Baubike

BauBikeThis beautiful bicycle is a nod to the Bauhaus School, one of my favorite art movements. The Baubike was created by the Danish designer Michael Ubbesen Jakobsen and, with its clean lines and dedication to raw materials, clearly inspired by Bauhaus tenets. The Baubike is being featured at several exhibitions, including Salone del Mobile in Milan and DMY in Berlin. Since my bike is in the repair shop, I suppose I'm free to dream about a new one...

Another Book Begins

the elegance of the hedgehog "I have often wondered, as I watch him go by with his huge arrogant nose: Can one be so gifted and yet impervious to the presence of things? It seems one can. Some people are incapable of perceiving in the object of their contemplation the very thing that gives it its intrinsic life and breath, and they spend their entire lives conversing about mankind as if they were robots,  and about things as though they have no soul and must be reduced to what can be said about them – all at the whim of their own subjective inspiration."

Graffiti in the West Bank

Wall The recent completion of the spraying of an essay by Farid Esack, professor and anti-apartheid activist, onto the West Bank barrier is a strong example of the power of visual art to become a tool of resistance. Of course, this isn't the first wall to be turned into a canvas, the Berlin Wall being just one example. In Palestine, local taggers Faris Arouri, Yousef Nijim, and Raji Najamare are funded through the Dutch organization Send a Message and for €30 they will spray a work of your choice onto the wall. Esack's essay is their largest feat yet. At 1,998 words long, the piece consumed 500 cans of spray paint and 300 cans of white paint. Yet it occupied a mere mile of the 463 mile-long barrier. Esack writes:

Arriving in your land, the land of Palestine, the sense of deja vu is inescapable. I am struck by the similarities. In some ways, all of us are the children of our histories. Yet, we may also choose to be struck by the stories of others. Perhaps this ability is what is called morality. We cannot always act upon what we see but we always have the freedom to see and to be moved.

Akiyoshi's Illusions

moving snakes The first page of Professor Akiyoshi Kitaoka's website says: "This page contains some works of 'anomalous motion illusion', which might make sensitive observers dizzy or sick. Should you feel dizzy, you had better leave this page immediately." Great! Not every site is lucky enough to have such a dramatic opening. Akiyoshi's work in the Ritsumeikan University Department of Psychology plays with optical illusions of movement and color and does actually cause a bit of nausea.

orochi

Cubanisimo Vineyards

Hello Fidel While enjoying some Willamette Valley wine tasting earlier this month, I quite enjoyed the bathroom décor at Cubanisimo. It did pale in comparison to their 2006 Pinot Noir, likely one of my favorite wines. Alas, they do not ship internationally.

'To Make Love To The Walls'

l'image1 FLY's latest short film features the artistic works of Petra Mrzyk and Jean-Francois Moriceau. A masked narrator reads a text about Mrzyk and Moriceau written by Michel Vaillant, exploring the subtleties and novelty of their work. The narrator wears five unique masks, created by Mrzyk and Moriceau exclusively for the film. He reads:

"Last year, Petra Mrzyk and Jean-Francois Moriceau wrote to me to tell me that at the other end of the world they were making love to the walls. This tells us a great deal about the capacity of these two artists to tame the bare walls of a gallery space with a biting iconography that makes the work reactive and sexy."

The film celebrates their creation of the new Collector's Edition for FLY: two round series of 25 screenprints.

Neuroenhancement

Brain Gain A fascinating article in The New Yorker by Margaret Talbot, Brain Gain: The underground world of "neuroenhancing" drugs, discusses the rising off-label use of prescriptive medicines commonly used to treat ADD and ADHD, in order to achieve a heightened sense of focus in crunch time. Talbot thoroughly explores the intrigue and dangers of these 'steroids for the brain'.

"Don't neuroenhancers confer yet another advantage on the kind of people who already can afford private tutors and prep courses? At many colleges, students have begun calling the off-label use of neuroenhancers a form of cheating. Writing last year in the Cavalier Daily, the student newspaper of the University of Virginia, a columnist named Greg Crapanzano argued that neuroenhancers "create an unfair advantage for the users who are willing to break the law in order to gain an edge. These students create work that is dependent on the use of a pill rather than their own work ethic." Of course, it's hard to imagine a university administration that would require students to pee in a cup before they get their blue books. And though secretly taking a neuroenhancer for a three-hour exam does seem unfair, condemning the drugs use seems extreme. Even with the aid of a neuroenhancer, you still have to write the essay, conceive the screenplay, or finish the grant proposal, and if you can take credit for work you've done on caffeine or nicotine, then you can take credit for work produced on Provigil."

