jihad by the infidels?

It is really funny to hear that a feminist wants to defend women rights within the boundries of islamic religion...is like trying to make gravity happen in cero gravity environments...

"Organisers of the first international congress on Islamic feminism are calling for a "gender jihad... Organisers say they want more collaboration with western feminists but say non-Muslim feminists need to challenge their anti-Islamic stereotypes."

I guess they are trying to create a bridge between the "islamic world" and the "western world", but in reality any effort for promote femenist views within religion in western or eastern cultures is plainly futile...Most (I think all) religions opress in one way or the other, female nature. Female nature is, within all big religions, something to control and avoid, something evil, subhuman, twisted, non correct. Where as male nature is something to prise and mostly to follow. I think religion (any religion) is a face on human social development that should be left as a bunch of fear on punishment (from the hand of a male god) mixed with faith on what it can not be explained, and of course all sort of social constructs to opress who rebels against the monopoly of faith based power. It is a power based on opression, ignorance, superstition, mediocrecy, with a veil of superficial mercy on others (mercy on who, I would ask).
In all cultures "infidels" are most of the time women....no wonder why...

scandinavian e-motion

A Norwegian guy once told me many jokes about how silly Swedish people were...and then a Swedish girl told jokes about how silly Norwegians were...This is a website that a scandinavian looking dear fellow likes...I like it to! No silly jokes here.

mapping stuff

Functional visualizations are more than innovative statistical analyses and computational algorithms. They must make sense to the user and require a visual language system that uses colour, shape, line, hierarchy and composition to communicate clearly and appropriately, much like the alphabetic and character-based languages used worldwide between humans."

Matt Woolman
Digital Information Graphics

Goal

VisualComplexity.com intends to be a unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks. The project main goal is to leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines, as diverse as Biology, Social Networks or the World Wide Web. I truly hope this space can inspire, motivate and enlighten any person doing research on this field.

Not all projects shown here are genuine complex networks, in the sense that they aren’t necessarily at the edge of chaos, or show an irregular and systematic degree of connectivity. However, the projects that apparently skip this class were chosen for two important reasons. They either provide advancement in terms of visual depiction techniques/methods or show conceptual uniqueness and originality in the choice of a subject. Nevertheless, all projects have one trait in common: the whole is always more than the sum of its parts.

Tom Ford loves the machine

He has capitalized on the human tendency of not so secretly adoring sex. He put Gucci on the hot sphere of mass consumption...luxe for all...

"When sex goes out of business, so do we."

A bon mot of brilliance delivered back when by Estée Lauder, one her son Leonard Lauder takes considerable delight in repeating.

Assuming the beauty doyenne was correct, these should be heady times for the house she founded. This month will see the first fruits of Lauder's curious marriage with Tom Ford, the man for whom sex and style are virtually synonymous. "We've always tried to position ourselves where we're selling something that's really sexy," says Leonard Lauder, the company chairman. "That's the cornerstone of Estée Lauder."

W: These pictures look futuristic-creepy—not a celebration of beauty.

TF: We are futuristic; we're on the cusp of being able to manipulate humans genetically to grow into whatever we think looks good. The moment we can start manipulating genes, how long are our legs going to get? Beauty used to be all about cream and lotions, and now it's not. It's about Botox. It's about fillers. It's about mini facelifts. We've reached a level of manipulation. And then of course I'm portrayed as the one doing the manipulating…the polishing, buffing, shaping, which is what I do. It's just what we do. What the fashion industry does.

Sad day for Mayan people.

I like this war!

the cold days are here to stay for months...

hot or cold design

A couple of designers from portugal came with this design for bedding sheets:
"Couple(name of design) can be a game or a monitoring system.
The ruler is printed so as to be readable from inside the bed.
The numbering rises outwards and from warm to cold colours.
Each person knows how much he or she can pull and how far apart the couple rests."

Final test : past!

