I’ve never been a huge Apple fanboy. I’ve never waited in line, much less purchased an iPhone or iPad. I’ve had one or 2 iPods, and enjoyed them. However, I’ve also never owned a PC. From my first childhood computer until now, I’ve always had macs, always enjoyed the OS and the quirkiness. Jobs build Apple from a fledgling tech company to a corporate powerhouse, not once, but twice. As much as I enjoy my apple products, and am excited to see what is to come, the thing that makes Apple so successful now also makes it a worry for me. It’s the highest valued tech company in the world. It’s a corporate behemoth. It’s success is based on constant innovation, and that’s just the problem. I’ve always enjoyed Apple’s stability and ease-of-use, but as it’s sky rocketed to the forefront, it also has much more now to lose. Steve Job’s passing raises the very, very real possibility that Apple will setting into being just another tech giant. It may sound naive, but I hold out hope that Apple will maintain it’s quality, character, and intimacy. We’ll see what the future holds, but regardless, thank you Steve, for a beautiful past.

Wu Lyf is probably going to be a band you either love or hate. I can’t imagine many people falling somewhere in between because the music is so distinctive that you have to pick a side.

It’s rather difficult to describe Wu Lyf’s sound, but I’m not going to use that as an excuse.

I’ll start with lead singer Ellery Roberts’ contribution. The singing is never actually singing. I mean, I totally thought of TV on the Radio circa “Wolf Like Me,” but even those vocals are more traditionally melodic than Wu Lyf’s. It’s a kind of raspy shouting, as if Roberts lost his voice before they even began recording, yet he is still able to exert all this energy, even with a sandpaper throat. It’s tough to keep that kind of a vibe up without sounding like your vocal chords have splintered.

But the singing in Wu Lyf’s music avoids this somehow; there is this untidy, lost-soul desperation, like every word is said with the heaviest of emotions, like every word is lustful and wretched: a dream, a plea. (I apologize to Wu Lyf for this comparison, but it came to mind: Remember that scene from Titanic when Jack froze to death and Rose is trying to wake him back up but her voice is raspy and she can’t quite speak, and it’s this tragic emotional moment? It’s kind of like that, but if she had just manned up and yelled with some real gusto.)

Now, if you can focus on something other than my last simile, then listen to the music behind the vocals. It’s catchy like fire! The drums are hard-hitting, like the singing, and they go hand-in-hand with the upbeat bass line to encourage hip-shaking dancers to sweat. But the slow, drawn-out organ/piano notes provide a more sober tone to the songs. The guitar sounds distant, but the overlapping poppy riffs are warm and sweet, kind of like watching fireflies dance around in the dark. It sounds gentle and mature, serving as a total contrast to the vocals.

And that’s where Wu Lyf succeeds the most. It’s easy to write songs where all of the elements match. (See: most surf rock.) But to combine yelling and whispering, the soulful with the playful, the sweetness with the hopeless – and to do it well – now, there’s a challenge.

Don’t roll your eyes at this exclamation of originality. Comparisons can be made, of course, and the band undoubtedly nods at its personal inspirations, but Wu Lyf still has its own sound. And in a world where you hear a song in a restaurant and can’t tell if it’s this indie-rock band or that one, Wu Lyf really stands out. Impressive.

The Tree of Life has received a plethora of mixed reviews from critics and theater-goes alike, from absolutely love and breathtaking awe, to just walking out of the theater 20 minutes in as lightly highlighted in this NPR story. I found the film not to be baffling or incomprehensible, just quiet. The typical audiences need for hand-holding, linear narrative, and typical story arch are the grounds for the majority of the negative or bewildered feedback, a smaller portion of self-described conceptual aficionados have stated it’s “too easy”.