Talbot argues that, like cosmetic surgery, cosmetic neurology is probably here to stay. But, while the comparison to caffeine and nicotine can be drawn, the heart of the problem, as it seems to me, is the lifestyle choice behind such an impulse. While many Americans might perceive neuroenhancers as giving them a competitive advantage and increasing work productivity, it reeks of the mentality that life is about work and nothing more.

One of the supposed benefits of neuroenhancers are that they could reduce intellectual equality across social and economical sectors. Rather than suggesting we should turn to a pill to solve such problem, I have to side with Nicholas Kristof's New York Times column that intellectual ineqaulity can be leveled by promoting the right environment.

But, in the end, neuroenhancers aren't so much about intelligence and creativity as they are about efficiency and productivity. And, in this era, it's hard to imagine that the Creative Class will be ousted by straight-faced robots.

Polka Dot Passion

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq0LXh3sais&hl=en&fs=1] Yayoi Kusama, one of Japan's greatest female artists, works are currently on display at the Gagosian in New York and the gallery in LA. The exhibitions celebrate her 80th birthday and anticipates this forthcoming documentary Kusama: Princess of Polka Dots. The bi-coastal exhibitions feature several new works including Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity (2009). The Gagosian Gallery describes it as

"...a mesmerizing "infinity room" that operates on a system of simple yet ingenious optical devices. In a dark void, a delicate, shimmering mirage unfolds around the viewer, a myriad of gleaming lights that reproduce and reflect endlessly upon each other in golden silence."

Henry Jenkins on Participatory Culture

henry jenkins In this video, Henry Jenkins, author of Convergence Culture and director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT, discusses the role

"As we moved into the 20th Century [...] images now belong to major media companies who claim exclusive ownership of it. What we're seeing is in the digital age, as the public began to take media in its own hands and began to assert its right to retell those stories, the public are taking the media without the permission of copyright owners and innovating, experimenting, recontextualizing, responding to those images in new ways."

He continues to discuss that this participatory culture has created a complex mediascape that has the potential to further propel the diversification of the world. Phone cameras, text messages and open forums have the potential not just to upend politics, reshape entertainment, and expose the life of the 'average' person, but it also can push forward human rights by offering a platform to the most oppressed segments of society.

Love in the Time of Cholera Covers

covers A book I've long intended to read, I was a bit disappointed when the only copy at the bookstore was (apparently) the design from the film poster. A red rose? What an unfortunate cover (bottom right). Last summer I saw a beautiful cover of a friend's copy from Spain. Searching for it proved to be unsuccessful, but I did find some others which would all be preferable to the one I have. It's interesting that on two covers the title is most prominent, while on the other two the author is.  I would have most liked the cover on the bottom left, with the title and the author reversed. The contents of the book are what make it a beautiful or disappointing read, but the cover design should always be well thought out.

Al Jazeera interview with 'Fighting the Silence' filmmakers

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZKyG9bNt4w&hl=en&fs=1] Dutch filmmakers Ilse and Femke van Velzen recently appeared on the Al Jazeera documentary channel Witness to discuss their 2007 film 'Fighting the Silence' about rape in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Presenter Rageh Omaar asked them how they were able to encourage the women to speak to them about an act that is considered so shameful in Congolese society. Isle and Femke respond that they found the women through local women activists. Because the women who had been raped trusted these activists, Isle and Femke were able to more easily create a bond of trust with them. Secondly, the women were told exactly why they would be doing the interviews. But the biggest motivation was that they wanted to share their story. Ilse and Femke state that they did not want to victimize the women. Yet, I wonder, how can they walk the fine line between not victimizing them women in order to show their real strength and needing to create sympathy within the audience? The goal of documentary films about human rights is not just to extend knowledge to the audience, but, I believe, to create action and encourage the audience to see what small part they can play in fighting for the right's of others.

The Real Rock Stars

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMlWbTqwkdU&hl=en&fs=1] This new Intel ad, from their recently-launched 'Sponsors of Tomorrow' campaign, is spot on. Today's real rock stars should be the brains behind all the technology that has changed our lives and prompted the world in new directions. And, in many ways, they are. I wonder how many people would opt for a free computer over free concert tickets. I know I would.

Right now, I'm knee-deep in a research project about future technology and I must say it's really inspiring. Intel's Exploratory Research Projects, NTT DoCoMo's (the Japanese rock stars of all that is mobile) Mobile Society Research Institute, and Singularity University (to-be-opened in June, sponsored in part by Google, of course), to name a few examples, are all scheming away for the next big breakthrough. Rock stars to be.