Des Temps – Page 36 – a blog by desedo

The only blog you’ll ever need.

Beautiful Losers

As piracy remixes the old business models of music and film, the money ‘lost’ doesn’t disappear, it just gets spent elsewhere.

When I was a teenager, I’d spend money on music in the act of fleshing out my personality – (both publicly and privately) – Rolling Stones/Tribe Called Quest/Blues Traveller, etc… Each $12 CD added what I felt was another aspect to myself. And since the 90’s things done changed – thanks to the internets, a kid can change his entire music collection (and subsequent claims to identity groups) in an afternoon and at no cost. With the decrease in cost of music, so decreases the social value one can gain from association. Sacrifice of money is no longer part of the equation music = identity.

So where does the money + value go? While music can easily be ripped to possess, this is not yet possible with clothing or aspects of industrial and artistic design. Digital as we are, these products are still quite tangible, and I think now carry an even greater value in our quest to claim individuality. Witness the rise of Threadless and Etsy. Nowadays there are far more subsets and identity groups amongst teens – and the nuances are oft fleshed out via the visual language of clothes and accessories. Well, where is this heading?

In the 80s, Punk and Hip-Hop empowered everyone to become a musician. Cool kids were in bands. In the 90s, Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez did this for filmmaking – cool kids rocked a camera. Next? Premiering at SXSW, the doco Beautiful Losers, is a window into the world of the DIY artists that coalesced toward the end of the 90s. While once they were fringe, they have since become mainstream, and the new cool sees them kids rocking photoshop and silkscreens like an electric guitar.

JyRAHKTy6hI

March 25, 2008
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]

—
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!

March 23, 2008
Stuff White People Like (and don't)

Christian Lander, EIC of the blog Stuff White People Like, just inked a book deal for 325K. While the blogosphere has been ripe with race-based blogs for a while, this might be the first of its kind to go from pixel to print. I’m now curious to see the tone of future white-scribed humor blogs that touch on racial politics and poetics.

Of note is that SWPL, and its progenitor Black People Love Us, are both racially self-immolating. Based in the concept of white folks being goofy and absurdly unaware that ‘others’ are equals, not exotics, this brand of humor doesn’t spit fire beyond the white man in the mirror.

Historically, white (liberal) comic commentary has avoided other races, while on the flipside comics of color use greater narrative freedom in speaking their mind. One root of this is simply in our nation’s power structure – white people get to run the country and so everyone else can have comedy & cool. Now does this rubric change if Obama becomes president? Will white folks then feel a new sense of comic and cultural freedom, so that next time someone says “Larry Bird is overrated”, they’ll retort with ease “Yeah, well so is Antwone Fisher.”

(black people love this movie)

March 21, 2008
Good Friday ROI

At the entrance to the Bedford L this morn, a chap was handing out the above card to commuters. So simple and so direct, no need for the www. He rocked a wry smile, knowing that his ROI would likely be astronomical, either as a sting operation or a truly green enterprise.

March 21, 2008
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 oneÃ¢â‚¬â„¢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 todayÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s font gazers one of the movers in many circles goes by the name Rockwell.
(more…)

March 19, 2008
MSLM & The Pirate's Dilemma

So on the same day that I threw a rock at Vice, from Amazon arrives The Pirate’s Dilemma, a book about remix culture penned by Vice contributor Matt Mason. Love good timing. I opened the package, opened the book and was like a kid in a candy store. Here is a quick slide show that outlines his thesis:

(more…)

March 18, 2008
Predator

Paul Kamuf, Brad and MHB teamed up to make this short film about dial tones and predator drones. It’s been flying around the festival circuit from the hills of Italy to Cali-for-ni-ay.

March 18, 2008