My interview/exam went pretty well. 20 minutes before the scheduled exam, I realized that my green card was somewhere out of my reach. I freaked out for 20 minutes....Then I decided that I had to go without that document and hope they will allow me to take the exam. I drove late to the apointment, like a mad foreign woman. Then I circled the same block for 10 minutes without realizing that I was looking for an imaginary different address than the immigration building. Here there was in front of me and I always thought that it was a new address (next building or something). I arrived , sat, and after 1 minute the officer called my name...The Officer asked many questions that I partially answered and then when not having the exact answer, ..Anyhow, that is what they require to give you the precious right to vote. I'll be sworn as citizen in a short while. WEE!

Men in tights! fuck yeah!

I love tights! I have had tights across many different periods throughout my life...Breeches, tights, super slim pants, and I just adore them. You have to have some nice toned legs to wear tights properly.... otherwise you would look like a crazy taco. Anyway it seems that my favorite feminine/masculine style is coming so super strong into fashion, that many spring collections for males were inspired by Nurayev. Rock on my pretty male ballerina!
"Nureyev's signature peaked fishermen's caps and wool beanies were the crowning glories on a schizoid personal look that embodied his Rimbaud-Rambo ying-yang sides. He was just as inclined to dress like a stevedore who might have calluses on his calluses as he was to step out resembling a doyenne in Oriental robes and shawls. Fittingly, for a brawling balletomane who grew up in 1950's Russia having to wear his sisters' hand-me-downs, Nureyev became the mediagenic personification of jet-set-era androgyny, an agent for sexual and cultural change whom the dance critic Arlene Croce once dubbed "Gorbachev's advance man." ">> NYTIMES.

North or South, I'm definitely American!

I have the test for becoming a citizen tomorrow morning...It seems really easy. I hope to pass it only using my general knowledge on American history. Regarding rights: I personally find the right to bear arms, the most ridiculous right EVER! Only make sense if you are a paranoid person and believe in the rule of the natural law (Hobbes).In the study guide there are some useless questions regarding past wars... Like we need to remember who shouted some rant against some other country on the top of a hill...I think the most important thing to take into consideration is to take pride in the multitude of cultures mixing in this continent: the whole melting pot...I'm totally melted! ...melting on this planet!
I'll post my exam experience afterwards.

Editorial: images + content

For my 'editorial design' class I have to build a book.
Each student can decide what would be the topic of the book.
I choose fashion by location. I'm planning to include some serious essays about cultural identity through fashion, as I go to very distinct locations and take a series of minimum 30 people per location. I'm posting the images in my website while in college.

NEEEEERD!

I must confess:Although I'm ridicusly hot, my alter ego is a nerd.

telebolitos

This guys are awesome! Not that they are my super friends or anything: they ROCK! I recomend two songs from this new band: Valderrama y Cae. Good music.
Here is the front cover of the final compositions I made for their new CD.

Ryan McGuiness

My greatest inspiration. This designer/artist has been able to create a style that has permeated all visual aesthetics in what is cool and sophisticated... Astonishing excellence!

crazy little things

Apple announced the Ipod NANO. cute and not expensive....too bad that I just got my second Ipod "biggo".

"After summarizing the existing iPod product line, Jobs explained that the iPod mini is what all of Apple's competitors are aiming for. Apple is "going to do something pretty bold," he said. Apple is "replacing it with something new."

Jobs calls the iPod nano "an entirely new ground-up design, that also has 1000 songs in your pocket." The white device features a color display and can support photos, uses a grey click wheel to navigate, and is 80 percent smaller in volume than the original iPod -- thinner than a number two pencil, said Jobs. The iPod nano weighs 1.5 ounces or 42 grams.

Compared to the iPod mini, the iPod nano is half the thickness and 62 percent smaller by volume. It uses a 30-pin dock connector, so the iPod nano plugs in to existing iPod accessories, and can also connect using USB 2.0. It features a 14-hour rechargeable battery. It achieves its small size by eschewing a hard disk drive in favor of flash memory."
"Jobs told the crowd that Apple has sold more than half a billion songs through its iTunes Music Store to date. "We are selling songs at a rate of 1.8 million songs per day," he explained. "iTunes has an 82 percent market share here in the US."

