Cool Hunting Video

Capsule Video: Billes Products International Design Contest 2008

coolhunting.com — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 08:00:14 -0500

For the inaugural video in our new series of mini-episodes, we're pleased to present a document of the New Orleans-based Billes Architecture's first-ever design competition. We were honored to be invited as a judge and, as you'll see in the video, the results are nothing less than stunning and—perhaps—harbingers of the design future.

Whartscape

coolhunting.com — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 12:58:51 -0500

Homegrown in Baltimore, Whartscape is a touring music festival featuring nearly one hundred bands, thousands of attendees and a lot of sweat. We were lucky enough to be there for the 3rd annual Whartscape and caught several performances including Ponytail, Double Dagger, Girl Talk and Dan Deacon, the festival's co-founder and main impresario. In an interview with him conducted over iChat, he explains how the police inspired the festival, why people often participate in his shows and the future.

Veuve Clicquot

coolhunting.com — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 23:28:38 -0500

We were recently invited out to Madame Clicquot's estate in Reims, France to learn about the process of making her Veuve Clicquot bubbly. In between boat and helicopter rides, we visited their vineyards and labs with their cellar masters for a behind the scenes look at the scientific process of fermenting their famous grapes. Check out the video for a glimpse at the good life while it still exists.

Cut Brooklyn: Knifemaker Joel Bukiewicz

coolhunting.com — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:59:41 -0500

In a small studio in Brooklyn, novelist-turned-knifemaker Joel Bukiewicz crafts knives of the highest quality under the label Cut Brooklyn. Our video visits Joel in his studio and watches the exceedingly rare craft of cutting and sanding steel to perfection.

Ponytail

coolhunting.com — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 18:23:23 -0500

Baltimore artrock heroes Ponytail have been blowing up basements from MICA to Pratt for a while now. We included them on our Memorial Day Muxtape (R.I.P.) back in May, but we wanted more. In this video, we spend a sweaty summer weekend with Ponytail at shows in Baltimore and Brooklyn and talk shop over homemade omelets at their house and practice space. We’re hoping to make this a series of cooking with bands, and we’re excited to kick it off with Ponytail.

Os Gemeos

coolhunting.com — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:00:11 -0500

The world of Brazilian street artists Os Gemeos (aka identical twins Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo) is a slightly surreal, colorful and wildly-patterned one, populated with people and animals, boats and pyramids and cars and music. In this video we visit their world, interviewing the brothers at work on an installation that took place earlier this year at Deitch Projects in downtown Manhattan. They discuss how they first started working together, the show and the free-form way they make art.

Playing the Building

coolhunting.com — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:52:35 -0500

In conjunction with Creative Time, Playing the Building is an installation by David Byrne that transformed a 9,000 square foot abandoned room in Lower Manhattan's Battery Maritime Building into an instrument for the summer. An antique pump organ controls devices that create sounds using the building's infrastructure, including heating pipes, metal beams and pillars. For a special event last month, curator Mark Beasley invited accomplished musicians to perform an improvisational piece with the building. The result is a captivating musical experience.

Glow Fest 2008

coolhunting.com — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:10:34 -0500

by Perrin Drumm Last month, Santa Monica's pier hosted 12 hours of performance and installation art, attracting 200,000 revelers for Glow, a public light and sound extravaganza in the style of Paris' Nuit Blanche. This video navigates through both the throngs of people (almost more notable than the art itself) and the many luminous installations dotting the beach and boardwalk. At the far end, Infranatural unveiled "The Amazing Mental Scope," which reads the viewer's emotions and translates them into changing colors on the body of the telescope. Skyglow (Jeff Cain) offered some respite from the crowd, projecting aerial footage of Los Angeles onto the ceiling of a room, which actually required you to stop moving and lie down. Other crowd-pleasers included Dunnage Ball (Peter Tolkin Projects), a sort of illuminated, modern moon-bounce, and Usman Haque's show-stopper "Primal Source." Yes, that's the one with the projections onto the big wall of water that everyone pointed and gasped at. Not featured in our video, but still worth noting, is the award for the best use of glow sticks, which goes to Illumination Migration (Frank Rozasy). Nine hundred and fifty glow sticks were stuck in the sand and rearranged over the course of the night in accordance with the change in tide and migration of grunions.

June Taylor Jams

coolhunting.com — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:34:39 -0500

Tucked in an anonymous building on a quiet Berkeley, CA street, June Taylor makes small batches of some of the most mouth-watering jams, preserves, syrups and marmalades we've tasted. In this video, June modestly shares her artisan and old-world techniques, explaining how nature helps dictate exotic flavor combinations like Strawberry and Provençal Lavender and how she takes into consideration even the tiniest of details, such as the shape and size of the pieces of fruit. It's a window into an exceedingly rare level of art and craft.

