Category Archives: New Utopia

Earlier this week, Grimes dropped her new single "Shinigami Eyes" - a club stomper which serves as a prelude to her upcoming space opera album 'Book 1.' In this FRONTPAGE interview, she spins us her vision of the future.

The first time I saw Grimes was, incidentally, the last time she was able to wear high heels.

It was the summer of 2014, and the artist otherwise known as Claire Boucher was cresting the wave of alternative music stardom that began in earnest with the release of her 2012 album Visions. Like pretty much everyone I knew at the time, I adored this record, but I held a special obsession for its lead single Genesis. I would have paid to see her live show for that song alone, so you can imagine my chagrin when she ended her otherwise perfect set at Governors Ball without playing it. I stared at the vacant stage in disbelief attempting to console myself when she suddenly darts back to the microphone and sheepishly blurts Oh my God you guys, Im so sorry. I completely forgot to play Genesis, at which point I burst into tears as she tore into the encore of my dreams.

I regale her with this story and she affirms that she remembers that moment deeply: It was a life-changing event, that moment. I was wearing platform shoes, and on the way running back out I tripped on a light and twisted my ankle so badly that I have never been able to wear high heels again.

Learning that my moment of transcendent joy ruined her future in stilettos is devastating, but she seems to have (quite literally) taken it in stride: Tall shoes are overrated. Its been a process of accepting my height. Whatever everything happens for a reason.

In the few short years since that fateful performance, Grimes has gone from an indie darling little known outside Pitchforks readership to a pop culture juggernaut; a household name who cant even post a TikTok without launching a thousand think pieces. She released two more albums 2015s Art Angels and 2020s Miss Anthropocene to international acclaim and has dropped untold musical goodies in scores of DJ sets and mixes. She entered the NFT game with a multimedia project titled War Nymph Collection Vol 1 and served as a judge on the virtual avatar competition show Alter Ego. She brought a sword to the Met Gala, and she continues to hold the world in thrall with her unparalleled social media presence. And perhaps most important of all, she became a mother, giving birth to X A-12 in 2020.

Which is all to say, its unsurprising to hear that the inspirations behind the next Grimes opus are as varied, ambitious, and cosmically huge as everything else she has going on. Basically, I'm writing this space opera that's a metaphor of my life and also an exploration of an extreme 10,000 years in the future, a sort of optimistic technocratic utopianism, she rattles out effortlessly.

The space opera in question is her upcoming sixth studio album titled Book 1, which will feature the recently released song Player of Games. But weve come together to chat specifically about Shinigami Eyes, an absolute banger which officially dropped this week. Its title is derived from the anime Death Note, wherein the titular eyes grant you the power to see someones lifespan upon looking at them, but its merely a jumping off point in the universe of Grimes album. Without going [too] into the story, she begins, There's a computer that is essentially running a simulation of Earth in something closer to our era, and there's a superintelligence that decides to send a virus into this simulation, for fun. Shinigami's kind of like this AI, because in Death Note, the Shinigami are outside, looking in at the Earth and the people, and being like, We're just going to go into the human world and troll around a bit.

[Its] a metaphor for superintelligence, essentially, she continues. There is no difference between an AI and a god, like what gods or demons are in mythology - its kind of the same thing. One of the really interesting things that is occurring in reality is that the mythology we once imagined can potentially come to fruition by our own hands.

Though Shinigami Eyes is no longer going to be featured on Book 1 (appearing instead on a forthcoming EP titled Fairies Cum First as a prelude to the album), it exemplifies one of the more unique elements of Bouchers current era: working with other people. Somewhat infamously, her early projects were created on Garageband in manic bursts of activity alone in her bedroom. For an artist whose work thus far has been entirely self-produced and released, it was a massive cognitive explosion to open her compositional process up this go-round. Traditionally, I've always just made my own music, she explains. I never worked with anybody else. I was being an egomaniac thinking that I should produce everything. I don't know what the fuck I was thinking.

That's your 20s, she continues. You just need to be a control freak. I was so insane back then, but I wanted to create something that no one could take away from me. I didn't want to have to rely on anybody to have Grimes exist. That's ultimately a good thing.

Boucher readily admits that relinquishing control became something of a godsend during the recording process. She signed to Columbia Records in 2021, and she had the full force of their support during production. It was inevitably thanks to them that we even have Shinigami Eyes. I probably would not have picked this as my single, she laughs. But it's like I tried to remove Oblivion and Genesis from Visions. I'm incapable of understanding what people enjoy. I am at odds with human beings in terms of taste, so I have no capacity to choose a single whatsoever.

I am respectfully inclined to agree that her calculus in measuring a singles appeal may not be the most keen, but on a conceptual level, Boucher has rarely reached such heights of complexity in the messages attached to this era of music. Nor has she ever felt so assured of her purpose. [In terms of] my goal as an artist I used to be confused about what I was trying to do, she says. I was like, Well, I always want to try to do things that someone else hasn't done. But I feel now that my goal is to open the window as much as possible to push things into being conceptualized in the public eye that aren't currently there.

I would like to create science fiction that is more accessible, she continues forcefully. There's a lot of information that needs more accessible funneling into society so that more people can engage with some of the things that are happening in technology. There simply isn't enough utopianism in our culture right now. And I think we have a moral imperative as human beings to start imagining better futures. [Particularly those] with superintelligences, because its going to happen whether we like it or not.

Considering her last album Miss Anthropocene was told from the perspective of a goddess of climate change gleefully heralding our mass extinction, the thematic tone of Book 1 is a complete about-face. Yet its surely no coincidence that her focus gazes on a more livable future a little over a year after becoming a mother. Little X, as she refers to her son, has led to a totemic shift in priorities: It changes everything. Like, a massive, undeniable, absolutely 200 percent change. Holy shit. [Its been] a complete and utter life realignment in every conceivable way the cynicism or darkness I used to have is just gone.

