Helsinki

Florence

I miss this:
Old place in Florence (two windows on the left)

And it was out of this world. This weekend me and my roommate went to Cake Shop's 2nd birthday... actually we went to see Vampire Weekend play, but I guess they pulled the 'put the best band on first so everyone will get there and drink a lot and stay until the last band' method. But we didn't know that. So we ended up getting there while a really bad band was playing, but it wasn't unbearable because audience was pretty entertaining (all wiggly and stuff). So after the wiggling and seizuring stopped we were ready to see what we had paid all of 2$ to see. Little known to us that they had already had their turn. Anyway, this band comes on with a killer start. Now when I use the word killer in this sentence, I am not using it like Californians do, but how it was intended. I thought my ears were going to explode. It was pretty much the back feed noise you get from a mic being too close to a speaker that is amplifying itself, but 10 times worse, and on purpose. but then they started to beat some drums, and lessened up on the ear explosion noise. This band was not only the coolest and most rememberable thing I have seen in the last month, but it only consisted of 3 full on drum sets (3 drummers included) and some guy on a synth slash super electro machine that makes noises. It was awesome. After you got over the intensity of the back feed type noise, you could hear the pop rocks with soda energy level of three frigging drummers going to town on their sets like there was no tomorrow. I highly recommend you check out Aa (pronounced big 'A' little 'a') if you have the chance. It is an experience not to be missed.
http://www.myspace.com/alittlea

So I spent most of today trying to figure out the difference between the two methods of making this ridiculously complex form for a building that I am working on. You see I am currently working at an architecture firm called Asymptote Google it if interested, but I'm not gonna link to it (at least not today). Anyway. this form is a parametrically twisting curvy triangle that tapers - aka a bitch. Nothing is the same from floor to floor, not even obviously directly linked (like it could twist at a certain degree). But that's what makes it look so elegant and cool, and it keeps us all on our toes. Anyway, I got a little frustrated around 5:43pm and I picked up a book of this artist that had caught my eye before. I mainly browsed through the pictures, so I really don't know much of the concept, but somehow it is related to the artist I wrote about yesterday (Kenji Hirata). So this Brian Jungen makes these tribal masks out of nike jordans. but that's not the coolest thing. He makes skeletal structures out of plastic lawn chairs. The thing I love about it is the repetitive intricate but obvious form of product design mimicking the mechanics of organisms. Did that make any sense? What it means is I love the detail that looks robotic but also organic. Plus this whole repetition morphing thing is so hot right now, or maybe last year. I couldn't find a web page, meaning he may be a little obscure (or at least as far as Google is concerned) so check it out for yourself. This pic is a whale looking skeleton made out of plastic lawn chairs morphing in a kinda stop motion animation where freeze frame is stuck for every frame.
get it?

So off to a great start! Already one day and I neglect my job of finding somthing interesting write about. So, anyway, today I saw somthign cool in Surface magazine. There is this project called Project to Surface = artist and architect = 2D artwork goes 3D in RHINO!! yeah whatever. Its only cool because this one artist Kenji Hirata is one of the artists and he is kinda futurist meets grafitti, and now its in 3D!!! check it out.
http://www.projecttosurface.com/the_project.html