Google's New Feature Celebrates Graffiti Around the World

Graffiti, for some strange reason, has always fascinated me. Why? First, a lot of the visual arts, like art galleries, museums, sculpture parks and hell, even glass studios can give off a very pretentious air to the uninitiated like myself. There's definitely something intimidating about walking into some chi-chi gallery somewhere - first you have to dress up like you belong there, then fake being familiar with any particular artist's ouevre, and forget about taking pictures! Only if you plan on buying the fucking thing...Sculpture parks, while nice, are very few and far between, and tend to have a very static quality to them. They're like elaborate, whimsical pieces of outdoor furniture. Entertaining, for sure, but the pieces are supposed to be part of the landscape. You're not supposed to think about them, they just are.

Graffiti, on the other hand, is dynamic and full of life. There is little to no fanfare for any kind of "emerging artist" in the field. Aside from Banksy, perhaps, has anyone ever heard of a famous graffiti artist? In most areas, the act of creating this type of art is considered a criminal act. A fantastic mural you found randomly one day could well be gone the next. And believe me, folks, I'm not talking about random gang signs scribbled across the sides of ugly buildings; we're talking the real deal, legitimate - often impromptu - works of art that grace our cities in the most unexpected ways. No admission fee, no fashion, no art dealers, completely pure and to the point. 

Our Lord and Savior Google has developed a search engine that acts as a directory for the best street art/graffiti on the planet. Using Google's Street View feature, the search engine compiles the best shots of graffiti murals around the world. From Spain to Japan to your Seattle neighborhood, chances are one of your favorite works is listed on there. Did I mention the site is interactive? If you find your favorite piece on Street View, just zoom in to the best possible shot of the piece, and submit it to Google Street Art View. I added a mural on Roosevelt & 68th in Seattle a few days ago, and it's already live!

Here are a few of my favorites:

Ibiza, Spain - Right here, right now!

Valenica, Spain - a punk rock Uzi Christ

Valencia, Spain

Amsterdam's Red Light District - it says "slave trade" next to her jacket, fitting because 70% are actually slaves :(

Barcelona, Spain - gentrification and tourists as terrorism?

Barrio Gracia, Barcelona - don't you feel so safe now :)

Jerez de la Frontera, Spain

Granada, Spain - guapaaaaaa

Ibiza, Spain - Is it a cish or a fat?

Ibiza - Gives new meaning to the phrase "brainchild"

Ibiza

And...This is What Happens to Your Art When You're On Drugs!

The influence of drugs, especially psychedelic drugs, on art has always fascinated me.

Drugs have been the catalyst, if not the inspiration, for countless works of art over the centuries that have captured the masses. Without the element of this specific type of debauchery, so much of our artistic canon could never have come into being.

How else, for instance, do you think of this album cover for Santana's Supernatural?

Or this music video by the French band Justice, a chaotic ode to the city of Paris?

It's easy to see the influence that drugs in all their permutations have influenced art, but which drugs? What doses? What circumstances? My inner geek justs begs for a control group to test out the drug spectrum and see what parts of the brain each ingredient sticks to. A single artist, painting an identical self-portrait dozens of times to illustrate the effects of each....What's that, Good magazine? You read my mind perfectly.

Since March 30, 1995, multimedia artist Bryan Lewis Saunders has done one self-portrait per day, every day. When that started to get boring, Saunders began taking drugs of all types to liven up the work, a process he says has left him with brain damage. 

Saunders is still doing his self-portraits today, though he'll now only take drugs if they are administered by medical professionals for valid health issues. Regardless, the results of his endeavor are a fascinating glimpse into how different chemicals shape our perceptions of self.

The artist's idea was to test the environment's effects on the subconscious and use his brain like a canvas. You can only be soberific so long when you're painting nearly 8,000 (!!!) self-portraits over the course of a decade. Here are some of my favorite of his artistic ahem..."experiments":

Ambien - looks like it's not working...

Hydrocodone, Oxycodone, and Xanax - this is what art looks like when you can't feel your face...

Absinthe - monochrome (and cubist?)

Adderall - The artist is both literal and distracted :)

Cocaine is a helluva drug...

Two bottles of cough syrup later - wow, this guy had a bit of a death wish!

Sweet Jesus crystal meth...

Dilaudid and morphine - industrial grade gangsta...

Morphine meets Easter Island?