Jobs reiterated an Apple press release offered earlier today that it has 80 percent of the legitimate online music download market in the UK, and said that iTunes is doing "extremely well around the world." There are iTunes Music Stores in 20 countries, he said, representing 85 percent of the global music market."

"Pastafarians" unite

Flying Spaghetti Monsterism is a parody religion created to protest the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to allow intelligent design to be taught in science classes alongside evolution.

The "religion" has since become an Internet phenomenon that has garnered many followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (sometimes referring to themselves as "Pastafarians", a pun on Rastafarians) who claim to have been touched by "His Noodly Appendage" and preach the word of their "noodly master" as the one true religion. Flying Spaghetti Monsterism is primarily the invention of Bobby Henderson, a graduate of Oregon State University with a degree in physics.

Natural state of violence

Thomas Hobbes (leviathan) resonates in mi head while listening to the news of the collapse of "civility" in New Orleans. I believe is time for this U.S. system to develop a conscientious staged process for granting "the order of civilization", avoiding the "natural law" rule. It seems that they (current higher political power) takes for granted civilization as a condition intrinsic to geographical area, and the use of military power...They fail to see basic structures on different societies that maintain and legitimate order. It is a extremely complicated topic in deed. Hobbes gives at least one of the corner stones for understanding human behavior, chaos, and power legitimacy.
This fundamentals in political theory are grounded in the believe of a God (XVI century). Something that currently I find harmful for society in general and women specifically. But again everything needs to be read taking into consideration the valuable and ignoring the futile.

Blonde redhead

Blonde redhead is one of my favorite music groups. It is not pop music, so it has many sharp edges. I'm very interested in the structure and melody of their music, plus the lyrics are al bit psychotic and intimate: lovely. Music for a few.
They have like 3 different websites.
Here are some videos and music samples.
"None of the band are American. Amadeo and Simone came from Milan as teenagers to live in Montreal, while Kazu relocated from her home town of Kyoto in the early 90s to study in New York, where the band initially formed and where all three still live. These tangled paths are reflected in the intuitive twists and turns of Blonde Redhead's music, which has increasingly shed its influences to follow a strange, bewitching and cosmopolitan logic of its own."

Tijuana Bible

Again: culture, religion, and geography connected to a sexual "reality"
In terms of design: awesome little booklet, with a forbidden and humorous allure.

Entertainment

While living in Berlin in my very early twenties, I discovered that sex was a pastime for many people trying to stop boredom: some type of national hobby. These days I think it is a pastime not exclusive to a culture or an age...Even though some want to believe it is exclusive to a gender.

An essay by Peter Saville on pornography that link commercial art and sex.
...And yes, he is naive enough to think that pornography is a "male" motivated past time...like women are floating in ether and males are the ones living on "reality"....Whose reality? It seems that men escaped from the religious/cultural constructions the kept separated sex from entertainment, but women are supposed to stick to those constructions like some type of "natural" tendency. I would say that men might find themselves more addicted to the past time than women to restate their very "cultural freedom". Interesting essay anyhow.

"Most of our popular culture these days is based on familiarity. It's good business. Challenging is not good business."
This quote is what I consider A basic in the semiotics of globalization!

"I can say categorically that porn depraves and corrupts. Absolutely. Frequent exposure to pornography changes your sensibility about personal behavior."

More essays.

“L' exactitude n'est pas la vérité” -Matise

This project has always fascinated me. Ideas of identity across cultural perceptions and ideas of individual uniqueness that are mutually opposing. Very simple yet forceful project. AMAZING.

"Inspired by a shared interest in the striking dress codes of various social groups, the Rotterdam-based photographic team of Ari Versluis & Ellie Uyttenbroek have been systematically hamstringing such permutations of received identity for ten years. They call their series Exactitudes, a contraction of “exact” and “attitudes”. It’s August Sander and Eugène Atget turned on their heads by Bernd and Hilla Becher - a direct assault on the mythic formula that photography plus the street equals authenticity.

