Hasta La Ideas

La scène artistique New-yorkaise des années 1980 charrie son lot de mythes et de légendes. Encore aujourd’hui ses grandes figures telles que Andy Warhol, Keith Harring, Robert Mapplethorpe et tant d’autres nous fascinent  et nous font rêver.

A l’occasion de l’exposition “Tub Shots” à la galerie Daniel Cooney, New York City, jusqu’au 3 novembre, les clichés sidérants de Don Herron sont à découvrir et redécouvrir : les idoles du pop art alors fantasmées par le public se sont mises à nu dans leur baignoire. Au total, ce sont 65 portraits qui ont été réalisés par le photographe entre 1978 et 1992, pour notre plus grand plaisir.

Floating cigarettes and fish-headed jazz players feature in Puma Blue’s surreal new music video for track As Is, which is directed by Alice Bloomfield.

The animated music video, which is created in a style of illustration similar to The Simpsons, features a man searching for a past lover in an underwater city.  It is intended as a metaphor for depression.

“We wanted to visualise the sense of being haunted by a past relationship, needing to let go but maybe not being quite able to yet. And the immersion in water acted as a perfect metaphor for depression and the feeling of being under a weight and lost in the blue,” Bloomfield told Dezeen.

“It was also important to me not to include any other people in the video, only musician-fish hybrids, to solidify the feeling of loneliness and not having anyone to reach out to,” she explained.

The video begins at dusk in a cityscape, where a faceless protagonist drops his cigarette on the floor outside a cinema titled Puma Blue. As the sky gets darker, the clouds turn into bubbles and individual cigarettes are shown to float out of a packet in his hand.

The protagonist wanders the empty streets to a jazz bar, which is occupied by three fish-headed jazz players performing to a deserted room with furniture that floats in the air.

Upon deciding to leave the bar, he is greeted by a black shadow. The closing frame depicts the protagonist walking by the sea in the dark.

The video consists of 1,200 individual drawings, which took Bloomfield approximately a month to animate. Each frame was drawn in a sketchbook first before being recreated in Photoshop and animated.

“Although this might sound like a lot of time to some people, it is the most satisfying thing to watch your drawings come to life after so much work,” she said.

“The process also always pushes you to learn so many new things, not only technical software skills but bits like how to draw a face from every single angle,” she continued.

Bloomfield was given creative freedom when conceiving the visual language for As Is. She was inspired by the Instagram account Scenic Simpsons, which features stills of backgrounds and inanimate objects from The Simpsons.

“It is interesting how still and beautiful some of the images are even though they’re in such a bold cartoon style,” she explained.

She was also influenced by the cinematic style of film Enter the Void by director Gaspar Noe. “He uses a lot of gaudy flashing neon lights which mask an undertone of melancholy and futility which is present throughout the film,” said Bloomfield.

“Whether people are trying to hide their sorrows under the colourful lights or simply distract themselves, there is something just so enticing about this contrast between this nightlife and the deeper emotions going on beneath,” she explained.

Similarly, Gabriel Böhmer created a music video for Ber that is meant to represent the unusual thoughts and images triggered by sleep deprivation.

The post Puma Blue’s Simpsons-esque music video explores feelings of depression appeared first on Dezeen.

There’s a high likelihood that the coffee you drink comes from Colombia. Famous for producing some of the finest coffee beans for centuries, Colombia and Colombians know their coffee too well, so when they invent a new way of brewing it, it’s definitely worth noticing. Meet Eduardo Umaña, the man who built the FrankOne, the first and only machine to use Vacuum Extraction Technology to brew coffee. The result of this brewing method? Coffee that’s deliciously rich, and significantly sweeter than coffees created using other traditional brewing methods. In fact, the FrankOne boasts of being able to create coffee that measures up to the “Gold Cup Standard” in just 30 seconds. Aside from hot coffee that has almost no bitterness, FrankOne also claims the record for fastest machine able to make Cold Brew at just 4 minutes brewing time, rather than the typical 8-12 hours.

