A$AP Rocky, Schoolboy Q, Danny Brown

The Egyptian Room at Old National Centre

Wednesday, October 10

The pungent smell of weed smoke and Black & Milds wafted down the stairs as I waited in line for my tickets to the LongLiveA$AP tour at the Egyptian Room at Old National Centre. It was a night of post-racial celebration and generational kinship under the guise of military imagery, odes to marijuana and good ol' fashioned hip-hop hedonism. In the words of A$AP himself "It's two thousand twelve, two thousand thirteen. Race doesn't matter. We're not black or white, but we're all purple."

I missed the bulk of opener Danny Brown's short set but luckily caught the last few songs dealing mostly with ingesting various prescription pills and smoking "blunt after blunt after blunt after blunt." Like the rest of the performers on the LongLiveA$AP tour, Brown is an artist who simply couldn't have existed in the hip-hop sphere ten years ago. He pounced around in skinny jeans and a long, slim-fitting V-neck and an asymmetrical haircut, and delivered rhymes like a strangled B-Real after raiding his grandmother's medicine cabinet -- a nasal yap hinting at a special brand of insanity. Brown seems to be a descendent in a long line of hip-hop weirdos -- Kool Keith immediately comes to mind -- and his presence set a precedent for the night i.e. it was a show that refused to fully submit to hip-hop's traditionally heteronormative values.

Schoolboy Q followed Brown and by comparison seemed ludicrously normal. He arrived on the stage in a hoodie and sunglasses, muscling through a spirited set peppered with personal anecdotes about his personal struggles and love affair with marijuana. Green smoke plumes scattered through the air during his set (and frankly, pretty much the whole night) rendering the stage's smoke machines redundant. Q is a dynamic performer though - seeming sensitive, tough and personable simultaneously. His amped set prepared the crowd for the bizarre spectacle that was A$AP Rocky.

As the interim music played on full blast, a giant banner depicting soldiers raising an upside down American flag on Iwo Jima against a beating red sun was unveiled. The DJ table was clothed in camouflage mesh and two upside down American flags flanked the stage. After a spoken-word intro complete with helicopter and gunshot sounds, A$AP arrived on the stage donned in all black and wrapped in the stars and stripes. His set was marked by hits from his debut mixtape LiveLoveA$AP, the somewhat underwhelming appearance of the A$AP Mob and a few more spoken word interludes, including an especially haunting one that paired a washed out recording of The Mamas and the Papas "California Dreaming" with graphic war sounds. It was almost a theatrical production - one that used a war aesthetic to symbolize what he called a "struggle against being misunderstood."

A$AP Rocky seems like he lives inside the pop culture zeitgeist. He's a Harlem native whose sound seems more rooted in futurism and hazy, mid-tempo Houston hip-hop than anything found in New York. He preached a post-racial message that resounded with the diverse crowd. Amidst a financial recession and global anxiety, he told the crowd that, much like him, we could do whatever we wanted to. And that night, it all seemed possible.

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Review: A$AP Rocky at the Egyptian Room at Old National Centre

Last weekend I was at the Singularity Summit for a few days. There were interesting speakers, but the reality is that quite often a talk given at a conference has been given elsewhere, and there isnt going to be much value-add in the Q & A, which is often limited and constrained. No, the point of the conference is to meet interesting people, and there were some conference goers who didnt go to any talks at all, but simply milled around the lobby, talking to whoever they chanced upon.

I spent a lot of the conference talking about genomics, and answering questions about genomics, if I thought could give a precise, accurate, and competent answer (e.g., I dodged any microbiome related questions because I dont know much about that). Perhaps more curiously, in the course of talking about personal genomics issues relating to my daughters genotype came to the fore, and I would ask if my interlocutorhad seen the lion. By the end of the conference a substantial proportion of the attendees had seen the lion.

This included a polite Estonian physicist. I spent about 20 minutes talking to him and his wife about personal genomics (since he was a physicist he grokked abstract and complex explanations rather quickly), and eventually I had to show him the lion. But during the course of the whole conference he was the only one who had a counter-response: he pulled up a photo of his 5 children! Touch! Only as I was leaving did I realize that Id been talking the ear off of Jaan Tallinn, the founder of Skype . For much of the conference Tallinn stood like an impassive Nordic sentinel, engaging in discussions with half a dozen individuals in a circle (often his wife was at his side, though she often engaged people by herself). Some extremely successful and wealthy people manifest a certain reticence, rightly suspicious that others may attempt to cultivate them for personal advantage. Tallinn seems to be immune to this syndrome. His manner and affect resemble that of a graduate student. He was there to learn, listen, and was exceedingly patient even with the sort of monomaniacal personality which dominated conference attendees (I plead guilty!).

At the conference I had a press pass, but generally I just introduced myself by name. But because of the demographic I knew that many people would know me from this weblog, and that was the case (multiple times Id talk to someone for 5 minutes, and theyd finally ask if I had a blog, nervous that theyd gone false positive). An interesting encounter was with a 22 year old young man who explained that he stumbled onto my weblog while searching for content on the singularity. This surprised me, because this is primarily a weblog devoted to genetics, and my curiosity about futurism and technological change is marginal. Nevertheless, it did make me reconsider the relative paucity of information on the singularity out there on the web (or, perhaps websites discussing the singularity dont have a high Pagerank, I dont know).

I also had an interesting interaction with an individual who was at his first conference. A few times he spoke of Ray, and expressed disappointment that Ray Kurzweil had not heard of Bitcoin, which was part of his business. Though I didnt say it explicitly, I had to break it to this individual that Ray Kurzweil is not god. In fact, I told him to watch for the exits when Kurzweils time to talk came up. He would notice that many Summit volunteers and other V.I.P. types would head for the lobby. And thats exactly what happened.

