This is like jjjjound without the materialism, and with a slightly darker taste. Both favorite brainbreakfasts. What’s in a name, hey?
Distracted
Can’t- Stop! Cut- Broadband!
This is worse (better?) than TED. Online playground for the curious, Sputnik Observatory is a Jonathan Harris project, which means, for one thing, compulsive “page turning”. Part of it is the flexible navigation. Part of it is the ability to store your path. And part of it is that the only thing we love more than listening to smart people talk about cool concepts, is having the clip of the smart person start and finish in under two minutes. Enter at your own (productivity) risk.
The Pleasures of Owen Freeman
If you like what you see here (done for LA Weekly), you should build a schedule of regular visits to Owen Freeman’s site and/or blog, and be one step closer to true happiness.
Not Convinced They Come In That Colour
I imagine this Jonas Wood as a sort of compulsive painter, continually painting, unable to stop. I imagine this because the subject matter appears to be every detail of his surroundings, including basketball cards, stacks of stuff in rooms, and people in kitchens and so forth. And milk crates. But I don’t know.
Some of it reminds me of South Park.
Booooooom! sent me there.
Observant and True
Please go visit my longtime fave Kelly Mark, and then lobby for her new work (It’s Just One God Damn Thing After Another, just wrapped from the Diaz in Toronto) to come to your town. You won’t be sorry. Interdisciplinary conceptual work that is simple but clever, observant and true. Above is Glow House #3, not part of the current show, but I cannot pass up any opportunity to show it to people, so….
Number Two…Number Two…Number Two…
Second verse Book City Jackets sweet as the first. These work on you from several angles: the nostalgia for that period of your life that also includes wet mittens, lunch ladies, and bullies. Er, no, not the bullies. Moving on to another angle: the aura of simplicity and authenticity that radiates from craft paper. And transcending all angles, the crazy dope artwork on these bad boys.
Featured above is Michael Hsiung’s “Betwixt a moment of adoration and obsession, the man is taken aback by the baby angora unicorns”. If you know what I mean. Other works this round by Cheeming Boey and Nishat Akhtar.
artists edition no. 2 « Book City Jackets — Make Every Book Beautiful.
F*ck Art School
A crushing reminder from The Cool Hunter that it is, as you feared, far too late for you to do anything worthwhile with your life. This stuff is the work of 19 year old, SELF TAUGHT Minjae Lee.
Glorifying the Gak
Image from Please step quietly everyone can hear you
© All rights reserved Trent Parke 2009 Australia pigment print
Artabase tells us of a smashing show opening presently. Magnum photog Trent Parke shoots behind the scenes at the Sydney Opera House, glorifying the gak. You have until February to make the Forecourt.
The Places We Live
I cannot believe I briefly forgot about The Places We Live. This website made an enormous impact on me when it launched last year. It’s a great use of the medium: award-winning Magnum photographer Jonas Bendiksen captures startling imagery from slums around the world, and these are married with sounds and voices from the locations telling the stories of the families and individuals featured in the photos. You can navigate the 360 degree perspectives interactively.
To quote Aperture: “For the first time in history, more people live in cities than in rural areas. One-third of those city dwellers—over a billion people—live in slums, mostly in the rapidly urbanising cities of Africa and Asia. Slums have become the fastest growing human habitat in the world.”
I was reminded of this important work recently, thanks to coverage of the National Building Museum’s presentation of Bendiksen’s touring multimedia exhibit, developed in conjunction with the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo. The exhibit is on view at the Museum until January 15, 2010.
If you are happy with your current intake of shelter blogs and mags, do not visit The Places We Live. You really can’t look at lush photos of architecture and decor the same way afterward.
Ephemeral and Nonviable. Or, Giant Jewelry
Ahhh, these are so great! Guess what? It’s in Amsterdam! What the hell is going on with Even More Legendary and the Netherlands? I don’t get it. This recent jewelry grad transforms existing urban structures into giant jewelry. She is working with that zeitgeist about “ordinary”, and quotes the poetic words of photographer Joel Meyerowitz on the second splash page, Splash The Sequel, of her site: “It may be the slant of the light, it may be even the smell, something not visible, you may feel yourself rooted to the spot where suddenly there’s a smell of salt water mixed with roses, and it’s got your number. At that moment you know ‘I’m alive. Here, now.’ And what’s there? Whatever you make of it. Sometimes it’s ephemeral and nonviable. Ordinary.” Saw this over at todayandtomorrow.net.
Even More Legendary 
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