By dragging the repertory of the street kicking and screaming to the studio backdrop, the series offers a purposely absurd response to the sentimentality of Jamal Shabazz (“Back in the days”) and the beloved and utterly bogus spontaneity of the photo booth. It’s a perfect fit for an age that’s made the “cool hunt” a corporate pursuit. Of course the photos are starchy and obdurately posed and ever so consciously styled, because there can be no meaningful limit to the cross-contamination between those notions of a authenticity and supreme self-awareness."

Show!

“SHOWstudio is based on the belief that showing the entire creative process—from conception to completion—is beneficial for the artist, the audience and the art itself.”

Nick Knight

SHOWstudio is an online project committed to showing the process of creativity. Throughout its first four years, SHOWstudio has consistently broken new ground in pioneering new forms of interactive and motion imagery at its London studio and broadcasting these unique art and fashion collaborations via its award-winning website. Providing a ‘view from within’ the industry, its aim is to unpack every aspect of fashion image-making, from the generation of ideas and production stages through to the problem solving and minutiae of executing the final images.

the dude

Peter Saville is one of the rockstars of graphic design: Joy division, New order, Pulp are few of his 'clients'.
From his biography:
"In July 1978, Saville graduated from Manchester with a first class degree. He then undertook Factory's next major project, the sleeve for a Factory Sample. He became a founding partner in Factory Records, with Wilson, Joy Division's manager Rob Gretton and actor Alan Erasmus. This release heralded an assault on the post-punk burgeoning music scene in Manchester. The unqualified autonomy he enjoyed while working for the new label, initiated a freedom from the overt constraints of marketing, which further allowed him to experiment in the very semiotics of visual communications.... ...After the dissolution of Din Disc in 1982, Saville, along with his collaborators, the photographer Trevor Key and Brett Wickens (a Canadian design student), formed Peter Saville Associates (PSA). During these years, music industry clients were joined by institutions like the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, the Pompidou Center, Paris, and the French Ministry of Culture, as well as fashion clients such as Yohji Yamamoto, Martin Sitbon and Jill Sander."

Postmodern POP music anybody?

M.I.A. is one of the good examples of the postmodern artist. Not that you have to be exotic to express your views, but it looks so good on her!
Awesome music, it feels like future.
To see her awesome style you can go the music section where there are some videos.
She graduated From St Martins (England) from fine arts/film.

Visual music

These guys have some good design > from the UK.
It is interesting to see the difference between cover design and poster design.

Andersen M Studio was formed by graphic designer and photographer Martin Andersen and has been operating since 1998.

The Studio works on a range of projects from music labels, book design, identities, fashion to branding campaigns. Clients include: Thames & Hudson, Virgin Records, EMI, Rough Trade, Accenture.

"Our influences stem from the classical, the avant-garde and contemporary art in creating solutions that have an enduring symbiosis between image and the written word."

The Studio ensures that each solution is artistically crafted and commercially considered.

Ciao Rachell

Rachel is moving to NYC. We had to eat some italian food in case she does not find a Italian restaurant there...
I'll see ya in some weeks in the big apple.

tu eres el amor de mi vida

This guy titled his metadata with "tu eres el amor de mi vida". Why? 'cause he's Spanish cool!

Whatever the reason behind the awesome use of my 'lengua materna' his work is amazing!

*The Works of Nigel Evan Dennis
Skills to Pay the Bills. 2005.

New social club in NYC

A comment from an article in the NY times:"the Core Club, set to open its doors, for a few people anyway, in mid-September. "

"I see it more like a SOHO House," she said. "You know it's not really about if you're of a certain class. It's about interesting people."To assist members in this mission, club consultants or "curators" will filter through the cultural detritus of the day to recommend the best stuff to members.Lea Carpenter, a former publisher of The Paris Review, has been hired to curate the library; Yvonne Force Villareal, an art consultant and the wife of the artist Leo Villareal, will curate the art offerings. David Koh, a former film executive, will curate the movie library and so on. For the tens of thousands of dollars in fees, the elite membership is also promised access to galleys of coming books and screenings of not-yet-released movies - all the entree, in other words, of your average Entertainment Weekly intern.While traditional clubs serve to promote homogeneity and to preserve the social order by keeping new and different people away, the Core Club's pitch - and as a for-profit corporation, it has a pitch - is that it will serve as a place for a geographically and socially diverse set of wealthy people to gather and meet others of the same disparate tribe. As a result, its membership list resembles a kind of Noah's ark manifest of overachievers from various professional species."

