Lost AT E Minor

70s Rock Musicians and Their Parents’ Homes

Interior design website, Apartment Therapy, just posted some amazing pictures of ’70s rock stars in their parents’ homes. My favorite is of David Crosby and his dad [below]. The two look so completely opposite of each other that it’s hard to believe that it’s Crosby’s real dad. They also look like they’re barely concealing the contempt they have for each other. Crosby’s father was an Academy-Award-winning cinematographer who shot Tabu and High Noon, amongst other well-known films. Read more

Luciano Rigolini’s new book: What You See

There’s something unsettling about stumbling onto discarded photographs. A family album set adrift from its owner or a displaced snapshot calls out to be rescued. Swiss photographer and filmmaker Luciano Rigolini is one of a growing number of artists turning the anonymous or found photograph into an artform. In his new book, What You See, Rigolini brings together a disparate collection of photographs retrieved from sifting through flea markets, archives and the Internet to create a mysterious arrangement of images. Freed from the moorings of their original context, these anonymous images inspire new stories and become a mesmerising projection screen in their own right.

The big name photography of Sam-Taylor Wood

Picture meets name, and they all live happily ever after in Sam Taylor-Wood’s piece, Escape Artist. Her simplicity is her genius. She was the mastermind behind Elton John’s video with Robert Downey Jr, singing of wanting Love, and she was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery to make a video of David Beckham sleeping. If I were to investigate the essence of ‘viewers delight’, it would be defined as ‘up-grading to simplicity’. Sam Taylor Wood’s work relishes in this idea.

Urs Fischer’s installations

New York and Zurich-based artist Urs Fischer’s entropic sculptures and installations blows apart people’s expectations of what to expect at a gallery. Last year’s installation, You, at Gavin Brown was a 38-foot-by-30-foot crater dug into the gallery floor. His huge, ambitious works seem frantic and impulsive despite the immense planning and meticulous execution they often require. His mockery of physics, and the enormous scale and shock-and-awe quality of his work suggest the god-like potency of an artist, at least within a gallery space. Read more

Paper Water Bottle

Design company BrandImage has just come out with their line of paper water bottles made out of renewable resources. The bottles themselves are recyclable, and while not as reusable as a plastic bottle, can still be reused a few times. These are cool designs, even if they still pander to our on-the-go, single-serving, throw-away culture. Their environmental friendliness is also dubious, considering most people will still choose to throw these things in the trash rather than taking the time to find a recycling bin.

Faith No More reunion

Very few band reunions get me excited, but I’ve consistently loved Faith No More since I was 13. I loved their pre-Mike Patton era, I loved King for a Day, and I even loved their track with Boo Yah Tribe on the Judgment Night soundtrack. Kerrang recently hinted that a FNM reformation is in the works for ‘09, and though bassist Billy Gould has emphatically denied the rumors, the general consensus is that the reunion is on.