This is old but I miss watching this in Pratt cafeteria after class.

Warning: NSFW

http://www.newsyesterday.com/

Why does everything look cooler in Japan? 

McDonalds recently launched two Japanese concept restaurants in Shibuya and Omotesando called Quarter Pounder. As expected, or not expected, the place is totally amazingly on-point. The super simple menu is limted to a Quarter Pounder, Double Quarter Pounder, fries and drinks. That’s it.

Curious why they would open a restaurant that only sells Quarter Pounders? According to Business Week, it all comes down to the grill. “McDonald’s has sold its Quarter Pounder in the U.S. since the early 1970s. But until a few weeks ago there was only one place in Japan where you could get one: in Kumamoto prefecture, on the southern island of Kyushu. Former McDonald’s officials say the fast-food chain’s outlets in Japan lacked the proper grill to churn out the burgers in big quantities.” There you have it.

http://acontinuouslean.com/2008/11/21/its-official/
Official website: http://www.quarter-pounder.net/

:phunk studio’s new universal theme park

:phunk studio explores deeper into the creation of their own imaginary universe to build a new globalised theme park of our inner world. The multi-media collection of artworks collectively illustrates a dysfunctional tale of an apocalyptic society where good and evil co-exist. It is a world inhabited by both man and god with its own contradicting system of universal truism and values. :phunk studio has infused its own unique visual language, iconography and wit to create an urban mythological tale informed by social satire and popular culture. It reflects the collective’s multi-cultural identity, background and environment. :phunk studio has developed an original illustration technique that is inspired by the halftone screen and shading techniques of comic books and manga to illustrate this ‘Universe’. It is an evolving visual system that seamlessly references and reinterprets their diverse influences such as traditional Chinese philosophy, craft and folklore, Hong Kong pulp fiction, Japanese manga and otaku subculture, Western popular culture, art and design movements into the creation of a universe populated by its own world of creatures, objects, people, ideologies, buildings, landscapes, cities, and natural forces.

http://phunkstudio.com/
http://www.artseasonsgallery.com/

Harvey James

more stuff here

I know this is kinda old, but i think its value is timeless. It kind of applies to some of us now.
Keep looking, don’t settle.

Set up in 1955, the Shanghai Watch Factory has produced over 120 million watches, which have been worn by luminaries such as Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Zhou Enlai. With Wieden + Kennedy  Shanghai and multi-discipline creative practice Jellymon, it has produced 5 fresh designs, adding bold silver and gold and a modern Chinese attitude to a watch that has been resurrected from the archives. On the back of the watch you’ll find the Chinese characters 老乱 (Pronounced “Lao Leow”) which translate literally in Mandarin as “Old Disorder” and Shanghainese slang roughly as “Fucking Cool”.

via

Art with Sound, is a cross-disciplinary collaboration between designers and musicians from Japan and Singapore. The exhibition brings together the complexities of the two disciplines, both innate and compelling to each other. The result will be an installation and 10 LP-sized albums, each with the designer’s artwork and musician’s piece.
Moreover, the video installation work is newly exhibited in this exhibition.

The theme(s) of this project are:
1) Tradition & Modernity
2) Influence & Change
3) Monochromatic

Art with Soundは、
日本とシンガポールのアーティスト10組が、グラフィックとサウンドをひとつにするというコラボレーション作品のエキシビション。2つの表現が影響を受け合いながら複雑に絡み合い、グラフィックそしてサウンドを変化させます。展示は、それぞれデザイナーのグラフィックとミュージシャンのサウンドのインスタレーション10作品と、10枚のLPサイズのCD作品がリリース。

また、この東京でのエキシビションでは、新たにビデオインスタレーション作品が展示されます。

プロジェクトテーマ：
1) 伝統と現代性
2) 影響と変化
3) モノクローム

–
FEATURING

JAPAN:

artless + noiselessly
Adapter + The Samos
Merry + Leo Sato
Raku-gaki + Soothe
Tycoon Graphics + Merce Death

Singapore:

4femmes + Fugu.san
Djohan + Fezz
Phunk studio + Victor Low (The Observatory)
SILNT + MUON
Steve Lawler + AntiGravityChocolate

VIDEO INSTALLATION:
Futurismo Zugakousaku + MUON

http://www.alt-space.jp/
http://www.dualcitysessions.com/

Urban Outfitters is opening a new experimental concept store called Space15Twenty

A mix of shopping, art gallery, performance space, flea market, and cafe, it kind of sounds too good to be true. With vintage goods from New York’s What Comes Around Goes Around, books galore from Hennessey & Ingalls, and snacks from Philly-based Snack Bar

To Everyone:

Observing the surroundings from different points of view can change the perception of the reality.
Among the endless possible points of view, we can find the one more near to the beauty: that is to make art.
Why should everybody make art?
To seek for the beautiful in the daily things it undoubtedly helps us to…live better.” - Serra Glia

When All Else Fails:

“We’re in a particularly fallow period. Audiences regard the arts as essentially trivial and decorative. When audiences don’t demand much from artists, that doesn’t mean they quit working. It means they start talking to themselves.” - Paul Schrader, 1998

(From recent readings, forgot where sorry.)

这世间美丽却也残酷的一切，

总是来去如朝雾，亦如闪电，

于是我开始相信爱和自由，只存在于惊鸿一瞥间。

All things beautiful but cruel in the world

Always come and go as morning dew and lightening as well

Then I started to believe that love and freedom only exist in a glimpse

— Maleonn

http://www.maleonn.com/v2/

It’s been said that K-Guy is next in line for the street art crown. Approaching fast on Banksy’s heels, the UK based artist has produced a series dubbed the “Sleep Easy Family Bank”. Riffing off the idea that keeping money under your mattress is safer than keeping it in a bank, K-Guy painted and placed several of his “personal banks” around London. The series consists of real mattresses of varying sizes with owner’s names and assorted bank marketing slogans stenciled on the surface.

http://www.k-guy.co.uk/
http://graffoto1.blogspot.com/2008/11/k-guy-under-mattress-banking.html

(She used to be my professor at Pratt.)

try this http://www.foddy.net/Athletics.html

View Larger Map
Sampsonia Way, Pittsburgh
On May 3rd 2008, artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley invited the Google Inc. Street View team and residents of Pittsburghs Northside to collaborate on a series of tableaux along Sampsonia Way. Neighbors, and other participants from around the city, staged scenes ranging from a parade and a marathon, to a garage band practice, a seventeenth century sword fight, a heroic rescue and much more…

the making of

http://www.mmparis.com/mm_posters.pdf

»No Ghost Just a Shell« was initiated by Philippe Parreno and Pierre Huyghe in 1999. They acquired the copyright for a figure called ‘Annlee’ and her original image from the Japanese agency »Kworks«, which develops figures (almost actors) for cartoons, comic strips, advertising and video games of the booming Japanese Manga industry. ‘Annlee’ was a cheap model: the price of a Manga figure relates to the complexity of its character traits and thus its ability to adapt to a story-line and ’survive’ several episodes. ‘Annlee’ had no particular qualities, and so she would have disappeared from the scene very quickly. “True heroes are rare and extremely expensive …” (Parreno) Buying ‘Annlee’ rescued her from an industry that had condemned her to death.

http://www.noghostjustashell.com/