X has also been getting involved in the studio: He comes and hangs out when I make music, she laughs. He has preferences, its kind of crazy. It's like you'll be working on something, and if he likes it, he might try to dance. He's got slightly different taste in music than me, which is literally insane. He really likes funk music, and I'm like, Dude, I do not listen to funk music! He's an interesting guy

(So if not funk music, what has Grimes been listening to lately? The answer may surprise you: I'm so into elevator music. I swear to God. If you just put on elevator music in any scenario, you feel fucking great. Corporate America destroyed elevator music's reputation, and now it's time to reclaim it.)

Theres a clear through line in the wonder of creation in the current worlds of both Grimes and Claire Boucher she discusses her son and the birth of superintelligence as sharing the qualities of coming into the world with a set of personalities that we cant anticipate.

But I imagine I am not alone in finding the dawn of the age of AI beings as hard to conceive in anything but apocalyptic terms. It was what made me so disarmed and extremely comforted by her analysis:

We're at the very beginning of what consciousness can be, of what a thinking machine or a thinking organism can be. We are currently sort of like the only one. We are on a precipice where there might be other beings that can think, that don't think in exactly the same biologically structured way that we do. We're starting to choose our own evolution; that is literally intelligent design. I think that's the most beautiful thing I can possibly imagine.

Read more from the original source:

Tales of the Future: Grimes Takes Us Into Her Technocratic Utopia - Highsnobiety

Ahead of Chinese New Year, China released a new video that shows Tianwen-1 Mars Orbiter flying around the Martian lands.

The country's National Space Administration unveiled this selfie clip as part of the celebration for the Year of the Tiger.

(Photo : WANG ZHAO/AFP via Getty Images)Ahead of Chinese New Year, China released a new video that shows Tianwen-1 Mars Orbiter flying around the Martian lands.

According to a report by Ars Technica,the visual highlights of the video involved the space probe's fuel tanks, solar panels, and main engine. The fact that it was roaming on a foreign planet was not a new task for this machine.

China first sent it to space in July 2020. In February 2021, it successfully entered Mars orbit. The space program recognized the said spacecraft in a special feat. It was the first vehicle that reached the planet's orbit for the first time.

The accomplishment of China put it on the prestigious list of countries that managed to touch down on the red planet using a space robot. To add, Tianwen-1 was not an ordinary invention, to begin with. It came with a rover-lander bundle thattouched the Martian soil last May 2021.

In the next five years, China will integrate space science, technology, and applications while pursuing the new development philosophy, building a new development model, and meeting the requirements for high-quality development," the white paper of the Chinese space program reads.

Related Article: China's Tianwen-1 Mars Rover Snaps First Photo of the Eerie Red Planet Amid Challenging Entry

The Verge reported in another story that China was known for being "fairly opaque" about its space missions. The country only publicized minor information about its flights in space.

The recent selfie video that showed Tianwen-1's activity was not the first clip to be released for the public. Last month, the team captured images of the Martian terrain through the vehicle.

Furthermore, the Mars Orbiter also snapped photos of itself in the same region through a camera attached to another vehicle. The said vehicle was protected by a shell-like feature.

In another report by Tech Times, the Tianwen-1 spacecraft landed on Utopia Planitiaof the Red planet. Upon unloading the Zhurong rover, it faced the dreaded "seven minutes of terror" which the NASA Perseverance managed to survive.

However, it turned out that the Chinese vehicle did not only endure the seven minutes of its battle. Instead, it was recorded to be nine minutes in duration.

The said term was used by NASA to describe a specific point in time wherein a space robot could have difficulties in receiving the radio signals.

Interestingly, several pictures involve other Martian robots. Aside from China, NASA has been taking pictures of the Red Planet using the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers.

The international space agency discovered the ever-changing landscape in Earth's neighboring planet. When NASA sent its Insight lander to survey the "iron" region, it also deployed two satellites. One of them was used to take a selfie of the huge Martian background.

Read Also:Hubble Space Telescope Discovers Three Unusual Galaxies Inspired by 'Star Trek'

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Joseph Henry

2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

Go here to see the original:

Tianwen-1 Mars Orbiter Seen Journeying the Red Planet on the Latest Footage Ahead of Chinese Lunar New Year [VIDEO] - Tech Times

Utah is at the forefront of innovation in developing clean energy generation, and its happening at a breakneck pace. From our clean energy utopia in central Utah to educating Utahs future energy workforce, our state is leading the way to a cleaner and more renewable energy future.

For all these advancements, Utah is still largely reliant on coal. More than 70% of our electricity comes from coal-fired power plants located in rural Utah, and it will be at similar numbers for years to come. While coal-generated power fuels our modern life and helps make Utah an attractive place to live and do business, it does come with costs to our climate, air quality and environment.

Completely abandoning the use of fossil fuels is not an option if we want to maintain our modern life, so its imperative we tackle the issue of their pollutants as soon as possible.

So is there a way to use fossil fuels without emitting irresponsible amounts of CO2 into the air? The answer isnt a yes or no its carbon capture. Carbon capture works by doing exactly what it sounds like it captures the CO2 emitted from the combustion of fossil fuels, like coal, where it can then be safely stored thousands of feet underground or used in other capacities.

And the great thing about this technology is it can be retrofitted to existing facilities. Post-combustion carbon capture has the ability to capture over 90% of the CO2 emitted from power plants and industrial facilities, which would otherwise go straight into the air.

