POINTS OF ENTRY


The Payola Chronicles

What do you do when a music marketing company out of Brooklyn asks if they can put you on their promo list and send you music and concert tickets in exchange for you writing reviews on your blog? You start a new series called The Payola Chronicles.

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Redesigning the Towers and Turrets*

For the past few months I have been posting a series called Great Counterculture Logos and getting feedback from the likes of Paul Pascarella of Gonzo lore, PD at Skull Skates and Jordan Cooper at Revelation Records on how their respective marks came to be...

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It's All Around You...

Some of the best artistic inspiration that crosses my path on a daily basis is not in the galleries (although I post on that here as well) but on the walls and back alleys I pass through on my way to work. The best of these pieces are posted in the aptly titled ongoing series Art I Pass By On My Way to Work. Cooler still, they are all geotagged.

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WORK WORTH DOING

An Interview with Lorraine Gauthier and Alex Quinto
as featured on blog.industrialbrand.com and eco.psfk.com

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Greenland is melting!"

This was how Lorraine Gauthier and Alex Quinto introduced themselves at this year's ICOGRADA in Seattle. It was early in the conference and the first statement that truly made us sit up and take notice. We would learn that the pair had worked on Bruce Mau's exhibit Massive Change, a massive undertaking unto itself tackling the world's most critical problems from a designer's perspective. They then went on to create Work Worth Doing, a design studio "working at the intersection of the business, cultural and philanthropy sectors bringing design thinking and design processes to a host of social and environmental challenges".

Yes, Greenland is melting. This can interpreted as a catastrophic event, threatening ocean circulation patterns and Europe's climate. But from a different perspective, it also stands as an untapped economic resource for Greenland and a potential water supply for Africa. From this latter view, the Greenland issue no longer becomes a problem, but a solution. It is all in how you approach the challenge.

We recently interviewed Lorraine and Alex to further discuss the potential of design in creating positive change in the world.

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ICOGRADA 2006

Defining Design on a Changing Planet
 (the writer's cut)

I have just returned home and begun an intensive recovery that is befitting of the work hard / play hard ethic with which our team tackled these past four days at ICOGRADA’s Design Week in Seattle. The news has been on the television all evening: looping footage of the escalating tension between Israel and the Hezbollah; of blown out Lebanese neighbourhoods and clips of Anderson Cooper chasing after the next ground zero.

After dinner, we rent Syriana, remembering its scenes of a claustophobic and heavily armed Hezbollah-occupied Beirut; trying to make some sense of it all; but, of course, it only serves to underline the point that there are no simple answers, no defined lines that clearly separate right from wrong, the good guy from the bad guy; and a harsh reminder of what we are up against as we return from this conference back to reality with our heads full of optimism and ideals.

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DESIGN

A Sensitive Dependence: The Search for a Canadian Identity in Graphic Design
This past summer, on the balmy shores of Lake Huron, I took part in a wine tasting where the libations in question were all by the same wine maker, they were all from the same grape and all bottled in the same year. The defining difference between the three bottles was one of a very specific geography. The first bottle had been cultivated from the grapes on the southern hillside of the winery; the second bottle's fruit had matured in the valley while the last bottle had its roots in the acreage just across the highway. Within these controlled settings, the differences in taste seemed ever more apparent and strangely, more relevant. By reducing the variables to a matter of a few square kilometres, we had derived from the wine its true essence.

This experiment came to mind as I listened to the debate at the launch of the GDC's Graphex 2006 National Design Competition. The panel of international and highly qualified judges consisted of Rick Poynor, Min Wang, Debbie Millman, Robert Sarner and Tan Le. The topic was "Is there a definitive Canadian style in our graphic design?"

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IDEAS

Music for the 21st Century

"The most beautiful chord is made from dischord"
-Heraclitus

On May 29, 1913, 'The Rite of Spring', performed by Diaghiler's inimitable Ballet Russes made its world premiere at Paris' Théatre des Champs Elysées. The physically unnatural choreography accompanied by the atonal, rhythmically ambiguous music of Igor Stravinsky was too much for the audience's sensibilities. Hissing and booing grew to such a volume that the dancers were unable to hear their cues and the performance eventually dissolved into a state of chaos and rioting in the theatre. It was in this fashion that Modernism in music was born and in this sense did Stravinsky foreshadow all that would follow in the tumultuous 20th century.

So it seemed darkly fitting that tonight, nearly a century later, with the world's eyes once again focused on Paris as the major themes of our time play out against the fiery backdrop of its poorest districts, that Stravinsky would feature on the roster as symphony-goers in Vancouver Canada were treated to an evening of new sounds and new ideas which also included Michio Kitazume's Ei-Sho and John Adam's 'The Dharma at Big Sur', a piece that was inspired by Beat writer Jack Kerouac's novel 'Big Sur'.

