Events / David Byrne’s Playing the Building
I recently got to see David Byrne’s installation piece, Playing the Building, at the Battery Maritime Building in lower Manhattan. It was opening day, but I got there on the early side, and everything was pretty well organized, so it wasn’t too difficult or slow to get in. The piece is pretty straightforward – it’s an antique organ that is attached to the building via an array of pneumatic and electrical tubes that connects each key to a pipe, pillar, or metal beam. When you depress the keys, they make a percussive, whistling, or vibrating sound depending on what they’re attached to. The building itself was pretty impressive, and it was as breathtaking to see the historical architecture as it was to see a great piece made by the Talking Heads frontman.
Tagged: 80s music, installations, New York artists, New York galleries
RELATED
Though his colourful murals, installations, and drawings look playful and whimsical, at the heart of Fawad Khan’s work is a dark and complex political struggle with violence and identity that takes place through, on, and in, public vehicles. The New York-based artist was raised in Pakistan and speaks of being ridiculed when he was a child as he boarded a bus in Karachi for being born in Libya. The vehicles Khan renders and replicates are not only symbols of place and authority (the New York City cab and the US mail truck) and gathering places (public buses), but also have become weapons, as the constant news of car bombs reminds us every day. Read more
Joshua Harris on his subway grates artwork
New York-based artist Joshua Harris makes movable sculptural artwork out of plastic bags, harnessing the air from subway grates to give them a sense of life. Read more
Brian Bress is my art obsession at the moment. I recently saw his show at the LFL gallery in New York, and his collages and photographs were so striking, modern and funny that I couldn’t stop staring at them.
Also by GERRY MAK
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
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.
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.
YOU'RE SAYING (0)
No comments yet.
HAVE YOUR SAY
London-based indie-prog group Klaxons take their name from the Greek word ‘to shriek’. We interviewed vocalist and keyboardist, Jamie Righton, and asked him why, unlike many of their contemporaries, none of them grew up to become great footballers: ‘Me and Simon are from Stratford-upon-Avon and the only famous footballer to ever come from there is Gary Barnett! Jamie’s from Bournemouth and there are even less from there. I was asked to play for the Tottenham Hotspur Legends and Celebrities team in a new Sky TV programme but it clashes with our US tour. Gutted’. Read more
TheStar69 track So What Is The News is the very personification of great pop. In fact, it takes bits and pieces of the best music the The Cult, Hall & Oates and The Steve Miller Band ever recorded and messes it up with a well-honed, Scottish sense of mischief. We like.
Aurie Ramirez’s elegant watercolors have something outsider-y about them, with a slight nod of Henry Darger, but the fantasy world she depicts is less manic and angry — the whimsical and characters that inhabit her work seem more playful and less tormented by religious repression. Read more
What a wonderfully grown up ethos of punk is to be found in the latest effort by New Zealand’s Stolen Girlfriends Club. I saw sequin, lace, leather, denim, tulle, rhinestone and what appeared to be heshen, breaking all the rules of taste but nevertheless making me very, very happy. Read more
In Los Angeles, in the gas guzzling centre of the Universe, BP has enlisted Office dA to embrace the paradoxical task of creating a green petrol station. Read more
History is the story of the winners, and western dominated culture recounts few triumphs from the east. Mongol is an effort to correct this balance, and the eastern influence is evident in much more than just the storyline. It is more like a fairy tale or legend handed down through generations, than based on fact, with mythical elements playing a major part, and the character’s motivations remaining simple. Read more
DJ Spooky — That Subliminal Kid — is just about the deepest crate digger around, trawling the barrels of long-lost record stores for choice vinyl to spin in his wickedly dubby sets. He gave us the inside word last week on his eight favourite songs right now via our sister website, My Secret Playlist. This is what he had to say about Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s Panic in Babylon: ‘If there’s anything that the twenty-first century has told us, it’s that dub is the real original hip-hop. Lee Scratch even had to make it clear in 1965 by adding “Scratch” to his middle name. Take that, Grandmaster Flash!’ Read the rest of DJ Spooky’s Secret Playlist.