Developed as an improvement to the reverse french press technique, the FrankOne alters and improves it, and comes with a vacuum that automates the process, allowing you to literally have brewed coffee at the press of a button. The brew is said to be richer in its flavor profile and sweeter too, thanks to the lack of crema, or the slight white foam you usually find on the top of your brews. The FrankOne isolates the crema by extracting the brew from its base, leaving the bitter crema behind along with your coffee-grounds, and gives you a coffee that’s pristine-looking, with a rich gold tint and a taste that matches standards set by the Specialty Coffee Association of America.

The FrankOne’s design is pretty simple. A small attachment that sits above a borosilicate cup, the FrankOne literally has a one-step function. Just empty your coffee grounds into it and drizzle with water, before putting the cap on and shutting the brewing chamber. Designer Eduardo Umaña says that the brew just needs to rest for as little as 30 seconds to reach perfection, after which all you need to do is press the button on top and the vacuum inside the FrankOne decants the rich, golden coffee directly into the borosilicate mug, stopping the crema from passing through.

The Vacuum Extraction Technology has its own share of benefits. Aside from filtering out the crema, it also automates the entire extracting process at the single push of a button. The ability to make Cold Brew in just 4 minutes is equally, if not more so, notable. Besides, with its incredibly small form-factor, you can literally carry it around and brew a cup of intense coffee anywhere… and given that the FrankOne comes approved by Colombians, your coffee should taste absolutely divine!

Designer: Eduardo Umaña

Click here to Buy Now: $70 $99 (30% off).

FrankOne is the first one-touch coffee and cold brew maker.

Exceptional Cold Brew

Good cold brewed coffee can take up to 12 hours to make. With FrankOne it is possible to prepare exceptional cold brewed coffee in as little as 4 minutes. Their Vacuum Extraction Technology™ accelerates the process by forcing cold water through finely ground coffee.

How Does it Work?

FrankOne’s patented Vacuum Extraction Technology™ uses negative pressure to force water through a bed of ground coffee, extracting more of the flavors that coffee has to offer, while reducing bitterness. Their patented method generates pressure that is strong enough to allow brewing with any grind size; from very fine to very coarse. Different grind sizes mean the possibility of preparing a wide range of brew types and cup profiles–from coffee to cold brew, all with the same machine.

Their patented technology also provides superior convenience and ease of use: press a button and your coffee is ready in seconds.

Coffee Types

FrankOne can make a beverage remarkably similar to an espresso by using finely ground coffee, or even a full-bodied french press by using coarsely ground coffee. It all depends on the steeping time and the grind size you use. Above are some recipes. You can easily make an intense brew as well as a light brew, depending on your preference.

Features

Save money by avoiding paper filters. Their fine metal mesh filter imparts no flavor into the coffee and lasts for hundreds of uses. The filter can easily be removed for cleaning.

FrankOne charges over USB in just 2 hours and makes up to 150 coffees on a single charge.

Cleaning is a breeze! FrankOne is completely waterproof.

Click here to Buy Now: $70 $99 (30% off).

Designers should stop using recycled plastic and instead use bioplastics made from natural materials such as algae if they want to reduce pollution, according to Istanbul Design Biennial curator Jan Boelen.

Boelen described the trend for making products out of reclaimed plastic as “bullshit” and said it helped perpetuate the dependence on fossil-based polymers.

“I really, really think it’s bullshit,” he told Dezeen. “It’s doing nothing. It’s not changing the fundamental problem we have.”

Boelen made the comments while giving a tour of the Istanbul Design Biennial, which opened this week. The event comes at a time of rising interest among designers in working with waste materials including ocean plastic and salvaged bottles.

Earlier this year, young designers told Dezeen that using recycled plastic would soon be the “the only choice“.

However, the Belgian curator and educator argued that recycling helps prop up the plastic economy rather than offering a viable solution to environmental contamination.

Recycling has become a branch of the powerful plastics industry, Boelen argued, explaining why the concept has taken hold in the media, politics and the design world.

Recycling “relieves our guilt”

“A lot of partners have a big interest in it. It’s business. It’s easy, it relieves our guilt,” said Boelen. “We’ve set up crazy systems to collect it and reuse it and these systems now need to be made viable. So we are building systems to solve a problem but they are creating a new problem.”

