Sarah Esteje

     There is something about limiting materials that really inspires creativity like no other. Jack White once explained that he only uses poor quality guitars and amps because they force a certain type of creativity and sound. While I'm not the biggest White Stripes fan, I've always felt the best art work comes from the editing, limiting,and regulating aspects of one's practice.

    Here's the work or Sarah Esteje an artists who drawings only using red and blue ball point pens. Her work has been circulating over all the major art blogs.

Her website has a bunch of great examples.

Kill Your Idols

 
       Found an interesting documentary on Netflix the other day, called Kill Your Idols. It examines the massive influence of a very tiny New York musical movement, known as "No Wave". The movement lasted just under 2 years in the late 70's. The sound was characterized as free-form, arrhythmic, atonal, emotional, experimental noise.

       The No Wave philosophy was fascinating to me specially given the bitter and spiteful tone of the film. Here we have groups from older generation who  felt compelled to create music that references nothing, that sounds like nothing else, as a form a backlash to mainstream culture. In this sense they were very nihilistic, rejecting the established expectations of music, being skeptical of the mainstream. The No Wavers appear to be the dadaists of the music world. The film portrays them as unique, groundbreaking geniuses who's artistry couldn't be tainted by (or attracted by) commercialization. The anti-everything mentality runs aground towards the end of the film as the revolutionaries of old begin to preach that same type of bland homogeneity that fought so hard against.

       The new generation of New York musicians in the film are on one hand expected to fight the same tireless fight and are on the other accused of stealing that sound and turning it into commercial success. The hypocrisy hurts my brains.

Record Playing Bike

Created by three dutch designers and crafted from from a 30 year old Alpina bike is this record playing bicycle. Features include the ability to change records on the fly and a megaphone style speaker. Interestingly though, you will need to peddle evenly to keep the record speed correct.