From Coolhunting by Leonora Oppenheim:

To coincide with London’s Frieze Art Week, Lisson Gallery has opened a major exhibition new of work by one of the UK’s greatest living artists, Anish Kapoor. Just when it seemed that Kapoor had reached the limits of the art world’s highest echelons, perhaps quite literally with the Olympic Arcelor Mittal Orbit, he comes right back down to earth again with a new show, called “In The Shadow of the Tree and the Knot of The Earth.” In a recent tour of the work, Lisson Gallery director Nicholas Logsdail commented on the exhibition, saying, “Anish captures each phase of his work so fully, prompting us to ask ‘Can he go any further?’ But, always, with very perfect timing, he moves on. This is an entire body of new work, which is a remarkable achievement.”

Full Article HERE.

“Merging his love for skateboarding, music, art and mayhem, Chad Muska has opened a conceptual art and studio space next to his store, Factory 413 on Fairfax. Flat425 reveals Muska’s prolific output as part of “Deconstructionism,” a constantly evolving installation comprising mixed-media vignettes with chaotic twists of oil paint, cement, found materials, shredded bills, neon vinyl, projections, and even a teepee. Challenging viewers to “decode the message,” Muska has created highly textured pieces from more than five years of sourcing materials and exploring the notions of destruction and creation.” – by Julie Wolfson

Click HERE for article.

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From Blank Code:

This week we have a special mix to give you by our close friend and Detroit Underground producer and label boss Kero. This set was recorded live at Interface 36 l Scene 04 an official after party for Movement Festival in Detroit on May 27th, 2012. Kero flexes his diverse taste and programming abilities to flawlessly weave between techno, electro, idm, acid, and dubstep.

Detroit techno label Blank Code delivers their latest podcast.

Click Here to listen or right click and ‘save as’

From Blank Code:

It’s Monday June 11th, 2012 and today we bring you a podcast from an old friend and a proper techno artist, Ray Nicholes. Ray started out playing the drums in his early years and coupled with his interest in rock, industrial, and hip-hop he realized quickly that he had an unique edge to his creativity. While living in west Michigan he continued to build the foundation of his sound as he bounced between the underground techno scenes of Chicago, Detroit, and Toronto in the early ’90s.

Throughout the rapidly evolving techno scene Ray has kept his focus on producing tracks. His EPs Black Kamanche, Confessions, Tentación, and Caja de Ultima Hora “the remixes” are all released on Black Nation Records. Heavily influenced over the past 14 years by some of techno’s icons, Ray has been able to fine tune and master his own style that he coins “machine gun techno” that is dark, deep, heavy on drums and percussion, somewhat moody and tribal.

Since moving to Miami in 2009, Ray has performed at a number of clubs and private events including multiple gigs during WMC. He headlined parties at Space Techno Loft, Grand Central, Treehouse, and Overkill Warehouse Party Art Basel (Miami Beach); and also performed for Detek at The Works during the 2011 Movement Festival in Detroit.

For now, the preview – “The Full Retard”:

From URB:

The newest video from MC SelfSays (Directed by Matt Barth) features famed New York producer Blockhead on the beat. The feisty Detroit rapper has a few new projects in the works at the moment — saying you can expect a new flexi-disc single out on Insect Records just in time for SXSW.

From SelfSays.com:
Charles Vann, an ordinary man, is poised to be one of the most refreshing new voices in hip-hop. As SelfSays he makes music that balances quirky, off-kilter rhyme styles with more serious, straight-aced lyricism. The soundscapes that he has chosen as vehicles for his voice are just as interesting and innovative as his own skills. He has been one of the earliest rapping proponents of the production of Samiyam and Devonwho and he has been dilligently at work with producers like House Shoes and Blockhead.

The Michigan-born MC grew up with a natural proclivity towards language arts. Talk Too Much by Run DMC is his first memory of hearing hip-hop as a child and as he grew his attachment towards the music grew with him. In particular he looked up to his older cousins and uncles who watched Yo! MTV Raps and had EPMD 12″ sleeves all over their walls. “I know my mom didn’t approve, but I couldn’t get enough,” SelfSays recalls. In middle school, on a whim, a young Charles tried his hand at rapping with some friends. Imitating Common and Big Pun at first, soon the young MC began the search to finding his own voice. Michigan State Radio helped introduce him to the thriving scene in neighboring Detroit, but he still stayed watching from afar. A self-proclaimed late bloomer, some idle time after high school led to SelfSays delving deeper and deeper into rap. He wet his feet with small battles locally and freestyling whenever and wherever he could. Soon he began cutting demos with friends. When he wasn’t crafting demo recordings, SelfSays was taking down his foes in battles and performing at open mics. Somewhere along the road those rough cuts found like-minded artists. One such artist was I Heart Lung from record label Asthmatic Kitty. That connection led to SelfSays remixing one of I Heart Lung’s tracks for a compilation. During that time, he also made his first recorded appearance on Lawless Element’s Soundvision: In Stereo album.

The Lansing native’s writing and recording came to a head in February 2009 with the release of his EP, Something Out Of Nothing. A free download, this project offered that aforementioned balance SelfSays so easily achieves. Something Out Of Nothing is a mixture of SelfSays’s quips and insights across futuristic, spacey boom-bap from, among others, Samiyam, Dakim and Bullion. Something Out Of Nothing was mentioned on sites like XLR8R, singled out in URB Magazine’s Next 1000 artists as well as highlighted on a weekly MySpace Music feature, the social networking giant’s weekly independent music showcase. In August 2009, SelfSays dropped the digital single “Contra/Another Ughh Letter” on Paramanu Recordings. Those tracks, which date back several years ago, chronicled some of the first collaborations between SelfSays and Samiyam.