The Glass House

coolhunting.com — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:34:44 -0500

In this video RISD president John Maeda narrates a visit to Philip Johnson's Glass House in New Canaan, CT. Maeda shares his impressions and talks about how it relates to his thoughts on simplicity. Meanwhile, we explore the site (there are actually several buildings on the property in addition to the Glass House), shot over a couple picture perfect spring days.

Electric Windows

coolhunting.com — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:16:12 -0500

Bringing together 24 street artists from all over the world, Electric Windows is a semi-permanent installation of large-scale work exhibited on the exterior windows of a 19th century blanket factory in Beacon, NY. We traveled to the small town earlier this year to meet some of the artists and watch them make "urban art" in a not-so-urban setting. We also interview one of the organizers, Daniel Weise, a vet of the NYC street artist scene who recently moved to Beacon and co-founded Beacon's Open Space gallery there.

Fashionable Technology

coolhunting.com — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:30:42 -0500

A massage-based video game controller, panties with wings and an inflatable dress were just a few of the concepts exhibited recently at the NYC gallery Eyebeam to launch Sabine Seymour's new book "Fashionable Technology." In this video, we interview Sabine about the burgeoning field and her lifelong obsession with fashion. She also helps us peruse the exhibit, chatting with the designers and artists behind each piece to learn about their inspiration and process.To see all the projects, buy the book from Amazon.

Lisa Kereszi, Photographer

coolhunting.com — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:18:23 -0500

Known for her hauntingly still imagery, photographer Lisa Kereszi's subjects have included junkyards, burlesque clubs and other desolate sites. Her commercial work for clients such as The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Nest, W, GQ, Tokion, Penthouse, Nylon, Flaunt, wallpaper* and others shares a similarly serenely meditative quality, capturing the quiet beauty of scenes that would otherwise likely go unnoticed. Currently teaching at Yale, as well as continuing her fine art and commercial pursuits, Lisa took us on a trip to revisit the shots she took at Governors Island for a 2003 monograph on the former military base. We found several of the sites she captured, including a bus stop, an elementary school drinking fountain, bowling alley lanes and a Burger King sign. In an interview in an empty pool, Lisa shares how a mild depressive bent informs her work, her solitary working habits and her obsession with Governors Island.

Alex Da Corte, Artist

coolhunting.com — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:55:01 -0500

Drawing on found objects (and people), kitsch and the banal, Philadelphia-based artist Alex Da Corte makes multimedia work that belies its material origins. This video visits his studio/apartment and his recent gallery show at Fleischer-Ollman to gain some insight into his ideas and technique. We also interview Fleischer-Ollman's director William Pym to get his take on the young artist.

Kiel Mead, Jewelry and Furniture Designer

coolhunting.com — Fri, 23 May 2008 20:20:04 -0500

A Pratt graduate who cut his teeth in the Brooklyn design scene, jewelry and furniture maker Kiel Mead represents the next generation of New York designers. Taking inspiration from such disparate sources as everyday objects (car keys, chewing gum, retainers) and Catholic iconography (Saint Sebastian, crucifixes), his work mixes irreverence with first-rate craftsmanship. In this video, we visit his Brooklyn studio where he shows us his work and walks us through his thought process. We also head to Brooklyn's renowned design outpost, The Future Perfect, to see his show with German design duo 45 Kilo called "Cleanliness is Next to Godliness."

Lee Stoetzel

coolhunting.com — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:43:54 -0500

Juxtaposing nature with man-made objects, Pennsylvania-based artist Lee Stoetzel uses woods chosen for their natural flaws to make large-scale sculptures. In this video we visit Lee at his home studio where he's disassembling his life-size replica of a VW bus to transport to an art fair. He also shows us his latest work—giant models of fixed-gear bikes—and his workshop.

Scott Campbell

coolhunting.com — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:00:31 -0500

Brooklyn-based tattooist Scott Campbell has taken the art form to another level—not just by being one of the most sought-after tattoo artists in NY (if not the world) but for using a laser cutter to etch his intricate old-world designs into everything from laptops and books to leather chairs, tables and paintings. In this field trip to Scott's Brooklyn tattoo parlor and studio, he shows us around, demonstrates how the laser works and does some coloring on a tattoo.

