Since being voted a Top 10 VJ Worldwide by DJ Mag, illustrator Shantell Martin has been taking her style of PPP (pen – paper – projector) in a continuous line around the world. But what’s a VJ some of you might be asking? Put simply, it’s the person in the club providing the visuals to the music.

More people are getting used to having visuals in the background at clubs and events, but Martin wants to bring them up and into the foreground. As she says, “I want to take the VJ out from behind the scenes and put them slap bang in the middle of the event . . . in the middle of the clubbers . . . in the middle of the action. I want to make work that is more and more interactive. I want the viewer – the party goer, the DJ’s, the bands – to have some kind of immediate influence or contribution to my live visuals.”

A new concept Martin has been working on – ‘Hidden Ora’ – is one way of doing this. Originally it was planned to be a one off project, “but I really enjoyed it and the audience loved it too, so it will live on.” So what is it? “Well, I ask a person to stand in front of a large projector screen for four minutes each, while I capture their moving Hidden Ora. To do this I connect my computer to the projector, open up the drawing software, plug in my Wacom tablet, paint the background black, and then I’m ready to go. For four minutes I draw what I feel from that person. I compose their Hidden Ora.”

The strong connection she forms between her work and the immediate environment instantly makes the audience a part of her work. Martin films and photographs the process sending all participants their Hidden Ora photo after. This gives those that participated something very personal, and individual, to keep from the experience.

But even if she isn’t expressing an audience member’s Hidden Ora, she’s always connecting with them in some other way. “If a friend walks into the venue I can write their name up on the big projector screens, if people are dancing in a club and swinging their arms around in the air I can draw lassoes around them, and if people start to interact with my drawings on the projector screen (following the pen line . . . trying to catch different shapes and characters) I can instantly play along with them.”

While it’s more common to see visuals for music now, it’s rarely the other way around. In the future, Martin wants music and visuals to be more spontaneous and free, synchronously working together. She’s forming a group right now – that when they play live – will have music and visuals feeding and pushing each other back and forth . . . forth and back . . . creating a unique atmosphere with a narrative kind of ping pong.

And to aspiring VJ’s out there who think it’s all about complicated software and expensive hardware, Martin offers this advice. “You only need to be visual. Artists, illustrators, poets . . . anybody who has a talent at creating visually and has a love for music can potentially do it, and are starting to. The doors are now wide open.”

Photographs courtesy of Shantell Martin. Her videos can be viewed here.

This is a post by David Report contributor Kristina Dryza.

Andra bloggar om: vj, tokyo, japan, shantell martin

The new V model from Swedish bicycle producer Skeppshult is a faceted bike with small wheels and great personality. It’s designed by Swedish Björn Dahlström.

It’s a practical bike for the short transports. Where do you put your computer, the bread and last but not least, where do you put your helmet when you are leaving the bike? These are questions that where taking care of when Björn Dahlström developed the V model and designed all the accessories like boxes, bags, parcel carriers and baskets. All the accessories are made to be attached conveniently on the frame of the bike.

You can choose your favourite colour like graphic white or black or a splashing red, yellow or green. I’m really happy every time I find a new smart bike. The new V by Björn Dahlström makes urban commuting a pleasure.

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tags technorati : design skeppshult bike bicycle bjorn dahlstrom

Andra bloggar om: design, cykel, skeppshult, björn dahlström

“Transformed Flower,” a new public art sculpture designed and built by Phillip K. Smith, III, principal of The Art Office was installed in May, 2008 as part of the newly renovated Richard and Annette Bloch Cancer Survivors Park in Kansas City. The sculpture was commissioned by Kansas City resident and philanthropist, Annette Bloch, as a centerpiece for inspiration and hope within the park’s new, open plaza. The park’s completion was celebrated at a rededication ceremony on  June 1st, as part of the 23rd Annual Kansas City Celebration of Life event.

The lower half of “Transformed Flower” was built in the studio of The Art Office in Indio, CA and delivered to the site. For six days in May, Phillip Smith and Burzeen Contractor were on-site installing the upper half of the sculpture. “Transformed Flower” is built from 720 computer-milled parts of UV resistant High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) that were hand assembled to create the final sculpture. Inspired by a flower ready to bloom, the sculpture transforms formally from the bottom to the top. The base of the sculpture is a perfect circle, which then twists 45 degrees, transforming and opening into an 8-pointed star. The sculpture is pixilated in color from white at the base to yellow, orange, and red at the top.

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Andra bloggar om: konst, skulptur, usa

Studio Klink is is a young architectural studio based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, founded by architect Jasper Klinkhamer (as JKav) in 2005. Studio Klink is a founding partner of Urban Alliance, which won the price for most innovative new company of Amsterdam and Northern Holland 2007 for it’s projects in which architecture and new media are united in interactive media objects.