Regardless of the social push-pull, The Tree of Life is undeniably beautiful, often breathtaking, and an immensely satisfying meditation on life, family, and nature. Visually, the cinematography and art direction are softly beautiful. Together they bring about an authentic beauty in a way one can translate to looking at the every-day world around us with a more graceful lens. The screenplay is sparse, but impact-full. The film often says more with silence than words, a respite from our current societies media landscape. Sonically, while the film is often immensely silent, providing huge emotional vistas, the overall soundtrack is beautiful, and highlights the imagery when necessary and advantageous. I found myself often concentrating deeply on the images passing on the screen, and my heart rate adjusting to the intensity of the music. Even now, as I write this review, I listen to bits from the soundtrack to relive my bodies emotional memory as I write. Story-wise, many might find it light (not in subject, but in content), but I found the profundity of the visual experience, mixed with the deeply emotive family narrative to whet my appetite on content grounds. As the beautiful pictures move by though, one is always aware of the deep swell of the presence of death, as both a theme and reality, weaves its way in and out of the film.

Final word? Go see the movie, it’s immensely beautiful. One of the most beautiful, graceful 2.5 hours you can spend in front of screen. It probably won’t change your life, but that’s not what the appreciation of beauty needs to be about.

Asif Khan’s installation for Design Miami/ Basel 2011, W Hotels Designer of the Future award was entitled “Cloud”.

The clouds simple beauty and childish accessibility made it an instant hit to the visitors and press at the show. Built by Mr. Khan and Pernilla Ohrstedt, it’s base concept, the idea of openness in architecture, and the focus and purpose of the built environment to facilitate interaction between people, was gracefully on display at the show floor.

“Cloud” stems from a simple, elegant machine; but gains conceptual complexity very quickly when the viewer considers it’s purpose as a concept-model for the future of architecture. The idea of flexible, easily produceable, playful structures opens up the possibilities of constantly creating, re-definining, and re-engaging with space. This fluidity in structure, as in concept, provides the base-line for an “open” conversation about the direction architecture will take, and the role of structures, and designing them, in our lives. This young and fluid place Asif Khan and his firm are currently in give the necessary vitality to bring architecture’s future to the next level.

 

 

 

Photos by James Harris
Provided by Design Miami/ Basel AG

To see a video of Cloud please follow this link : http://vimeo.com/25500203
For more please visit www.asif-khan.com

studio juju is a fresh development in the design world. The light simplicity of their forms acknowledge contemporary Asian aesthetics without falling for faux minimalism. Not Japanese, not Scandinavian; their design balance finds a simple, elegant, and disarming place.  Their success at Salone in Milan brought them to Design Miami/ Basel 2011, at which point their uniquely clean and readily produce-able works stood out in their mature, simple ever-present space.

Presenting [ A Tent ] at Design Miami/ Basel this year, Studio Juju provided one of 3 radically different perspectives on the concept point of “Conversation”, presented as the prompt for the Designer of the Future/ award for this years show. Juju’s approach to this promp involved developing space, and opening up the negative space of a structure as a vessel for meeting.

Their studio, launched in 2009 in Singapore has since risen to prominence among young industrial designers at Salone over the past 3 years, and their products have begun to be put into production.  Juju means “to give and take” in Japanese, and the phrase has found itself as a central concept between Timo Wong and Priscilla Lui’s on-going design development. The youthful freshness that their clean designs seem to easily translate into usable, pleasing objects, which are fully ready for market and home. Their hands-on approach to prototyping and development leads to interesting and unexpected outcomes, constantly re-inventing fresh designs, which will propel studio juju into a curious, and bright career.

 

Photos by James Harris
Provided by Design Miami/

 

Wikitaube Sabra Research continues. Being abroad and unsettled for now twenty three days it is hard to stay wild-eyed. Then there’s shell shock from the mortar attack at Kibbutz Ein HaShlosha that still reigns my excitement as the new things I see appear banal. Tada, my compatriot had to return to the States for knee surgery while his travel insurance is still active. I am now solo.

One thing I have learned In Israel: enjoy the “Sabbath,” (in a secular sense – the idea of not working at all.) So I paint watercolors and close my eyes to nothingness.

