Surf Culture in Japan
Given its geography, Japan seems a natural fit for surfing culture. But what’s interesting is the way in which it’s started to take hold again recently, which is to say they’ve put an emphasis on the culture as much as, if not more than the surfing. T Magazine recenly spoke with the co-owners of surf [...]
Myoung Ho Lee’s Treescapes
It’s always a thrill when a photographer develops a fresh approach to the classic landscape. The New York Times Style Magazine featured work from South Korean artist Myoung Ho Lee, whose collection of trees against white canvas are as gorgeous as they are understated. According to the article, Lee wanted to rid the final shots [...]
Re-imagining the Donnell Library
Ever since the Donnell Library branch closed in 2008, the neighborhood surrounding West 53rd street has missed its beloved reading room. Today the New York Public Library will officially unveil the The Donnell Library Center’s replacement, a center redesigned to fit at the base of a high-rise hotel. Architect Enrique Norten and his firm TEN Arquitectos imagined [...]
Solar Plane Flies over San Francisco
On Wednesday afternoon the Solar Impulse, a plane that relies entirely on energy from the sun, made its third and final test flight above San Francisco Bay. Soon it will fly across the length of the United States, ending its trip in New York come the end of June or July. According to the Guardian, [...]
The Upcycle
This past week, the authors William McDonough and Michael Braungart have released the awaited follow-up to their successful landmark book on sustainable design, Cradle to Cradle, which they wrote over ten years ago. Their new book, The Upcycle, takes their experience of putting sustainable ideas into practice in many different arenas, and translates that mindset into [...]
Thierry Cohen’s Darkened Cities
Those who were near lower Manhattan during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy may have experienced the rare and eerie view of the city’s skyline gone partway dark. Biking through Manhattan at dusk that week, the loss of power made the night feel that much deeper, and the bright sky that much more brilliant. What are [...]
Michael Gaillard (Harmony Artist-In-Residence)
Below are some more of the images taken during my residency at the Harmony, once again, all of these images were taken with my 8×10 film camera.
The New Cinema – Creating Your Own Environments
Over at The Creators Project, and in association with Eyebeam and Framestore, New Cinema is conceptualizing new ways of merging visual arts and moving images with the more experiential concepts long associated with video games. In a recent post on The Creators Project blog, a team member at the recent hackathon shares the experience of generating [...]
Anonymous Press
Operating under the notion that anyone can publish their own work today, Anonymous Press allows the user to simply type in a title for a book, and allow Google Images to do the rest. The site runs a search on the title, and puts the resulting images into a layout, resulting in a tiny little [...]
Photos by Joel Meyerowitz: Taking My Time
Joel Meyerowitz’s photos sneak up on you. Though you may not recognize his name at first glance, a quick overview of his photographs is likely to ring one bell or another. It’s the gleam of the thigh in the uniform of a female bus driver in Los Angeles, circa 1976. It’s a street shot of [...]
Michael Gaillard (Harmony Artist-In-Residence)
Glimpses of Costa Rica, as seen through the lens of my 8×10 camera (please click on a thumbnail to load the slideshow)…
The Ecstatic Music Festival
Already underway, The Ecstatic Music Festival at the Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Center once again unites a wide array of performers from the classical and independent music worlds, resulting in some truly one-of-a-kind opportunities to witness musicians doing what they do best outside of their usual confines. While the overall slant of the program [...]
Notes on Water by Aritst Leanne Shapton
From Leanne Shapton’s website: As a teenager, Leanne Shapton trained for the Olympic swimming trials; now an artist, she is still drawn inexorably to swimming, in pools and on beaches across the world. What do you with an all-absorbing activity once it’s past its relevance, and yet you can’t quite give it up? Is it possible [...]
As We Enter Into 2013…
Some thoughts to keep in mind for the year, all from the mind of Nora Ephron: Write everything down. Take more pictures. Anything you think is wrong with your body at the age of thirty-five, you will be nostalgic for at the age of forty-five. The plane is not going to crash. There are no [...]
The Museum in the Elevator
One of New York’s newest institutions is not housed in an grand space envisioned by teams of architects and designers. It’s in a cramped Tribeca elevator, easily overlooked by unassuming passersby. Not yet a year old, the plainly titled Museum (mmuseumm.com) was opened in June by the collective filmmaking trio behind Red Bucket Films. Within [...]
Charles Simic on “memory traps”
The poet Charles Simic has written a short essay on “memory traps”–places that have vanished but which linger in the mind, and which anyone who has lived in a city for a long time will recognize: It doesn’t take much. A deserted street at dusk, with the summer sunlight lingering on the upper floors of [...]
The “Busy” Trap
The writer and artist Tim Kreider recently published an essay in the New York Times on being “busy.” As the scare quotes suggest, he believes we make ourselves seem busy, and that our compulsion to do so is rather needless: If you live in America in the 21st century you’ve probably had to listen to a [...]
Joni Sternbach
A review by Vince Aletti in the New Yorker alerts us to Joni Sternbach’s exhibition of surfer portraits at Rick Wester Fine Art. Aletti writes: Sternbach’s photographs of surfers, taken in the past six years in Malibu, Montauk, and Australia, look as if they could have been made any time in the past half century of [...]
Have A Seat
Emeco debuted a new designer collaboration at the Salone del Mobile in Milan last week. The Broom chair created with Philippe Starck is recycled and recyclable, a mix of 75% reclaimed polypropylene, 15% reclaimed wood fiber and 10% glass fiber.
Dreaming
Man’s moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.””William Faulkner in The Paris Review, Spring 1956
Leap Year
The leap year’s extra day is necessary because of the “messiness” of our Solar System. One Earth year (a complete orbit around the Sun) does not take an exact number of whole days (one complete spin of the Earth on its axis). In fact, it takes 365.2422 days, give or take.””BBC’s Leap year: 10 things [...]
Bigert & Bergström, The Last Calendar
The perfect gift for your favorite prophet! From Cabinet: When the current cycle of the Maya Long Count calendar concludes on 21 December 2012, the world will end. Of course, this is hardly the first time the planet”™s demise has been prophesied. And so Cabinet offers you, doomed reader, a guide to the brief time that remains. [...]
VOGUE
Tropes can elicit ooohs, aaahs, oh no, not that again””a place where affect is held in suspension over the historical and its signifiers. It is the experience of “I know what the overused parts are and will they only remain as themselves, or is there some combinatory manner in which they achieve something unpredictable that [...]
Romance downtown
Last week I mentioned an exciting project I was going to participate it in. It was simple effort but made a huge impact on the intended party as well as many passersby. My neighbors are an Australian couple named Craig and Greg. They moved to NY in June of last year and I took the [...]
