Cheep Art

Check out 365ive.com if you are interested in picking up some cheep art. 10 bucks for a good size 2 color print is a steel in my book and you can even get paintings for $40. So good. 365ive is run by Scott Rickey who went to school with Peter who I work with (Peter got me to 365ive.com) You can check out more of Scott's stuff at Arts and Crap. Hot shit!

MacNeil X Animal

This is a few days late, but MacNeil and Animal have teemed up to release a Animal seat using MacNeil's Pivotal seat technology. This means that Animal is dropping a seat that works like a MacNeil. Dope huh? I think so. Animal will be working on a post to go with the seat in the future, but for now you can just rock it with a MacNeil post. Now this is how companies should be working together.

You can check out the PR on bmxonline.

Kanye Live at Abbey Road

I know you are saying "Not another post on Kanye West..." Yes, this one is pretty hot. Kanye live at Abbey Road on the BBC. You can view Kanye's whole show with a live orchestra and special guest John Legend on the BBC site. Click here to see that shit and don't miss Kanye on Saturday Night Live next Saturday at 11:30.

Exactitudes

Check this out. This is a photography project from photographer Ari Versluis and Stylist Ellie Uyttenbroek. They started the Exactitudes project in the late 90's and it has turned into a huge ongoing project that they are still working on today.

"They call their series Exactitudes: a contraction of exact and attitude. By registering their subjects in an identical framework, with similar poses and a strictly observed dress code, Versluis and Uyttenbroek provide an almost scientific, anthropological record of people's attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity. The apparent contradiction between individuality and uniformity is, however, taken to such extremes in their arresting objective-looking photographic viewpoint and stylistic analysis that the artistic aspect clearly dominates the purely documentary element."

From what I understand is they will go into a town or city, study the people, styles, and trends for a few days. They say McDonalds is the best place to do their studying because it brings so many different walks of life together. After days of observing they figure out what kind of style or group they are going to photograph, pick a leading model, set up a studio on the street, or if they are in their home town, bring people into their studio and start shooting. They show each person a Polaroid of the leading model so the subject has an idea of what they are looking for, but are never told to pose in a specific way. They shoot about 60 shots on each subject and only shoot 12 people for each category. When they ask the subjects to come to the studio, they ask them to wear what they are wearing when they were first approached, but to bring some more of their own clothes. It is pretty interesting to think of all of the people who think they are "individuals" but just fall into some category where there are hundreds of other people how look just the same. Just picture a photo study with all of the BMX kids who wear girls pants... I shouldn't talk because I'm sure they could find a group to stick me in.

Check out their site here. It's pretty mind blowing seeing all of the photos there. Good luck getting through all of them because they rotate every time you go back to the home page, so you never know where you left off.

Arkitip

The new issue of Arkitip just dropped. If you haven't seen Arkitip yet you need to track down a copy. This magazine has done it differently from the start. It started as a black and white limited edition magazine filled with contributions from artists and photographers from all over the world. Every year they flip the format of the magazine and have recently changed to full color, but are still printed in limited quantities. The contents of each issue is always fantastic, they have themed articles for every year, but each issue a different artist interprets the assigned article and the outcome is always amazing. This issue contains a feature and cover from New Yorks's KRINK. If you don't know KRINK check out this issue. It even comes with a KRINK sharpie.

Check out the Arkitip site here. They have some great stuff on there... Every issue is archived from the start and they have a great news post/ blog section called intelligence. Defgrip salutes Arkitp so make sure to check them out.

Just For Kicks

Nuno from Odyssey hooked this one up... Thanks Nuno.

Res Fest is a mish mash film festival focusing just about every type of digital media, film and animation. Res Fest started yesterday and will be traveling to 33 citys 15 countries and 6 continents.

One of the featured films at Res Fest is a film called "Just for Kicks." Just For Kicks is the first documentary about one of pop cultures biggest phenomena's... Sneakers. The film starts in the 70's and takes you all the way up through today talking about the trends, the people who started them, how hip-hop commercialized sneakers, Run DMC, Nike, just about everything you can imagine. You can check out the the sneaker freakers site and the res fest site for some more info on the film about the worlds most popular footwear.