SelfSays has performed at the Detroit Electronic Music Festival. He has also shared the stage with local hip-hop luminaries One Be Lo, Finale, Phat Kat, Slum Village, Buff1, Shigeto and many others. He is currently immersing himself in creation like never before and has several interesting and creative projects dropping sometime in the near future.

From rospit.com:
“A Portrait of Growth and Success”

In any profession there can be a perceived impenatrable glass ceiling, but Ro Spit is poised to break just that. As he continues to separate from the pack, Ro Spit releases his 3rd solo project, Glass Ceiling. Ro Spit’s transition is on display as he paints a portrait of growth and success while he continues to be one of the torch bearers for Michigan hip-hop. He has expanded his sound working with a broader patch of producers to compliment his versatility.

From the Beauty is Embarrassing website:

Wayne White is an American artist, art director, illustrator, puppeteer and much, much more. Born and raised in Chattanooga, Wayne has used his memories of the south to create inspired works for film, television and the fine art world. After graduating from Middle Tennessee State University Wayne traveled to New York City where he worked as an illustrator for The East Village Eye, New York Times, Raw Magazine and the Village Voice. In 1986 Wayne became a designer for the hit television show Pee Wee’s Playhouse and his work was awarded with three Emmy’s. After traveling to Los Angeles with his wife, Mimi Pond, Wayne continued to work in television and designed sets and characters for shows such as Shining Time Station, Beakman’s World, Riders In The Sky and Bill & Willis. He also worked in the music video industry winning Billboard and MTV Music Video Awards as an art director for seminal music videos including The Smashing Pumpkins’ ‘Tonight, Tonight’ and Peter Gabriel’s ‘Big Time’.

More recently Wayne has had great success as a fine artist and has created paintings and public works that have been shown all over the world. His most successful works have been the world paintings featuring oversized, three dimensional text pain stakingly integrated into vintage landscape reproductions. The message of the paintings is often thought provoking and almost always humorous with Wayne pointing a finger at vanity, ego and his memories of the South. Wayne has also received great praise for several public works he has created recently including a successful show at Rice University where he built the world’s largest George Jones puppet head for a piece called ‘Big Lectric Fan To Keep Me Cool While I Sleep’.

In 2009 Wayne’s life and career were chronicled in an incredible 382 page monograph edited by Todd Oldham. The book features hundreds of images from Wayne’s earliest work as an illustrator all the way to his most recent fine art sculptures.

Since the book’s release Wayne has been traveling the country delivering an incredibly entertaining hour long talk where he discusses his life and work while making time for a little banjo and harmonica.

Download Here.

From Blank Code:
2012 has arrived and we couldn’t think of a better way to start it off than by sharing the recordings from Blank Code event Scene.02, in Detroit November.26.2011. This week we are happy to share with you a 1.5 hour mix by Memnok who set the tone of the night by keeping it deep and dark as we expected!

When Jeremy’s not performing he’s working hard in his studio. Recently his Sniper Kitty EP released on Cirque Du Minimaliste and coming early 2012, Memnok – Awakenings EP on Hidden Records. Also coming early 2012 is his remix for Tiari – On The Edge (Memnok Remix) on Cirque Du Minimaliste and a collaboration with Tiari for Blank Code. Keep up with Memnok on Beatport and Soundcloud.

Source: Derivative

From Derivative: Earlier this month Obscura Digital used TouchDesigner to once again raise the bar of large scale architectural mapping and projection design, this time for the 40th Anniversary of the United Arab Emirates National Day Celebration at the Sheikh, Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi.

The sheer scale of this production was mindboggling with 49 projectors used to project on a total surface measuring 19,474 square meters which included 4 minarets and 12 domes necessitating “detailed accuracy of 3-D mapping and content quality on incredibly complex geometry of flat walls with intricate hand carved details and arcades with rows of columns.”

Interactive developer and artist Mary Franck who worked on the project for the duration had this to say: “It was certainly a dream projection-mapping job: incredible architecture, all white marble, completely artistic and cultural content. It was absolutely an honor to be a part of it.

We pulled it all altogether in record time. We have done projects of huge scale (the Coke building) and architectural complexity (Sydney Opera House) before, but this building is both exceptionally large and exceptionally complex. We were able to draw in the best methods from those jobs to make a TouchDesigner calibration and playback system for 20 channels of mapped video.

Things were actually pretty smooth on site– we’d been able to anticipate what we would need. Although the days were oppressively hot, the weather and dust weren’t problems.

To pull of mapping the complex geometry of the mosque we pulled many late nights, calibrating until the dawn call to prayer.

Sequestered in the control room, in abaya and hijab, I didn’t get to see the audience reaction, which I’m sad to have missed, but there was an air of real excitement and national pride.”

And here are a few more pertinent details from Obscura’s UAE Event Fact Sheet:

Equipment used / number and types of projectors / lumens / power:
44 projectors on the mosque (24 x 20K lumens + 20 18K lumens) = 840,000 lumens
5 projectors on the fort (5 x 20K lumens) = 100,000 lumens
940,000 lumens total
49 projectors x 3.2kW x 60 hours = 9,400kW total show (Mosque and Fort)

CO2 Offsetting plan:
9,400kW = 12,878 lbs of CO2 = 6 tons of CO2
(1.37 pounds CO2 per kW / 2204 pounds = 1 ton of CO2)
6 tons x 5 trees per ton = 30 trees