"I have two dreams: to play in the World Cup and to be a champion."
On Your Bike
Bike culture has exploded in London.
Places like this and this have popped up all over the capital.
More and more people are wearing the hottest bike brands like they wear fashion labels.
Film festivals dedicated to (and celebrating) bike culture have sprung up:
(From the film Life Cycles 2 shown at the Banff Mountain Film Festival).
And now big brands have entered the fray, this idea from Red Bull is fun:
Jeff Bridges
The dude is a legend and his blog is one of my favourites.
Good mix of art / writing / thoughts.
I love his tone; gentle, humble. human and heartfelt.
Standing For Something
The most ground-breaking cultural movements of the last 100 years have all stood for something.
Pioneers, misfits and leaders use manifestos to inspire action and explain their vision and worldview.
This amazing book collects the manifestos from the movements that have changed our world; from communism to dadaism. It's an important cultural legacy all bound in the pages of one book.
'The Manifesto is remarkable for its imaginative power . . . it is the first great modernist work of art.'
Marshall Berman
And here is the fascinating manifesto for the Internet called A Declaration of the Independece of Cyberspace by John Perry Barlow, written in 1996.
Age of Innovation
"Everybody right now in the 21st century is orientated towards innovation and creativity, as never before. Apple is a design company, an innovator, not a technology company."
Professor David Kirsh, University of California, San Diego
Dancing with Science
Since 2003 Wayne McGregor has been collaborating with cognitive scientists to generate new understandings of creativity.
Whilst scientists have studied the visual arts, very little work has been done in the field of dance.
McGregor has been working with Dr Philip Barnard (MRC Cognition and Brain Unit at Cambridge) to understand, amongst other things, how to disrupt the messages in the brain to make someone discoordinated.
During this creative collaboration process he's learnt that before the body can move, the brain has to generate imagery. Dr Barnard has identified that we can build three types of imagery; verbal/auditory, visual or deep schemer (from instinct, emotion and experience).
Each of these are created through a different mental loop. McGregor is passionate about understanding the brain so he can unlock a new way to create dance:
"If you're always imagining in the same way, you're always moving in the same way."
He's applying this knowledge to generate unusal imagery and is creating beautiful and ground-breaking dance in the process.
His latest work is FAR.
Technology x Music x Art
These three ingredients are "coming together to produce radical new interactive forms" (Dazed & Confused).
Led by a new school of directors from Warp Films.
"The uneasy marriage between art and technology has gone from strength to strength since the birth of the net. Armed with a grab-bag of raw data and lines of code, creative technologists have developed a range of artistic forms - from image patterns that grow organically on screen, to repurposed video game engines. The impulse is subversive and playful - a digital decoupage that revisits early web design and drags it kicking and screaming into the here and now."
Aaron Meyers (the guy who did Radiohead's awesome House of Cards video):
Tron's Legacy
"Without Tron there would be no Toy Story"
John Lasseter, PIXAR.
Robot Opera
Tod Machover has been dubbed "America's most wired composer."
A renowned musician and forward-thinking inventor of music technology, he is Head of the Hyperinstruments/Opera of the Future group at MIT Media Lab and has collaborated on projects with Peter Gabriel and Prince. He also invented the interactive Brain Opera which set the technological template for Guitar Hero and twenty three years ago he created an opera called VALIS based on the Philip K Dick novel of the same name.
He's currently working on a robotic opera (that's been ten years in the making) called Death And The Powers.
Machover is naturally restless and experimental. He's always finding new ways to mix technology and music together.
In the same vein, and at the same time, Daft Punk are combining Classical music with Electronic sounds to create an Orchestral score for the year's biggest Sci-fi spectacular Tron: Legacy.
Not long until that drops. Can't wait.
Summer Shots
Peter Dench travelled the country this summer to capture the colourful and quirky images of a 21st Century English summer.
Me, Me, Me
Interesting art project that explores our growing obsession with beauty and the things that define people's personal identity in the modern world.
"Love Me explores the insidious power of the global beauty industry and our collective insecurity, vanity and fear of ageing."
Rave Generator
Takes me back.
Hip Hop: Past, Present & Future
A couple of weeks ago I went to see KRS-One at the Jazz Cafe in London. He was supported by MC Supernatural.