As with all energy generation and technologies, carbon capture does have its challenges. The technology isnt new, but it is expensive. According to the Department of Energy, todays carbon capture technologies are so energy-intensive they may decrease the efficiency of a coal power plant by up to 30%, resulting in an 80% price increase in electricity. Additionally, advanced carbon capture technologies, which can help reduce cost, have never been demonstrated at scales large enough for power plants, so there are still some unknowns about the feasibility of such projects.

But these challenges arent insurmountable and can be overcome by businesses researching and investing in better and more affordable ways to capture carbon. Just like solar panels reaching levels of affordability with improvements in technology and manufacturing, carbon capture is expected to be more efficient and less costly as technologies improve. Its also important to remember that we as a state are not interested in exclusively adopting carbon capture to solve our emissions-related problems. Other opportunities are also within reach that we should continue developing including wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, biomass, nuclear and hydrogen.

Utah is not interested in just one of these technologies, were interested in all of them. Were an all-of-the-above energy state, and it takes a combination of these technologies to meet our future energy needs.

We must have a balanced, diverse approach to clean energy and that includes the use of fossil fuels, coupled with carbon capture. Carbon capture could be the breath of fresh air Utah is looking for as we transition our portfolios to include more clean and renewable energies. That diversity will bring security to our grid, and with Utahs commitment to innovation unencumbered by government regulations, we are well-positioned to build a clean and reliable energy future.

Thom Carter is energy adviser to Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and executive director of the Utah Office of Energy.

The rest is here:

John Kerry wants to get rid of coal. There is a better way to save the planet/Opinion - Deseret News

The number of peoplein Northern Territory hospitals withCOVID-19 has reached a new peak of 111, as the NT government introduces a seven-day outdoor mask mandate to combat rising coronavirus case numbers.

Of the 111 people now in Territory hospitals,10 patients are receiving oxygen and five are in intensive care,Health Minister Natasha Fyles said on Saturday.

She also said the NT had recorded 828 new cases of coronavirus in the 24 hours up to 8pm on Friday.

Of those, 648 were recorded from rapid antigen tests while the remainder came from PCR tests.

There are now 4,650 active cases of COVID-19 in the NT.

"We're seeing case numbers right across the Northern Territory. COVID is in every region," Ms Fyles said.

"We're seeinglarge numbers of people that are asymptomatic, they're feeling mildly unwell and they're able to be cared for at home."

Ms Fylessaid case numbers seemed to be rising as people returned to the Territory from interstate in the lead-up to schools going back this week.

She also announced thatFriday's daily case tally had been revised up from 940 to 1,006, after the addition of more positive RAT test results.

Last week, the NT government began revising up daily COVID case totals for the previous day's cases, adding hundreds of cases to both Wednesday and Thursday's figures.

Ms Fyles said from 6pm on Saturday, a seven-day outdoor mask mandate would come into effect across the Territory.

The new mandate will apply to people aged 12 and over outdoorswhenever they cannot maintain a 1.5 distance from others,but will not apply while exercising.

The NT-wideindoor mask mandate remains in place.

Ms Fyles said the outdoor mask mandatehad been introducedin response to growing COVID-19 case numbers in the NT.

"This is just considering we've seen a large increase in those new cases, which we largely attribute to the end of the school holidaysand that higher number of interstate arrivals," she said.

"We really want to get our case numbers back down to that average what we were seeing,[that] around 450 [cases] seven-day average."

Deputy Chief Health Officer Jacqui Murdoch said the outdoor mask mandate was aimed at slowing thespread of COVID-19 in the community.

"What we have seen and what we know from the international evidenceis that masks are really effective at stopping the spread of Omicron, and so that's why we've recommended the introduction of an outdoor mask mandate, to try and stop those increased numbers translating into more community transmission," she said.

Ms Fyles also said lockdowns in Gunyangara (Ski Beach), Wurrumiyanga on the Tiwi Islands and Utopia in Central Australia ended at 2pm on Saturdayas scheduled.

Ampilatwatja,Milikapiti and Elcho Island (including Galiwin'ku) remain in lockdown, while lockouts are still in place in Alice Springs,Amoonguna,Yuendumu and Yuelamu.

Ms Fyles said authorities would decide in the morning whether lockdown or lockout restrictions in some other communities could be lifted.

"We certainly haven't ruled out further measures, or further changes going forward," she said.

Ms Fyles said case numbers at the Alice Springs prison had jumped in the latest reporting period, with 154 new cases recorded there on Friday.

"That's a significant increase," she said.

There are now a total of 274 cases at the facility.

The rise in cases came after atesting team was sent intothe prison to test everyone for COVID-19, Ms Fyles said.

She said she understood all of the 154 people who tested positive yesterday were asymptomatic, though she couldn't say if any had been taken to hospital.

The full vaccination rate at the prisonstands at 86 per cent.

Ms Fyles also said there had been 22 new cases recorded in Milingimbi in Arnhem Land.

"Our officials are just working through what assistance they will need in this situation, so we can provide them withsupport and resources," she said.

She said health authorities were also working withWadeye after thecommunity recorded its first COVID-19 case yesterday.

Communities under lockdown or lockout restrictions

Cases in communities that are not under lockdown or lockout restrictions:

Top End:

East Arnhem:

Big Rivers:

Central Australia:

Loading form...

Visit link:

NT brings in outdoor mask mandate, as Territory COVID-19 hospital admissions rise to new peak of 111 - ABC News

Steve Martin was astonished the first time he walked into a room full of Australian Aboriginal art. It was something I had never seen before, says the actor and writer. And Ive been collecting art for 50 years.

