Modern Graffiti

Every design, in essence, is a criticism of its context for which it has been produced. Art by CT.

Hearts in Malaysia Mixtape #1

Cymbals swing. Knowing quietly that we felt fine all this time. Bruised by the knees, dodging the venom, we'll eventually find our peace somewhere in this messy world of self, finding self, and extradited emotions. Dedicated to Louie Vuitton eating munchies somewhere in Southeast Asia. 

Buena Vista Social Club Vs Kanye West - Two Chan Words (KMT Mix)
Jay-Z vs. Coldplay - One Ruler (Produced by Max Tannone)
The Xx - Infinity (Flufftronix Remix)
Monarchy - Love Get Out Of My Way (Treasure Fingers Remix)
LUSHUS – HO FO SHO
Chromeo - Don't Walk Away
Wishing Wars - Beach
Soft Powers - Just Like Tropica-L
LCD Soundsystem - Dance Yrself Clean
Yeasayer - Wait For the Summer
The Smiths - Bigmouth Strikes Again
M. Ward - Let’s Dance 

Download: Hearts in Malaysia Mixtape #1 (ZShare)

More GF-1 Porn: Vented Hoods & Straps

This one's from Norway. Beautiful work that suits the looks of the almighty Panasonic GF1. Here we have the 20mm 1.7 outfitted with a vented hood, 50mm Voigtländer finder, and of course the exquisite Gordy strap.

Geek Stab

Mercy mercy me. 5 hours PS CS5. Part of my Lookbook M83 Sessions for Fall/Winter 2011.

Less is Not Necessarily More

"Being a child of modernism I have heard this mantra all my life. Less is more. One morning upon awakening I realised that it was total nonsense, it is an absurd proposition and also fairly meaningless.

But it sounds great because it contains within it a paradox that is resistant to understanding. But it simply does not obtain when you think about the visual of the history of the world.

If you look at a Persian rug, you cannot say that less is more because you realise that every part of that rug, every change of colour, every shift in form is absolutely essential for its aesthetic success. You cannot prove to me that a solid blue rug is in any way superior. That also goes for the work of Gaudi, Persian miniatures, art nouveau and everything else.

However, I have an alternative to the proposition that I believe is more appropriate. ‘Just enough is more.’" -Miltor Glaser (2001)

Image: AT

Director Who

I wanna be a superstar. I wanna be a director. Just tell me where to sign.

Funkism Amplified

This is the perfect. Utterly serene. Feels like sleeping in a pile of mud getting my eyebrows laced with gold. It also brings me a few ideas on using (or providing) designer music blogs with something new to play with. Maybe something tangible to all the great work they do finding these jams I eat up on Hype Machine on the daily like a delicious bowl of Lucky Charms.

Drake - Forever (Nosaj Thing Remix) (320 kbps)
Oh Land - Son of a Gun (Yuksek Remix) (160 kbps)

Makin' a Splash

That's all I wanna do. Even small splashes will be acceptable.

Sexy Chalkboards

These huge Marseilles Chalkboard with extra bold oak frames can measure up to 48" x 95" and is undoubtedly the coolest thing I've found today. Available for $699 at Restoration Hardware.

Drew & Kathleen's SF Retro Modern

Jaw dropped. Couldn't help it. Careful, drool made it slippery. See the rest here.

The Smiths: A Modern Study in Music Acquirement

A few days ago, I decided to do a quick study in music acquirement, specifically that of the modern age today. The topic of the choice: The Smiths.

I really hadn't explored The Smiths much until this point, so I felt it was the perfect way to jump-start my capstone research. Because I needed a slightly older band with history. A band that have had experience releasing vinyls in the past. A band with a large following. With a lead that girls would kill over. YouTube videos. Past massive success.

I needed a band that would heavily contrast to up-and-coming artists (I know a couple in Brooklyn and Chicago), due to budget constraints or by choice, have chosen to release completely digital records to the Internet for consumption. More on that later.

For now, it's all about The Smiths and how I naturally searched the Webosphere for their material. It started with an MP3 given to me by a friend about 2 years ago. The song? "I Know It's Over." I hadn't heard the song in ages. It was dreary, full of pent up angst, and beautifully crafted like an origami boat. It sparked excitement in me. I had to find out more.

Being a poor graduate student, my next step on the Internet was clear: Google, YouTube, and Soulseek. Google would provide me with 50 best recommendations. YouTube would give visual stimulation in addition to playlists by members. Soulseek would give me the highest bitrate MP3 for free. All of this seemed natural and satisfyingly procedural knowing that it was a fail-safe method of acquiring the information I needed to further my understanding of The Smiths. Seeing as this method had worked time and time again, I saw no need for an alternative process.

