When Desedo Films comes to your ‘hood (at five in the morning), believe that we’re coming away with something fresh (and a hacking cough). Hat tip to Sobotka for the inspiration.
Author: raafi
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ODB Lives
Intentional cultural poaching or no, ODB Liquors on Mission Hill in Boston might be the most keenly named individual business I’ve come across. I can think of no better tribute to the man and his work.
b2-5GSjZvW8 The name has to be intentional, right?
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[1] I’ve just spent the past half-hour recapping ODB’s career on youtube. If NSFW street language isn’t a problem, you might want to check out the linked Pryor-esque clip of Ol’ Dirty monologizing onstage. Among many Barron’s-level gems, we hear the nearly-quotable aphorism, “Before drugs was illegal, b----, it was LEGAL!”
[2] Hip-hop’s cultural fluidity as spoiler of youth reigns as ever (vocal lines on the song sampled from ODB). Stunner shades for all. -
All You See Is Crime in the City
At its root, hip-hop has always mixed tech and middle-finger D.I.Y. with open-source. It’s why there are so many different “purple drank” recipes on the web and the raison d’être of the Urban Dictionary. Enter the Graffiti Research Lab — one of the more novel embodiments of all three of these things, but with the backing of the art establishment.
You might have missed the last time when G.R.L. got the MoMa invite, or thought that since the words “F— You Snobs,” appeared in their presentation sometime after a phallus that they’d fail to get another. But the fusion of tech, open-source, and street art is just too compelling a concoction to turn down and thus the G.R.L.’s DVD will make its New York premier at MoMa in two weeks. There is, to be sure, an alluring tight rope that separates the worlds of the graf (anti) establishment and the places where the film has shown — places like Sundance. Many of the graf writers in attendance in the video below obscure their faces even as the bubbly swirls around them — probably as much for affect as for security, but the point is inescapable.
G.R.L. @ M.o.M.A. from fi5e on Vimeo.In speaking with Evan, one of the founders, nearly two years ago, he mentioned that one of the difficult parts in getting started was in convincing many of the graf writers that he wasn’t out to arrest them. But in graffiti as in hip-hop, being more visible or “up” trumps being obscure (I’m sure Shepard Fairey and Marc Ecko would agree). It follows, then, that the party video is set to Jay-Z and not the Artifacts. Let’s just hope they swerve the right drinks at the after-party.
Ah, what the hell. Artifacts from back in the day:
xmR2lBmhQfQ True to their D.I.Y. roots, the G.R.L. has made a torrent of their dvd available here.
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UPDATES
4/21/08: NYPost says that NYC graf is on the rise. -
Too Well Connected
Is there a chance that our rapid rate of discovery on the web is simply too fast to be useful? The so-called web 2.0 has created many bursts of useful or at least nominally cool applications that we in turn ogle and rush to begin using. Muxtape being the flickr of the month this time around. And a damn good one at that. But is the rapid adaption of new processes something that inherently improves our quality of life or ability to navigate our virtual lives? Or is it chatter — a sustaining churn of new that fails to deliver on the Jetsons premise we all eagerly await?
In the world of agencies and brands, Second Life stands as a recent cautionary tale in the cultish urge to embrace what is new online. The blogosphere, on the other hand, serves as a compelling, and profitable for some, reminder that people are in search of the adequate medium to interact and express themselves. As ever there seems to be a vital disconnect between the apps that can actually make life easier or more fun, and the ones being made that (whether through clunky design, poor concept, or muddled purpose) needlessly clutter our online lives with more links to click. Are we hamstrung?
Often when returning from vacation or otherwise less-wired times I find that the number of blogs I actually want to read, or the applications that I actually wish to use is diminished by a fraction of half or more. The process is both liberating and confusing — all of it being stuff that I’ve chosen to make life richer. But when Gizmodo trots out new phones with the same wary voice it uses to play up the latest batch of iPhone parodies, shouldn’t it as easily remind us that a snazzy phone is among the last things that will transform our ability to process the information machine that swirls around us? What is missing is the step that perfects the process of using each added contraption or assesses its value beyond cool.
Without this vital step, we have techniques to navigate data, but no way forward, toys and exercise without endgame.
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Weak Rappers Need to Step Off
This one is for all my XHTML/CSS heads out there:
a0qMe7Z3EYg I hate to sound like a broken record on this one, but umm:
…the nerd who is possessed wholly of a black American masculinity is a specific character that enjoys a renaissance today even as the hip-hop world continues to project a cartoonishly grotesque opposite.
…the proliferation of media voices and sources enabled by the internet has allowed a more nuanced and less gangster voice of young black America to emerge untempered by market concerns and sensationalism.When I originally wrote about black nerds, much of the backlash in the comments amounted to something like this: What are you talking about!? There have been black nerds forever!!; this despite the fact that I had made the same point in the piece. And while there were enough sane comments for a decent conversation to ensue, an email exchange with one of the ranters contained this gem, “I don’t think I fully read your article the first time.” SMH.
The thrust of the piece remains vital — that because of our more democratized communication tools we are beginning to see a more accurate depiction of black america. Mainly because that media is actually being created by, ahem, black people. But all of these things are articulated more succinctly by the SEO Rapper above, whose seamless integration of the swagger required of an MC with the pedantry of the digerati is too smooth for hypertext.
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Oh yeah, the industry’s onto his words on SEO and Social Media too.
Original link via startsnitching. -
E Pluribus Unum
No two objects have meant as much to visual culture of late as the widespread use (and piracy) of Adobe Photoshop and the availability of digital cameras. It is no wonder, then, that the stock photography business is booming. And should we be surprised that Bill Gates presciently entered this business long ago? His stock company Corbis is the number two player in the industry.
The creation and manipulation of images remains one of the simple pleasures of computer ownership for a great many. It is also the secret weapon of the blogosphere. From Perez, et al.:
Skipping ahead to business class, I’ll note that the same image creation tools in the hands of professionals can take on wide-ranging and even sublime implications. Witness Shepard Fairey‘s entry into the most captivating narrative in a generation [1]:
The middling photographer in all of us lives and dies in the paintbrush and rubber stamp, the eraser and the magic wand tools in Photoshop. Somewhere around there I had the idea of creating a desktop calendar. It was, for me, a purely functional idea. Being able to visualize the coming weeks gives the processing of time a much-needed physical component that helps prevent it from getting lost in the mind haze of Life in the Big City. That’s the theory anyway. The down-side of doing so publicly, I realized only later, is that I’d have to create a new one every three months. With that, I present desedo’s 2nd quarter desktop calendar — available here at our free store. [2]
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1. Speaking of Fairey, many skateboarders have become paragons of outsider culture, not as many are invited to lecture the creative world via the PSFK conference.
2. The four photographs in this post comprise the pixel space from which the calendar was wrought. Out of Many, One.Oh, and take that Photoshop!
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Rock Thee Well
Ed. note: corrections appended below.
One doubts that the home of the Whopper would have much client base in common with the paper of record’s Sunday magazine. Yet as a matter of course both Burger King and the New York Times Magazine stand behind the same face. Let me clarify. My first mentor in design once explained to me that a typeface was called such because, like a face, each one is unique. Of course, one could reliably say the same about snowflakes or tigers and still not be able to tell the difference between them even while having one’s arm gnawed off in Siberia, but the point stands. In the case of typefaces, a small subset of creative people cares very deeply about differences that most others would ignore. And in the eyes of today’s font gazers one of the movers in many circles goes by the name Rockwell.
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