 

This past week, before Tada’s departure, we met with Ido Barel, chair of the Fine Art department at the Bezalel Academy. Ido has the little black book of contemporary artist in Israel. He was able to provide ample artist and their cell numbers that make work the either references the Sabra (prickly Pear Cactus) or represent it someway or another. David Reeb and the late Asim Abu Shakra, are two that have imaged in more dimensional ways than the Israeli slogan, “tough on the outside but sweet inside.” Reeb address the photographic image of the conflict, many times representing the players in the fight— the IDF solider and the stone throwing youth. Dark poetics of suffering through separation are loaded into Abu Shakar’s image of the potted cactus on a windowsill. We ended the week by filming an interview with Etti Arman of the Art Center at

Gavit Haviva. Etti has developed a photography course, Through Others Eyes that evenly matches Arab and Jewish students and women. They are taught the technical aspects of photography to mediate the cultural “differences and similarities,” having the participants enter each of the others homes to photograph. This project exercises the formal aspect of the Wall being composed of two forces that in division become Other. When differences are examined, celebrated, or even dissolved so too is the boundary.

Being in the Holy-Land during Passover or Pesach (He passed over) I had to attend my first Seder. As with all of this I intend to project a secular or  at least naive observation, to look at what actually happens en lieu of any scriptural rational. My only prior experience is from Larry David’s follys in Curb Your Enthusiasm. For the observant Jews like my friends Carisle and Uriel (Kibbutznik from En HaShlosha) preparing for Pesach is an intensive extermination of bread or Chametz and an OCD cleaning of the house.

A Spring Cleaning Ritual. There are many complicated rules that one must abide in removing Chametz. Any object or product in the home that is made of grain and/or is fermented or capable of fermentation is out the door. This is literal. A yearly ritual where you swap out old clothing, furniture, and clutter with new ones. It is tossed to the curb. Bread is donated to the gentiles, fed to the birds in the city center, or burnt at the street corner fire pits set up for the occasion. Those you are in the business of chametz, bread or liquor companies, or if one has chametz that they want to keep, they have the option of symbolically selling it to a non-Jew. You can keep your Whiskey, but you must enter a contract overseen by a rabbi to sell the chametz. However when you “sell” you are actually donating a sum to the rabbi or synagogue for providing the service. There are even Jewish owned industrial bakeries that are “sold” to a non jew for the week.

 

In signing the contract it is important to remember to lift our pen straight up after you sign your name. This makes it binding. Sold chametz, goes into a closet staying out of sight until the end of Pesach when contract voided.

My hosts, Lundi and David, invited me to a Sedar at their neighbors house, Mikal and Yaffa. Their children and their children’s children attended, twelve of us in all. The table was beautifully set with a fresh floral center piece, fine gilded china and silverware. The first dinner of Pesach begins with the blessing of the matzoh and hiding a portion of it for the children to find later on. When a child finds the hidden Motzah, they negotiate with the head of the household for an exchange. The meal continues with the blessing of the morar, or bitters vegetables, we ate a leaf of romaine lettuce and a slice of raw horseradish. Then a glass of wine. Then the story of the Exodus, the leaving of Judea from famine to take refuge in the fertile Nile plains to be taken as slaves. We know the story— the wrath of G-d upon the Egyptians with the ten plagues, parting of the sea and the return and eventual exile etc. The most significant of plagues being the death of the first born child, that the Jew where spared.

 

In the recounting of the events, the phrase “it would have sufficed us!” is repeated in recounting the events, humbled before Gee Oh Dee. For me, the gefiletfish would not have sufficed. A Seder tests the taste buds, you drink wine, clear the palate with horseradish, eat gelatinous cold fish, more wine, delicate Nile Perch stewed in vegetables, savory baked lamb quarters that just melt, wine, a blessing, wine again, and ending the meal we had coffee and a fruit compote.  One can only be sufficed after a Seder. The moral being that when the goings good — you feast and remember the past when the Jewish flight only had time to cook the bread for eight-teen minutes.
Coming soon, I travel to Kibbutz Yir’on on the border of Lebanon to interview the “Lone Soldiers of the Israeli Defense Force.”

Something that has been of interest to me lately is the possibility that you could be creatively exploring while having any type of other job. Supposedly, limitations can bring about breakthroughs. If  I want to quote Jaques Vidal, “Nothing is good unless it has rules” = you have to force yourself to make something better by giving yourself limitations.

As of late, I’ve been tinkering with Google Sketch-up, a free CAD-based program intended to help people design/construct spaces. Sketch-up also allows the used to save pdf files of their work, or show an animated walk-through of the constructed space.