It was hip hop with a message; KRS-One was like a preacher on stage, full of conviction and a vision of what hip hop should be. He's doing some important things for the culture of hip hop including this:
Whilst KRS-One is spreading his message, Kanye West is experimenting with a dizzying array of influences on his new album - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - which is being hailed as a masterpiece.
And, lastly, introducing Odd Future; a teenage skate rat crew who are shaking up the rap underground and being compared to Wu-Tang Clan.
Also known as Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (OFWGKTA).
These guys are going to blow up.
Pulp & Gorillaz
Lovely comic that accompanied the Pulp single Common People, sold in France and Australia.
Designed by Jamie Hewlett.
And a beautifully simple video from Gorillaz that uses the lights of New York as inspiration.
Avatar Pop Star
Hatsune Miku is a phenomenon in Japan.
She has...
- No.1 selling single.
- Sell out tour.
- Created over 67,000 songs & 100,000 You Tube videos.
But what's so fascinating about Hatsune Mika is that she's part of a game called Vocaloid and her songs and videos have been created by the players of the game.
Users go online and record their own songs via a singing synthesiser application.
On her tour she plays with a live band as she appears in 3D.
All of the songs she performs have been written by the fans in the audience.
Awesome.
Are Zombies the New Vampires?
Pop culture has been obsessed with Vampires for the last few years - True Blood, Vampire Diaries, Twilight - but could Zombies be the next big thing? A new film called Play Dead and new TV show Walking Dead are both about Zombies.
Time Obsessed
The Clock by Christian Marclay is a montage of film clips that runs for 24 hours and is made up of time references for every minute of the day.
It's a collage of thousands of movie clips that makes a perpetual artwork.
"This is extraordinary, it's artwork about time, where you sit and think about time, and are reminded about time, all of the time." (Will Gompertz).
I think it's such a fascinating piece because it reflects one of the key modern truths about our society:
We are time obsessed.
Alain de Botton, as always, makes a brilliantly insightful comment on the modern tyranny of time:
"Modern capitalism guards time preciously because it knows it to be one of the raw ingredients of production and financial accumulation. Just as valuable in its own way as oil or a labour-force. As a result time has become oppresive."
The Power of The X Factor
It's amazing to witness the growing influence of TV shows on wider culture.
Pubs across the country (including this one in Bucks) are increasingly using The X Factor to drum up business and get people through the doors.
Fascinating to see The X Factor as the new Sky Sports.
What other TV show could bring a new audience to pubs?
Enlightened Entrepreneur
Alain de Botton is one of my favourite authors. He unlocks fascinating insights into the lives of other people and explores why we do what we do; whether that's our job, travelling, the houses we live in or the people we choose to love.
He shares a trait common in other inspiring people; he's not just a thinker, he's a doer.
A while ago he started this brilliant idea; where anyone can go and learn new tools to help improve their lives. More recently he has launched this ground-breaking project which offers people the chance to experience what it's like to live, eat and sleep in a space designed by an outstanding architectural practice.
de Botton is such an interesting entrepreneur because he gives back to society.
He wants us to live our lives in more meaningful ways.
His ideas (and effort) should be applauded.
Re-thinking the Book
A fascinating new book by American author Padgett Powell. Every sentence is written as a question.
And this app for Stephen Fry's memoirs lets you filter his life by different categories (or tags).
Pie Chart Reviews
Infographics used to review films and music.
I spotted these in the new (and badly named) mens magazine Gaz7etta - which is the male version of the UK's Grazia.
Gorillaz
"Pop has changed so markedly from what I remember, or from the way I think you make records. I believe records should have a theme. There aren't any other albums out there like that at the moment. We believe it's an antidote to the more commercial aspects of the pop world - and that's why I try to keep it in the pop realm. I want it to be an example of what you can do in the pop world."
Damon Albarn talking about Plastic Beach
So Solid's Legacy
It's been a decade since this song whacked me around the head:
Fast-forward to 2010 and the UK's biggest pop stars have all come from the underground urban scene.
Household names like Dizzee Rascal, N-Dubz, Chipmunk, Tinchy Stryder and Tinie Tempah (who has the biggest selling single of the year so far). It proves that the British urban scene has become strong and deep enough to support underground artists and mainstream pop stars.
Respect.