The next few songs were the hit singles: "How Soon Is Now?," "Bigmouth Strikes Again," and "The Boy With The Thorn In His Side." I found these songs by rating via Google. There was also a Yelp post asking, "What are your top 5 Smiths songs?" dated back in 2007. There were over 100 responses. I read through them all and listened to all of the songs the members suggested, first by YouTubing for an initial skim, followed by a search in Soulseek, then downloading the highest bitrate MP3 I could find. I never settle for anything 192kbps or less.

 

I continued by downloading an entire "The Smiths Hit Singles" set on Soulseek after finding a user who had all 320kbps MP3s. While listening to "Panic," I gleefully watched my downloads go from 16 KB/sec to 100 KB/sec to slowly fill up my "impossible to fill" 2TB hard drive on my desktop PC. Never once did I question the legality of my process. It seemed too natural and intuitive. Just the next step after another. The passing of an idea.

Before I realized, I had about 33 curated and tested songs by The Smiths sitting in my Downloads folder. I had renamed them all to have a consistent naming convention. That was my OCD at work. It was 3AM. My headphones had been blasting for over 4 hours straight. I listened to "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" again.

It's been about a week since this process and my new MP3 collection consisting of my current top songs by The Smiths patiently sit in my Downloads folder, awaiting some sort of sorting process before it finally goes into my MP3 folder. Seeing as I've already acquired about 20 more songs over the past week from various music blogs and recommendations by friends, The Smiths - along with half of its album art missing) - starts to lose its priority.

And that's okay. Because these MP3s won't degrade. They don't take up much physical room. They'll just sit on my hard drive. Like a Word document. Like any other multimedia I collect on my hard drive.

"Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before," I ask. I think many of us take a similar, if not identical, approach to music discovery today. Sure, some may prefer Pandora, HypeMachine, and Rhapsody over others, but the real problem lies in the lack of nostalgia/emotional connection tied to the music we acquire today.

No longer are the "memories of Dad putting on the record player for all of us to listen" - it's "Dad connected the iPod into the sound system." And that's just fine with me. What does bother me is the modern day lack of consideration for music and movies as a form of collectible art. Perhaps due to the fact that there is no longer a piece of art associated with mediums (digital album art itself has its own set of negative connotations to being easily replicated), the end result is a medium that feels unfinished compared to its predecessors. Technology-centric. Lacking something that makes us feel human.

My only hope is that digital music could one day be experienced a little differently. Collected differently. To one day be held and valued as much as the records we collected back in the day, but feel just as warm, nostalgic, and satisfying to keep as the books and vinyls seen in our fathers' den.

Alexander Wang x Abbey Lee Kershaw x The Xx

Holy s%#&!*, yes.

A Study in Light

There's something mighty magnificent about natural light. Reminds me of Dane Petersen's capstone. It affects the way we view the world. It allows for photography. Our circadian rhythms. It affects our emotions. Changes how we watch movies. It moves us.

Gariz Soft Shutter Button

Who would've thought a pointless piece of 3M sticker could make such a difference? I think I'm gonna ____ in my pants. Really.

There's No Copyright in Fashion

I recently stumbled upon this TED Talk at USC with Johanna Blakley who spoke of the lack of intellectual property in the fashion industry in the USA today and how it could spark innovation in other creative industries who seem to be in trouble today (yes, we're talking about you books, movies, and music).

While a fascinating talk, provided with images and a well-crafted argument contrasting different cultures and other creative industries that lack copyright protection (food, perfume, game rules, software, automobiles, to name a few), I couldn't help but point out the lack of applicability to music and video.

First, people are not distributing knock-off versions of multimedia (well, some are... which explains why SoundCloud and HypeMachine seem to be doing so well), but rather most are giving away the original version for free in a digital format. Also, while convincingly articulated, the graphic the speaker presents is quite misleading. People are required to buy clothes, not so much music and movies. The fact that a family can share a single movie between an entire household while each generally require their own set of clothes proves that the market models are highly imbalanced in nature and thus, may not take in a copyright-less model so easily.

For me, I won't deny that entertainment (catered experiences packaged into bits and bytes for consumption) whether it be games, music, or movies, deserve compensation for all their hard work. However, unlike fashion where technology has helped exposure for fashionistas, the whole digital revolution has pushed music and movies into the brink of where they are now more viewed as "ideas" and "intangible" than anything. So yeah - maybe music should be free, but to what benefit to the industry does breaking out into something completely wild and robust free-for-all model, potentially requiring a constant rebirth and redesign every few seconds?