There are two classes of reasons why this occurs. First, Kurzweil gives the same talks many times, and people dont want to waste their time listening to him repeat himself. Second, Kurzweils ideas are not universally accepted within the community which is most closely associated with Singularity Institute. In fact, I dont recall ever meeting a 100-proof Kurzweilian. So why is the singularity so closely associated with Ray Kurzweil in the public mind? Why not Vernor Vinge? Ultimately, its because Ray Kurzweil is not just a thinker, hes a marketer and businessman. Kurzweils personal empire is substantial, and hes a wealthy man from his previous ventures. He doesnt need the singularity movement, he has his own means of propagation and communication. People interested in the concept of the singularity may come in through Kurzweils books, articles, and talks, but if they become embedded in the hyper-rational community which has grown out of acceptance of the possibility of the singularity theyll come to understand that Kurzweil is no god or Ayn Rand, and that pluralism of opinion and assessment is the norm. I feel rather ridiculous even writing this, because Ive known people associated with the singularity movement for so many years (e.g., Michael Vassar) that I take all this as a given. But after talking to enough people, and even some of the more naive summit attendees, I thought it would be useful to lay it all out there.

As for the talks, many of them, such as Steven Pinkers, would be familiar to readers of this weblog. Others, perhaps less so. Linda Avey and John Wilbanksgave complementary talks about personalized data and bringing healthcare into the 21st century. To make a long story short it seems that Aveys new firm aims to make the quantified self into a retail & wholesale business. Wilbanks made the case for grassroots and open source data sharing, both genetic and phenotypic. In fact, Avey explicitly suggested her new firm aims to be to phenotypes what her old firm, 23andMe, is to genotypes. Im a biased audience, obviously I disagree very little with any of the arguments which Avey and Wilbanks deployed (I also appreciated Linda Aveys emphasis on the fact that you own your own information). But Im also now more optimistic about the promise of this enterprise after getting a more fleshed out case. Nevertheless, I see change in this space to be a ten year project. We wont see much difference in the next few I suspect.

The two above talks seem only tangentially related to the singularity in all its cosmic significance. Other talks also exhibited the same distance, such as Pinkers talk on violence. But let me highlight two individuals who spoke more to the spirit of the Summit at its emotional heart. Laura Deming is a young woman whose passion for research really impressed me, and made me hopeful for the future of the human race. This the quest for science at its purest. No careerism, no politics, just straight up assault on an insurmountable problem. If I had to bet money, I dont think shell succeed. But at least this isnt a person who is going to expend their talents on making money on Wall Street. Im hopeful that significant successes will come out of her battles in the course of a war I suspect shell lose.

The second talk which grabbed my attention was the aforementioned Jaan Tallinns. Jaans talk was about the metaphysics of the singularity, and it was presented in a congenial cartoon form. Being a physicist it was larded with some of the basic presuppositions of modern cosmology (e.g., multi-verse), but also extended the logic in a singularitariandirection. And yet Tallinn ended his talk with a very humanistic message. I dont even know what to think of some of his propositions, but he certainly has me thinking even now. Sometimes its easy to get fixated on your own personal obsessions, and lose track of the cosmic scale.

Which goes back to the whole point of a face-to-face conference. You can ponder grand theories in the pages of a book. For that to become human you have to meet, talk, engage, eat, and drink. A conference which at its heart is about transcending humanity as we understand is interestingly very much a reflection of ancient human urges to be social, and part of a broader community.

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Singularity Summit 2012: the lion doesn’t sleep tonight | Gene Expression

Conceptual clocks were set every which way, calendars were meaningless, and the durable Rush trio was right on time for the first of its two shows at the Air Canada Centre on Sunday. The semi-legendary band is touring its latest album, Clockwork Angels, a thematic record inspired by H.G. Wells/Jules Verne-styled retro-futurism yesterdays imagined tomorrow land of steam-powered gadgets, adapted to flavour the bands accessible brand of Byzantine rock.

A three-hour concert saw furnace blasts of fire and belches of steam, literally and figuratively. There were old songs and new, and three drum solos at least. It all ended with a strong exit of parts of 2112, a forecasting album made 36 years ago and now a century ahead of its time.

On a stage of whimsical props and steam-punk gadgetry, the non-misfiring night began with Subdivisions, a thing of grandiose eighties synthesizer rock and tumbling drum fills that concerns urban planning, conformity and the restless dreams of youth. The Big Money followed, set to big-screen imagery of commercialism and cash registers, and cheered by audience members who had paid $70 to $160 to hear bassist-keyboardist Geddy Lee in high vocal shrill.

Lee, in shaded granny glasses, hippie hair and Chuck Taylor sneakers, is rather avuncular at the age of 59. Guitarist Alex Lifeson, also 59, used his collection of Gibson products to produce squealing solos and quick-fingered, high-fretboard note-hitting jumbo-screen close-ups of which enabled us to count the carats of his wedding ring. Drummer Neil Peart, who continues to morph into a sad-faced Buster Keaton look-alike at the age of 60, wore an African prayer cap and sat within an outstanding drum kit that had more chrome to it than a sixties Chrysler factory.

After that, things settled a bit, with a set list that disregarded well-known material and, after a short intermission, settled into the songs of Clockwork Angels, presented with a string ensemble. The crowd was politely appreciative of (though hardly wound up over) offerings strong in synchronized musicianship and a graceful sort of fury. What I would call a heavy, loud sereneness prevailed.