Classism and colonialism recedes in front professional success (?)
Yeah, sure! If you give me $55.000 , I'll tell you how progressive you are.

My comment on such leisure activities of these "interesting" rich dudes, is that they think that only by paying they can compare them selves to intellectuals, artist and other "interesting people", when they are mere consumers of the work of others. Are they producing, in return, valuable matter? Are they even getting a profound experience? Do they want superficial interactions?
Is the consumption of cultural issues helping others than themselves?

I think that being a Museum patron or a "one artist" patron is more rewarding for all sides involved.

I would say the "interesting people club" is creating for them selves an illusion of cultural awareness: entertaining but superficial. A congregation of pseudo intellectual people that get bored easily, paying for sophisticated buffoons.
The question is: does the "new buffoon" make these "new kings", or the other way around?
If they would really interest in being part of trascendental social progress they should consider being witnesses also of the not flattering cultural reality: not only for entertaining purposes.

A real jester was able to pronounce what others would not dare to the king. The benefit was awareness, something elusive to people that isolate themselves with power or within the same group of people. Are those interactions from the new club meaningful for society at large? The level of ethics is still low if they think that they can acquire instantly the identity and awareness than others struggle to achieve -without that many curators by their side-.

Interesting topic anyhow.

Sweet song

This song is so sweet, but the video kind of sucks!
It has some cute characters, but the plot is totally out of synchrony with the song
...Plus the textures are not as harmonic as they can be. The wolf is pretty awesome. I don't know what is what bothers me about the video...I think is the textures and the pace.
I like the song so much that I don't mind the bad video .
...But what a wasted opportunity. The lyrics and the sound are gorgeous.
Icelandic songstress Torrini unspools a nifty folkie ditty with deft musicianship and a winning sense of melody. The vid is a lumpy-but-cool animation telling the tale of returned call via message in a bottle. Love ain't easy, but this tune goes down smooth and sweet.

Ignore the ad before the video.

exploradora

Pamela's (my boss) partner is Ann Bancroft. Interesting...

• February 2001 - Ann and Norwegian polar explorer Liv Arnesen become the first women in history to sail and ski across Antarcticaÿs landmass - completing a 94 -day, 1,717-mile (2,747 trek).
• 1993 - Ann leads the American Women's Expedition to the South Pole, a 67-day expedition of 660 miles (1,060 km) on skis by four women, earning the distinction of being the first known woman in history to cross the ice to both the North and South Poles.
• 1992 - Ann leads the first American women's east to west crossing of Greenland.
• 1986 - Ann dogsleds 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from the Northwest Territories in Canada to the North Pole as the only female member of the Steger International Polar Expedition, earning the distinction of being the first known woman in history to cross the ice to the North Pole.
• Ann's other achievements include founding and leading the Ann Bancroft Foundation, a non-profit organization that celebrates the existing and potential achievements of women and girls.

some music for you today!

Macabre spring roll in summer time

Today, I choked eating spring rolls in a Vietnamese restaurant.I felt that I had no air left...I'm OK now, I coughed up the macabre little thing.
Next time when chocking alone, I'll throw my self rapidly against a chair...

base design

" Created in Brussels in 1993, Base is made up of 35 people divided between studios in Brussels, New York, Barcelona, Madrid, and Paris. The studio specializes in creative direction and brand development. With a clientele that spans the corporate, cultural, and institutional sectors, Base has worked on a broad range of projects, from creating small art pieces to designing brand identities and campaigns for major corporations. In addition, the agency has produced its own products, created BEople—a magazine about Belgian culture, and established BaseWORDS, a division dedicated to creative writing." Niiice!