Everything it needs to survive, probably. But there's something missing, and someone needs to find out what that is.

Meanwhile, they need to stop pissing off the Internet if they want some smart people to help them dig out of the shit hole they've dug themselves in over the past decade plus.

4Chan Attacks RIAA and MPAA

Ah, Internet. You never cease to entertain me. Right after CEO of MPAA started boasting about how they took a mean swing a The Pirate Bay, pirate-lovin' 4Chan raises their swords and launches an all-out assault on the MPAA and RIAA sites with DDoS attacks.

The dust has cleared for now, but seeing as both the MPAA and RIAA haven't been on my good side for quite some time, I'd just like to say, "Serves them right." Now if we can get those 4Chan members to start planting trees or something, that'd be interesting.

Capstone Inspiration Roundup

I like the home too much. Not that I'm a recluse. Well, maybe I am. But I think a product that lives well in a home requires much a great deal of effort given all the considerations required for a good design - fit, timelessness, space, style, expectation management, and universal aesthetic.

Shittay to Glossy

I always enjoy kitchen before and afters more than any other transitional upgrade in the home. I think it's just because you can literally identify within seconds all the design decisions that went into making the transition. It feels almost overwhelming, at times - but I've learned to enjoy giving people that feeling or rebirth. Like Buudha or something.

This Is What We Do

Here, a user-test including three blondes are asked to find photos on an Xperia™ X10, iPhone4 and Galaxy Vibrant to determine which phone is truly the smartest one of all.

How To Become a Fratstar

If you've ever wanted to become a fratstar, it's actually quite a simple formula. You just need these 5 steps. And, while predictable, it has been scientifically confirmed by a bunch of yelling drunk fratties outside my window tonight. For your enjoyment:

A) Drink ungodly amounts of alcohol, bro
B) Fuck the bitches
C) Preferably ones that live together
D) Preferably at the same time
E) Throw things (especially shit that breaks, like furniture, bottles and shit)

Told you. Anyway, that's the key to fratstar success... in case you're still 18 and into that sorta thing. Oh, and you gotta yell, "WOoooooooooooooooo!" when you're all done with your business, too

Cole Haan Is In Your Homes

Cole Haan's Fall 2010 Collection was featured on The Selby today. I gotta admit, those Selby folks sure know how to take some nice photos.

Situational Awareness

Uh... I think I was gonna go somewhere with this. Not so sure anymore. Sometimes I think my combined ADD and OCD requires a tertiary Tumblr blog just for pointless posts like this one.

I think it was something about design culture influenced by fashion induction mediating change through quick adoption. Or something like that.

André the Ottoman

I'm taking industrial design and ergonomics this semester. That means I'll be building random shit from foam core and doing lots of sketching. Here's a sneak peek at an ottoman coffee table hybrid I created for Room and Board's André Sofa.

MissionWorkshop Bags

Pardon me, hipsters. I've got only like the most industrial looking messenger bag ever created coming through. Not that I'm judging all you Chromies out there or anything.

Although, to be honest, I still kind of prefer the traditional fit and style of their backpack styles way more.

Every Morning I Think of You

I think of her speed of focus, receptability, excellent ergonomics, and restrained but sexy aesthetics. She's a toy that is a true pleasure to use. She brings the fun back into photography. The only thing is - she's not a toy. She is a serious piece of sophisticated photographic hardware and any serious photographer worth his salt would be well advised to get one! Now, where'd I put my pants?

Design vs. Art vs. Synthesizers

Design has a client. In art, you are your own client. But nevermind art, let's fuckin' play with synthesizers baby. Here's some tunes for all you delirious insomniacs out there. 

Chemical Brothers - Dissolve (Bloody Beeroots Remix) (MP3)
CocoRosie - Werewolf (Omega Remix) (MP3) 
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps (TGIK Remix) (MP3)
Sufjan Stevens - I Walked (MP3)

YouTube Art of the Meme

In case you feel like you haven't had enough brain numbing chaos from YouTube already, here's the top 100 greatest hits in 4 minutes.

Bikes Fo Sho

Probably one of my favorite roundups from The Sponge this month. Bikes, bikes, and more bikes. Hey, did I mention I got a sexy Schwinn bike that I'm hipsterly cruising around B-town now? It has some go, fascinating the ladies... fo sho.

Type Porn

Mmmmm yeah, baby. I like it candid, raw, and in your face.

MacBook Cutting Board

Must. Have. Perhaps simply as proof that impractical yet aesthetic design will almost always trump functionality.

Parliament Portland Oregon

Revisited. I don't care. I would like to work here. Yes, free is fine. Thank you.