Rush makes serious music; the Peart-penned lyrics of Clockwork Angels were influenced by Voltaires Candide and John Barths The Sot-Weed Factor. It all distills into a vision, as Peart has explained, of one of many possible worlds, driven by steam, alchemy and intricate clockworks.

And yet part of Rushs charisma is its lack of self-seriousness. Some of the concert experience involved Monty Python-like animations on the big screen behind the band, as well as quirky high-budget vignettes starring actor Jay Baruchel and, as jokester gnomes, the members of the band.

The Clockwork Angels set had begun with the busy, shifting music of Caravan, with the line, In a world where I feel so small, I cant stop thinking big. That kind of thinking is a theme of the bands career a three-piece outfit of high-minded misfits, a group with no time or concern for expectations and naysayers. The train continues, powered by untraditional imagination and weird ticking.

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The future according to Rush runs like clockwork

David Byrne & St. Vincent plus horns in Costa Mesa. Photo: Kelly A. Swift, for the Register. Click for more.

You certainly notice right away the multitude of horns that punch up Love This Giant, the dizzying new result of a slow-soldered mind-meld between legendary innovator David Byrne and experimental upstart Annie Clark, who does business as St. Vincent. The expansive brass band gathered for the duos project announces itself from the get-go with introductory single Who, spitting forth the first of an array of squiggly riffs that 45 minutes later has run the gamut from heady Afropop and feverish JBs funk to mood-yoking motifs la Gil Evans.

Yet regardless of how dominant they may seem on record and even more so when you witness Byrne & Clark & Co. in concert, like their superb performance Friday night at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, which replayed tonight at the Greek Theatre you can just as easily get caught up by how the albums other forces sinuously helix with those horns into one multifaceted strand.

Those forces, to be exact: 1) Byrne, that restless musicologist, never less than intriguing since parting from Talking Heads at the end of the 80s, yet whose imagistic, philosophizing pop has rarely been so sublime and stately as it has been lately. 2) Clark, the curly-haired wisp from Manhattan, who via three remarkable St. Vincent discs (Marry Me, Actor and Strange Mercy) has emerged as one of todays most inventive and important new talents. And 3) drum programmer John Congleton, whose various stuttered patterns prove essential to making this synthesis so smooth.

Byrne (60) and Clark (30) are naturals together, like an eccentric, visionary godfather and his eclectic, virtuoso niece. You can feel their creative camaraderie even in Love This Giants iciest moments, but it was even more palpable in the gracious glances and gestures they gave one another inside the opulent Rene and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, a three-tiered jewel rarely used for amplified performances like this. Their voices are such a perfect blend of chilly and warm, futurism and earthiness, its a wonder they arent biologically related.

But Congletons beats, every bit as textured and syncopated as the adorning horns he helps propel, provides just as much punctuation to these organically developed tales of nature vs. technology, inner peace vs. outer cataclysm. Byrne believes every strain of it intertwines into something distinctly new. I think he might be right.

Whats arguably even more daring an enterprise, however, is what he and Clark achieve with this fusion on stage and with almost entirely different musicians from those who appear on the album.

Though its a minimalist, somewhat black-and-white night filled with stark shadows and martial choreography, people keep coming out of performances with minds blown because they dont often see such invigorating imagination at work, even in these supposedly more sophisticated times of so many other duos (the xx, the Kills, Sleigh Bells, Crystal Castles) concocting engulfing sounds out of sparse situations.

This, though, is an altogether more hypnotic experience, not least because of the mesmerizing eight-piece brass and woodwind ensemble that powers the group with layers of sweetly cacophonous trombone and alto sax, effective interjections of French horn and flugelhorn, all anchored by some of the heartiest Sousaphone blowing outside of New Orleans. Theres no electric bass involved, just those impressive horns, a keyboardist and drummer kept clear to the corners, and whatever guitars are added by Byrne (usually on acoustic) and Clark, whose shards of frantic, distorted leads on her Gibson SG are becoming a signature all their own.

Hello, people of Orange, Byrne deadpanned at the outset of what I believe is his first appearance in O.C. since his 1997 tour behind his fourth post-Heads effort Feelings, which played San Juan Capistranos Coach House.

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Live review: David Byrne & St. Vincent spellbinding at Segerstrom Center stunner

Say hello to the world's most visited destinationTimes Square in New York City. This single attraction hosts more visitors every year than Canadia has residents. This collection of shots from our friends at Oobject illustrate the Square's radical evolution over the past century from former NYT publishing house to giant, glitter ball-topped billboard.

Be sure to also take a tour of the New York Skyline, check out some New York Futurism, and these images of the Real New York City.

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How NYC Transformed Times Square Into a Cultural Icon [Architecture]

Outside it's 2012 and a mlange of wild styles diverts attention wherever you look. Inside the section headers of this year's Best of Nashville issue, however, it's a nostalgic era of equal parts Art Deco, the Jazz Age, vintage Americana and other stylistic influences from the early 20th century. The look is a hallmark of Nashville designer Joel Anderson and his Anderson Design Group, whose work can be seen throughout the issue.

A Ringling College of Art & Design graduate who's lived in Nashville since 1986 his credits extend from the award-winning "Spirit of Nashville" poster series and Olive & Sinclair Chocolate's sumptuous packaging to an Emmy-winning stint in the art department on the locally produced 1988 CBS kids' show Hey Vern, It's Ernest! Anderson says he takes inspiration from "the lost art of advertising design."

