Image of the Day

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Experimental recording artist Laurie Spiegel in her NYC apartment, early 1970s.


Spiegel's 1972 track "Sediment" is featured in the film The Hunger Games (I haven't read or seen it).

She worked out “Sediment” using graph paper and a ruler to get the timing of the layers right.

“People who are in love with vintage analog now don’t understand what it was like to work with analog synths before computers, and before multitracks.”

While recording “Sediment” in her tenement apartment in Manhattan, Spiegel used a semi-modular Electrocomp 200. She recalled having to turn her refrigerator off to keep the analog synthesizer in tune.

“It was a five-room apartment running on a single 15-amp fuse,” she said. “When the refrigerator went on, half the oscillators dropped by a quarter tone…. I had to turn the refrigerator off, or it would ruin the take.”

[via Wired]

Watch the Sound

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She Builds Domes in Air is a 16mm film by Catherine Sullivan featuring Kristen McMenamy in Alexander McQueen (by Sarah Burton) SS2012 for AnOther Magazine. That was a mouthful but totally worth it.

Words and Verbs

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I don’t care about someone being intelligent; any situation between people, when they are really human with each other, produces “intelligence.”

—Susan Sontag, from the forthcoming book As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980, edited by David Rieff.

(via South Willard)

Mad to Live

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I'm still kind of shocked that anyone actually attempted this adaptation, and also surprised that it took so long. Whichever is correct, I'll definitely see it.



On the Road. Directed by Walter Salles
(The Motorcycle Diaries); out this summer.

Image of the Day

. Cover of the first Sunn O))) album The Grimm Robe Demos (1999, Hydra Head/Southern Lord). No reason, semi-random choice, just love the image.

Showing Out, Showing Out

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SHOWstudio's "NEWGEN/TEN" by Nick Knight, featuring Karlie Kloss and fashion direction by Kate Phelan, celebrates ten years of Topshop's sponsorship of the British Fashion Council's NEWGEN program. (Full credits here.)

Speaking of which – bonus:


Roxy Music "Love Is The Drug" from Siren (1975, EG)

Image of the Day

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Interior of artist Doug Aitken's house on the cover of yesterday's T Magazine.

Slideshow and totally amazing video/sound tour here.

Must be the Season

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Céline next-season inspirations poster, handed out at their FW2012 show.


Via Wallpaper* – click here for a slideshow of A/W 2012 fashion show invitations.

Something About April

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Adrian Younge presents Venice Dawn "Turn Down the Sound" from Something About April (2012, Wax Poetics).

Stream the whole album here.

Weekend

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Weekend Wolves "Karma" – video produced with public domain footage from One Got Fat, a 1963 bicycle safety film.
How weird was America?

[ via Chad 's YouTube channel ]

Photography Gets Us Out of the House

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Juergen Teller: Exposed by TJ Wilcox for Nowness.

Image of the Day

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Catherine Jansen: Page from Visual Diary of Artpark Residency, 1975 (Cyanotype on cloth: single page from book, 84 x 60 inches). From the new show Wish You Were Here: The Buffalo Avant-garde in the 1970s through July 8th at Albright Knox Gallery in Buffalo, NY.

Image of the Day

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Tauba Auerbach: The Whole Alphabet, From the Center Out, Digital, V. (2006, Gouache on paper on panel 30 x 22″) – featured in the upcoming show at MoMA Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language, May 6–August 27, 2012. More info here.

Luxury, Class and Pleasure

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Video preview of the giant new Helmut Newton show at the Grand Palais in Paris through June 17 – it's kind of shocking that this is the very first retrospective of his work in France. From the Grand Palais website:

We used to say of Yves Saint Laurent that his creations had empowered women. The same could be said of Helmut Newton, who was long intimately involved in YSL’s approach, and that was no accident. Nude or in a dinner jacket, Newton’s women are powerful, seductive and dominant - never icy but always impressive or even intimidating. They are liberated women who take full responsibility for the freedom of their bodies, timeless and unclassifiable, open to all fantasies. They are rich women, who have conquered the world and its money, and luxuriate in refinement, from evening gowns to bed. Luxe, classe et volupté could be the motto of the Newtonian woman. When Newton published A World Without Men, he formulated the visionary expression of a society in which women had gained enough power to do without men if need be.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a new film, Helmut by June, directed by Helmut's wife June Newton – a great photographer herself (pictured at right in the photo below). Go here for info.