Huffed gasoline - this is probably what his brain cells feel like!

Mushrooms - wow, what do those bubbles mean? Cosmic...

Nitrous oxide - you know those little whip cream canisters that make you black out? I mean...

PCP - the one you should never, ever do

Pot brownies! Duhhhh

Pot resin hits - jeez, I wonder what he cleaned his bowl piece with...

Salvia - arguably his best work!

Ritalin is just unpleasant...

Good old mary jane!

Via: Good

Saul Williams' Got a List of Demands...

Just finished re-reading Saul Williams' groundbreaking work, The Dead Emcee Scrolls. I first saw Saul Williams live at UW's Kane Hall when I was a wee freshman, having no idea of what a poetic firestorm I was about to witness.

Williams' poetry can best be described as a tongue-lashing, luscious harmony of hip-hop Zulu NYC Afrocentricity. He is also the only artist who is commercially successful as a slam poet and hip hop star. For more of a sampling of his poetic beats set to rap music, check out his hit single, "List of Demands." It was used as the soundtrack to a Nike commercial several years ago. Can you top that, Sherman Alexie? I think not...



My favorite quotes from Dead Emcee Scrolls could go on for days...suffice it to say his writing packs a punch!

Let me mold a guitar of your bodily bazaar. Strap your tongue, chord your lungs, string your toes. And bows that precede the rain shall serpent symphonies in your name.

Mother of countless daughters. The tricks of time. It is your thrust and grind that defines us. We are the offspring of your decapitated head. The bastard sons of Father Time.

Dance. Even when your feet hurt. Dance like the fires of hell are upon you and you’re dodging every flame. 

Dance when it tastes good. Dance when the spirit moves you.

Dance because you feel it and you don’t have to be taught how to count, how to step and slide, how to twirl and jump and land on a good foot before taking off to fly,

NGH, dance. Dance, nigger. Paint your faces. Shine your shoes. Pop that collar. Shake it. Wind it. Kick fight scratch rip kill BREAK.

Neck back jump back kiss BREAK. Uprock freeze pop lock BREAK. Don’t stop don’t stop snap BREAK.

Into ferocious song and dance. Calculated movement. Gestures of prayer and invocation. Dance. Your life depends on it.

Cakewalk. Lindy. Charleston. Mashed potatoes. Camel walk. Hot pants. Hustle. Electric boogaloo. Patty Duke. Steve Martin. Pee-wee Herman. Prep. Wop. Rooftop. Cabbage Patch. Chickenhead. Ragtop. Wobble. Crump. Snake. BREAK! 

Not until you listen to Rakim on a rocky mountaintop have you heard hip-hop. Extract the urban element that created it and let an open wide countryside illustrate it.

The trains and planes could corrupt and obstruct your planes of thought so that you forget how to walk through the woods which ain’t good cause if you never walked through the trees listening to Nobody Beats The Biz then you ain’t never heard hip-hop.

And you don’t stop. And you don’t stop. And you must stop letting cities define you. Confine you to that which is brick and cement. We are not a hard people. Our domes have been crowned with the likes of steeples.

The wind plays the world like an instrument. Blows through trees like flutes. But trees won’t grow in cement. And as heart beats bring percussion fallen trees bring repercussions. Cities play upon our souls like broken drums.

We drum the essence of creation from city slums. But city slums mute our drums and our drums become humdrum cause city slums have never been where our drums were from.

Just the place where our daughters and sons become offbeat heartbeats. Slaves to city streets. Where hearts get broken when heartbeats stop. Broken heartbeats become break-beats for NGHs to rhyme on top.

Cop car swerves to the side of the road. Hip-hop takes its last breath. The cop scrawls vernacular manslaughter onto his yellow pad, then balls the paper into his hands, deciding he’d rather freestyle. 

You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to remain silent. And maybe you should have before your bullshit manifested.

 

Song is the invitation from the primordial unseen to become one with that which is seen. To nod your head is to agree that the moment is godly: communion. To dance is to become God. There are many ways of dancing. Follow your heart.

 

The buck and gully. The native son. Bigger and Deffer. The freshest one. The sewed-in creases. The flavored twills. The confidence snorted through dollar bills.

The “Fuck I care for?” The boldfaced lie. The been there and done that. The do or die. The dirty dirty. The filthy clean. Thugged out and nerdy. No in between. The blackest berry. The sweetest juice. That complex NGH born of simple truth.