With his work for the Best of Nashville issue, Anderson says, he wanted to recapture some of the optimism and exuberance of the poster art surrounding the 1925 World's Fair in Paris, which assimilated styles ranging from Futurism to Constructivism to evoke a world spinning faster.

By going for the World's Fair look and vibe, he explains, he and illustrator Aaron Johnson, an intern from the Watkins College of Art & Design, wanted to reflect a time when "people were really excited about what technology would bring."

In some regards, it may have been too optimistic about the shape of things to come, he says. But in the traces of the style that linger for example, the locomotive and airplane in the Frist Center's interior grillwork he sees "a belief that we could build anything." That hope, and the human touch it represents, is partly what Anderson believes is driving the booming revival in vintage-style print-making.

"Everybody's got a computer now and can make their own graphics," Anderson says. "People are going back to that pre-computer age and those tactile, warm, human feels." See more of Anderson's work at andersondesigngroup.com.

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About the Illustrators

PARIS.- Paintings by Edward Hopper (1882-1967) have the deceptive simplicity of myths, a sort of picture-book obviousness. Each one is a concentrate of the hypothetical knowledge and dreams conjured up by the fabulous name of America. Whether they express deep poignancy or explore figments of the imagination, these paintings have been interpreted in the most contradictory ways. A romantic, realist, symbolist and even formalist, Hopper has been enrolled under every possible banner. The exhibition at the Grand Palais seeks to shed light on this complexity, which is an indication of the richness of Hoppers oeuvre.

It is divided chronologically into two main parts: the first section covers Hoppers formative years (1900-1924), comparing his work with that of his contemporaries and art he saw in Paris, which may have influenced him. The second section looks at the art of his mature years, from the first paintings emblematic of his personal style - House by the Railroad - (1924), to his last works (Two Comedians -1966).

Hopper entered Robert Henris studio at the New York School of Art in the early years of the twentieth century. Henri was a colourful figure; in 1908, he founded the Ashcan School, whose very name was a statement of the uncompromising realism of its most radical members.

Hoppers time in Paris (nearly a year in 1906, followed by shorter stays in 1909 and 1910) offers an opportunity to compare his paintings with those he saw in the citys galleries and salons. Degas inspired him to take original angles and apply the poetic principle of dramatisation. The massive structure of his views of the quays of the Seine was borrowed from Albert Marquet. He shared with Flix Vallotton a taste for light inspired by Vermeer. Walter Sickert was his model for the iconography of theatres and paintings of damned flesh. In Paris, Hopper adopted the style of Impressionism, a technique which he felt had been invented to express harmony and sensual pleasure; Back in the United States he absorbed the gritty realism of Bellows or Sloan, that of the Ashcan School, whose dystopic vision he shared. He earned his living doing commercial illustrations, which will be presented in the Paris exhibition. But it was his etchings (from 1915) that brought about a metamorphosis in his work and crystallized his painting, as he put it. One room in the exhibition is devoted to his etchings.

1924 was a turning point in Hoppers life and career. The exhibition of his watercolours of neo-Victorian houses in Gloucester, in the Brooklyn Museum and then in Franck Rehns gallery, brought him recognition and commercial success which enabled him to work full time on his art (he had previously sold only one painting, at the Armory Show in 1913). Hoppers watercolours open the second major section of the exhibition, which shows the American artists emblematic paintings and iconography. The chronological presentation permits visitors to appreciate the continuity of his inspiration, the way he explored his favourite subjects: houses infused with a near psychological identity (House by the Railroad, 1924, MoMA), solitary figures sunk in thought (Morning Sun, 1952, Columbus Museum of Art), the world of the theatre (Two on the Aisle, 1927, Toledo Museum of Art), images of the modern city (Nighthawks, 1942, Art Institute Chicago).

The apparent realism of Hoppers paintings, the abstract mental process that prevails in their construction, destined these works to the most contradictory claims. The bastion of the American realist tradition, the Whitney Museum of Art, regularly showed his work. And yet it was the MoMA of New York, the temple of Formalism, which gave him his first retrospective, in 1933. The MoMAs director, Alfred Barr, hailed an artist whose compositions were often interesting from a strictly formal point of view.

The complexity of Hoppers oeuvre puts it at the intersection of the two historical definitions of American modernity: one derived from the Ashcan School which claimed the Baudelairian principle of modernity linked to the subject, and the other taken from the lessons of the Armory Show which, in 1913, revealed the formalism of European avant-gardes (cubism and cubist futurism) to the American public. In the fifties, the surreal strangeness, and metaphysical dimension of Hoppers painting led to comparisons with De Chirico. At the same time, in the columns of the magazine Reality, the painter joined American realist artists in denouncing abstract art, which, in their view, was submerging collections and museums.

Only a few months after the artists death, the curator of the American section of the Sao Paulo Biennale, Peter Seltz, reconciled realism and avant-garde art by organising an exhibition of Hoppers works in conjunction with paintings by the Pop Art generation.

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Exhibition at the Grand Palais seeks to shed light on Edward Hopper's works of art

Name Your Own Price - How It Actually Works "Of all the ideas from the heady days of internet futurism, none is as fraught as "price discrimination," the practice of charging different rates to different customers for the same product. Price discrimination is a mainstay of the travel industry, where airlines and hotels try all manner of tricks to try and figure out who's willing to pay more and charge them accordingly." The Guardian (UK) 10/09/12

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Name Your Own Price - How It Actually Works

Phil Erli with Ringgold Telephone Company will be the featured speaker at the Walker County Chamber of Commerces October Membership Luncheon speaking on Watershed Events of Technology in the Future. The event will take place on Tuesday, Oct. 23, 11:30 a.m. at the Walker County Civic Center.