The Lever House Art Collection

coolhunting.com — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:36:18 -0500

For nearly a decade the Lever House in New York City has been home to some of the most daring public exhibits of contemporary art. In this video curator Richard Marshall gives some background on the architectural landmark and explains the ins-and-outs of putting together the biannual commissions that have included the likes of Barnaby Furnace, Sarah Morris and Damien Hirst. In addition to past shows, we also get a close look at Richard Dupont's installation of larger-than-life distorted figures, the making of which we documented in our video profiling the artist.

Design and the Elastic Mind

coolhunting.com — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:17:10 -0500

To document MoMA's wonderful, monumental exhibit spanning design, science and technology, "Design and the Elastic Mind," we enlisted the help of the show's esteemed curator, Paola Antonelli. Paola speaks in detail about several of the exhibits, including "The Afterlife," a system for turning corpses into batteries, robots that act as personal climatizers and DNA origami. She also weighs in on her curatorial approach, addressing the role of the designer, her mission to shift public perception of design and how design revolutionizes our lives. As always, but especially in this case, we hope CH inspires you to experience this show firsthand. It's up through May 2008, see details below. If you absolutely can't make it in person, the website, designed by the renowned Yugo Nakamura, is full of information organized into an extremely pleasing UI and the book (available online from the MoMA store) is a must-have resource for designers, educators and the curious. Design and the Elastic Mind Through 12 May 2008 MoMA 11 West 53 Street New York, NY 10019 map tel. +1 212 708 9400

Mika Rottenberg

coolhunting.com — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:43:00 -0500

For our final video taking a closer look at this year's Whitney Biennial, we travel to the Harlem studio of video artist Mika Rottenberg. Known for videos depicting women engaging in elaborate systems of production that often harvest their own body, Mika shows us the set of her latest piece (and Biennial installation), "Cheese" and tells us the backstory of making the video. We also spend some time at the former brewery talking over her motivations and strategies—from the role that sound plays to finding her actors online.Also on Cool Hunting: Whitney Biennial, Olaf Breuning

Whitney Biennial 2008

coolhunting.com — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 16:10:12 -0500

This time around we chose to cover the Whitney Biennial with help from the museum's exhibition designer, Mark Steigelman. Last week's video on Olaf Breuning included a glimpse of his Biennial installation at the Park Avenue Armory (an off-site component that's new this year) and this episode is a select survey of the works by the 50-odd artists showing at the Whitney. Mark explains the challenges of laying out such a monumental exhibit, shows us a few of his prized sight-lines and points out architectural features unique to the Marcel Breuer-designed building.Also on Cool Hunting: Whitney Biennial 2006

Olaf Breuning

coolhunting.com — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:24:37 -0500

In honor of Swiss artist Olaf Breuning's inclusion in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, this video visits his Manhattan studio. In the midst of working on his two-part installation for the show, Olaf takes the time to explain his inspiration and thinking behind his mini army made of readymade objects and a recreation of a 1932 photograph. There's also plenty of examples of his other playfully absurd photographs, videos and sculptures as well as a few comments about how materials spark his creativity, pop culture and the differences of working out of a place of pleasure vs. struggle.

Papabubble

coolhunting.com — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 12:04:10 -0500

At the artisinal candy shop Papabubble in Manhattan (the first U.S. outpost following Barcelona, Amsterdam and Tokyo), mounds of colorful, flavor-packed "caramels" get whipped up daily. In this video we meet co-owner Fiona Ryan, watch her and another candymaker, Jelly, prepare a batch of the little treats and learn how Papabubble's quite unlike any other confectionery out there. Also on Cool Hunting: Papabubble Interview

Simone Pace

coolhunting.com — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 14:56:31 -0500

This video joins Simone Pace, best known as one-third of Blonde Redhead, on one of his vintage Italian motorcycles, from an East Village garage, across the Brooklyn bridge, to the band's recording studio. Simone shares some of the design elements that make him a fan of Motoguzzis, offers some insight on Blonde Redhead's music and tells the story of the first time he played drums.

Richard Dupont

coolhunting.com — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:44:00 -0500

For our 99th episode, we visit the Manhattan studio of Richard Dupont who makes arresting figurative work. His sculptures initially caught our eye when they made an appearance in our very first video at Art Basel and now Dupont's busy with his large-scale installation, "Terminal Stage," due to open at the Lever House next month. In this video he unmolds one of his distorted replicas of his body that he made using military scans, walking us through his process and some of the ideas that inform his work. Terminal Stage Opening Reception: 13 March 2008, 6-8pm 13 March-3 May 2008 Lever House 390 Park Avenue New York, NY 10022 map