WE'RE RESPECTING
WE'RE POSTING / SOME OF THE BEST
David Holmes’ The Holy Pictures
David Holmes’ fourth solo album has been a long time in the making. The man who is best known for his scoring of films such as Ocean’s 11, 12 and 13, and remixing for bands like U2 and The Manic Street Preachers, took just over ten years to make his latest album. Read more
I like Roots Manuva because he tells stories. I know that sounds simplistic, but honestly, have you noticed how rappers, certainly American rappers, have stopped narrating their lives and are purely focused on how great they are? I know, I know, hip-hop is all about word play, slang, and blah blah blah. Read more
National Geographic Best Wild Animal Photos of 2008
National Geographic just announced the Best Wild Animal Photos of 2008. They’re all stunning, but I’m particularly fond of the one of a frog refusing to become lunch for a snake. It looks like they’re eating each other. My number two is the black-crested macaque hanging out on a beach. Read more
Lightspeed Champion performs The Kids unhinged
We met Lightspeed Champion (Londoner and former Test Icicles member Dev Hynes) backstage at Oxford Arts Factory at precisely 4.15pm. Read more
There are two Americas: one which strives to create its own culture, music, and art with a strong sense of ethics in mind, and another that drinks 32-ounce energy drinks before waiting on line to get into a club packed with women trying to get back at their overbearing fathers, and homophobic men with a fondness for Axe body spray. How do we bridge the divide?
We have a stack of CDs and DVDs to give away to a lucky new subscriber who signs up to receive our free weekly email publication between now and New Year’s Day. There’s 50 new CDs in the pile, along with a handful of DVDs. So sign up now and leave a message here telling us what album you hope will be in the pile!
Australian illustrator Moofus is just 11 years old. As he says, ‘my mum and dad won’t let me leave school to get a proper job, so I draw lots of pictures’. This limited edition print of Sydney’s Coogee Beach is printed on Epson heavyweight matt paper with archival inks and is just US$20 through the Lost At E Minor store. Read more
Recently
- Samantha Everton’s Vintage Dolls Zolton
- David Bray t-shirt Zolton
- DRM free MP3 downloads Zolton
- Urs Fischer’s installations Gerry Mak
- Paper Water Bottle Gerry Mak
- Faith No More reunion Gerry Mak
- Bestial Mockery Gerry Mak
- Win an instant CD collection Zolton
- 70s Rock Musicians and Their Parents’ Homes Gerry Mak
- Cooking by the Book mashup with Lil’ Jon Gerry Mak
DISCOVER MORE
SO...
TAGS: acoustic music animals animation Australian bands Australian fashion black and white illustrations blogs Brooklyn Brooklyn artists Brooklyn bands cartoons China collaboration colour colourful artwork colourful illustrations comics electronic music flash games folk music Hip Hop installations Japan jewellery London Los Angeles magazines Melbourne New York New York artists New York bands New York illustrators pop music portrait portraits prints rock music San Francisco soul music street art Sydney Sydney bands t-shirts technology UK bands
IMAGES:
POPULAR:
- Marc Collin: My Secret Playlist!' - loved 63 times
- Brittanie Pendleton - loved 50 times
- Elaine Biss's feminine charms - loved 25 times
- Ed Harcourt: 'My Secret Playlist' - loved 22 times
- Prefab House - loved 19 times
- Andreco's brilliant visions - loved 18 times
- I Give Up On T-Shirts - loved 18 times
SEARCH: Can't find what you're looking for? Do a search..
IS IT GOOD FOR YOU TOO?
We hope you're enjoying your time on Lost At E Minor, but it’s not over yet. Got something to share? Tell us about it and we'll look to publish it. If you want to have your work featured on the site, we'd love to hear from you. Or if you’d just like to talk amongst yourselves, that’s cool too. Pssst, we also have an online store stocking some of the goodies we feature on the site.
If you're a media agency and want to use this platform to connect with our readership, then drop us a line and tell us about it. Oh yeah, and we do digital consulting for cool brands that want to reach the sort of demographic that visits this site.
