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Whilst we are within the vicinity of of musical critique, (just watch this segway unfold) THIS link may be of note for all you fans of the The Knife, or the general notion of sending some sonic saw-tooth direct into space.

The project has a broad aim of contacting alien life, however i think its evident to most of those involved that the project is purely so the musicians can have "message to space" listed on discogs. Lyrical content should be interesting, if any, but i think the most important part of this project is that people are still spending lots of money on extremely unecessary tasks. In all seriousness, this kind of financial looseness is rarely seen these days, with more importance placed on economical viability and fund management, less on extremely expensive gold detailing in your penthouse apartment.

Point being made is, buy a 200 dollar car and spend the other 1800 bux on either these shoes or these shoes depending on your sex, because its better to blow some cash with aspirations for a dancefloor in space, than dwindle your funds on second hand fun.

(NB shoes mentioned are from Chanel and Raf Simons respectively, still available in stores and online)

Count Olafur

Olafur Eliasson is one of the few contemporary artists who still manage to nudge that envelope a little closer to the cliff face of the new age. A 15 year retrospective of his is currently exhibiting at MoMA (not so good for most of us here in the land of wealth for toil) and should adequately represent his exquisitely lit paradise of neo-geometria, whilst also giving everyone a chance to reflect (no pun intended) upon their own aesthetic inadequacy. Hit him up at MoMA if that works out for you, or recieve your daily dose of visual kenosis HERE.

Majick In Machines

Yamaha have just released some shots of a concept motorcycle entitled Deux Ex Machina, translated from latin it means literally God out of Machine.
Created by Transportation Design student (rare course title..) Jake Loniak, the motorcycle looks like someone paid Ridley Scott to direct a remake of Street Hawk . The cycle also boasts a NanoPhosphate battery, thus ticking most of the eco-friendly boxes for all you Midnight Oil fans. Still, it manages 0-60mph in 3 seconds which is sick, and in true ergonomic fashion its controlled purely by the movements of your body. So hang up your handlebars and slip into something a little more biomechatronically comfortable because you could be riding into a steel sunset in just two shakes, literally.

Shintaro Sato

Shintaro Sato had his first major solo exhibition at age 29, proving there's still hope for most of us. After leaving Kyodo News in 2001 where he worked as a cameraman, he has been steadily producing amazing photographs that document the lush late hours in Japan's capitol, Tokyo. Taken from the fire escapes of buildings near the cities edge, little else can be said about them except they are dope, and that a ticket to the whaling capitol of the world is only 1500 bux return via Webjet.

The light in his photographs has all the properties of a hot sheet of steel dividing your brain butter, leaving you CTRL+C-ing anything he's ever done directly into My Pictures via your Myspace Page. He shoots on a 4x5 large format camera, but I have no idea how much editing goes into these. What i do know though is that one of his photos has been my desktop background for most of this year and i still fail to tire of its illness.

Shintaro Sato

BusyBeingBiennaled

In about 20 days, the MCA will host the Sydney 2008 Biennale. The exhibition will run like a cold nose from the 18th of June till the 7th of September, so pick a date and eat it, cause the exhibitions got its phasers set to stun. Featuring such international sculptural talent as Sam Durant and Maurizio Cattelan (shown above, his controversial La Nona Ora)the exhibition will also feature works from renowned Oz photographers Rosemary Laing and Tracey Moffat.

The theme is Revolutions - Forms That Turn, and curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev has made it her mission to inspire us with works spanning the full breadth of last century, drowning our eyeballs in a low-viscosity blend of slick ideas and glittering innovation globules. Pencil that in.

P.S. Got a kewl gramps who's busy busting loose instead of busting hips? Get him onto THIS stat!!!

Gone Back To Gomorrah?

Bill Henson is potentially facing prosecution after complaints were lodged over his current exhibition at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney last week. Hetty Johnston, a member of the sexual assault awareness group Braveheart filed the complaint with the NSW police, re: "depicting youths under the age of 16 in a sexual context". Admittedly sexual assault is a very important and worthy cause, but it has no application within Bill Hensons artwork. Whilst his work is a little darker than his namesake (sic) Jim Henson's Crystal, it is far from pornographic. Hetty however has been quoted questioning both the artist, the gallery in question as well as the models parents. Clearly she should rest her festering feminist roots back in the prudish soil from whence they came, and quit yanking on the long strings of the moral muppets that control the kermits in our artistic kremlin.

Welcome to the Anti-Future, Population: Dwindling, Because Taking Your Shirt Off Is Criminal.

Bill Hensons Website

For Further Reading

SMH
An Idiot
Sydney Arts Journo

John Galliano

Amazing man, amazing ideas, nothing quite says extravagance like a wardrobe handsewn by John Galliano. Unfortunately i'm relatively sure no one owns the aforementioned, so we are reduced to watching videos of his talent documented via Youtube. The above is a collaboration between stylist Simon Foxton and photographer Nick Knight, documenting a trademark debaucherous Galliano attack upon man's clothing in early 07. Nick Knight is worthy of mention in himself, and i advise checking out his site HERE and his conceptual project SHOWstudio, HERE.

Below is video from SHOWstudio which abstractly documents the process of the shoot, "..giving those with a penchant for woolen Minotaurs, skintight briefs and Samurai swordsmen an opportunity to indulge their tastes for the primeval and the preposterous in equal measure." - From SHOWstudio's article 'Beasting'



P.S. HIGHLY ADVISED - www.johngalliano.com follow the links to mens ready to wear video, it's not on youtube so don't bother.

Bill Viola

Video artist Bill Viola first came to Death Valley with a friend in 1973. A child of the green summers and freezing winters of New York, he had just graduated from university. He was 21, a student of religions. He stood in the middle of a salt flat, simultaneously inconsequential and enveloping, and felt his horizons extend.

Read more about Bill Viola here or go check out his exhibition currently on at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

RAM:ELL:ZEE

If your into graffiti, Basquiat, robots or any of the above, step into Ramellzee's world of Gothic Futurism, a complex interpretation of typography, space, and numerology. If Mad Max was black, Ram:Ell:Zee would be Mel Gibson, battling Master Blaster within a dated positronic thunderdome, yielding only to a textual Gulag.

http://www.gothicfuturism.com

Smoke And Coke Mirrors

Kick off your shoes and skip through the tall grass as Michel Gondry pulses your brain with dappled sunshine, or head down for a dip in the icey waters of Black Lake, and watch as the ripples herald the emergence of a synthetic excalibur, forged in the bionic hands of Chris Cunningham.