During the program Mr. Erli will discuss futurism in business. He will inform attendees on the ways technology and its growth will affect the ways in which persons conduct their business and personal lives.

Mr. Erli is a frequent speaker and has addressed many groups associated with the telephone industry including USTA, NECA, NTCA, OPASTCO, The International IP Forum and various state telephone associations. He has also spoken at the International Consumer Electronics Show on the subject of IPTV and addressed the National League of Cities on the subject of Futurism in Business.

A Promise Walk Community Center will have a featured spotlight table at the event. Attendees will be invited to visit this table during registration and after the event. The spotlight table host will also be given two minutes each to describe their organization during the program.

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Chattanoogan.com - Chattanooga's source for breaking local news

For a fortnight, tents across the city have held up for scrutiny the autumn/winter 2012, Resort 2013 and spring/summer 2013 collections at both Prague Fashion Weekend and Dreft Fashion Week, two of three such events vying for the top spot in Prague. With a week's worth of hindsight to digest and reflect on the parties, catwalk schedules and influential collections, we can now better determine who came out of Prague's annual fashion top dog (so far).

Czech designers have been known to love futurism and minimalism more than most, sometimes verging on the side of unwearable or just downright bland, but Pavel Brejcha's autumn/winter 2012 collection turned minimalism on its head with a tonal blue palette that was reminiscent of Calvin Klein. Using fabrics with motion that seemed to sway ever so slightly down the catwalk, "clothes for the modern woman," as Brejcha has called them, should continue to bolster the career of the designer.

At Dreft Fashion Week, it was Black Card winner Jindra Jansov whose delicate layering of organza created a sophisticated collection that is far beyond her young years as a designer. The autumn/winter cuts went with the oversized coat and jacket trend, but did so in a way that still allowed the wearers to maintain "womanly" shapes. Another minimalist standout was Lenka tpnkov, who blended silks and leather to create a very tough female persona by using mostly grays and blacks with pops of tangerine orange: The collection certainly set her apart from her other design counterparts.

Finally, Czech minimalism was done right.

The mix-up du jour of bold, bright colors and patterns came from the spring/summer 2013 collection of Dreft Fashion Week darling Alexandre Herchcovitch, which mixed mad-hatter and Boy George in seamless harmony. Checkered suits, blouses and skirts were paired with plaid trousers or oversized jackets, while clutches incorporated smiley faces la Forrest Gump or safety-pins in a heart design. Quirky? A bit. Facetious and jovial? Absolutely.

Prague Fashion Weekend was not without color or crazy patterns, either: The Berlin-based designer Marcel Ostertag used tangerine orange, bordeaux and cherry red in silks, satins and lace to create a spring/summer 2013 line that was easy and clear. The silhouettes were feminine, allowing a small waist to take precedence over everything else. The designer, who opened up his own show by donning a red, silk chiffon number, was the epitome of grace as he sauntered down the runway.

La Formela, the spectacular design trio, went with "Good News from the Far East Palace" in a nod to Chinese artist Zou Fana for spring/summer 2013. Invoking psychedelic Chinese gardens by mixing lady bugs and koi fish with backdrop colors of bubblegum pink, lime green and marigold yellow seemed so effortless that is was easy to forget just how young the design team is. There were sheer blouses in black mixed with printed high-waist trousers, halter dresses with just a border hem of printed gardens, or a fully printed trench coat which would undoubtedly make for perfect outerwear in spring's fussy weather. The color harmony, which is so often out of place with Czech designers, was executed by a La Formela team living in a minimalist world that was able to overcome those barriers in one fell swoop.

Of course, the young talent that is emerging on the local fashion scene will determine whether or not the industry is propelled forward or pushed back. In both fashion weeks, the organizers painstakingly picked budding talent whose accolades would eventually be far-reaching.

The Awkward Collection by Lucie Jelnkov and Monika Novkov was one such budding talent that debuted two collections of varying tastes at Prague Fashion Weekend and Dreft Fashion Week. At PFW, it was the dinosaur shoes that won the type of recognition normally saved for celebrities. The collection of Velociraptors and T-Rex footwear in various colors were meant to create "memories of childhood, when we discover the world through color, Lego figures and plastic dinosaurs," explains the design duo behind the collection. At Dreft Fashion Week, it was their collection of sheer silk blouses and dresses with the drizzling of silicone to create a bodice, military details, accessories and shoes that were the scene stealers.

In the end, Prague Fashion Weekend and Dreft Fashion Week will each have to decide whether to show autumn/winter or spring/summer collections for the 2013 edition of these events. Cannibalizing each other in an event to win "September" is silly and won't necessarily allow the fashion weeks to grow and garner the type of attention each are aiming for, i.e. international press and buyers.

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Review: Prague's weeks of fashion

In the annals of "Fine Art History," graffiti is usually placed squarely outside of the mainstream dialogue. Usually, its relegated to a foggy category sometimes called Urban Art--or worse, Urban Contemporary. Those are not terms that came from the graffiti or street communities, says writer and theorist Daniel Feral. They may be a result of categories created by the auction houses. I usually hear the terms used when discussing sales of art.

Click to enlarge.

