Cool Hunting
| 01 February 2005view entries from: this week | this month | view previous day | view next day |
MusicPlasma: Look at the Pretty Bubbles
by Ari Bendersky
Looking for new music based on your current tastes? MusicPlasma lets you search on any band or artist and it returns a family tree-like display with other bands or musicians closely related to the original search term.
For instance, put in Coldplay and artists like Radiohead, Travis, White Stripes and the Strokes pop up. Enter Madonna and the obvious come up: J.Lo, Britney, Justin, Christina, Kylie and any number of first-name pop stars (not really sure how George Strait’s related though).
It’s like six degrees of separation for music, but things here are more closely related. At first, the search may seem a little daunting, but after the first or second try, you may find yourself addicted. For fun, click on an artist’s sphere and change the display again.
The navigation is kind of tricky-- – if you click on something in the right or left portion of the screen, the entire sphere of artists moves and it’s not that easy to center it again. Plus, if you put a newer artist into the search, you tend to stump the intelligence.
It'’s not entirely intuitive, but the colorful bubbles are fun to look at.
The Drama Store
by Josh Spear
The Drama Store has a really nice collection of designer books, magazines, clothing, toys and accessories. They all are from independent designers, like this Salt Tooth Press shirt, which is a collaborative illustration between Max Hubenthal and Travis Robertson. Aside from all the wearables they have a bunch of really great limited edition screen prints and painted canvases for sale.
Vitra at Home Collection
by Carol T Chung
Hey all, I got a peek at the new Vitra at Home Collection on Monday morning. This collection is supposed to present an eclectic mix of fresh and classic design to the home furnishing market in the U.S. The image presented above is entitled Zip Rug and it's by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec. The material is thick wool felt. It comes in the colors displayed above. Each piece is about 71 by 30 inches and can be zipped depending on what size and color you need. More fun stuff after the jump...
Taroshooten Skull Ring
by Carol T Chung
For the rocker or badass in us all. The ring is designed by TaroShooten. As a lover of all things kawaii (japanese for cute), this ring, with its simple, yet elegant design, appeals to both the sensibilities of grace and deviance. The Japanese cataolgue for TaroShooten has three versions (one with blue eyes, which is my favorite color! So if you're in Japan... hook a girl up!) along with other items, like a Suicide Bombing Button--the traditional ways of seppuku are long past. Anyway! The plain silver skull ring is also available at Giant Robot for you US inhabitants.
Airborn Audio
by Josh Spear
Two members of Antipop Consortium are back. Well, that’s not exactly true because they never left—, they just took a small vacation from music stardom. Ex-members High Priest and M.Sayyid have teamed up, leaving old Antipop member Beans behind to bring what they had done once before to a much, much higher level. They call their new group Airborn Audio. Blasting through all stereoptypes of what hip hop is and should be they created a mixtape called Close Encounters, chock full of edgy and eccentric rhymes on playgrounds of ghostly and bizarrely good beats. Rumor has it an upcoming album is on its way from Ninjatune.
Check out their promo mixtape on iTunes.