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OPINION

Build Your Homes in Factories

Two years ago, while in Ontario visiting with friends and family, I was kindly invited to my cousin's new home for Thanksgiving dinner. Getting there required taking the subway out to Kipling, its westernmost stop and then driving another 40 minutes until we arrived literally on the edge of the GTA sprawl. Only a block away lay acres of razed land, once the fertile soil of farms and orchards, now reallocated to the purposes of souless and sterile suburbia. Is this what we were all striving for? I asked myself. Working our lives away for a carving of these spoils?

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JOURNEYS

The Beijing Dispatch

There are people wandering along the side of the freeway. This is my first impression upon our arrival in Beijing. It strikes a deep set horror in me. Caught in the headlights, choked on the edge of the 10 lanes that spew out an air that you wear like another layer of skin, they look displaced, lost, left behind.

My god, I think to myself, 1.3 billion is too many; China's population is supersaturated; the levee has broken; people are spilling out everywhere.

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MARKETING

Digging in the right yard: The viral marketing of It's All Gone Pete Tong
As featured on if.psfk.com, ihaveanidea.org and blog.industrialbrand.com

There was little coverage to be found in the mainstream media upon the release of the independent mockumentary "It's All Gone Pete Tong". Not that it deserved to be overlooked. The movie, about an Ibiza deejay, Frankie Wilde, who has to deal with going deaf, is not your average party flick. Picking up awards at a number of festivals, it is beautifully filmed and touches on a far deeper level than just spinning records and snorting lines. There is redemption in this movie. And everyone likes a little of that in their lives once in a while.

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CATALYSTS

Monday, November 28, 2005

The Paranoiac Space
of Modernism
Dave Maisel
I've been searching for a decent link to photographer Dave Maisel's series "Oblivion" —brilliant and terrifying aerial photos of the LA sprawl—ever since I fist saw it featured in the September issue of Dwell Magazine. On his subject, Maisel writes:

"In his book “Warped Space,” the architectural theorist Anthony Vidler speaks of the 'paranoiac space of modernism,' a space which is 'mutated into a realm of panic, where all limits and boundaries become blurred…' These words come to mind when considering the urban aerial images of Los Angeles and its periphery shown here, excerpted from my photographic project called Oblivion."

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by Kevin Broome | PERMALINK |
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Monday, November 21, 2005

Cyborg Forest
1st-ave-machine
Organic meets robotic in this sweet CG from 1st Avenue Machine.

Reminds me quite a bit of Neill Blomkamp's work.

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by Kevin Broome | PERMALINK |
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Thursday, November 17, 2005

Left Behind
abandoned japan
There is something eerily resounding in the utter silence of abandoned buildings. No longer with purpose, emptied of their human charge, they stand as physical prophecies to the conquest of time and the inevitable reinstatement of nature.

Check out these spectacular images of Abandoned Japan (via the Skinny). And if you are left wanting more there is a very comprehensive listing of similar urban skeletons at Ruins and Urban Exploration.

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by Kevin Broome | PERMALINK |
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Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Denial Twist gets twisted Gondry treatment
gondry
The White Stripes continue their video production relationship with the brilliant and - in this case more than others - warped director Michel Gondry on their latest single Denial Twist.

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by Kevin Broome | PERMALINK |
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Monday, November 07, 2005

Adventures in the Industrial Brand Blogosphere
Industrial Brand Blog
The Industrial Brand Blog has been getting quite a lot of attention as of late. In less than a year, the number of visitors has risen steadily to about 30,000 per month. We suddenly find ourselves using terms like "blogroll" and "trackback" a lot. We've made contact with other bloggers and web pioneers from around the world. We've sat on blog panels. And just this past month, we have been recognized by Applied Arts for Best Blog and on Wednesday with a Lotus Award of Merit for Best Interactive Miscellaneous. It has been quite the exciting ride so far. Can't wait to see what lies around the next cyber corner.

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by Kevin Broome | PERMALINK |
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Friday, November 04, 2005

Classified Materials
Hadley + Maxwell
Always experimenting with new ways to present art to the public, the Vancouver Art Gallery's current exhibit, Classified Materials: Accumulations, Archives, Artists is at times overwhelming in how it conveys the chaos of information that swarms today's artists and the subsequent order that they make of it.

Walking through the two floor exhibit, it was a fitting and pleasant surprise to find Hadley + Maxwell's "The Decor Project" amidst the filing cabinets and alphabetized lists. Beautifully documented by my friend and photographer, Sven Boecker, the artistic team visited curators' homes and "redecorated" a room based on the personality traits and fantasies of the curator as revealed in a provided questionnaire. The results are nothing short of poetic.

Classified Materials: Accumulations, Archives, Artists runs until January 2nd, 2006.

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by Kevin Broome | PERMALINK |
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