigenous traditions; is “hipster” culture an hyper-ironic recursive game that lays waste to creative thought? The article is written in typical heavy handed Adbusters style, but the ideas presented are worth thinking over.
From Adbusters:
Ever since the Allies bombed the Axis into submission, Western civilization has had a succession of counter-culture movements that have energetically challenged the status quo. Each successive decade of the post-war era has seen it smash social standards, riot and fight to revolutionize every aspect of music, art, government and civil society.
But after punk was plasticized and hip hop lost its impetus for social change, all of the formerly dominant streams of “counter-culture” have merged together. Now, one mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior has come to define the generally indefinable idea of the “Hipster.”
An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.
Adbusters: “Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization”
Video Is The New Text File / Infomercial
Make Magazine make an interesting comment on their site about how video (like the one in this post) has become the new user-manual and that we, or at least tech-geeks don’t tend to learn from text anymore:
We think there are some good opportunities for people who makes things to share their skills and how they create and make a living doing that (and we’ve shared some initial numbers). Videos are becoming the new “text files” – if you grew up learning about some techy topics by text files shared around you likely recognize the analogy. Etsy sellers, makers and anyone who makes things might want to experiment with this model of sharing their skills with other online via video and having actually things to buy as part of the video, but not just an “advertisement” or “infomercial”.
Nice comment on the power of video to share ideas too.
International Street and Stencil Art Celebrated in Melbourne
On August 1, Australia will host its 5th annual Melbourne Stencil Festival, featuring works by established and emerging artists from Australia and around the world. The 10-day long festival will showcase a wide variety of colorful exhibitions, artist live demonstrations, artist talks, panel discussions, workshops, master classes and street art related films.
Over the past four years, Stencil Festival has featured some 800 works by 150 artists including Logan Hicks, Kenji Nakayama, Broken Crow, Mephisto Jones, Sixten, and Australian artists Anthony Lister, Meggs, HaHa, Vexta amongst others. For many artists, it has been their first major exhibition and a launching point for their career.
[via AWE50ME]
PICNIC’08: Collaborative Creativity
PICNIC is a three day gathering of creative people in Amsterdam. The event is in its third year and brings together some of the most interesting media entrepreneurs, thinkers and creators to share their experience and stories.
The conference has a neat design which is kept in an all-green picnic style, about 1,500 delegates from all over the world are attending. There are also PICNIC Specials: seminars, lectures and round table discussions that follow each year’s theme deeper. Practical workshops are part of the PICNIC Labs and help refine ideas or come up with creative business concepts. Their site says:
The main theme of PICNIC’08 is “Collaborative Creativity” in its many guises. We will look at new and connected forms of intelligence and creativity, from the fields of entertainment, science, the arts and business. From the global brain to crowd-sourced design, from data visualization techniques to fostering creativity; from connected cities to connected souls: in a series of ground-breaking presentations, discussions and debates we will explore the future of collaborative creativity and its implications for us all.
The next PICNIC will be held 24-26 September 2008. PSFK Germany will be there. If you are, too, drop us a line!