Hasta La Ideas

Milan 2011: Dezeen, Jawbone and industrial designer Yves Behar have teamed up to invite readers to create tracks for an audio installation at Ventura Lambrate in Milan next month.

Called JamScape, the installation will use Behar’s Jambox wireless speakers designed for Jawbone (see our earlier story) as building blocks to create an audio installation and lounge.

The first 20 entrants to submit soundscapes that are selected for JamScape will each win a Jambox.

To enter all you have to do is upload your track to Dezeen’s Sound Cloud account.

Accepted formats: Please supply audio as MP3.
Minimum length of audio: 5 minutes.
Deadline: 9.00 GMT on Monday 4 April 2011.

Here are some more details from Jambox:

Seeking soundscapes for Milan

Calling musicians, DJs and sound artists: Dezeen teams up with Jawbone and industrial designer Yves Behar in Milan this April to curate the audio for JamScape, a ground-breaking installation and lounge, which takes place in the Ventura Lambrate district in Milan from Monday 11 April to Sunday 17 April 2011.

We’re looking for original tracks that are soothing, inspiring, uplifting, provocative… or anything that would appeal to design-savvy visitors to the space.

Using Jawbone’s bold new JAMBOX wireless speakers as building blocks, JamScape will be a truly global collaborative audio experience developed around the idea of liberating and unleashing sound. The installation will foster creative partnerships with a cadre of audio artists and enable them to express their perceptions and ideas of music, improvisation, jamming, and social sound.

Yves Behar said: “We’re looking for cool ambient music that will be used to create a sound journey to be experienced by the visitors walking around the JamScape installation. The opportunity is to create different sounds for each of the 5 JamScapes to craft a unique series of soundscapes as visitors walk around the exhibit.”

Each track and artist will be credited at the space, as well as on Dezeen. Your track may also be used, with full credit and link, on a Dezeen movie about Milan. The first 20 soundscapes submitted and selected to be part of JamScape will win a Jambox.

Copyright note: Copyright remains with the artist and artists will be fully credited. Artists must own all legal rights to the works they submit or have full written permission of the rights holder. By submitting works, artists warrant that they have such legal rights or full written permission and agree to indemnify and hold harmless Jawbone against any claims to the contrary. Artists give full permission for Dezeen and JamScape to use their works as set out above under a Creative Commons licence or similar. Artists must notify Jawbone in writing at the time of submittal about any restrictions regarding the use of submitted works.

Submit your track »

Following up on a story from late last week, apparently it wasn’t just bloggers and news outlets who found that the latest music video by singer Rihanna was remarkably similar to the work of photographer David LaChapelle. The famous shooter has now filed suit against the singer, her record labels, Island Def Jam and UMG Recordings, and the video’s director, Melina Matsoukas, claiming that his work was copied without his permission. Radar, who was the first to discuss the story with LaChapelle’s representatives, has received a copy of the lawsuit (pdf), which is particularly damning. Among other items, it’s surprising to read that “Prior to the hiring of Matsoukas, another well-known director was asked to create a LaChapelle-inspired music video for Rihanna and that director rejected the offer.” Our years of Law & Order watching makes us believe that it doesn’t get much more “willful intent” than that. Here’s an overview of the case from the NY Times:

The suit, which asks for at least $1 million in damages, argues that the video is “directly derived from and substantially similar to” photographs he has created and published that show, among other things, a dominatrix walking a chained man on a leash, a woman in latex headgear and another woman (Lady Gaga, to be precise) wearing only screaming headlines. In all, the suit claims, eight of Mr. LaChapelle’s images were used to create scenes in the video, which the suit calls a “willful, wanton and deliberate” infringement of his copyright protections.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Now that all the Justin Bieber outcry and Arcade Fire surprise talk has quieted down after Sunday night’s Grammy Awards, attention must be paid to things much more important, namely packaging design. In case you missed it, because the award hand off wasn’t televised and it didn’t arrive in an egg carried by a group of dancers, Brooklyn-based designer Michael Carey took home the Grammy win for best packaging for The Black Keys‘ album Brothers. Outside of the very dry and very funny case, which simply lays it all out by saying, “This is an album by The Black Keys. The name of this album is Brothers,” the thrill of the packaging came from the inside, featuring a disc printed with heat-sensitive ink that would change colors (like a Hypercolor shirt, if you were born before 1990). The LA Times has a short post-win interview with Carey, but for the real deal, we recommend reading Wes Flexner‘s great, lengthy interview with him for all the details. Here’s a bit about how the printing came to be:

I told one of the people at [the band’s label] Nonesuch that I heard about color changing ink and I wanted to find out if we could source it and if we could do some test runs to find out how it works. She found a company that made it and I sent the art to a factory for mock ups. We got it back, thought it was insane so we used it. The funny thing is I didn’t really tell any one other than [band members] Pat and Dan that I used it, so when the final cds came back I got this crazy voice mail from the Black Keys management saying, “The cds are misprinted. What are we gonna do…?” He was freaked out and I called him and I was like take the cd, and hold it up to your forehead for a minute then look at it. He did it and then lost his mind when he saw the heat sensitive ink.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

A big week for plagiarism allegations, apparently. First, there was our report on The Art Guys saying director Morgan Spurlock had stolen several of their ideas from a project they’d put together in the late 90s. Now the shift is a brewing controversy between a music video and a famous photographer. Found by way of ArtInfo (who were very kind to talk about our Art Guys/Spurlock story), the internet is still awash in talk that the music video for singer Rihanna, directed by Melina Matsoukas, has blatantly copied several of David LaChapelle‘s photos. Radar was one of the first to report the story, putting frames from the video next to scans of the photographer’s images for side-by-side comparisons of the sections allegedly borrowed. They also spoke to sources employed by LaChappelle who say they immediately began receiving questions about the production, despite being unaware of its existence until that point. Furthermore, though these are still anonymous sources at work, it was learned that the video’s director “had photographs from past Italian Vogue shoots by LaChapelle, ranging from 1995-2002 laying around the set of the music video shoot.” Some of the images do seem similar, though perhaps not nearly to the point of looking like outright copies. But who knows? It certainly wouldn’t be the first time a music video director has gotten in trouble for lifting concepts from other sources.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Find the perfect fit with custom molded earbuds

Custom-fitted to the unique shape of your ear in just four minutes, the Sculpted Eers earbuds from Montreal-based Sonomax deliver dynamic sound in an ultra-comfortable way. The DIY kit comes with easy instructions for achieving a perfect fit for either of their two models—a single speaker PCS-100 or superior dual driver PCS-200.

The recently-launched earbuds will be available beginning spring 2011, and will sell for $200-300. To keep tabs on their arrival, follow Sculpted Eers on Twitter.