The line-based works, by Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri, a painter from Australias desert interior, were rendered in rich yellows and ochres. The canvases seemed to undulate. Enchanted, Martin left the Lower East Side gallery with a painting. He took it back to the apartment on Central Park West that he shares with his wife, Anne Stringfield, and set about finding a place for it among their Morandis and Hockneys. Ive been hooked ever since, he says six years later.

Martins self-described nave appreciation of the earthy tones, intricate dotting and flowing lines of Aboriginal desert painting soon became something more:I started ordering books, and I realised how complex thework was. He read about Country, an ancient philosophy in which the ecosystem, human inhabitants and past, present and future of a place are inextricable; and he learned that Country has helped inspire many contemporary Australian Aboriginal artists to create. These painters, he realised, were drafting nothing less than blueprints for existence. The results were beautiful.

These pictures could hang next to any works of the same period and hold their own, Martin says now. I daydream about seeing themmixedin with paintings by Agnes MartinandJackson Pollock.

Martin may not need to daydream for much longer. The contemporary art world is catching up fast to Aboriginal art, and some of its biggest names are deepening their engagement with it in 2022. Earlier thismonth, Gagosian opened a solo exhibition of works by the late Emily Kame Kngwarreye at one of its Paris galleries Emily: Desert Painter of Australia runs until 12March. InMay, Sothebys New York will host a dedicated Aboriginal art auction following its Evening Sales for contemporary and modern art.

Major museum shows have begun to proliferate, starting with the Tate Moderns A Year in Art: Australia 1992, which has proven so popular since it opened last June that its run has been extended for another six months. Ever Present: First Peoples Art of Australia will open at the National Gallery Singapore in May, showcasing 150 works from the collections of the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) and Wesfarmers Arts. And, back in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is finalising plans for new galleries with a space dedicated to contemporary Australian Aboriginal work.

Its a hugely exciting moment, says Hetti Perkins, curator of another big show, the NGAs fourth National Indigenous Art Triennial, which opens on 26 March in Canberra. And its timely. This is art from the oldest surviving culture in the world, made by a population that has lived sustainably for millennia. These artists can show us the way forward.

Painting was ameans of preserving their understanding ofCountry

There have been flurries of excitement about Australian Aboriginal art before, but this is the first time that commercial and institutional heavy hitters have moved in tandem. Chief among them is gallerist Larry Gagosian, an old friend of Martins. In 2019, Martin staged a private exhibition of Aboriginal art from his collection for his friends in New York. The next day, over lunch, Gagosian suggested they do a proper show together. That exhibition, Desert Painters, was met with such enthusiasm that the gallery quickly mounted a second one in Los Angeles and a third in Hong Kong.

Then, in December 2019, Sothebys held its first dedicated Australian Aboriginal art auction in New York, netting $2.8m from 29 lots, including $596,000 for a painting by market leader Kngwarreye. A few months later, just before the pandemic took hold, Australian fine art dealer DLan Davidson arrived in New York and mounted a sale of work by her and other desert painters that achieved more than $3m. New York eclipsed our expectations, not only in sales results, but also in terms ofthe sophisticated way the audience engaged with thework, says Davidson, who has become Martins primary Aboriginal art adviser.

At all three events, the artist who achieved the strongest results was Kngwarreye (Ung-wah-ray). Her story is enthralling: she lived in a remote desert area known as Utopia; began painting on canvas in 1988, when she was about 80 years old; and produced more than 3,000 works in a dizzying array of styles before her death in 1996.

Kngwarreye electrified the Australian art scene during the 1990s and her paintings, known as Emilys, soon became hot commodities. It was certainly on the strength of her work that she became such a high-profile artist, butit was also the fact that she was so outside of that contemporary art world, says Perkins. I think people were intrigued by the fact that this very elderly woman, living in a very remote community, was responsible for this extraordinary vision. It was almost mythic.

Kngwarreyes exuberant dot paintings, kinetic line-based work and mastery of colour fundamentally changed the way contemporary art lovers in Australia and beyondengaged with Aboriginal art. Comparisons with abstract expressionists abounded. But Kngwarreye had not studied 20th-century movements. Rather, her alternately sensuous and muscular mark-making sprang from her deep knowledge of Country and from the ceremonial body painting of Utopia.

The $596,000 Sothebys result was far from a high-water mark for Kngwarreye: two years earlier, in Sydney, her painting Earths Creation I fetched $1.6m at auction. Davidson describes her as a force of nature in the market. Emily is head and shoulders above any of her peers, hesays. Shes going to break into the mainstream contemporary art world, and thats a matter of time.

Its an exciting moment. These artists can show us the way forward

Kngwarreye is not the only Aboriginal artist to have begun practising in old age: many others, past and present,wait untiltheir understanding of Country is fully formed before attempting to create work. But lively younger artists are also increasingly commanding the spotlight. The majority of young Australian Aboriginal people now live in cities, away from their ancestral homes, and these urban artists are creating work thatcontends with feelings of dislocation and with Australias violent colonial past. And younger practitioners from remote communities are gaining prominence, too. Beyonc caused a stir last year when sheInstagrammed a photo of herself in front of a work bydesert artist Yukultji Napangati (the artwork in question was a gift from Jay-Z).

Then theres Daniel Walbidi (Wal-biddi), a thirtysomething who lives by the ocean in Australias tropical north-west and paints intensely saturated visionsof Country in yellow, red and metallic tones. Heworks slowly, and demand for his paintings far outstrips supply.Some of Australias top curators grumbleprivately about not being able to acquire Walbidis for their institutions. Hes a visionary, says Nick Mitzevich, director of the NGA.

Walbidis homeland is actually a desert region hundreds of miles from the coast, but a widespread drought in the 1950s forced his clan group to relocate. He began painting in high school and soon decided that he wanted to depict his peoples place of origin. He sat down with community elders and asked to hear their stories. WhenI did that, a new world was revealed to me, Walbidi says. I had a revelation of knowledge, and my connection to Country was manifested.