Are You Gonna

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Dominant Legs "Hoop of Love" from Invitation (2011, Lefse)

[ h/t Chad's YouTube channel. ]

Recommended Reading

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The new S/S 2012 issue of Purple Fashion. Best issue in a while, in my opinion, and well worth the price of admission. (Click to enlarge images.)

(This Balenciaga hat/visor is (deservedly) everywhere.)

Too much good stuff to even attempt to start cataloging. Preview the entire issue here. In Seattle, find yours at Bulldog News.

Explain Things

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EMA "Marked" from Past Life Martyred Saints (2011, Souterrain Transmissions). Took me awhile to get into this album after I picked it up but I'm way into it now.

Before and After

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The 1966 Jaguar 3.8 Litre Saloon* my dad has been restoring for the past 12 years.

He turns 70 this year and I think it's the perfect self-gifted birthday present.

*Saloon is apparently the fancy English word for sedan

Shell of Light

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Isabel Marant.

Image of the Day

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Rineke Dijkstra: Still from The Buzzclub Liverpool/Mystery World, Zaandam, NL, 1996–1997 (Two-screen video projection with sound) – on view in the Dutch photographer's solo retrospective on view at SFMoMA through May 28th. I had the chance to visit when I was in town for a hot minute the other day, and granted I am a semi-fragile muhf*cker these days, but I found the show extraordinarily moving.

Got It In My Mind

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Twerps "Dreamin" (2011, Underwater Peoples)

(photo: SFMoMA, March 2012)

Ahem

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This just in from SHOWstudio:

Alongside the 2012 SHOWstudio Shop exhibition Selling Sex, SHOWstudio launches a unique project under the provocative title Fashion Fetish. Created entirely by women working in fashion - including Ruth Hogben, Lady Amanda Harlech and Daphne Guinness, Lily Donaldson, Liberty Ross, Rei Nadel, Asia Argento and Dasha Zhukova of Garage magazine - these fashion films, performances and multi-media pieces make a comment on the fusion of fashion with fetish, a contentious and provocative subject. One piece will be released each week for the duration of the Selling Sex exhibition, 22 March - 1 June 2012.

Click here (or click the image above) to visit SHOWstudio and watch the first piece, directed by Ruth Hogben and featuring Karlie Kloss.

Where Did It All Begin

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Bobby Womack, "Please Forgive My Heart,"
from The Bravest Man in the Universe (XL, forthcoming June 2012)

P.S.

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...I couldn't resist adding:

The flower room at the Ritz Paris [click to enlarge].
Photograph by Tim Walker.

Where Fashion Sits

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Photos above and immediately below are of Anja Rubik at the Ritz Paris, from a 2010 story shot by Hedi Slimane for Vogue Paris (styling by Emmanuelle Alt).

Today American Vogue posted a story from its April issue featuring a Grace Coddington-styled Kate Moss in the Spring 2012 Couture collections - also shot at the hotel, which is closing for a two-year renovation starting this year. See the story here, along with a selection of images from stories throughout the magazine's run that have used the Ritz as a backdrop.

Kate Moss in Chanel Haute Couture,
photographed by Tim Walker [click to enlarge].
Vogue, April 2012.

Image of the Day

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The new Ferrari Museum in Modena – the final design project of the great London-based firm Future Systems – built around the former offices of Enzo Ferrari.

Image via Wallpaper* – click here for more info and a slideshow.

Amongst the Buzzing of Billions

. Mainly I just like this song but it's a cool idea for a video too. When the arrows appear you can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to choose your own adventure:
Chairlift "Met Before" from Something (2012, Kanine). Video directed by Jordan Fish.

Happy Spring

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Officially, that is.

Wes Lang, Time Will Tell, 2011
(11 x 8.5 in., acrylic on paper).

One of the works produced by Lang last year, during a month-long stay at the Chateau in L.A. (all done on the hotel's stationery). The series was inspired by Martin Kippenberger's hotel drawings. See more here.

Image of the Day

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A view through the top of the Smith Tower, from a Kinfolk Magazine story shot by Kyle Johnson.

Shallow

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Beach Fossils "Shallow" from a 7" on Captured Tracks (2012).

Image of the Day

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Pages from the journals of a young Keith Haring. The Keith Haring Foundation scanned the journals featured in the Brooklyn Museum show Keith Haring: 1978–1982, the first large-scale exhibition of Haring's early work. They will post one image a day through the show's close on July 8th. Go here for more.

(As per usual, via Suspence)