BETCPARISLONDON
31 05 13
Last summer we lent our rooftop terrace to the British artist-producer Dan Black to shoot the music video for his collaboration with Kelis, “Hearts.” The video, directed by Chic & Artistic, is a timelapse montage of photographs taken every 16 seconds over 24 hours. 5395 images, 0 breaks, 67 cans of Redbull, 98 coffees, 103 insults, and 32 sunburns later, this labour of love has finally been released, proof that “the heart never sleeps.”
23 04 13
Colors magazine came up with a nice idea for the launch of its latest issue #86 – Making the News. The News Machine feeds tweets sent to @colorsmachine through different media filters in a kind of old-school media game of Chinese whispers. A fun commentary on the state of the media today and the power of the tweet. The machine is launching at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia this month.
30 01 13
We are loving this new video by Japanese artist Shugo Tokumaru for the song ‘Katachi’ (shape in Japanese). The Polish director/animator duo Kijek/Adamski used around two thousand silhouettes extracted from PVC plates using a computer-controlled cutter to animate the video.
06 09 12
The D&AD White Pencil is a new annual initiative designed to harness the power of the creative industries to effect real and positive change in the world. Each year this competition will set a brief challenging the creative community to solve a communications problem for a non-profit organisation or established cause. As our own Rémi Babinet is a D&AD White Pencil Ambassador we want to spread the word about this year’s brief:
Grow awareness of and engagement with Peace Day, establishing September 21 as a global, self-sustaining, annual day of peace, when everyone can take action to end conflict in their own lives and in the lives of others.
More information on www.whitepencil.org
05 09 12
With its recent renovation the Palais de Tokyo has become one of the largest contemporary art spaces in Europe. After this summer’s Triennale, the Palais is entrusting its summer 2013 programme exclusively to young curators under the age of 40. This open call is a great and rare opportunity for emerging curators to put forward new ideas on the way we relate to art. More information on the Palais de Tokyo website.
27 04 12
The 27th Hyères International Festival of Fashion and Photography starts today. Each year the Festival introduces ten fashion designers and ten photographers, with juries in both fields: the Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto is heading up the fashion jury this year. Alongside the competition, the festival also presents a series of exhibitions combining art, photography, fashion and design at the Villa Noailles, built in the 1920s by Robert Mallet-Stevens. Discover the 2012 edition with this short “apocalypse” film prepared by the organizers.
17 04 12
After 10 months of renovations the Palais de Tokyo contemporary art space in Paris is reopening its doors on 20 April 2012. The significant renovations have expanded the space from 8,000 to 22,000 sq. m, making it the largest contemporary art space in Europe. For the reopening, the Palais de Tokyo is hosting the the 3rd edition of La Triennale (20 April – 26 August 2012) in collaboration with seven other institutions based in Paris and the surrounding region. Curated by the Nigerian-born poet and critic Okwui Enwezor, the triennale, entitled Intense Proximité, will explore what it means to be active as an artist working today, in the context of a globalized and diverse French art scene.
06 03 12
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the neon tube, La Maison rouge in Paris has just opened its latest exhibition entitled Neon. Who’s afraid of red, yellow and blue? With 100 works spanning from the 1940s and 1950s by pioneers Gyula Kosice and Lucio Fontana through to contemporary pieces by artists like Jason Rhoades, Claude Lévêque and Sylvie Fleury, this is the first major international exhibition of neon art. At the Maison rouge from 17 February to 20 May 2012.
05 03 12
Act 2: Palm Springs – CA
So the question is: is TED Active cooler than TED?
TED active is taking place at the same time as TED, in a nice palm tree Riviera in Palm Springs, and it offers a live simulcast of all the conferences, as well as ideas and projects to collaboratively work on.
Let’s compare:
Younger people. Less networking. More palm trees. Less Al Gore and Philippe Starck. More crazy startupers. Less beach. More desert. More good music. And above all, more energy.
A sort of retreat for neo-hippy-cool people with nice ideas, passing over some colored tape to each other to cover the trees with, working together on several projects to change the world, and going up to party in the desert in Steve McQueen’s house at night.
The Bear likes.
29 02 12
TED-day-one quote: “it took us a long time to put the wheel and the suitcase together.”
In other terms, it often takes us a really long time to merge two great inventions, in the idea of creating a better one, which will benefit people even more.
This observation is particularly relevant in the digital field, as we are quite slow at reinventing stuff through digital opportunities.
Take education for example. We still study as we did in the XVth century: by religiously listening to a teacher standing on a podium with a book. Yet this could be totally reinvented, for example by setting up interactive webcasts and degrees for students throughout the world. This is actually how two teachers at Stanford ended up creating a worldwide classroom, presented as an inspiring model at TED this year.
This lack of merging a long-time habit with new digital opportunities is quite relevant in many artistic fields. While were very quick at revolutionizing the way we listen to music, what about the way we read books, we watch dance performances or we listen to poetry?
We tend to apply traditional schemes to new technologies, and to keep it “old school.”
Fortunately, some inspiring people start exploring new paths.
Last year, Google and Arcade Fire reinvented the dusty MTV-style music video, by proposing a brand new interactive musical format. Here at TED, the American poet Bill Collins, proposes a new way to enjoy poetry through animation, and the Quixotic ensemble of artists creates a new type of sensorial experience.