It was more because I wanted something that wasn’t Photoshop that could help me build collages when I had down time at my current position. I wanted something that would allow me to draw, add color and shapes, and move the pieces through a 2-dimensional space. Without the intention of actually wanting a 3-dimensional space, I found that this seeming constraint turned into a blessing; I could rotate my collages through 3-dimensional space, forcing a different perspective and radical ideology change of how collages could be built and seen.

However, one can always sketch at work the real way. Or, trill, which I just recently learned was the combination of “true” and “real”.

Sam Thurman shares his recent work boredom sketches as potential comics in a style that slightly recalls the beloved cartoon series “Adventure Time”:

 

I almost wish the entire comic would take place on yellow lined paper, having the inhabiting spaces based on the lines. Dammit Sam, get drawing.

Just one word of advice : If you’re starting at a new job, make sure that the person hiring/firing doesn’t have to ask what you’re doing. Which may mean your job isn’t flexible enough and you need to find a new one, or you weren’t a careful employee and shame on you for trying to be creative at work.

“More tea, sir?”

Peter looked at the little white mug in his hands, which was nearly drained of its (probably now cold) dark liquid. “Ehm, no thanks,” he said. He picked up his newspaper – The Weekly Indeterminate – and left a few coins to tip the kind (but overly formal) waiter.

Peter strolled down the avenue, toward the Registrar. The paper was crumpled beneath his arm, displaying bits of headlines about this or that – the latest football match, or the local gangs and their efforts to recruit neutrals into a future of red or blue, etc. Peter tossed it in the garbage as he approached the stale, concrete building. On the door was a sign: “Closed for carpet cleaning.”

“Shit,” Peter grumbled. He peeked inside the tall glass doors and saw the girl who worked at the Registrar on Mondays – Mary. He knocked. She looked up, ready to shoo away the newcomer. Upon seeing Peter’s face, vaguely smiling (but mostly squinting), she sighed, stood up, and walked to the door.

“We’re closed,” she said, as she opened the door slightly, peering through the crack.

“I know, but I’m just dying to find out. Could you please take a look at my file – see if they’ve decided?”

She opened her mouth as if about to protest, but cut herself short when she noticed Peter’s furrowed brow; he had a look of pitiful curiosity. “Fine,” she said. “But just this once. What’s the name?”

“Shaw. Peter Shaw. DOD, March 5th, 2011.”

Mary closed the door and walked to a large file cabinet, opened one of the drawers, and began thumbing through the folders. She pulled one out and carried it back to where Peter stood waiting. Just before opening the door again, she froze. Licked her finger. Turned the page. A look of confusion fell upon her face.

Peter, suddenly worried, tried to catch her attention. He leaned over until his face was low enough to be in her line of sight. He smiled again, and waved awkwardly. She opened the door.

“Sorry,” Mary said. “I just…haven’t seen this in years. I’m trying to, ehm…understand it.”

“What – you haven’t seen what? Something unusual in my file?”

There was silence as Mary read the document again. Then, she began: “Well, let me try to explain. These things are usually pretty straight-forward. There’s a name, and next to it is one of three codes. H1 means Heaven. V54 means Hell. And a dash means it’s undecided, which is why you’d be here in Purgatory. But yours…hmm.” She glanced through the pages again, looking for more information, a clue.

“What? What’s it say next to my name?”

“Ehm, it says ‘RR’. Weird.”

“What does RR mean? Is that bad?” Peter said impatiently.

“It means Ready Reserve. But we don’t use that code anymore – haven’t since the late ’90s. Everything has been so black and white with us since God cracked down on entrance to Heaven. Used to be kind of easy. Standards were lowered for this ‘No soul left behind’ bullshit. Became too easy to get in.” She sighed. “So now, if you don’t cut it, you’re V54. Done and done.”

“Right, but what does RR mean – I mean, for me?”

She looked at Peter with a sort of glint in her eyes. “It means you’re staying right here. In Purgatory. You don’t fully qualify for either. You were mostly good, but not good enough.” She curled her hand around her mouth. “Between you and me, God’s gotten too picky. He rejects smokers now, but you should see pictures of him in his 20s. Such a chain-smoker.”

Peter blinked a few times, a bit dumbfounded. “Wait, what? So…so I’m supposed to do what for the rest of eternity? Live in absolute-fucking-boring neutrality?”