In the years that followed, Walbidi encouraged the elders around him to begin painting as a means of preserving their understanding of Country. Several, such as Weaver Jack and Jan Billycan, have become successful artists in their own right. People of that age see the world differently, and Country differently, Walbidi says. Old people keep the knowledge and maintain authority. Without elders, you dont know anything, really.

Walbidi is building a profile in America: he featured inthe Sothebys 2019 auction and his Australian representatives at Short Street Gallery have booked himaUSshow later this year after fielding numerous enquiries.He doesnt seem to mind the attention, but sayshe has no plans to leave north-west Australia. His practice is fed by daily life with his people. Im living andbreathing it, he says.

If Kngwarreye is the A-lister and Walbidi is the rising star, then Angelina Pwerle (Pull-uh) is the cult favourite one on whom a growing number of institutions and collectors are quietly placing bets. Thought to be about 75 years old (there is no paper record of her birth), she has been developing her assured and remarkably detailed style of dot-work since the 1990s. Her paintings, which conjure images of distant galaxies, cloud formations and geological phenomena, practically hum with energy.

The way her practice has developed is extraordinary, says Mitzevich. She has refined the Central Desert dotting technique and used it to create abstract visions that are quite distinct from those made by her contemporaries.

Those visions are inspired by Utopia, where Pwerle hasspent her entire life, and by the native bushplum, a spiritually significant fruit that grows inabundance there. San Francisco gallerist Todd Hosfeltvividly recalls visiting the office of billionaire Kerry Stokes in Perth and seeing the Bush Plum works forthefirst time. They made the hair on the back of myneckstand up, he says.

Pwerles work was featured last month in Salon 94s group show at Art Basel Miami; it will be part of the Mets touring exhibition The Shape of Time: Art and Ancestors of Oceania, which will travel to two international venues in 2023. For now, she is something of an insiders secret whose work is tightly held. Although her paintings are part of major private collections, the significant works have rarely shown in the secondary market to date, notesDavidson. But that could easily soon change. From a [broader] marketperspective, were at the very beginning stages, and I could not feel more excited, he adds. Ithasnt even started yet.

Steve Martin agrees. So much contemporary art is for billionaires, he admits. For Anne and I, its almost unmanageable: you buy one picture and youve spent your 10-year budget. But here is this fantastic trove of beautiful work that we really love. Its not just standard gallery fare. And its still relatively attainable. Its also another welcome example of the market rectifying past omissions, he says. A lot of black artists in America who were overlooked have become very collectable. And this should too. This deserves to be.

Pwerle herself remains happily apart from the growing buzz. She speaks only her native Anmatyerre and rarely leaves the Utopia region. Like Kngwarreye and Walbidi, she paints to articulate the profundity of the life system that she is part of, and to ensure its survival. This is a constant engagement, she says, through a translator. This is a spiritual connection to place. Asked to explain her work, she says, simply: My Bush Plum paintings represent the whole thing: all of Country.

See more here:

In praise of Australian Aboriginal art the oldest surviving culture in the world - Financial Times

New listings in a high potential area of east-end Toronto fuel an even bigger vision.

When real estate investor Albert Shoihet recently approached the team at Realosophy Realty about selling off a lucrative portfolio of east downtown Toronto homes, his motivation for selling was very surprising - even to a group of seasoned brokers and agents.

Shoihet had acquired two properties around Queen Street East/Coxwell Avenue and one east of the Beach on Kingston Road after being struck by the area's yet-to-be-fully-realized potential.

But Shoihet now has his sights on an even bigger real estate opportunity in the Metaverse.

The Metaverse, according to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, is a concept that blends the physical and digital world via virtual and augmented reality. Even more technically, according to XR Today, it is [a] simulated digital environment that uses augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and blockchain, along with concepts from social media, to create spaces for rich user interaction mimicking the real world.

Think The Sims, only we are the characters and the money is actually real no signs of there being cheat codes in the Metaverse yet. But in any case, you can already get mortgages there.

The vision may sound outlandish, but then Shoihet is no stranger to great adventures.

After graduating from Western University in 2014 with a degree in sociology, he embarked on a combined career as an entrepreneur and a professional squash player, winning an Ontario championship and qualifying for Team Canada for the World championships in 2017 before eventually retiring.

Alongside, Shoihet experienced the usual ups and downs of an entrepreneurial life, experimenting with several different projects. Prior to the pandemic, he invested in rental properties in Owen Sound, Ontario before selling to a larger investor and moving on to invest in east end Toronto.

Struck by the location of the up to now out of sight, out of mind Queen and Coxwell area where the popular neighbourhoods of The Beaches and Leslieville meet, Shoihet saw potential in the notable condo and hospitality projects, including Drake's music venue, History, going up in the area.

For Sale: 14 Coxwell Avenue (Centre), Toronto, Ontario

Shoihet soon focussed on acquiring properties with a view to building boutique condo and townhouse projects in the area, including a future laneway townhouse project off of Rhodes Ave, he has dubbed OFFRHODES.

Coming Soon: 3 Rhodes Avenue (Existing Dwelling Plus Land), Toronto, Ontario

When an opportunity to sell his nearby property in the city-designated densification area of Kingston Rd arose, Shoihet found himself thinking about diversifying his investments, growing more curious about new digital opportunities in cryptocurrency and other areas.

Wary of trying to enter the digital space without proper guidance and mentorship, and encouraged by his brother, a fellow entrepreneur-investor, Shoihet applied to and was accepted into the Toronto-hub of the highly competitive incubator program Antler.

