DJ Spinna: Intergalactic Soul

by Ami Kealoha

DJ Spinna's upcoming release, Intergalactic Soul, is what you'd expect from this veteran of the New York hip hop scene who's remixed the likes of De La Soul and Das EFX and made beats for luminaries such as, Grand Puba, The Jungle Brothers, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and Pharaohe Monch. Like his website says, on this album Spinna taps "into his perfected take on a truly cosmic boom-bap to a sexy, stylishly accessible brand of house and dance music that is unique only to him." Available at Amazon.

Found in Translation

by Ted Cahill

The innovative Japanese sneaker brand, Onitsuka Tiger teamed up with Ramp Industry to develop Found in Translation, a new website that went live earlier this month celebrating the latest designs and movements of Anglo-Japanese talent. The site's combination of audio, video, and animation, as well as special downloads that users can turn into their own customized pieces, makes it well worth a visit. Cultural pioneers on the site include sculptor Tomoaki Suzuki, punk inspired fashion designer Hiro, animator Hiroshi Kariya, girl drummer Akiko of Comanechi, and organic farmer Hiroyuki Suzuki, among others. The project will also have a life offline in multi-media installations at Onitsuka Tiger's London flagship store.

Sonarama

by Leonora Oppenheim

Ahhhh, summertime in Barcelona, can you feel the heat and the beats? Year-round this city's thumping to one rhythm or another, but summer months are a whole different story. For all the music festivals that descend on the town at this time of year, how anyone gets any sleep or does any work is a Catalan mystery. At its heart Barcelona is an electropolis and this weekend was the mother of all avant-garde electro music festivals, Sonar and the companion multimedia side show, Sonarama.

First up, a video installation on the ground floor by Swedish artist Lars Arrhenius "was born out of the artist’s interest in the universe that is animation, the capacity for synthesis of the pictograph and the possibility of employing these mediums to reflect the life that beats in the city." I particularly enjoyed the animation "Habitat" (left), which moved through a cross-section of an apartment block showing different household scenes. It’s wonderfully voyeuristic as these strangely simple, but expressive, figures go about their evening. With muffled sounds as voices, the tone and rhythm infer just enough to make up the dialogue in your head; the awkward disagreement at the dinner party, the couple having sex upstairs, the guy watching TV alone next door. The limited gestures made it all the more amusing. A small arm movement or bob of the head insightfully conveyed the humor of human emotions in a minimal format.

The next installation, the mind-boggling reacTable (left) "is an electronic multi-user musical instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface." Clear? No, I didn’t think so. Basically, players move shapes with different symbols on them across the table top. The reacTable reads the symbols, which connect to different synthesiser sounds and different speakers. You can play it like a multimedia instrument where color, movement, lines and sound are all connected—amazing stuff and totally unintelligible to non-electro-music geeks like me! But it is quite beautiful and mesmerizing to watch it working.

"After Kerouac" by the British artist Mike Nelson was at first nothing but a curved white wall, but following the curve, you realize you entered a spiral. Is this enclosed curving corridor with strange black streaks never-ending? Are you feeling claustrophobic yet? Or dizzy? We keep going round and round until suddenly…an old door with peeling paint and rusty hinges. What’s inside? A room full of old car tires! Ahh, now we know where those black marks come from. So strange, so unsettling. What does it mean? Kerouac equals cars, the open road, discovery? Well, it seems to be Kerouac inverted, no car and a spiralling path leading nowhere. As the blurb accurately describes, "In Mike Nelson’s work we feel this fear of being left alone with our questions and anxieties." For an installation at an electro music festival this was a very acoustic experience. I am sure the guard was entertained by the rhythm of our running footsteps and shrieks of nervousness as we ran around the spiral in an attempt to get out of there.

Open Air

by Ami Kealoha

Premiering this Friday, 23 June 2006, with a party and art exhibit, Open Air is Alyssa Natches and Lou Auguste's documentary about contemporary street art that's over three years in the making. Featuring some of the more innovative street artists out there like Faile, Michael De Feo, Dan Witz, Skewville, and ESPO, the film addresses controversies over the use of public space and surveys some of the lesser known forms of "graffiti," including stencils, wheat pasting, concrete castings, wood installations, and other sculptural techniques. The accompanying show consists of plywood sheets installed in the gallery meant to duplicate the industrial sites that often become canvasses. WIth DJ sets by Saheer Umar (TokionFM) and Oja (Sunchild Productions) the event kicks off at 7:30pm at Stay Gold Gallery and runs through 9 July 2006. After the jump, check the flyer and more info.

World Cup Contest Results

by SummerSeventySix

At the start of the World Cup, we asked you who was the coolest footballer ever. We got loads of entries from all over the world, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. There were plenty of votes for Pele, and while he is one of the greatest players ever, some of his fellow countrymen beat him in the cool stakes. The final list of names bring something extra than just sweet skills.

Our runners up, who each get to pick a Gelaskin for their iPod, plumped for the likes of Maradona, Johan Cruyff, Garrincha, Marco Van Basten and George Best (all in the banner above).

Our top-prize-winning entry from Lee M. in NYC describes in one succinct sentence, Brazil's Sócrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira, more simply known as Sócrates: "For the name, the beard, the shorts and the chain smoking for the few occasions he was actually on the bench--a jinga de verdade, (loosely translated as a truly elegant player)."

May we add that he was also his country's incredibly elegant captain, wore a headband like no other, and was a qualified medical doctor. Too cool.

As well as a Gelaskin, Lee will also receive a top from the Umbro by Kim Jones World Cup capsule collection and the soundtrack CD to Once In A Lifetime.

Alexander Girard Textiles Reissued

by Evan Orensten

Modernseed has exclusively reissued six classic designs from Alexander Girard, often acknowledged as one the most important American furniture and textile designers of the 20th Century.

Best known for his work as the head of textile design at Herman Miller from 1952 until the mid-1970s and the celebrated redesign of Braniff Airlines in 1965, Girard often found inspiration in his passion for folk art (together with his wife Susan they amassed a collection of more than 100,000 items that was donated to the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe). This inspiration led to the use of bright colors and whimsical patterns in his work.

The pillows measure 12" x 12" and retail for $49.