“No, not at all!” Mary protested. “You get to be you. You can do whatever it was that made you an RR. A little bit of good, a little bit of bad. I mean, this really is a thing of the past. You’re lucky.”

“So I can – what? – smoke weed and drink booze? Sleep with a woman out of wedlock? But no murder?” he asked, semi-sarcastically.

“Basically. I guess. I’m not even sure of all the rules, to tell you the truth. I’d take it easy at first. No stealing, no misdemeanors. After you’ve settled yourself, you can probably explore a bit more. You’ll get the hang of it.”

Peter furrowed his brow once more. “How do you know all of this?”

She took a deep breath. “My parents were some of the last Ready Reserves before the crackdown. They fought for me to be here, too. I’m not on the record as a Reserve; it’s kind of hush-hush.”

“So – you too? No kidding.” His face softened as he took the news in. He looked from the ground to Mary’s face, catching her eyes and the light held therein. “Would you, ehm, like to get some tea? I have so many questions for you.”

Mary paused, and looked at her watch. “Hm, sure. Let me grab my things. But, instead of tea, let’s get a beer. I know of a great place, just a few blocks away.”

She ran inside and gathered her purse and a jacket. As they rounded the corner of the Registrar, she reached into the pocket of her coat and pulled out a pack of Marlboro’s.

She looked up at Peter. “Got a light?”

For the past week I’ve traveled across Israel with my producer and friend Tadachika Kono. We’re in this land of ancient history mashed with modern settlements only as old as my parents generation, to seek out any murmurs of the Prickly Pear Cactus or the Sabra in Israeli and Arab culture. This plant’s peculiar narrative exist in the poetic position of being a symbolic wall and bridge in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

When I first learned that the Americas native prickly pear cactus had emigrated to Israel (at the time it was called Palestine or the Ottoman Empire) and had become a contemporary symbol for the Natural born Israeli while simultaneously being a facet in Arab culture, I thought, “How does a cactus get mixed up in a complex struggle over sovereignty?” The irony of the US involvement didn’t escape me either or the interesting fact the the cactus was brought to the region for the blood of the cochineal mite, to make the blood red carmine. The parallels also connect the emigration of the plant to the region by the Spanish dye barons approximately one hundred years before the First Aliyah of Jewish Immigrants.

Neither one of us are Jewish or have a more than humanist stance on the situation between Israel and Palestine. We have come to talk to both about how the cactus has become a part of culture.

My proposition is that there are direct links to culture production and the language that arises from or is rooted in agriculture. The way we relate to our environment via language is referential to the formal aspects of the object before us. The Arabic for word for the cactus Sabr means patience, however, when used in the context of the cactus, Sabr means “to approach something carefully,” a Jordanian clothing merchant in New Orleans explained to me before i left for Israel. A beautiful idea for conflict resolution. The word predates the emigration of the cactus is the 1780′s. When the Arab Jews or Old Yishuv, those who lived in Israel and where not part of the Diaspora, were first called the Sabra it was from the Arabs making note of there defensive nature, a mechanism of of persecution and exhile that would continue to at least the end of WWII or at least the acceptance of Israel as a Nation in 1948.

Our first week we traveled as touristas renting a Nissan TIIDA, which soon became known as our stubborn camel. We stayed in Tel Aviv for a day finding it to be a mini Miami and not the New York of the Middle East as it claims. Tel-Aviv is a beach town. A place where they rent surfboards to tourist but have an average Mediterranean wave height of 1.5 meters. The next day we drove south to Ashkelon, an industrial beach town and sister city to Baltimore Maryland. Here we found a curious garbage heap that backs up to a mule stable. A large massing of Sabras caught our eye among the litter. We observed that grown in mass the cactus paddles become waste scattering along the ground, mingling with the urban street trash and rotting. A stink of rotting cactus leaves calling for insects and ferrel critters nibble enough to feed beneath a sabra bush. I constructed an intervention of attaching a banana peel to sabra among the waste. From Ashkelon we drove through the Negev, the desert region in the south of Israel. This country as a whole has the most dynamic landscape per square km. From the sandy plains of Ashkelon we progressed to rolling dunes of desert vegetation. For about 50km we cruised through desert hill and roads marked, “DANGEROUS CURVES.” Then at the apex of one of these curves, the Negev opens into a deep continental shelf, as if we approached an ocean that existed before time now a dried painted desert. The beauty was stunning. We thought we would end our night in Eilat our destination on the Red Sea. We thought we would find an ancient port city and feast on seafood. Eilat is none of this. It is place of NO history, only sixty years old. Eilat is a resort town, a micro Las Vegas for the Israeli and Ukrainian vacationeer. Beautiful landscape is just the stuff between deaf-plan urban freaks of capitalism. Eilat is where we can imagine Pinocchio on Pleasure Island.

