Asian Film Festival at IFC Center in New York

A little off topic for a design blog, bt this is inspiring stuff. Among these unique offerings is the new Chan-Wook Park film "I'm a cyborg, but that's ok." [links to trailer], I've been a huge fan of his ever since seeing Oldboy and Lady Vengeance.

Katya Moorman, Designer

Check out the work by versatile interactive designer and motion graphics/video artist Katya Moorman.

Björk: Innocence Video Pitch

As some of you might know, Björk put out an open call for submissions for ideas for her new video. Our pitch was hastily produced in one week after they unexpectedly moved up the deadline a month, but I wanted to share it with you anyway.

Nagi Noda

If you haven't already you need to check out video art and motion design by Japanese Creative Nagi Noda.

My favorite work of hers is probably the fashion show in which she used people dressed in black crawling the floor on their backs, trailing the models as their shadows.

Summer of Love at The Whitney, NYC

On view May 24-September 16, 2007
Summer of Love revisits the unprecedented explosion of contemporary art and popular culture brought about by the civil unrest and pervasive social change of the 1960s and early 70s, when a new psychedelic aesthetic emerged in art, music, film, architecture, graphic design, and fashion. The exhibition includes paintings, photographs and sculptures by Richard Avedon, Jimi Hendrix, and Andy Warhol, among others. As well as a rich selection of important posters, album covers and underground magazines. A special emphasis is placed on environments as well as on film, video and multimedia installations. The art in the exhibition is conceptualized through a wealth of documentary material highlighting events, people and places; from the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival to Timothy Leary to the UFO nightclub in London.

The New Customizing Paradigm, Exhibition

The exhibition The New Customizing Paradigm curated by Rein van de Mast on view until July 21st at the Intermezzo Gallery in Dordrecht, The Netherlands. It deals with product design driven by rapid prototyping. The show includes: MGX by Materialise - Ben Oostrum i.s.m. Jan Melis - Christie Wright, Elasticbrand - Hippus - Janne Kyttanen, Freedom of Creation - Joris Laarman, Droog/Friedman, Phil Verdult/Gravotech - PeLiDesign - Pjotr, 3dprototyping.nl, Logic Electronics - Timo Voorhuis- Wouter Scheublin


Alexander Pelikan, Photo by Michael Anhalt


Christie Wright, Elasticbrand. Photo by Burçu Avsar.

Artist / Designer Hans van Bentem

Hans van Bentem is a dutch artist/designer who is pretty much impossible to pigeon hole. There are a few constants though, the work is very iconic and as one fourth of the Artoonists collective, there are usually a healthy dose of pop culture references present.

London 2012 Logo by Wolff Olins

Wolff Olins, the powerhouse branding agency, founded in 1965, is responsible for the identity design of the olympic Games in 2012 in London, UK.

The unveiling received mixed reviews and even outrage.


"It’s vital that we reach out to those young people in a language that they understand and in technology that’s familiar to them," London organizing chief Sebastian Coe said. "This brand is absolutely the world they live in."
(From the Chronicle article)

Now, first off, I am excited that a logo can still baffle, confuse and excite me. So major points there. However to style something that looks dangerously like eighties graffiti (I know a thing or two about that) seems like a misguided way to "talk the kids' language" and represent "The world they live in". I'm almost 32 myself and the logo feels nostalgic to me... aah those wonderful days of early hip-hop and spraycan art! More 1991 than 2007, no? To be sure, I don't even think this logo is ugly, wrong or inappropriate, quite the contrary. But I almost find it not forward thinking enough.

That said, how exciting that the IOC went out on a limb and let Wolff-Olins do something to shake things up in branding-world.


Apparently epilepsy patients would have suffered seizures from the animated version that has since been yanked off the web:

From the Housston Chronicle:
Epilepsy Action, a British health charity, said 10 people had complained about the animation and some had suffered seizures from watching images depicting a diver plunging into a pool.

The Olympic group said it has taken steps to remove the animation from the Web site and will now re-edit the film.

The design is made up of four jagged pieces that form the numbers 2012. It cost $796,000 and was targeted at young people. The logo was unveiled Monday, and within hours an online petition was established asking for a new design.

London's Design Museum founder Stephen Bayley said the logo was "a puerile mess, an artistic flop and a commercial scandal."

Summer Sampler at Front Room, Including Emily Roz

Image: Emily Roz from the "Multiples" exhibition at Frontroom.

