HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Onuinu new single “Happy Home” had me looking for his album just one minute into it. Too bad the LP doesn’t drop until August, he’s on tour with Yacht on these dates. Its like a upbeat Black Moth Super Rainbow is backing Toro Y Moi for an encore at a outdoor roller disco, everyone is dancing.
New Gold Panda dropped today out of nowhere, Derwin comes with a full sound that ramps up and builds like a classic Telefon Tel Aviv track but has hints of Caribou but pitched down an octave, an amazing follow up for recent releases that will be hard to beat. One thing I have to say is something that I learned from Mux Mool is that Derwin puts a lot of punch into his rhythm section thats what separates him from most of his following producers plus there’s a perfect level of brightness added during mastering.
If there’s any label to be excited about it should be Tim Sweeney’sBeats In Space, they’re already on release #3, sounds like original indie-disco(I don’t know if thats even a thing) Erlend Oye material, 12″ ships May 22nd I recommended picking this one up.
Time to drop it out and go a little deep, heavy beauties from Conforce, if you missed their latest album later year then I guess I just feel bad for you.
It’s about that time when iPhone 5 rumors start ramping up. Fortunately I have one right here for you to feast your eyes upon. This iPhone 5 concept or as the creator calls it, the “iPhone Plus”, was created by the same guy who dreamed up the Instagram Camera.
Here’s a quick feature list for you dreamed up by the creator:
– Liquid metal Body: thermoformed on a single plane, no junctions needed
– Screen with double alkali-aluminosilicate sheet glass
– 4.3″ Retina Display with In-Cell technology
– A6 Quad Core processor
– Rear Camera: 10.0 Megapixel, f/2.4, 1080p Full HD video at 30 FPS
– Front Camera: 2.0 Megapixel (VGA), 480p VGA video at 30 FPS
– Rear motion sensor
– Top pico-projector to beam photos and videos on any surfaces
– Slim design for an edge-to-edge thinner profile
– New slim-dock connector
– Fully “Capacitive” home button
Fascinated by the work of Paul Davies, an Australian architectural-landscape painter and sculptor. Can’t help but to find some parallels between his work and Scott’s, who both seem to have the ability to create “dream-like sequences”, through the manipulation of layers, color and texture.
In the words of Paul himself:
Much of this work has been sourced from my recent visits to America and Europe. During these visits I examined The Eames House and Schindler House, both in Los Angeles, Frank Sinatra’s holiday retreat in Palm Springs, The Bauhaus in Dessau and The Villa Savoye in Poissy. I have also visited the modernist buildings in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, by Van Mollyvan, who spent time training under Le Corbusier. Gaining access to these sites often takes many requests as some of the buildings are privately owned. I was interested in these examples of international landscapes and architecture because of the striking, atmospheric qualities I could capture when photographing them. To amplify these images, I collaged them with sourced landscape photographs, of North America’s West Coast, by Ansel Adams. Adams’s photographs, with their crisp cinematic quality, allowed me to play with the composition and to stage dramatic, non- existent scenes. The photographic images reminded me of typical holiday postcards and I have attempted to capture this in my work by intensifying the perspectives and altering the colour ways.
Although the scenes and structures that inhibit them seem picturesque, in reality, these iconic homes can often feel austere and isolated. My work investigates these images as portraits of space, devoid of human form, inviting the viewer to generate their own emotional response to the painting. The absence of people in my work encourages the viewer to wander uninterrupted through the space and appreciate the built and non-built qualities of the surrounding environment. Through my practice I have attempted to explore this concept of isolation by incorporating empty swimming pools in the picture. Throughout my school years I swam competitively and was fascinated by the vacant feeling of the outdoor pools when they were drained for winter. I recently visited David Hockney’s underwater swimming pool mural, painted in the 1980’s for The Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles. Hockney’s work addresses issues of space and location, and his swimming pool design is a brilliant 3D version of these concepts. This year I designed a version of Hockney’s mural, for my Father’s swimming pool, and the experience was helped by the understanding of space I learnt from my Sculpture study at NSW College Of Fine Arts. By creating my paintings devoid of people, “emptying” the swimming pools and “burning” the forests, I am attempting to convey this dislocation to the viewer and raise environmental concerns that face us today.
Alex Koplin is one of the veteran commenters on ISO50 blog, while he’s been working on graduating he’s also had time to work on a few collages and some free desktops for everyone. I talked to him over the phone before I posted this and he shared that Adrift by ISO50 was an influence on the work which I thought was a good choice always to look at before working mostly anything.
I’ve always been fascinated by collage. It’s a visceral technique that emerged in the early 20th century as a form of pop art, involving the assemblage of a variety of different sources of color and texture. Inspired by a few recent projects, I set out to experiment and develop my own technique for collage. These collage/number studies are the result of my first concerted effort, and I couldn’t be happier with the results. What excites me even more is the potential to apply this technique in future projects, using different color and texture palettes, and new layout techniques. I learned about how layout and order of placement dictate the motion and flow of the collage, which can be especially noted viewing the piece at a small size, or from far-away. It’s especially interesting to think about collage in this case as a digital approach to replicating a technique that traditionally relied on the physical sourcing, cutting and gluing of materials. The affordances of applications like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, and the abundance of pixels to source from the internet allow us to replicate these processes without all the mess, but is this still giving us the experience of bonding with the materials as we combine and re-contextualize them to form something new, expressive, and ultimately our own? I can say I did get a taste of this feeling, but there is still a barrier that existed between me and this final result that beckons me to somehow bring this sort of technique into the material world.
I’ve been a fan of Ash Bolland‘s work at Umeric for a while now, but I only realized tonight that these scattered pieces I had kept coming back to over the years were all his. There’s something about the live action mixed with 3D that’s other worldy and strange that I absolutely love. Some of these organic models make no sense, but they’re beautifully designed and rendered and also amazing to watch interact with the environment. The four above sort of detail his latest work first, middle work second and third and oldest work last. Really love the sound design in the fourth piece.
Head over to his site to check out the rest of his work or Umeric’s Vimeo, it’ll be worth the half hour.
Browsing for inspiration this morning, I came across this set of beautiful vintage Psychology book covers by the ever so great publishing company Penguin Books.
There’s also a great set of Penguin Book designs on this Flickr account.
I don’t usually go too deep trying to interpret films and videos simply for the fact that I’m not good at it. Can you really ever truly determine the intentions of an artist? True, some are pretty forthright and wear it on their sleeves as a sort of art-form in and of itself, but for the most part art and expression are purely personal exercises, the products of which can’t be expected to be faithfully interpreted by others. And that’s the beauty; that others are free to take the form and mold it to their own experience, to derive a more personal meaning from it. I for one hope that the majority of people who consume my work perceive it in a completely different way than I do. I know that by and large that’s not the case, but I’d like to think it could be if properly framed.
But this video struck a chord with me as an artist and as a human being in general. How can we reconcile our passions and goals with the biological imperative and our desire to find true meaning in life? Is our work the true meaning? On your death bed will you praise yourself for the things you’ve achieved as an artist, be fulfilled because you followed your “dream”. Or will you be thankful for the the relationships you’ve forged and the lives you’ve touched? Hopefully both. But as I grown older and learn more of myself and my work, I begin to fear these goals are mutually exclusive in some respects.
Curious to hear other’s thoughts. And I’m not missing the lighter side of this, it’s downright hilarious in it’s own way. But on a more serious note I think this is outlines some conflicts we all must face as artists striving towards our self-oriented goals.