Villa Peet is the first built project from Studio Klink and was designed by as a sequence of contrasting spatial experiences. These contrasts create a feeling of entering new worlds behind a series of rabbit holes. The absence of traditional interior doors gives the ground floor a sence of continuity, although the different space are well defined.

The sequence on the ground floor is as follows:
The entrance hall: high. A glimpse of the stairs and a small balcony give a hint of the world above.
Central axis: long. After turning the corner in the hallway one looks through the whole house straight into the garden.
The kitchen/dining: wide and high. A brigde runs through the room and divides the spaces for cooking and eating.
The living room: panoramic and intimately low. The garden seems to surround the house from and open but intimate space.

On the upper floor the guest rooms are divided from the private bedrooms by the voids in the kitchen.
Seen from the street the house seems to be a very closed volume without windows and just one corner with glass and a door. Despite this first impression the house is very light and transparant and gives views to the garden from everywhere in the house. The rooms are orientated to the sides and the back because of the clients wish for privacy.

The plans are organised in a way that the further from the street they are more private they become.

Photos by Lars van den Brink.

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Andra bloggar om: hus, arkitektur, boende, villa

Kivik Pavilions is a project by Kivik Art Centre that combines architecture with art and design. Fundamental are issues of environmental solutions, a symbiosis of the landscape and the pavilion, local materials, and corporate partnership with industries in the region. The 2007 pavilion, called ‘Mother Ship’, was designed by Norwegian architects Snohetta, in conjunction with the photographer Tom Sandberg (here are some nice pictures).

The 2008 pavilion for Kivik Art Centre in southeast Sweden has been designed by David Chipperfield and Antony Gormley. The pavilion, which was constructed in only two months, is a sculpture entirely in concrete. Formed of three interlocked 100 m3 volumes – ‘The Cave’, ‘The Stage’ and ‘The Tower’ – the pavilion offers three different ways of experiencing the nature and landscapes around Kivik.

‘The Cave’ – a solid, dormant space in the base of the sculpture where one can rest on a wall-fixed bench, offers the enclosed feeling of being in the dark forest. Stairs then take the visitor up to the first floor – ‘The Stage’ – a horizontal volume open to the landscape, where one looks out but is also exposed. The third volume – ‘The Tower’ – takes the visitor up spiral stairs to a platform almost 18 metres above the ground, where one is rewarded with a spectacular view over the trees towards the Baltic Sea.

The pavilion will be open to the public from 19 July – 28 September 2008.

P.s Maybe some of you remember I wrote about a minimalistic John Pawson house in Scania in southern Sweden a while ago. It’s actually situated quite close to Kivik Art Centre, in the same area of Scania called Österlen.

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Andra bloggar om: David Chipperfield, Antony Gormley, konst, arkitektur, design, kivik art

Every year we gaze enviously at the lists of the richest people in world. Wondering what it would be like to have that sort of cash. But where would you sit on one of those lists? Here’s your chance to find out.

Just enter your annual income into the box below and hit ’show me the money’.

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Andra bloggar om: demokrati, samhälle, rättvisa, mänskliga rättigheter,

Blue Lounge recently announced that they got a honourable mention in the Red Dot award 2008 for their Space station.

Designed for the laptop user, the minimal looking Space station provides a surprising cluster of practical functionality: a cord organizer which conceals all surplus cords lengths; an internal 4-port USB 2.0 hub; a raised back to create an ergonomic keyboard angle; underside airflow cooling; a business card slot and a very handy page holder to keep documents upright for easy reference.

The problem:

The solution:

How it works:

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Andra bloggar om: dator, datorer, hårdvara, design

DESIGN HOTELS™ proudly announces this year’s Future Forum in Berlin. After a successful Future Forum in Barcelona in 2007, the event will take place in Berlin this year from 15-17 October.
Once again it will feature leading minds from the fields of architecture, design, hospitality and art.

Future Forum addresses all those who are interested in creating hotels with a whole new mindset. 
It is geared towards investors, hoteliers, architects, designers, developers and consultants, who are looking for the brighter and broader picture.

Find more details and get your tickets here.

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Andra bloggar om: design hotels, hotell, design, konferens

Wallpaper magazine has just launched the 2008 Architects Directory. It features 50+ of their newly sanctioned practices from all over the globe. Most have photo galleries featuring their work too. You can check it here.

The attached photo below it’s of the Shibuya Station, by Tadao Ando, photo credit: Satoshi Minakawa.

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Andra bloggar om: arkitektur, media, wallpaper, hus

Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec has just opened the étapes exhibition at  Villa Noailles in Hyères. It will run until 21st of September.

This exhibition will also travel to the following places:

L’elac, L’espace Lausannois d’art contemporain in Lausanne, Switzerland 2nd October – 22nd November 2008 and Grand Hornu in Hornu, Belgium 8th March – 31st May 2009.

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Andra bloggar om: design, bouroullec, utställning