Front Room Gallery
147 roebling street
williamsburg, brooklyn, new york
718-782-2556
open weekends -- 1 pm to 6 pm
info@frontroom.org

The Front Room Presents
Summer Sampler
with work by Amanda Alic, Sasha Bezzubov, Erik Guzman, Melissa
Pokorny, Emily Roz, Jan Sokota, Sante Scardillo, David Schulz, Philip
Simmons, Patricia Smith, Chris Twomey and Edie Winograde
June 8th – July 8th
Reception: Friday June 8th, 7-9 pm
Viewing hours: Fri-Sun 1-6 and by appointment

The Front Room is proud to present "Summer Sampler", a delightful
digestif featuring artworks by the last season's Front Room artists
as well as a preview of the shows to come, and some new selections
from our Multiples and Editions program.

Amanda Alic's photographs capture the construction of our personal
and public character, domesticity, pleasure and discord. Her series
"Off Season" portrays abandoned play areas—racetracks, mini-golf
courses etc. Referencing the romanticization of ruins, these images
convey exquisite yet eerie locations imbued with memories of pleasure
and activity. They reflect the desperate drive to satisfy ourselves
by filling our lives with external stimulus.

Sasha Bezzubov's crushingly beautiful large scale photographs of
natural disasters transcend the conscious, topical associations we
have to these events in the world of 24 hour news channels. In these
enormous dyptich and tryptichs one can't help but marvel at the
terrifying impersonal beauty in these destroyed and desolate landscapes.

Erik Guzman's artworks consist of a multitude finely cut parts of
aluminum, glass and plastics. Each of these material elements
converge to create mechanical devices that move, generate sound, and
light up (blindingly) without obvious or logical results. A marriage
between craft and movement creates an aesthetic that is independent
of the two.

Melissa Pokorny's "homemade cultural probes" are assemblages
consisting of quirky casts, found objects, and synthetic building
materials. By using overtly artificial means to represent space,
coupled with uncannily realistic animal figurines and casts, Pokorny
questions our estrangement from, and subsequent longing for
connection to the natural world, and the resulting substitution of
the real by the fake.

Emily Roz's family portraits use animals and toys to illustrate the
subtle expressions of anger and violence within close family
relationships. Wallpaper patterns ground the implied aggression in a
domestic environment.

Through his work with newspaper articles, headlines, and magazine
advertisements Sante Scardillo reclaims the public space the media
uses for their marketing, and exposes a hidden message of compliance.
He questions both their strategies and implied political aims.

Philip Simmons, through his large, exceedingly glossy silhouette
sculptures taps the grandiose archetype of the American Wild West.
The sculptures adopt the visual language of western road signs of a
bygone era of idealism. Monumental and minimal—like a Clint Eastwood
spaghetti western movie—his works almost demand to be consumed by the
viewer in an instant.

Patricia Smith's meticulous, quietly subversive works on paper in ink
and watercolor are reminiscent of architectural drawings, medical
illustration, and antique maps. Her fantastical structures house
imaginary organizations. Text captions labeling the rooms and spaces
make use of puns, double meanings and dark humor. These miniature
worlds articulate slightly unsettling social phenomena and
psychological patterns, suggesting a depiction of both the individual
mind and the broader culture.

Edie Winograde photographs staged pageants—reenactments of incidents
(legendary or real) in American history presented in their original
locales. She is particularly drawn to reenactments of moments in the
history of westward expansion throughout the United States. Her
photographs represent an—at times—contentious constructed reality
portraying events suspended between history and imagination.

The summer sampler will also introduce three new works into the
Multiples and Editions program—the gallery's ongoing selection of
editioned work. New work by Jan Sokota, David Schulz and Chris Twomey
will be on view at the gallery during the Summer Sampler.

David Schulz's new photographic folio "Mirage" is a haunting
collection of 10 photo diptychs that present a poetic dream-vision.
Capturing glimpses of the external but implying elusive interior
states the images together are elegiac and dramatic and even
disturbing. In addition to the edition, two large scale versions of
prints from the folio will hang the Summer Sampler show.

Another new multiple included in the exhibition is a print from Chris
Twomey's CheeriOpus series. Twomey's work mixes the impersonal
scientific study of genetics with the acutely personal (and not
unrelated) subject of motherhood. Her eye-bending silkscreen prints
in the series feature cast Cheerios along with printed versions of
the breakfast cereal and pudgy and somehow disturbing babies swimming
together in a colorful gene pool.

Also included in the exhibition is Jan Sokota's Chump Change
offered here in her altered readymade change machine. Place a $1.00
bill face up into the slot to receive your Chump Change—machine
minted nickel-silver coins bearing contemptuous images of the
country's leaders. The change and its subjects are rendered equal in
this transaction: Good For Nothing. The political rip-off, the value
of real currency and the value of art are called up as your dollar is
swallowed and the Chump Change is dispensed.