Feral is the creator of the eponymous Feral Diagram, a map that revises the role of graffiti and street art in the canon of modern art. From Ferals perspective, graffiti and street art have been critical drivers of the art world for well nigh 40 years now. Framing them as outsider art is not only lazy, but incorrect. As an alternative, Feral has literally redrawn art history, showing how 1960s graffiti and street art emerged from major mainstream movements, from Pop Art and the Situationists to 1940s Art Brut. By way of looping arrows and signs, he also demonstrates how street art evolved, conceptually, alongside the likes of Gordon Matta-Clark and Jenny Holzer. And thankfully, Feral also parses out the boilerplate-in-their-own-right terms, graffiti and street art, into specific groups and movements, like Wildstyle and Otaku-tinged Childstyle.

Whats clever about the Feral Diagram is that it utilizes the visual language of another very famous diagram, created by the first director of MoMA, Alfred H. Barr, in 1935. In his visualization, Barr used looping black arrows and Futura type to explain how Cubism and Abstract Art evolved from a mixture of high art and pop culture influences, ranging from Japanese prints to the Neo-Impressionists. I wanted to honor Barrs intellectual brilliance, Feral writes. By utilizing his visual language to tell a story other than that sanctioned by the Fine Art establishment, it made me feel like I was subverting the system too. It made me feel like I was doing what my friends were doing: reclaiming public space.

MoMA director Alfred H. Barrs 1935 original.

A special edition of Ferals diagram was released this week in support of a new film and book, Futurism 2.0, documenting an emerging school of street artists known as Graffuturism, which began a few years ago as a secret Facebook group and has blossomed into a full-fledged movement. Now, Feral explains, it deserves its own mention on the diagram. A gallery show of Graffuturist art opened at Londons Blackhall Studios on September 28th.

You can buy a poster of the diagram here.

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Infographic: Mapping The 70-Year Gestation Of Street Art

LV / Photo by Jason Turner

"People presume that what they think of as South African elements on the album are actually that, but the connection is the guys that we were doing this with, rather than any idea of what the music would sound like."

Who:This South London trio Simon Williams, Gervase Gordon, and Will Horrocks has been subtly absorbing and reinvigorating underground British dance sounds since 2007. But Gordon's bi-continental birthright (he's British and South African) has acted as a fresh conduit for their latest album,Sebenza, and the producers collaborated with some of South Africa's brightest young MCs including Spoek Mathambo, Okmalumkoolkat, and Ruffest to integrate contemporary Johannesburg futurism with London's dance-floor avant-garde. While British beat trends shift every time the Queen walks her Corgi, LV have taken the gleaming, syncopated rhythms of UK funky, kwaito, kuduro, electrofunk, and straight-up house to forge their own distinct, holographic path.

Pirate Anthems:"People presume that what they think of as South African elements on the album are actually that," says Horrocks. "But the connection is the guys that we were doing this with, rather than any idea of what the music would sound like." The trio insists that there was no grand plan to explicitly link Jo'burg with London. But both South Africa and England have built formidable dance scenes largely inspired by pirate radio, and if anything most resemblesSebenza's beat clatter, it's the clamor of electronic beats on fuzzy renegade airwaves.

Snatching Victory from the Jaws:LV spent three years assembling tracks in both London and South Africa, and at various points, they thought the project wouldn't pan out. "The fact that it came together and that it has a coherent vibe?" marvels Williams, "I think it's quite standard to get halfway through and be like, hang on, is this as good as I think it is? Am I just making my life difficult for no good reason? But we're fueled by defeat," he adds, wryly. "That's how we roll." Once the songs sat side by side, though, notoriously selective Hyperdub boss Kode9 requested an album and an EP, with stray singles and instrumentals from the sessions to come.

Majoring in Beatmaking:Three is an odd number for collaborating on production, but LV doesn't know anything else, having discovered their mutual love for music-making while ditching class at university together. "We started skipping lectures to play with incredibly poor keyboards and my MPC," says Williams. "We used to record bass guitar on MiniDisc and then re-sample it onto an MPC, while Gerv played lamentable, regrettable chords." The crew still owns the music, but it won't be seeing the light of day anytime soon. "I'd like it if people bought [Sebenzafirst], but I think that's implied," he says, laughing.

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LV: Brit Dance-Music Production Crew Conspire With South African MCs

Summary: Many companies view SMS as legacy technology, and are bypassing it in favor of apps and new, non-carrier communication services like WhatsApp. The death of SMS is nowhere near, though.

The tech industry attracts the worst kind of futurists, Clayton Christensen-quoting types who behold shifting paradigms, looming inflection points and disruptive innovations everywhere they look.

The futurism business is so competitive these days that technologies get declared dying at the very moment they are actually peaking. In monarchy terms, that's like preparing tocrown the boy prince when the reigning king is a hale and hearty 40-something.

So it goes with text messaging, aka SMS. Nobody disputes that SMS is the king of mobile communications today. 7.8 trillion SMS messages were sent last year, according to Portio Research. Another firm, Informa, counted 5.9 trillion text messages worldwide last year, comprising 64% of mobile messaging traffic. You alsohave research showing that in developed countries,texting has just become more popularthan voice calling.

Not only is SMS on top, but it's still growing substantially. Portio predicted earlier this year that it will increase 23% this year to 9.6 trillion SMS messages.

According to Portio: "SMS is not dead. SMS is still the king and will remain so for some time to come."

Yet, many experts have already declared the death of SMS. Consumers don't care - they're too busy texting. And somecompanies are reaping the marketingbenefits(see Mobile Marketer for more North American case studies and Sybase 365 for the rest of the world).

But too many companies are being persuaded not to invest in SMS or its picture/video-enabled sibling, MMS, in favor of building native apps, or waiting to see what the mobile IM services or Twitter or even fast-rising 'free' Over-The-Top (OTT) services like WhatsApp.