I am sadly not in one of the cities that Res Fest is traveling to, but if you are, you should definitely try to check out the film festival.

Hillman Curtis X Pentagram

The simplest things can be so incredible. This short documentary film about Pentagram by Hillman Curtis blew my mind. The concept behind the intro and the outro almost make me speechless. I have posted on Hillman Curtis before and every time I go back to his site I am blown away. Hillman Curtis is a web designer that changed the way websites are designed and Pentagram is one of the biggest design firms in the world housing some of the best graphic designers the world has seen. Check out the Pentagram short here and if you would like to see more here is a link to Hilman Curtis's site and here is Pentagram's site.

What the Fuck!

So I know all of this Hurricane stuff is pretty crazy and all you have probably heard about for the past few weeks, but this is so fucked... Andrew and I were looking at some photos of the Hurricane and the aftermath when we came across this sequence of photos. The title of the photo sequence was "the suffering continues."... I still can believe this as I'm typing it.... So we are looking at all of these photos of people stuck on their roof, carrying dead people... Just click on the link to see the photos in the order that they were presented. So in the middle of all of this horrible suffering there is a photo of a WHITE GIRL, dry, fed, laughing on here cell phone talking to her friend...

Here is the caption:
"Katie Maucher talks to a friend on her cell phone at the College of Charleston, Thursday, Sept. 1, 2005, in Charleston, S.C. Maucher transferred to the College of Charleston after Hurricane Katrina damage Tulane University in New Orleans."

The next photo is some fucking house burning to the ground and people dying... America is fucked.

Here is the link, look under September 1, 2005 > the suffering continues.

Deep Blue

“Eighty percent of life on earth lives in the ocean, yet more people have walked on the moon than have seen the oceans deepest floor.”

It looks like this film has been out for a bit, but I just came across it today... The cinematography is absolutely incredible.
Check out the trailer here.

Internet TV

"DTV is a new, free and open-source platform for internet television and video. An intuitive interface lets users subscribe to channels, watch video, and build a video library. Our publishing software lets you broadcast full-screen video to thousands of people at virtually no cost. The project is non-profit, free and open source, and built on open standards. A Windows version of DTV and a full website are well underway and will arrive in the next several weeks." Check it out here.

If this catches on people are going to have TV shows like they do websites. Just picture it, Defgrip 11 o'clock news, coming to live from the Defgrip studios... Ha! I wonder if people are going to start rocking their computers in their living rooms in place of their TV"s. If i was to do it i would run a Sanyo 1080i projector and keep the computer out of the living room... Unless it was a 30" apple display.

Ryan McGinness

I just stumbled across Ryan McGinnes's site and I was pretty impressed with the archive or work he has up. McGinnes has been around for a long time, he's been doing gallery shows for 10 years and was one of the pioneers of vector art... He was the first person I saw doing stuff with vector and clipart that I was impressed with. In a time where everyone was busy doing crazy 3-D Photoshop collages, McGinness was holding strong with Adobe Illustrator and pushing vector art to a new level. Check out his site and if you are into his stuff he has a few books out. I’m sure you can find them on Amazon.

iPod Nano

Uh oh... More iPods. Apple just dropped their newest edition to the iPod family, the iPod Nano. The best part about the Nano is it comes in Black... No U2 crap with red, just good old black... Very hot. The Nano holds a bunch of songs, has a color display and all of the fun iPod features. Not sure if I'll pick one up... I have a 40g for all my stuff and then a shuffle for riding and quick trips. I can't think of any instance where I would need to rock the Nano, but if you don't have an iPod yet, I would pick the Nano over the rest. Check out how small it is.

New Lotek Site

Rich just put up a new Lotek site. Check it out here. I'm up in Vancouver for Metro Jam. Be back in a few days with some news stuff.