punch you in the eye

Jim Pollock Phish Hampton 2009 poster

For those of us who were lucky enough to make it down to the Phish Phamily Reunion at Hampton Coliseum, it was a weekend of both ear AND eye candy...and not just because of Chris Kuroda's unreal light show (see below). To mark the reunion after the band's five year hiatus, Chicago-based Phish poster artist Jim Pollock designed and hand pressed a poster specifically for the Hampton shows, using a 19th-century iron hand press. Only 750 of Pollock's 2009 Hampton posters were created, including those set aside for the band and management. Pollock himself was on hand to sign his posters for those dedicated souls who waited in line to get their hands on one of these rare gems at the Phamily Reunion: Best Poster Convention III, which took place at Hampton's Best Western Coliseum Inn & Suites on Saturday, March 7th. The linocut, three-colored, deckled edge, stonehenge stock, hand-numbered (whew!) posters were created with oil-based inks which went on rather thick - often marked by the artists thumbprints. These posters are the first hand pulled Pollock Phish prints since Shoreline in 2000.

The band's official commissioned posters from Daniel Lahoda of House Industries also did not disappoint. The large six-color serigraph, three-poster series was hand-embossed and hand-numbered, with similar artwork to the event tickets.











Official Hampton 2009 House Industries posters commissioned by the band

...and speaking of David Bowie, you can experience the Sound and Vision at livephish.com, where all three shows are available for free download in mp3 format, or for a minimal Fee (ha!) you can download them in all their glory in FLAC format.

My photos didn't quite turn out like these...all photos below courtesy of Phish.com/fromtheroad2009

feel good inc.

I don’t know about you, but Fridays make me want to high-five people, do cartwheels down the street, eat grilled cheese, commit random acts of kindness …and hug strangers.

But in case you’re not quite comfortable embracing random unfamiliar folk, Keetra Dean Dixon has got it covered: she recently introduced her Anonymous Hugging Wall from her ongoing series METHODS & APPARATI for Social Facilitation and Mood Elevation. The malleable, fabric-made Hugging Wall installation allows visitors to walk up and hug, cuddle, or just shake hands with a completely anonymous stranger, who embraces the visitor through arm pockets.
























Keetra Dean Dixon’s work is a perfect edge. Though whimsical, clever and dream-like, her aesthetic is edited; her execution well crafted. Her work is upbeat – pure sunshine without the sugary sweet – though sometimes deliciously and absurdly dark and twisted (like her blood puddle pillows). The Alaskan native works in a variety of media, from digital to traditional, for both personal and commercial use. Here are a couple of my favorite examples of Keetra’s work:




















"Knife cast in Sugar - hard candy with food coloring. Knife was packaged & mailed via USPS with the hopes that it would fracture during it's journey. Recipient ate the hard candy shards."




















"The Great Slumber - a.k.a. Blood Puddle Pillows. The pillows are inspired by those suspenseful moments when a sleeping loved one is a little too still for a little too long. Using an irreverent combination of comfort & fear the pillows parallel sleep & death. Project goal: taking ownership of morbidly intrusive thoughts through humor & play."








































































"The Tricky Photobooth - Holds no denotation of its unique qualities. Users enter the booth, pose for 2 shots and exit as usual. During the developing process, the photos are "analyzed" and customized with forecasts consisting of patters, symbols and messages - the resulting portrait presents an unexpected interference over a traditional photobooth image. The portrait becomes a custom souvenir of the unexpected".

recession marketing

Interesting times and FedEx Office is responding. Let's just hope we don't see Home Depot offering deals on DIY nooses.

ballooning euphoria

A friend recently introduced me to the ecstatically inventive balloon sculptures of Jason Hackenwerth...and my dreams haven't been the same since. His delicate masterpieces are constructed of thousands of vibrantly colored and precisely inflated balloons, fastened together to form what look like prickly reef-hugging amoebic creatures, desert cacti or the visions of blushing sexuality. The New York-based artist's pieces are fairly large scale, transforming the space they inhabit into hallucinatory breathing realms where light and the faint draft of industrial air seem to make the balloon animals dance ever so slightly.

Their beauty is fleeting - lasting about a month or so before withering and drooping, mirroring our own decay. Hackenwerth explains:

“the ephemeral nature of my installations is an unmistakable reflection of our own. Because of its delicacy, it is difficult to predict how long it will last. During its existence, these vibrant and organic forms undergo a process of transformation metaphorically similar to our own short lives. Shrinking and shriveling as they age, their spring-like luster sadly wilts, and in the autumn of their existence the can be seen struggling desperately against gravity as they slowly slip away."