NYC baby!

street style if you happen to enjoy virtual passers by,
spring
summer

shaolin dude

I wonder if these dudes actually have some hidden strong math skills or mere sense of present without fearing the future.
A hidden math dragon!?

style in movement

Hint is a design/fashion/style publication on the web. I specially enjoy the slide show articles and fashion week coverage. (Milan, Paris or NY). Plus some fashion editorials are magnificent motion graphic's creations.

Gems for my heart

I just bought two CD's of "The real Tuesday weld":
" I Lucifer", "The return of clerkenwell kid".












My review: awesome, folky, dark, quirky, and a bit electronic.
A fantastic soup for my ageless gipsy heart .
I have a new favorite group: The real Tuesday weld!
And a new favorite movie: Life aquatic! WEEEE!
Their website has some interesting videos -if you happen to have a fast connection-.
A sample (audio and video) here:
sample

pong and telebolitos

I have some friends with an awesome band: los telebolitos. The band is named after the game PONG.They asked me to create the new album cover. I'm developing some ideas.

My concept: silly pong .

Another day, another dollar...

Summer goes slowly, very slowly.
I'm almost done with the cover design for the Water~Stone project. I'm still a pupil, so I can have the time to meditate on small changes (very small changes). It is not a preference, it just happens. The proofing process of the book is taking longer than anybody expected, so I'll have to perform efficiently once the editor is done with the 2d proofing. I'm talking here about the content (300 pages) of literature. And yes there is a third proofing! I'm OK with proofing forever... But there are deadlines to print. Weee! Yes, printing deadlines mark the time line of design: the hectic crazy days.
Proofing is kind of tortuous, if you ask me. But as Pamela (boss) says, "welcome to the editorial world". The concept: Light Keepers, butterflies, and childhood. A half cover device (with a collage that conveys the idea of fiction against reality) covering half of the cover. That half cover can be removed and used as a bookmark.

Design: Me with the constrains of my boss.

Photo : Ukraine, Karolina Karlic

broken flowers

Antonia, I lost your comments while editing.

I watched "broken flowers" with Don -as in Don Juan- Bill Murray yesterday, pretty amazing movie. Some people's life consists of deciphering their own life in almost solitude.
For others life consists of being able to find (and to loose) as many individuals that might work as his or hers mirrors: tools for an ego, a never ending hunt…the whole playboy spiel. Ein spiel, ganz genau!
The pace of the movie was great. It values contemplation of details more than other movies...similar to what happens in "dead man" with Johnny Deep; almost spiritual, or at least a comment on mortality and awareness.

Additionally, the director (Jim Jarmusch) made some poignant criticism to American architecture and landscape, only by showing pretty realistic settings. But I'm biased against American architecture (the lack of it).... AWESOME film: factual criticism…the good type.

I'm hungry, I'll be back latter on.

Pickings:

'Dead Man' Guitar

Broken Flowers' Trailer

Platonic "Japanese" images

It is difficult to find a good use of images in film/video inpired by Japanese animation in a elegant or subtle way. And not all Japanese animation is inspiring...
This video by INTERPOL made me feel that mystical feeling that I felt when I was a little girl watching Japanese animation: fantastic platonic love images.
The textures, colors, contrast in characters, are all so well manipulated!. They (associates in science) achieved to create a good perception of those old platonic images, and symbolism in fire...BEAUTIFUL.
It is also a beautiful love song: C'MERE
To watch the video:
go to your ITUNES application>
Music Store> find the music videos > or find INTERPOL> watch the video.

Or click on one of the images

Associates in science

This guys (and girls?), create some amazing video works. Fresh like a lettuce! Many good concepts and execution!
IMPECABLE business model.
This Beck's video is motion graphic at its best.




I personally LOVVVVVVE this video: "misfits".
Sexy as hell! And Liliana"mamita rica" from
Mexico is one of the powerful women to lend her allure!
awesome video.

happy pets

" happypets is an experimental lab in the creative, graphic design, image and illustration domain, based in lausanne, switzerland."

Chia grew up close to me, and does not seem to realize that she is not a baby anymore...