After some intensive research, he committed to transitioning from real estate development to digital real estate development: The Metaverse is a new buzzword but the future of gaming/entertainment/play, work/creativity, health/wellness and more will all be greatly affected by this space, he explains.

As his real estate company 'Nohwer' (a more dot.com amenable play on 'Nowhere') continues to evolve, he hopes that he may someday, among other projects, be able to bring to fruition his dream of opening a hotel/residence health club in the Metaverse, and establish a corresponding physical space to bring together fellow supporters.

Reflecting on his journey so far and to be, Shoihet recalls: I initially studied sociology at university because I was inspired by my amazing grandfather [Irving Zeitlin, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Toronto]. And he continues to inspire me on what I would like to build in the future. Hes the one that once pointed out to me that Utopia actually means 'no place' or no where!

Holding to the adage that we can only serve one master or one higher purpose or calling at a time, Shoihet is looking for the right buyer or buyers to take over his vision for Torontos east end, in which he continues to believe in strongly, so that he can focus on his next venture this time, in another world entirely.

Property Details

Listed by Gus Papaioannou and Ada Bragado of Realosophy Realty:

Contact Gus

Contact Ada

Sydney Wilson is a social coordinator atRealosophy Realty,an innovative Toronto real estate brokerage which uses data analysis to advise residential real estate buyers, sellers, owners and renters, and educates consumers at theMove Smartly website.

Follow Move Smartly on Twitter

Follow Move Smartly on Instagram

The rest is here:

Why This Man is Selling Off His Toronto Homes to Build in the Metaverse - Move Smartly

David Byrne is all about connectedness these days. Everybodys coming to my house/And Im never gonna be alone, he sings on Broadway in American Utopia, half joyful, half fretful, still open. His online magazine, Reasons to Be Cheerful which bills itself as a tonic for tumultuous times catalogs all the ways in which people are pulling together to make sure the world does not in fact go to hell in a handbasket. And on Feb. 2, he reprises this theme of connectedness at Pace Gallery in Chelsea with a show of 48 whimsical line drawings that span 20 years of art making, from his tree series of the early 00s to the dingbats he made in lockdown in 2020-2021.

Byrnes drawings are modest affairs, not much bigger than a standard sheet of paper. They compare perhaps with George Cruikshanks illustrations for Oliver Twist, or John Tenniels for Alice in Wonderland. But when I dropped by the gallery two weeks ago to see them being hung, I found him some 15 feet up in the air, standing on a hydraulic lift as he labeled branches of an enormous tree hed drawn on a wall thats a good 20 feet high.

Tree drawings are like org charts: They define relationships. This one, titled Human Content and splayed in super-scale across the stark, white wall, is different in ways that are unique to Byrne. It shows not only branches but roots, and while the branches are labeled with familiar human categories nephews, boys, cousins, aunts, friends the roots bear the names of things that in one way or another affect our lives: sugar, sand, boxes, words, wheels, holes, sauces.

Staring intently and wielding an extra-large paint stick, Byrne added the word singers to a branch high in the treetop.

With his tree drawings, he explained afterward as we sat at a huge conference table in a back-office section of the gallery, Im trying to imagine connections between things that we dont normally think of as being connected. I just thought, lets see if I can let my imagination run free with that. If I can imagine connections where connections arent usually presumed to exist.

This whole connectedness thing may seem out of character for someone who gained prominence in the 1970s New Wave scene as the lead singer of Talking Heads, the avatar of alienation. As a younger person, I was uncomfortable socially, he confessed. But as often happens with those things, many people just kind of grow out of it.

Sometimes to an almost alarming extent: Now I can talk to strangers, he continued. They dont know who I am, they dont know what I do or anything like that, but sometimes I go hiking and if theres somebody coming on the path, I inevitably say hi to them. I do it on the street too, in New York. If its at night and youre walking down some street I might say hi.

Seriously?

It has gotten me into trouble. Maybe Im compensating, maybe Im but most of the time, it seems like a nice thing to do, to acknowledge someones existence.

Byrnes dingbat drawings, 115 of which have been gathered in a book called A History of the World (in Dingbats) that Phaidon is publishing Feb. 16, are about the toll of disconnectedness specifically, the kind that has been imposed on us by the pandemic. Byrne started making them in the spring of 2020 after an editor on the Reasons to Be Cheerful website asked if he could make some simple, decorative drawings they could use to break up columns of type the kind of thing printers used to call dingbats. No problem: It wasnt as if he had much else to do, sitting there in lockdown in his West Chelsea loft. But soon he found himself doing drawings like Infinite Sofa, of a sofa that seems to go on forever but has people sitting on it too far apart to connect, and T.M.I., which shows a person flattened by an enormous smartphone.

I didnt set out to do drawings that responded to the whole pandemic and the lockdown and everything else, Byrne said. But eventually I realized, oh, this is what youre doing. (The drawings in the show are for sale, priced at $8,000 apiece.)

What Byrne was not doing at the time was writing songs. Now Im starting to be able to write again, he said. But during the depth of the pandemic, nothing. Nothing at all. I mean, I could do collaborations with other people like Who Has Seen the Wind?, his recently released cover recorded with Yo La Tengo for a Yoko Ono tribute album put together by Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. (Ono recorded the haunting song in 1970.)

Those were kind of easy, he said. But I thought, I have not been able to process this thing how I feel about it, what it means. I cant write about health policy in a song. But somehow with drawing, I would just start doing something and it would just kind of flow out.