A wealth of violence. A violent wealth. You caught up, NGH, better watch your health, the beat is dope though. The junkie nod. The use of breakbeats to beat the odds.

God and pussy. Objects of desire and ill repute. Some’d rather seek up high than dig and grind that inner truth. The angel of my eye a bit too fly to substitute with any other form than the messiah’s.

 

Shower me with blessings. No second-guessing. ‘Cause God, herself, is sitting on the edge of my bed, slowly undressing. A night symbolic as the resurrection. I’m about to slide up in the kingdom of God with no protection.

And I can hear a second coming. ‘Cause I already hear the drummer boy barumpumpum pumming. A host of angles look at me through your eyes. My first communion with my hands on your thighs. You’re catching the spirit, the Holy Ghost and the fire. Yo, this is wild.

 

I’m every Jay-Z album played in reverse. I’m risen from blunt ash and stashed in a purse. I’m smuggled over borders, contraband, ‘though I rock. I paper. I scissor. Nah, NGH, no Glock.

Pay me cash. Simply ‘cause what money means to you. Your currency has currently devalued what is true. When freedom rings through costly bling, it’s overdrawn, past due. The bankroll of an empty soul kept vaulted. Code and clues:

 

NGH WHT, I represent the truth you claim to be. The hero of the eastern sky, the storm’s eye, westerly. Rough, rugged, raw, eternal law recited over beats. Some poetry to oversee the dance floor and the streets.

 

Your evolution stopped with the evolution of your technology. A society of automatic tellers and money machines. NGH WHT? My culture is lima beans. Dreams manifest. Dreams real. Not consistent with the rational.

 

I dance for no reason. For reason you can’t dance. Caught in the inactiveness of intellectualized circumstance. You can’t learn my steps until you unlearn your thoughts. Spirit/soul can’t be store bought. Fuck thought. It leads to naught. Simply stated, it leads to you trying to figure me out.

 

Your intellect is disfiguring your soul. Your being’s not whole. Check your flagpole: stars and stripes. Your astrology’s imprisoned by your concept of white, of self. What’s your plan for spiritual health? Calling reality unreal. Your line of thought is tangled.

The star-spangled got your soul mangled. Your being’s angled, forbidding you to be real and feel. You can’t find truth with an ax or a drill, in a white house on a hill, or in factories or plants made of steel. 

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words - Part Deux

As the world becomes ever more integrated via the Internet, a huge potential source of political mobilization can come from a new version of a familiar campaign tool: the political icon.

Whereas newspapers used to have a monopoly on this medium with editorial cartoonists on staff, today this powerful art form has been crowdsourced to the masses. 

The infographic is something I touched on several weeks ago as a rising trend that can distill complex political issues into easy-to-understand graphics. While we once had Uncle Sam and Smoky the Bear, we now have a new crop of graphic designers coming into the fray of the climate change talks in Cancun.

How do you explain the phenomenon of climate change to someone who is uneducated in science? To a person who is illiterate, even? Graphics like these may hold the answer. They have just enough punch to be provocative, without the vitriol and one-sidedness of a campaign speech or an idiotic soundbite. 

Check it out!

Isn't everything recyclable?

Kind of like "mi casa es su casa", no?

Follow the rest of the progress of the Cancun talks here on their official media website.

Via:  Inhabitat

Typographic Art

Check out these cool typographic prints from Ork Posters!

The cerebellum is so hot right now...

Porn for the Eyes - Set to Classical Music!

A timelapse of New York City - from Swiss video company Stimul. Simply beautiful, there are no other words.


New York City - Timelapse from stimul on Vimeo.

Who lives in the pyramid at the Top of the Smith Tower? These lucky bitches...

When I was a freshman at UW, I was looking for a part-time job. I came this close to landing a job working as an elevator operator and tour guide for the Smith Tower, the iconic 1914 skyscraper where this incredibly lucky family lives in the pyramid at the very top.

This has to be one of the most sought-after, out-of-this-world penthouse apartments in the entire city of Seattle. It's like being a 21st century pharaoh in your very own terra-cotta pyramid.

According to the NYTimes article linked above, one of the residents is an energy and recycling executive, and his wife is childhood friends with Dale Chihuly. It's good to have a dream, right? Especially one that involves having a giant glass ball in your attic and living at the top of a 35-story urban legend.

Via: NYTimes