“We need a systemic change,” he added. “We should change which kind of materials we source, how we manufacture, what we use them for, everything.”

Titled A School of Schools, this year’s Istanbul Design Biennial features six exhibitions set in cultural institutions in the centre of the Turkish city. These explore how informal “schools” of collaborators can tackle problems or disrupt outmoded systems through design. Themes explored include time, institutional standards and certifications, and materials.

One project on show demonstrates how bioplastic derived from algae could replace traditional plastics. The project, by designers Eric Klarenbeek and Maartje Dros for research foundation Atelier Luma, demonstrates how algae can be mixed with starch to create a versatile biodegradable material.

Algae eats greenhouse gases

Algae, which until recently has been viewed as an invasive species, is an abundant and completely compostable material that sucks carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

“You can find algae anywhere in the world,” said Boelen, who is artistic director of the foundation based in Arles, France. “There are more than 100,000 species of algae. It grows very fast. You can process it and combine it with starch to create a bioplastic.

“You can 3D print with it; you can injection mould it; the next step is to make textile out of it.”

Algae is just one natural material that can be used to make bioplastic. At London Design Festival last week, designers  Crafting Plastic Studio unveiled Nuatan, which is made from corn starch, sugar and used cooking oil.

However algae, which grows in water, could be a better choice since it does not involve using agricultural land to grow raw materials.

“You diminish food production,” Boelen said. “It’s better to use algae. It has to be taken seriously.”

Material labs need disrupting

Migration tests, which determine whether a new material can safely be used to package food, are encouraging for algae-based bioplastics, Boelen said. But he added that the material testing and certifying industry is rigged against innovative new materials.

“There are bio materials that are very easy to access but they don’t fit in the traditional industrial manufacturing system,” he said. “We have to disrupt that. On top of that we have to adapt the laws and certifications we have in place because they are blocking real change.”

Under Boelen’s creative leadership Luma Atelier, an offshoot of nonprofit arts institute Luma Foundation, is exploring how natural resources in the marshy Camargue region of southern France could be used to create sustainable materials. Besides algae, the institute is researching how salt and waste from sunflower farming could be turned into construction materials.

It is also developing its own materials testing and certifying laboratory to overcome the difficulty of getting new materials approved for use. “Norms and standards are really blocking innovation,” he said.

“The plastic soup won’t go away by recycling plastic,” he added. “We need materials that are nearer to nature, that are in dialogue with nature. That’s where the solution is.”

Besides his roles at Istanbul Deign Biennial and Atelier Luma, Boelen is head of the Social Design masters programme at Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands and artistic director of Z33 House for Contemporary Art in Hasselt, Belgium.

The post The rising use of recycled plastic in design is “bullshit” says Jan Boelen appeared first on Dezeen.

Dans quelques jours, les Fubiz Talks, orchestrés par l’agence TETRO et Fubiz, vous donnent rendez-vous à la Salle Pleyel pour la troisième édition qui aura lieu le 4 octobre prochain. Les créatifs partageront leurs inspirations et leur processus de création et dévoileront. Parmi ces talents, le rappeur Oxmo Puccino.

© Vincent Desailly

Fort de vingt ans de carrière, de sept albums et de multiples collaborations avec Ibrahim Maalouf, Booba, ou encore -M-, Oxmo Puccino est un artiste passionné par les mots, la musique et attentif aux autres, à leur vie, leurs préoccupations, leurs rêves. Poète au verbe aussi beau que puissant Oxmo Puccino offre au rap ses lettres de noblesse et à la chanson française un nouvel élan. Après deux concerts exceptionnels à l’Olympia à l’occasion des 20 ans de Opéra Puccino, Oxmo Puccino prépare actuellement son huitième album.

Cet artiste hors pair, qui continue d’inspirer les générations de rappeurs et d’interprètes, dévoilera les secrets de sa démarche créative et ses inspirations devant un public de passionnés.
Il est encore temps de réserver vos places pour assister à l’événement qui marquera la rentrée créative 2018.