Leaving Eilat was easy. We drove north to the Dead Sea. Upon exiting Eilat you pass by farms of palm trees. Acres and acres of industrial oasis planted in rows. The southern portions of the Dead Sea are fascinating salt ponds and ugly and brutal industry mining and loading the salt harvest. When we reached the shores of the Dead Sea I performed an action with banana peels flung from salt rocks while I carefully walked barefoot on sharp crystals. In having the luxury of travel it is wi-fi that is essential and rare and not water or food. We had already blew our budget for the first two weeks and had to find a safe place to sleep in our camel, TIIDA. We did this in Arad, and again the next night in Park Britania south of Be’et Shmesh.

En Hashlosha, as Uerial, the thirty one year old Kibbutznik explained is on the frontier. He told us that there are three old ways of claiming land: build a house, till the land, or plant a tree. He told us that the kibbutzim are strategically located en masse along the frontier of contested lands. Like I said En Hashlosha is too close to Gaza. We were 2km to the east of central Gaza Strip. This following experience was too real. We spent a beautiful Friday evening and Sabbath with Carlyese and Uriel, walking around the farms and residencies. The Kibbutznik live relatively quite and normal lives. They are close to their work and love the land they till.

There were a couple of sevel adom (red alerts) that came over the loud speakers, warnings of missile fire detected over head. When this happens the residents rush into their IDF built above-ground shelters. Waiting in a bomb shelter with new acquaintances makes for great conversation. This and being trapped in an elevator deserve an expression for getting to know someone quickly.  “We became Friends as though we were stuck in the same bomb shelter.” After about 30min we would get an SMS from the IDF notifying us that it was safe to leave the shelter. We mostly would hear bombs in the distance at least a kilometer away from the homes.

This changed sharply Saturday evening when we where gathering at our host home to say good bye. A family of the kibbutz was visiting and we were being introduced when a mortar shell exploded outside the building less than twenty meters away. The building shook, and instinctually everybody headed for the bomb shelter. Once inside we heard two more close blast. A woman with us was hysterical because her husband was outside moving the car nearby where the shell had landed. He later joined us. It was only minutes after that the Israeli Kibbutznik began to make jokes about the bombing, singing songs with the children and sharing cookies. A calming solution to terror- humor and play. After about thirty minutes in the shelter the men ventured outside to see where the shell had landed and what was the damage. I was concerned that the mortar could possibly hit the same place, and what a devious time it would be to strike a second time, as we take the bait. It was lucky that no one was injured. The shrapnel is intense. It simply rips through the objects around it. I pulled a piece out of the concrete wall of our neighbors building that was embedded two inches deep. The whole wall facing the blast was pitted with shrapnel. Some of it went through our neighbors window lodging  itself in a encyclopedia. …Poetically piecing an image of a comet.

What I’ve taken from this experience are stories I wont tell my mother about, and a perspective of the Sabra as a idea that thick skin and spines are softened by humor and normalcy. The research will continue in Jerusalem.

 

Art International Radio is a small internet radio station broadcasting from the 13th-story penthouse clock-tower of an old lower Manhattan building. Brought to life by Alanna Heiss, the same woman who developed PS1, Art International Radio strives to promote the work of emerging and established artists, discuss old and new ideas floating around the art world, and host exhibitions. The original Clock-Tower Gallery (same space) was opened in 1972, and the radio station was opened as a response to the lack of access allowed about the 9/11 attacks. The station often has engaging radio shows and a quality radio/podcast archive. Take some time to check it out