I understand that there is a consumer desire for a cheaper alternative to SMS. ButI think that companies waiting for the death of SMS will wait for a lot longer than they expect. In the meantime, there will be huge costs, in the form of blown opportunities to exploit the right-time, contextual marketing capabilitiesof mobiletoday.

As much as I'm a champion of apps, they remain largely a first-world phenomenon. Globally, smartphones that can run apps were outsold by featurephones by 2:1 last year.

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Text Messaging Still Thriving Despite Smartphones, Twitter and WhatsApp

Although they decrease in number with each passing year, classic cars from the 1950s and '60s are part of America's cultural landscape. They're icons of an time when we had just defeated the biggest threats the world had ever known.

The futurism seen in automotive design, art and architecture of that era are pretty good indications that on top of the nation's brewing social unrest, there was a sense of optimism. This is often reflected in the classic car art of the era, and of future artists looking back on the era. What's the most beautiful car-on-canvas painting reflecting this moment in America's existence.

Our nominee is this painting from Danny Heller, a 30-year-old painter from Southern California's San Fernando Valley. He wasn't even alive until the 1980s.

But growing up in Southern California, where mid-century architecture and cars are common, he began to notice that there was something special about that simple space age aesthetic. Houses are low and long, and because of the region's dry, sunny weather many of the cars from that era are still on the road, having escaped the fate of rust belt body rot.

"L.A. and the San Fernando Valley have a car culture. Those old cars were all around me when I was growing up," Heller told us. "My dad had a stingray 'Vette and an old Lincoln, the neighbors had a Chevy Bel Aire. You could drive by Bob's Big Boy in Burbank on cruise night and there would be classic cars in the parking lot."

So when he began painting mid-century architecture and design as his main subject matter, cars were a natural part of the scenery. Painting that scene is a way for him to preserve not just mid-century design, but it's version of hope for the future: Better living through good design. Big windows. Lots of light. Big, space age cars. Enough to go around.

Southern California has changed a lot since rocket tipped Oldsmobiles and suburban ranch homes were in vogue. Our vision of the future has shifted. Although the trappings of that time are still around, like any flotsam of a bygone time they're disappearing. Hipsters love '50s furniture and old, beer-bellied men are fond of finned Detroit iron, but the rest of the world has moved on. Heller thinks his waning, and in many cases dilapidated, SoCal Golden Suburban Utopia Era surroundings are beautiful, and wants to preserve some of it for posterity.

Take a look at Heller's paintings. At first glance, they almost look like photographs. But how does seeing old cars and Palm Springs homes in paint change the way you see them? Does it freeze them in time or do they age instantly? Do they become more or less alive? Has the Golden State dream portrayed in Heller's paintings disappeared completely, or have we reshaped it somehow?

Please share your images from that era and of that era and tell us what they mean to you.

Image credit: Danny Heller

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The Most Beautiful '50s And '60s American Car Paintings [Car Art]

Many companies view SMS as legacy technology, and are bypassing it in favor of apps and new, non-carrier communication services like WhatsApp. The death of SMS is nowhere near, though.

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Why Text Messaging Still Thrives Despite Smartphones, Twitter and WhatsApp

Curator Judith Brodie focuses on two seminal works in her excellent National Gallery of Art show, Shock of the News, which documents the stormy, obsessive, often dysfunctional and prodigiously productive relationship between art and newspapers over the past century. First is a classic screed by the Italian poet and provocateur Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, a manifesto of Futurism published in 1909 in the respectable Parisian newspaper Le Figaro. Second is Picassos 1912 collage Guitar, Sheet Music, and Glass, which incorporated a fragment of another French newspaper, Le Journal, into an image that also uses a scrap of sheet music and a charcoal sketch to create a flat, schematic map of sensual diversions and cafe life.

Although newspapers had appeared in art before (Cezanne painted his father reading what looks like the Jackson Pollock Daily Herald in 1866), and art had appeared in newspapers with increasingly satisfying results since advances in printing late in the 19th century, the Picasso and Marinetti works announced a new relation between the two media. Picassos pasted-paper construction brought the newspaper as a material thing to the foreground of his picture, while Marinetti suggested new ways for artists to use the larger apparatus of the newspaper phenomenon, its mass appeal and its power to mold public opinion.

Thereafter, what might seem to be two very different wellsprings of inspiration pretty much merged. Focusing on the materiality of newspaper inevitably raised questions about what those little pieces of paper said, which dragged in the jangling, newsy world of politics and war and celebrity and everything else the newspaper promised its readers on a daily basis. And as artists developed a more conceptual approach to using newspapers publishing their own absurdist or self-aggrandizing broadsheets, analyzing and dissecting the hidden mythologies of the news business they often, and perhaps accidentally, made work that is alluring on a purely aesthetic and tactile level.

Shock of the News presents a fascinating cross section of the results, from an original copy of Marinettis testosterone-soaked manifesto (like something Walt Whitmans evil twin might have written had he grown up in a Prussian boarding school) to works done in the past five years, as the newspaper business hemorrhaged jobs, profits and confidence. Paul Sietsemas 2008 Modernist Struggle ink and enamel work, a meticulous trompe loeil rendering of two pieces of newspaper, the New York Times and Los Angeles Times (which includes the headline Modernists Struggle with Traditionalists Over Guns), feels autumnal and reflective, an honorific painting that gives the newspaper the same treatment as a Dutch still life or an old family portrait hanging above the mantel. The precision of his image, including the painstakingly realistic rendering of slight creases and curled corners, is wistful, perhaps loving, and the results are such an accurate rendering of banal objects that attention focuses on the small dissonance between use of the singular in Sietsemas title (Modernist Struggle) and the plural in the headline the artist paints (Modernists Struggle ...).