Hackenwerth began his career as a street performer. While working towards his Bachelors of Fine Arts at Webster University, he made his living as a clown making poodles and noodles for kids parties and parades. Hackenwerth later completed his Masters of Fine Arts at the Savannah College of Art and Design. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums wordwide, including in London, Venice, Miami, Los Angeles and New York. He recently exhibited at Art Basel in Miami and was featured at the 2009 TED Conference.

square off

The winning design from the Office for Metropolitan Architecture

I must confess, I was slightly confused and disappointed when, following the cutthroat competition to design the new highly anticipated Taipei Performing Arts Center, the Netherland-based Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) was named the winner for their design proposal led by Kolhaas and Ole Scheeren. I figured maybe there had been some kind of miscount, some sort of absentee ballot mishap or hanging chad incident. I chalked it up to bad taste. The winning design, to me, looks dated and unimaginative.

I was a much bigger fan of the design proposal from NL Architects. Their stylish, dynamic cube design was ultra-modern without feeling overly out-of-place, alienating or abrasive to the viewer. The design is intended to be considered as a “table with ‘four legs’” supporting a “’tabletop’ that accommodates” three stories. The playful approach to form and void and the open public square in the center allows the public to participate in the design – filling the void and reshaping the architecture through their presence and interaction with the building.


















NL Architects proposed design for the Taipei Performing Arts Center

On the other hand, though aesthetically sleepy, OMA’s design is functionally superior: the project calls for a 430,560-square-foot complex composed of three theaters: two that seat 800 and one that holds 1,500 (as all proposed designs contain), all of which feed into a central cube cloaked in corrugated glass. As a result, the theaters can be used separately or together in various stage combinations. The curious show-goer can also see parts of the backstage area from a public path inside the cube, while the entire building is placed on a pedestal in order to preserve the existing local food market on the site.

The NL Architects design respectfully boasts a public browsing space with cultural facilities such as a multimedia library, music stores, galleries, lobbies, bars, cafes, restaurants and clubs, balconies and terraces with of swimming pools, a skate area, playground and garden. However, while these amenities have their appeal, the intelligent design of the OMA proposal creates exponential possibility for space utilization.

The Taipei Performing Arts Center project, which is budgeted at $112.8 million, is scheduled for completion in 2013.

press play

I had just posted in February about the lack of music packaging interactivity in the market today. Well, this week, Pearl Jam and digital agency Freedom + Partners took advantage of the opportunity and launched the Pearl Jam Ten Game website in light of the reissue of Pearl Jam's debut album Ten, combining gaming and online music streaming. Fans complete a drag-and-drop style game, moving and aligning colorful cubes to unlock songs from the album (trust me, it's not as easy as it sounds). Upon completion the puzzle, a behind-the-scenes video detailing the history of the Ten re-release launches.

Users also have the opportunity to preview the reissue album art. The original Ten cover was designed under the art direction of bassist Jeff Ament, who recalls that "there were some elements of the original Ten artwork that didn't turn out the way we had hoped, due to time constraints." Ament, back in his role as art director and in partnership with designer Andy Fischer of Cameron Crowe's Vinyl Films, set out to create "the ultimate fan-piece...something Pearl Jam lovers could pour over as they experience an incredible record all over again, in an entirely new way."

Visit the Ten Game site to pick up your copy of this special reissue edition.

music that makes you a lil bit stoopid

The Wall Street Journal and Pitchfork reported on the latest project from 25-year-old Caltech grad student Virgil Griffith, which correlates taste in music with intelligence. Griffith gathered his data from Facebook, collecting the "favorite music" inputs listed in individual profiles and plotting that information against the average SAT score of the associated school. The results? Puzzling and hilarious.

How it's possible for Dispatch fans to be smarter than Modest Mouse fans, or Counting Crows fans to be smarter than Beck and Bowie fans...or for Ben Folds fans to be smarter than Beatles fans... I will never understand. It's purplexing. And laughable. What's maybe funnier (in a sad sort of way) is that enjoying the stylings of Lil Wayne probably means you have a tiny lil brain with an SAT score somewhere in the neighborhood of 889, while Radiohead fans, like myself, have large, bulbous, pulsating, radiating brains and SAT scores that average around 1220. The truly gifted are geeking out on Beethoven, with an average score of 1371.

Pitchfork reporter Tom Breihan makes some interesting observations:

"You could point out how these results indicate how hopelessly Eurocentric the SATs actually are, with the whole chart practically cleaved in half between black and white artists. Or you could argue that really smart people don't necessarily brag about their musical tastes on Facebook, or that when they do list musical tastes they usually just try to out-obscure each other by naming individual guitar solos or whatever."

As far as the output itself, the map uses various elements to graphically display information: from color to scale and relational placement. While the x-axis refers to SAT scores, there's some room to tighten this graphic up visually and conceptually by utilizing the y-axis and cleaning up the taxonomy a bit. Reebee Garofalo's The Geneology of Pop/Rock Music is a true gem and a great example of a successful music infographic.

Check out the Sign Language blog for more on visual information maps.