Happy Holidays. Mad-blog.com will pause for a couple of days. We have started this blog to celebrate Media Arts and Disruption in February 2009 – after ten month up and running we are very happy about the outcome. But even more important is the fact that all of you are happy with our online publication, the numbers seem to prove this. Our visitors come from 143 countries. Over 6,000 have been visiting mad-blog.com from more than 100 times, I would call them regulars and more than 6,700 have subscribed to our RSS feed. Thanks for all the support. I am looking forward to seeing all of you again next year.
Because you forgot to shop for the holidays and now it’s like a week away and you need to shop for the holidays, duh!
Disrupting the Christmas shopping experience. Anna Sheffield, Anne Apparu, Dossier Journal, Johnny Misheff, Lindsey Thornburg and Ortolan Organic understand the need of todays urban Christmas shoppers and present the people of New York with a bona fide one-stop gift buying experience to end all one-stop gift buying experiences.
The showroom of Anna Sheffield, Bing Bang and Lindsey Thornburg Cloaks will be open from December 17-19th in the form of a one-of-a-kind holiday “emergency” shopping scenario…
Featuring not only the totally essential jewelry of Bing Bang designer Anna Sheffield and the utterly necessary cloaks of Lindsey Thornburg, you can also get your hands on the in-high-demand organic household goods crafted by Ortolan Organic, specializing in 100% organic materials. In addition, the initiators have asked the good people over at Dossier Journal to play shop too! They will set up a few racks of incredible women’s clothing by designers such as Duskin, Nomia and Samantha Pleet, as well as artist edition prints from Robert Longo, David Armstrong, Hisham Bharoocha, Skye Parrott, and Marni Horwitz.
Anna Sheffield is offering special Gift Certificates which are good for personalized rings and bracelets– a great gift that’s totally unique and virtually impossible to re-gift!
With traditional christmas retailer under fire in a time of anti-consumption, this holiday “emergency” shopping experience is not just a pop-up-store, but the proof that the initiators truly understand their urban audience.
December 17, 18, 19, 2009, that’s Thursday and Friday: Noon to 8pm, Saturday: 2-7pm
153 Lafayette Street, Buzzer 4, between Howard and Grand
This week saw the launch of a new site, created by TBWA\Digital Arts for Nissan, called www.journey-to-zero.com. The Journey to Zero supports zero emission mobility. By collaborating with leading architects, designers and artists to kick start the conversation on zero emissions, we hope to gain unique perspectives on the conversation about a cleaner future. Watch out for more information on Journey to Zero coming to mad-blog.com in the near future, and in the meantime check out the website, Facebook page, YouTube channel and Twitter feed.
As part of this new project, anthropologist and National Geographic’s explorer-at-large, Wade Davis, is in Copenhagen giving us his perspective on what is happening at COP 15. He is sharing his insights via video, text and tweets on his Journey to Zero blog, with the goal of helping people who have joined the Journey to Zero, understand what is happening at COP 15, in real time.
Not at the Art Basel in Miami but in London at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Cliff Kuang from Fast Company has selected 12 masterpieces of the show. Cliff says: “This Tuesday, the sometimes stuffy Victoria & Albert Museum in London is vaulting into the digital age, with “Decode: Digital Design Sensations,” an exhibition of cutting-edge digital art and design. The show was curated by OneDotZero, a production-house specializing in digital installations. Images can’t do it justice, since almost all of the works are either video based or interactive. So, to give you a taste of the show, we’ve gathered pictures and videos for 12 of the pieces on display. Enjoy!
What do Google, the Olympics and Harry Potter have in common? Not much you think. Wrong, they are symbols for the world we live in today. They are actually an essential part of contemporary culture.
Maybe thats why the UK-born artist Ryan Gander combined them in “Why French people look out of windows” (2008) as shown at this years edition of Art Basel Miami Beach.
We are all allowed to discuss the title, but after checking any given statistics you might find out that countries like France maybe show an interest in “global cultural phenomena” which is below the average. That could be one of the explanations for the title of the piece.
Nevertheless, brands like Google, the Olympics and Harry Potter are given factors in todays culture, because they behave in ways that make them part of our lives. Some may appreciate them, others not. But you cannot ignore them.
This isn’t an ad. This is an idea. A big one. It was conceived to be the ultimate product demo. Here’s how it goes. What if you took two rival high school football teams and had them replay a significant game…15 years later. The teams would need to train and get back in shape. And oh yeah, they’d need plenty of Gatorade. Two teams on the New Jersey-Pennsylvania border did this. Here’s the trailer, but got to MissionG.com to see more of the story. Also FOX has turned it into a series. You’ll find more info on that if you click HERE.
If you have any comments or suggestions please email Rob Schwartz. Or check out his blog.
Last year it was portraits of then President-elect Obama that have been on display everywhere across the show, this year it is the King of Pop: Michael Jackson. Jackson is probably the most portrayed individual of this years art fair in South Beach. Artists from David La Chapelle, Marc Brandenburg, Jonathan Monk and many more have work about Michael Jackson on display, but the most prominent piece can be seen at the booth of Deitch Projects, a New York based gallery.
Kehinde Wiley, 2009 (detail, Deitch Projects, New York USA)
Kehinde Wiley’s monumental commissioned portrait of Michael Jackson was unveiled this week in Miami Beach. The 32-year-old US painter was contacted by Jackson in 2008 after the performer saw the artist’s work at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. “I was receiving messages saying Michael Jackson wants to reach you…and I ignored them because quite honestly I thought it was a prank,” said Wiley in an interview with The Art Newspaper.
Marc Brandenburg (Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin Germany)
Michael Jackson is obviously one of the few personalities that have influenced artists around the world, or is he just a vehicle to generate attention? Is the brand Michael Jackson a way to generate more sales? The jury is still out.
On the streets of Africa, from Cape Town to Kinshasa, from Lagos to Mombasa, the true measure of fame is having a haircut named after you on a barbershop sign. The streets are full of ‘The Obama’, ‘The Oprah’ and ‘The Denzel.’
This ubiquitous barbershop signage is an African art form or African graphic art with its naïve renderings and pragmatic use of wood, metal and any material that is close at hand.
To celebrate the Confederation’s Cup being played for the first time on African soil, adidas commissioned a series of ‘barbershop’ artworks that honour their galaxy of stars like Gerrard, Messi, Kaka and Pienaar. A ‘cut’ was created for each player according to their skill. So, ‘The Kaka’ is all about dribbling skills while ‘The Gerrard’ is about powerful strikes.
Essentially, we africanised international players.
The word Kopanya is a South African word for ‘together’, which effectively makes this artwork an African interpretation of adidas’ global advertising position of “together I am strong.” Kopanya is also the name of the official adidas ball, that will be used at the Confederations Cup.
If you have any suggestions or comments please email Gavin Heron.
On the streets of Africa, from Cape Town to Kinshasa, from Lagos to Mombasa, the true measure of fame is having a haircut named after you on a barbershop sign. The streets are full of ‘The Obama’, ‘The Oprah’ and ‘The Denzel.’