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‘Shock of the News’ at National Gallery of Art a fascinating cross section of art, news

Dion Lee fused sportswear and futurism in his sleek spring summer 2013 show at London Fashion Week.

The Australian wunderkind, showing in London for the second time, held the crowd of international editors on the edges of their benches as they leaned in for closer looks at his accomplished creations.

The first thing to catch their eyes? That would be the leatherlots of it. Appearing in forensically fitted pencil skirts and jackets, it featured slashed-and-plaited panels that created vertebrae-like patterns down the backs of thighs and spines.

But there was simplicity too, as in the purity of the white, midriff-baring tracksuit that opened the show (yup, midriffs: it's practically a Lee-girl requirement to show it off). Colour filtered into the opening series of white looks in the form of transparent orange panels. It built through periwinkle dresses into more blazers, this time with sea-creature swirls and folded-leather peplums.

Dressesexcellent, wearable dresseswere mostly high-necked, with split, neoprene bodice panels that brought to mind lungs and respiration. Has London given the designer room to breathe?

Theres always a consciousness of the body that runs through the collections, he told us backstage. Particularly with this one, there was that kind of layering and transparency and building those shapes underneath the torso. But it was also looking at parallels between technology and the human race.

Technology, the human race and some mighty fine leather jacketscome back next season, Dion. Youre welcome in London anytime.

See the full collection here

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Dion Lee: sleek, futuristic, leathery

Posted in Fashion / Fashion blog / Hair & hairstyles / Hairstyles / New York fashion week

The hair for the Alexander Wang spring 2013 show created by stylist Guido for Redken was simply the reinvention of the ponytail. The inspiration was the futurism and minimalism behind Alexander Wangs designs.

Guido took the modern ponytail that we see day to day on the streets of any city and elevated it to new heights. Throughout his career he has found ways to make the ponytail new all over again and this New York fashion week show was no exception.

Article continues. To read it in full visit 'How to: Alexander Wangs futuristic ponytail' at Fashionising.com

Tagged: Alexander Wang Guido Palau Redken

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How to: Alexander Wang’s futuristic ponytail

There are predictions, mock-ups, and rumors galore...but this is what the next iPhone could use most.

I've owned an iPhone every year since its 2007 debut. Every one. The reward for such reckless upgrading has been a sense of the iPhone's evolution over those years. What started as a device that had not many apps to speak of, but dripped futurism, has become an always-on, location-aware, frighteningly integral part of my nervous system.

While I've listed what we expect out of the next iPhone, I haven't told you what I want. So, here's my own personal list of what matters most...to me.

Battery life. Honestly, I can't stress this enough. The iPhone's become my all-in-one catch-all device, the one thing other than my keys and wallet that I need to take with me. It's a mission-critical device. I need that device to last at least a full day. The iPhone 4 was very good in this regard; the iPhone 4S, while faster and better in many important ways, needs a top-off around British teatime if I'm spending the night out and have been power-using my phone all day. Battery pack cases and portable charge packs aside, I really want the iPhone 5 (or "New iPhone," or whatever it's called) to meet or exceed the iPhone 4S in battery life. Based on its allegedly larger size, I think it can -- but maybe the larger screen will make it a wash.

Smoother Siri. I appreciate the idea behind Siri, and the iPhone is better for Siri existing than not. Still, I hardly use it. The occasional errors and odd miscommunications Siri and I have when chatting are usually enough to drive me to old-fashioned typing...which over five years I've become very adept at. However, I'm a city-dweller. I understand that hands-free use for drivers and others could be a big part of the next iOS 6 update, and I might own a car soon enough as I prepare to leave the city. I'm willing to give Siri a second chance.

Complete cloud support. I use iCloud quite a bit: for Photo Streaming to my MacBook Air, iTunes Match to eliminate old-fashioned music syncing, and overnight backups (I restored my iPad from scratch via iCloud). iCloud is only halfway there. I want a complete, unchained iPhone life from my Mac. I'd like my HD videos and photos to be synced and even stored and archived in a secondary cloud location, automatically. I'd love better cloud syncing of stored app data and documents. This won't replace a local backup, but it sure will help.

A slightly bigger screen. I don't want a big, honking screen. That's what my iPad is for. I like a pocketable phone. My jeans pockets already bulge enough. Then again, the amount of screen space on the iPhone feels stale. The iPhone has tons of unused space around the screen, and the screen itself has maintained the exact same dimensions as the original 2007 model. I just want the screen to take up as much of that body size as possible.

4G...only if it doesn't chew up battery life or cost me an arm and a leg. See my above comments on battery life. I'm honestly okay with my "4G" HSDPA data on my AT&T iPhone 4S in New York, and I use Wi-Fi hot spots so frequently that I'm not sure I'd crave 4G LTE. I understand the use of 4G in an iPad for a frequent traveler. Sure, 4G on a phone would be a pleasant experience and make for zippier app use. I just don't want to pay a ton for it, and I certainly don't want my iPhone's battery life to dip down because of it. The third-gen iPad's excellent battery life on 4G is promising.

A tad less glass. The iPhone 4 and 4S are beautiful, but they make me feel like I need a case on all the time. The new iPhone looks like it's bringing back the metal, and I don't mind that one bit. Maybe it'll even encourage me to go caseless once in a while -- you know, live dangerously.

Come Wednesday, we'll found out what the iPhone holds.

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What I'd like to see in the iPhone 5

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Total Recall