The folks over at American Photo Magazine named Theme’s Issue 8 Fashion Story, Tropic of Imaginary Romance shot by Dietmar Busse, as one of their Top 10 Fashion Stories of the year. Dietmar also shot our Issue 13 cover with Terrence Koh. In this special issue, we’re in good company with publications like Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, V, and Elle magazines, and photographers Richard Avedon, Steven Meisel, Thierry Le Goues, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadini, Mario Testino, and Patrick Demarchelier.

Says American Photo
Why We Love It: These pictures present themselves as paintings first, and only with a double take reveal themselves as the beautifully lit, intricately planned fashion photographs that they are. With these careful black-and-white tableaux, Dietmar Busse dialogues with artists such as Henri Rousseau and Paul Gaugin, simultaneoulsy highlighting and subverting the colonial overtones of their images.

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Still from Many Birthdays

Falling cliffs, dancing skyscrapers, and a hunter who receives hole-punched enlightenment from Shiva; Eric Power’s stop-motion animation isn’t the primitive Gumby clay-jerks of earlier times. Austin-based Power, who runs his own production company called Clear Production, constructs painstakingly detailed, vivid, and bustling animation with a mesmerizing blend of stop-motion, claymation, digital art, painted newspaper, origami, and ink drawings. Two lovers made out of yarn tangle each other up and roll into a yarn ball; a black and white city is spontaneously transformed into a vividly-colored world by two flying bicycles. Power’s weird-crazy-awesome animation is bound to leave you asking two questions: “How’d he do that?” and “How long did it take?”

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You’ve probably heard of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) by now, with enough news media predicting the end of the world and what not. The scientists at CERN get the last laugh though - and they’ve released a youtube rap video to celebrate the start of the experiments. Yo! Raps, CERN!

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Everyone needs something to look forward to by the middle of the work week. Phonte, the North Carolina MC of Little Brother fame, and Brooklyn’s own DJ Brainchild have given us a great excuse to be excited about sitting inside at our computers on a beautiful Wednesday aka Hump Day!

Gordon Gartrell Radio (do you remember that Cosby Show episode where Theo tries to get that $95 Gordon Gartrell shirt?) is a hilarious mix of Phonte dishing on everything from current events to relationship advice and Brainchild’s soulful mix of hip-hop and ‘80s classics. The duo also drops random tracks from Phonte’s other projects including the newest jerri-curled ‘80s tribute from Detroit producer Zo and Phonte’s alter-ego Tigallo and selects from the next Foreign Exchange album (Nicolay producing and Phonte laying down the verses). Thanks to J for the link!

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Spring 2008 saw the launch of the world’s most environmentally responsible and socially positive T-shirt, ”Luxury Redefined.” The brainchild of strategy and design consultancy better thinking ltd began the quest for the “T-shirt of the future” in October 2005 in partnership with iconic British brand John Smedley. The result: organic, fair-trade Peruvian cotton from naturally-irrigated farms is shipped, un-dyed, to John Smedley’s Derbyshire mill, which is entirely powered by renewable energy. To say the premium-quality T-shirts take sustainability to higher levels that most eco-conscious designers is an understatement; indeed, the company spent two years on extensive global research and development before making a single sample. With painstaking procedures and careful thought, better thinking ltd has raised the bar and created the perfect T-shirt. 

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Ralf Daab is an art book publisher with a focus on finding young, up-and-coming talent for a worldwide audience. Along with the artist Feyyaz, Daab started his publishing and distribution house in November of 2003, transforming his last name into a convenient acronym for “design art architecture books.” His unique collection of design, architecture, and photography books can now be found in bookshops, furniture stores, clothing boutiques, and design shops worldwide; the Germany-based company goes way beyond the traditional markets of New York and London, spanning distribution throughout 120 countries and printing in five languages. And daab produces more than mere books--in addition to edaab, a web community for creative people, there are two daab club cds out, with Volume 3 available in June. This summer, look for daab releases from three artists--Argentinian photographer Fabio Borquez’s presentation of nude females, entitled Chicas, and self-titled monographs from both Japanese freelance designer Nendo Oki Sato and Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola. 

TAGS: Reviews, Book Reviews, Things We Like

A veteran of the dot-com boom of the ‘90s, ex-Rotten Tomatoes co-founder Patrick Lee is no stranger to successful startups; so it’s no surprise that the UC Berkeley grad is the mastermind and CEO behind the artist-driven community website AliveNotDead.com. After moving to Hong Kong in January 2007, Lee noticed there was no artistic platform for Hong Kong artists/fans to sound off on; to plug the gap and bring the artistic community together, he launched AliveNotDead.com in April 2007 (along with some ex-Rotten Tomatoes team members). Post-launch, the readership grew quickly and globally; up next for the site, says Lee, will be “more events and promotion all over Asia, and after that, THE WORLD!” With the support of international heavyweights like Daniel Wu, Jet Li, and Kelly Hu, you can bet it won’t be long before we’re all “alivenotdead.”

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Migration / Part 01 / London / By Hellovon from Hellovon on Vimeo.

Migration will take place in two parts, in two major cities in two months. A flock of abstracted birds will first be installed on the Truman Brewery, London in late August. In September the birds will reappear in New York flocking towards the billboard on the side of the Espeis Gallery in Williamsburg - the project inheriting the migrational nature of it’s content.
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The first half of the project can now be seen on a billboard at The Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London.
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The second billboard will go up in at the Espeis Gallery in New York next week.
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Check out more of Von’s work on his website, www.hellovon.com

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The Masdar Initiative is an ambitious new project to build a walled city within Abu Dhabi with renewable technologies, in hopes of achieving a carbon neutral, zero waste community. Master-planned by London-based architects Foster + Partners and driven by the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, the six-square-kilometer development, initiated in 2006, is expected to be complete by 2010. Strategically located next to Abu Dhabi’s international airport, Masdar will be linked through roads, railways and public transport routes, while the city itself will remain car-free to maintain its carbon neutral ecology. Seeking to put all transport points within 150 meters of each other, the shaded, compact network of streets will encourage a pedestrian-friendly environment; and citizens in a hurry can avail themselves of an electric, driverless rapid transport system. Further plans include a university, The Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, and the headquarters of the Future Energy Company. “The environmental ambitions of the Masdar Initiative are a world first,” says Norman Foster, and promises to set a blueprint for sustainable cities in the future. With expansion carefully planned, the surrounding land will contain wind and photovoltaic farms, desalination, waste recycling, research fields, and plantations, so that the city is entirely self-sustaining. Now that’s living in the future.

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iHologram - iPhone application from David OReilly on Vimeo.

This is an amazing 3D simulation app for iPhone by David O’Reilly. Not the chairman of the Chevron Corporation David O’Reilly, but the filmmaker and founder of the Centre for the Advancement of Animation. Check out his site here: http://www.davidoreilly.com

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