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The weirdest way to subvert paparazzi culture

October 10, 2014 / Klint Finley

The face privitisizer

This is an old link, freshly excavated from the depths of my Pocket account. Rob Walker writes about the strange way that Vanessa Stiviano , the alleged mistress of the former owner of the LA Clippers, subverts paparazzi culture:

What I’m interested in is how Stiviano is using it: Not to protect herself from the sun’s glare, but rather from the media glare. In other words, she is misusing, but I’d say rather effectively. This is a pretty good object-use hack.

And the aesthetics are, in my view, amazing: Unlike the traditional coat draped over a bowed head, or whatever, this visor allows her to do more than thwart perp-walk aesthetics. Instead she rather brazenly defies paparazzi culture. And indeed she seems to know what she’s doing, as she pairs her weird Darth Vader headgear with overtly camera-ready outfits — from semi-blingy-business attire to ostentatiously “casual” combinations of silly T shirts and cutoffs.

Full Story: Design Observer: Object in the News: The Face Privatizer

Very Large Structure: Return of the Walking City

November 5, 2013 / Klint Finley

Very Large Structure: a Walking City for the 21st Century

Arch Daily reports:

In a world where people live more mobile lifestyles than they have for centuries, cities are facing a problem they rarely planned for: their citizens move away. When jobs and resources start to decline, modern cities, such as Detroit , suffer difficult and often wasteful processes of urban contraction . In contrast to this, Manuel Dominguez’s “Very Large Structure,” the result of his thesis project at ETSA Madrid, proposes a nomadic city that can move on caterpillar tracks to locations where work and resources are abundant.

Of course this is not the first time that the idea of a nomadic city has been proposed. Ron Herron’s Walking City is one of the more recognizable Archigram designs from the 1960s, and has been influential to architectural theory ever since. However, the design for the “Very Large Structure” expands on the Walking City by including strong proposals for energy generation on board the city. […]

Dominguez also felt it was important that his design be theoretically feasible, which is why he looked to the world of heavy engineering to inspire the structure’s colossal steel frame and caterpillar tracks. With all these additions, Dominguez’s design seems less of a fantasy than Herron’s giant shell on stilts.

Full Story: Arch Daily: A Walking City for the 21st Century

Previously:

The Archigram Archive

Open Sailing

The Origin of Those Blade Runner Magazine Covers Floating Around

May 28, 2012 / Klint Finley

For the past few days scans of magazine covers allegedly appearing on newsstands in the background of the film Blade Runner have been circulating thanks to the Science Fiction Tumblr (you can find great quality scans and notes in this Flickr set).

Alexis Madrigal, a senior editor at The Atlantic, saw them and decided to find out whether they are real or not.

Spoiler alert: Yes, they’re real and they appeared on a Blade Runner special feature Signs of the Times: Graphic Design.

It’s still interesting to read Madrigal’s post because for some insight into the process of journalistic verification. Enjoy!

Full Story: The Atlantic: The Fake Magazines Used in Blade Runner Are Still Futuristic, Awesome

Thoughts:

*MONI is clearly a reference to OMNI.
*HORN looks like a predecessor to Future Sex.
*I wonder whether KILL is a reference to Solider of Fortune, but the first trials involving that magazine didn’t happen until the late 80s.

3D Printed Fashion of Iris van Herpen

March 30, 2012 / Klint Finley

The work of Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen, whose designs have been worn by the likes of Lady Gaga and Bjork, are being featured in the Groningen Museum in the Netherlands. van Herpen uses 3-D printing to make dresses like this one:

(you can see a model actually wearing it in the video above)

More images and information: 3-Der: Iris van Herpen’s 3D-printed dresses in Groningen Museum

(via Fiarce)

Posters Explaining How Classic 808 Drum Sequences Were Programmed

March 28, 2012 / Klint Finley

A series of informative posters detailing how some of the most notable drum sequences were programmed using the Roland TR-808 Drum Machine. Each sequence has been analyzed and represented as to allow users to re-programme each sequence, key for key.

If you would like an A3 print please send a mail to shop@robricketts.co.uk and I will email you as soon as some become available.

Rob Bricketts: Program Your 808

(via Iso50 via f mass)

Stark, Minimalist Posters Explaining Different Philosophies

September 12, 2011 / Klint Finley

determinism by gex

Nihilism

skepticism

London based graphic designer Gex sells these stark posters representing different philosophies.

You can see them all here and purchase them here. You can read the text better in the online shop.

(Thanks Supervert)

Brand Fanaticism Lights Up Same Part of the Brain as Religion

May 31, 2011 / Klint Finley

Glycon

Curt Hopkins compares the discovery that a company’s logo lights up the same brain regions in fans of that company that religious iconographic lights up in followers of the religion.

Anyway, the public (well, at least the free, male, moneyed public) that took such a hands-on role in shaping the policy of the Republic was displaced by an Imperial government that consolidated power in one man, whose will was carried out by a bureaucracy. When that happened, the formerly most influential elements of the society turned away from public life to “mystery religions”: Mithraism, the worship of Isis and of course Christianity.

In the same way, it feels that we’ve lost something in turn. I’m not sure what it is – religious faith, political will, tribal affiliation? – but I can feel it. With the loss of that thing, people have turned to brands, particularly to tech brands, with their promise of connection, amplification, justification, belonging. The promise of salvation and relevance.

ReadWriteWeb: Thou Shalt Have No Other Jobs Before Me: Geek Fanatacism Lights Up Same Part of the Brain as Religion

Also check out what Douglas Rushkoff has to say about the future of branding in social media.

Charlie Stross on Buckminster Fuller: “Why are your houses so heavy?”

May 25, 2011 / Klint Finley

Dymaxian House

The story of why we aren’t all living in Dymaxion houses today is a convoluted epic of business failure (for one thing, starting up a production line for houses using cutting-edge aerospace technology was something that had never been done before; for another, Bucky’s business sense was not, sadly, as good as his design sense) that has been recounted in numerous biographies. What interests me about it is that it’s a far more humane approach to the problem of providing housing for the masses than his Brutalist contemporaries, whose designs tended to be fixed, immovable, made cheaply out of low-end materials, and built with high density mass housing in mind rather than low impact customizability. It was also way ahead of the field in terms of awareness of environmental constraints; while we could design better today, we’d be making incremental tweaks, whereas Bucky came up with the original idea of modular, lightweight, mobile low-impact housing ab initio.

Charlie Stross: “Why are your houses so heavy?”

Warning: Future

March 7, 2011 / Klint Finley

Warning: Cognitive Hazard

A collection of future warning signs by Anders of Anders Transhuman Page. These are from October, 2006 – predating the similar signs that appear in Doktor Sleepless.

Andart: Warning Signs for Tomorrow

(via Justin P)

Dymaxion Car Reproduced

October 11, 2010 / Klint Finley

Norman Foster and his Dymaxion Car

The Dymaxion car reconstruction project mentioned here previously has been completed. For better or worse, it was just rebuilt as a one-off art project. Until the end of the month, you’ll be able to see it at the Ivorypress Art+Books gallery in Madrid.

Guardian: Norman Foster’s back-to-front car

(Thanks Bill!)

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