Otherwise, Byrne makes little distinction between art and music an attitude he shares with art-school alums like Brian Eno and Laurie Anderson. Like them, he occupies a liminal space where music shades into performance art and art has a Conceptualist bent, meaning among other things that its more likely to take the form of an installation than of traditional painting or sculpture. This helps explain why his show at Pace, though focusing on the conventional medium of drawing, is titled How I Learned About Non-Rational Logic, a seeming contradiction that in fact has to do with the interconnection of art and music. As Byrne explains in a brief essay thats mounted on the gallery wall, Both art and music seem to bypass the rational and logical parts of the mind rather, they are understood by myriad parts of the brain that are connected to one another. It is a different kind of understanding. The effect of this interconnection is pleasurable, ecstatic even.

Byrnes art education ended in the early 70s, when he dropped out of, first, the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, and then the Maryland Institute College of Art in his hometown, Baltimore. His student work consisted of things like questionnaires about different states of the union. It didnt get much traction, he admitted. I had questions like, which state in your opinion has the best shape? He gave a short laugh. Not getting very far with that.

He wasnt expecting to get very far with music either, but when Chris Frantz, a fellow RISD student whod become the drummer of the little group theyd formed in New York, told him about this happening club on the Bowery called CBGB, they decided to audition anyway. It was early 1975; by June, Talking Heads was opening for the Ramones. Two years later they connected with Eno in London. John Cale, once of the Velvet Underground, had seen them several times at CBGB, and he brought Eno to the tiny cellar club in Covent Garden where they were playing.

It was a good match. A few months later, Eno referred to them in a song called Kings Lead Hat, an anagram of Talking Heads. And in the years that followed he helped them explore the wonderfully syncopated African polyrhythms that became increasingly prevalent on the groups next three LPs, which he produced. He has been a key collaborator of Byrnes ever since, from My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, released in 1981, to American Utopia, the album that gave rise to the Broadway show, eight of whose ten songs they wrote together.

In 2014, when Byrne was in London for the National Theater production of Here Lies Love, his hit musical Ben Brantley of The New York Times called it a poperetta about Imelda Marcos, Eno introduced him to Mala Gaonkar, a hedge fund manager who co-founded the Surgo Foundation, a self-described action tank that tackles public health problems like AIDS and lack of access to toilets. Byrne had done art installations before most notably Playing the Building, a sound sculpture that New York magazine called a marriage of the industrial and the sublime. But this meeting generated Byrnes most ambitious art project to date: an immersive art-and-science experience that is scheduled to debut this summer in Denver.

As Byrne describes it, he and Gaonkar both had this interest in presenting scientific inquiry in a way that was more accessible to the public. The sciences used to be called a form of art, but now theyre very much separate, and we thought, oh, can we bring that together again?

The initial result was a 2016 installation at Pace Art + Technology, the gallerys Silicon Valley offshoot, called The Institute Presents: Neurosociety. Itself an experiment of sorts, it presented recent work in psychology and neuroscience in a game-show-like format. (Wired described it as a little weird, but very cool.) There were moral dilemmas suppose you were a drone operator and a girl was selling bread in front of a terrorist safe house? and perceptual distortions.

There were things that didnt work out, Byrne acknowledged like a quiz based on research led by the Princeton psychologist Alexander Todorov that showed that people could predict which candidate would win an election simply by glancing at their faces. They got it right about 70 percent of the time, which of course is terrifying, Byrne said. The problem was, number one, people did not like receiving such bad news. And also, its not based on what you as an individual voted for, its an aggregate of what everybody voted for so people would go, Wait a minute, I didnt pick that one! And they were right.

This August, if all goes according to plan, a radically revamped and expanded version of the Silicon Valley show will open in Denver in a former Army medical supply depot. Titled Theater of the Mind and presented by the Off-Center program of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, it dispenses with the election questions and other elements in favor of a narrative approach that somehow, Im told, relates to Byrnes life. It also shows how easily manipulated our senses are, said Charlie Miller, Off-Centers curator.

And the title? Its a phrase that Oliver Sacks used, Byrne recalls. He said the brain seems to be a kind of theater that presents things to us its not real. Youre watching a show.

Demonstrating, I suppose, that even if we can connect with one another, reality is a tougher nut.

David Byrne: How I Learned About Non-Rational Logic

Feb. 2 through March 19, Pace Gallery, 540 West 25th Street, Chelsea; pacegallery.com. On Feb. 7 at 7 p.m., Pace Live will present David Byrne in conversation with John Wilson, host of the HBO series How To With John Wilson.

See the original post here:

David Byrne, the Artist, Is Totally Connected - The New York Times

Dr Jacqueline Rowarth. Photo / Supplied

Opinion: Futurists present Utopia for New Zealand in the next 20 years, yet how to achieve this vision is hazy and the execution steps are almost non-existent, Dr Jacqueline Rowarth writes.

It is the time of year when trends for the 12 months ahead are announced, goals are vocalised, and visions are created.

Fitting the pattern is the Utopia being presented to us by futurists, who promote the idea that - "This is what the world/NZ could look like, and this is how it would be achieved. All you have to do is"

The next word might be "believe".

There are certain similarities to political visions and, just like many, political or not, the strategy on how to achieve the vision is hazy and the execution steps are almost non-existent.

A recent vision, designed to inspire change, involves New Zealand being a world leader in natural infrastructure, clean hydrogen energy, engineered wood and high-quality low-emissions food within the next 20 years.

The change required to achieve this Utopia was acknowledged as challenging but thought "worth it" because the economy would be prosperous.

This last bit is the hiccup for at least some scientists, engineers and economists. Not all (stereotyping the whole of the professions would result in a whole lot of social media claims about "completely wrong"), but certainly some.

"Natural infrastructure" aligns with the "nature-based solutions" proposed by some pundits. Both sound great but meanings are variable.

The former might mean wooden buildings, as proposed for the rebuilding of Christchurch by then CEO of Scion (the forestry Crown Research Institute) Dr Warren Parker.

28 Oct, 2021 01:00 AMQuick Read

12 Oct, 2021 12:45 AMQuick Read

28 Sep, 2021 12:30 AMQuick Read

15 Sep, 2021 03:03 AMQuick Read

Concrete, glass and steel dominated, however, and the economy of Canterbury and New Zealand thrived as the building industry boomed.

Wood was not considered seriously and Sir Bob Jones' plan for the world's highest wooden office tower (a 25 storey, 52m-tall building with laminated timber columns), announced in 2017, hasn't yet opened.

Other infrastructure such as roads, bridges and rail (which does appear in the new Utopia, with more people using public transport) also require concrete and steel.

The raw ingredients for both require mining, and in New Zealand, that means gaining approvals.

The environmental case for sand being mined for building and other infrastructure off Pakiri Beach, north of Auckland is already the subject of debate.

The application for mining off the South Taranaki Bight has been through several court processes and failed in the High Court last year.

The Utopian concept of natural infrastructure turns out to be an "emerging term to include native forests, wetlands, coastal environments and other ecosystems that store and clean water, protect against drought, flooding and storms, boost biodiversity and absorb carbon."

In the past (last year) natural resources and ecosystem services might have been used as descriptors.

These ecosystems are extremely important. They are part of life and add value through their very existence.

Ground-breaking work has attempted to quantify that value, and erudite as well as practical research papers have been written. The actual value of Natural Capital remains hard to quantify, however, and when people are asked to pay for it, the value changes.

"Who pays?" remains the issue. Most of the areas do not generate income per se. Many require income for maintenance.

As part of her doctoral studies, Dr Estelle Dominati (with supervisors Dr Alec Mackay from AgResearch and Dr Murray Patterson from Massey University) calculated the value of the ecosystem services provided by soil on a Waikato dairy farm.

Listen to Jamie Mackay interview Dr Jacqueline Rowarth on The Country below:

To replace the services given by the soil (such as food production, flood mitigation, filtering of contaminants etc) would have cost $16,390 per hectare per year in 2014.

The value of the milk produced per hectare was $4,757.

This leaves $11,000 per hectare which, if added to the cost of milk, would treble the base price.

The farmer manages the ecosystem services of the land to produce the milk and provide income to invest in the maintenance of the soil and enterprise, as well as pay taxes and rates so that national and local government can manage infrastructure and services as well.

The Utopian vision for 20 years hence involved the high quality, low emissions food which farmers already produce but in the future doing so will involve organic and regenerative agriculture.

This perpetuates the myth that organic and regenerative approaches produce fewer emissions and create fewer contaminants than conventional agriculture.

They don't. Per unit of food they usually have a greater impact. Again, research papers and reports are available to provide the information.

Green hydrogen, also suggested, is equally problematic.

It sounds good, but the energy required to create it currently outweighs the energy created. Hence the concept of "green" but it hasn't yet been proven: more research is necessary.

All of this means that Utopia is still a long way off but doesn't mean that sensible steps can't be taken. Scientific research and futurists agree that reducing fossil fuel use is vital.

The nose-to-tail holiday traffic over the holiday period indicates that rethinking the use of private cars hasn't yet featured in resolutions for the New Year.

There is still time to change and making the change is urgent. Scientists and futurists agree on that, too.

- Dr Jacqueline Rowarth, Adjunct Professor Lincoln University, is a farmer-elected director of DairyNZ and Ravensdown. The analysis and conclusions above are her own. jsrowarth@gmail.com

More:

Dr Jacqueline Rowarth: Why Utopia is still a long way off - New Zealand Herald

Action sports footwear and apparel brand etnies have expanded on their collection with cult classic BMX film "RAD" that was initially launched last year. Image: Business Wire

Action-sports footwear-and-apparel brand etnies and BMX film RAD have announced a new collection that expands on the first-ever official RAD apparel and footwear collection launched last year.

The new collection is filled with a variety of new apparel and footwear options featuring movie-inspired designs, including the much anticipated Prom Scene-themed products.

The brand and the cult-classic film launched the first official full-scale production of limited RAD footwear and apparel in 2021 in celebration of both the brand and the movies 35th anniversaries. The first etnies x RAD collection featured two different shoe styles, four short sleeve T-shirts, two long sleeve T-shirts, a hooded sweatshirt and accessories like socks and hats.

RAD was originally executive produced by the late Jack Schwartzman in 1986, and was rereleased in 2020 by Utopia Media, a film distribution and sales company founded in 2018 by Schwartzmans son, filmmaker Robert Schwartzman.

Originally posted here:

Etnies Expands RAD Collection With New Apparel and Footwear - Apparel News

Ethan P. Flynn has been an in-demand collaborator for a bit, working with the likes of David Byrne (on his album American Utopia), FKA twigs (on 2019's MAGDALENE) and most recently Vegyn, the Frank Ocean producer who collaborated with Flynn on the Songs You Need-playlisted single "Superstition." He's shared a collection of tracks called B-Sides & Rarities: Volume 1, but his upcoming seven-track album Universal Deluge, out March 11 via Young, marks his debut proper.

Like the songs on B-Sides, Flynn's new single "Father of Nine" is all bubbling emotion with the urgency of someone who's marooned on a desert island. Flynn's creaky, despondent lead vocals grasp on for dear life to the '60s psych pastiche of the instrumentation, an antsy sibling to the sound of MGMT's underrated sophomore project Congratulations. In the music video, Flynn belt out the song in a single take in front of a burning house.

View post:

Ethan P Flynn shares new song/video Father of Nine - The FADER