Sunday, June 29, 2003

Jonathan Ive speaks about the design of the new Apple G5 in Wired.

The 3D Design department at Cranbrook has a new and improved web presence.

I've been MIA from New York and regular postings for two whole months, more or less - much to catch up on...

Jared sent along a link for the OneDotZero festival back in May. Uncharacteristically untimely of us to post so late, but do check out the excellent site. Speaking of our man in the UK, Jared is the artist of the week at Invisible Records, and the new LP Oxidizer is slated for an October release... or as soon as I get the artwork done. The new and improved Chemlab will be hitting the road with Pigface in October as well.

Plastik fantastik: A reminder that Richie and Magda will be kicking off the PS1 Warm Up music series this Saturday, July 5th. Rich's new album is slated for release this fall - the first LP of all new material since Consumed. Be sure to check out Mr. Hawtin's new Control set-up: once again pushing into the future by combining his 909 machine and array of little black boxes, Final Scratch, Ableton Live and Cycloops sampler into a custom XOne62 mixer, simply called CTRL. (No word yet if it has a foot pedal.) Michiganders can catch Rich and Magda with Matt Dear and [Evil] Clark Warner at the Detroit TasteFest on Thursday, July 3rd. The TasteFest has blossomed into a premiere music event. Also appearing are Carl Craig, Los Lobos, Wilco, Billy Preston, Juan Atkins, Derek Plaslaiko and many more. Derek apparently put on an amazing semi-live set at UNTITLED last night. Hopefully Paxahau archived it. While you're at the fest, pick up some Detroit love from Pure Detroit.

ADHOC Group presents Reduction of Complexity: An Exploration in Three Parts. Part 1, Making, occurs at the Rx Gallery in San Fransisco and on the ADHOC site July 17th.

Random is a cool, shoe-gazey band from Ireland with a very nice web site. (Be sure to check out the neat downloads.) The site also uses Autoscape, the official Burnlab font from the geniuses at LINETO - there isn't a better type foundry on the planet for my money.

A classic recently revisited: Goth or Not dot com
I forgot how much I dig this site, and spent way too much time clicking through the gallery tonight. I do have a bit of a rating system, for those interested in scoring higher on the goth-o-meter. The top ten lists are pretty dead-on (no pun intended) with my own picks. If you look like you're sixteen or younger, bonus 3 points for your pain. If the photo is actually taken in a high school cafeteria, bonus 4 points. Bonus 2 points for actually using your class photo. Photos in cemeteries bonus 1 point. Bonus 2 points for expert combinations of plaid and latex. Being from the cyberpunk/rivethead camp myself, any name including words like 'synthetic', 'machine', any German-sounding words, etc. get an extra 2 points. Minus 2 points if you look like you're attending the Renaissance Festival. (Cyberpunks hate hippies, and the Renfest look is a so close, you may as well be wearing a fanny pack and sandals. Sorry - my rules.) Bonus 2 points for a good punk name like 'Blowmeasshole'. Any pumped-up Glen Danzig look-a-likes with the word 'master' in their name get minus 4 to 9 points, depending on how self-important looking they are in the photo. Likewise for anyone who looks like they're in a shorts rock band or might own a Limp Bizkit CD. (Slipknot is not goth, f.y.i.) Good Robert Smith look-a-likes get an automatic 10 rating.

Thursday, June 26, 2003

NOTICE TO LAB REPORT EDITORS
As you may have noticed, Blogger.com has a new interface. You may get a script error message when using the code for a blank window in your links (this bit here: target="_new" or target="_blank"). Please click the "ignore errors" box and proceed as usual. Since the Lab Report is in a frame (that's some fancy web site authoring term), it is very important to include this bit of code.
Much thanks conspirators.



ARCHINECT has exclusive photos of the new Prada Tokyo store, designed by Herzog & de Meuron - probably best known for London's Tate Modern. (Scroll down to Paul's 6/25 post in the news section for images.)


Now online: my latest project for Sony. Just click here then click on "Interactive Demo" in the upper right corner. Don't forget to build and download your desktop wallpaper.

Wednesday, June 25, 2003

hoping to finally get to doing the sonar report tonight...if not, i�ll be doing a two-festival report some time next week as i�m off to england for summer festival dos. my band misnoma will be playing the left field stage at the 3 day glastonbury festival, in it�s 33rd year and 112,000 people strong. interesting (though fairly commercial) lineup including radiohead, lamb, royksopp, the roots, de la soul...and us of course

Thursday, June 19, 2003

Thinking Differently?
Following their run in the Top 10 most downloaded albums on the new Apple Music Store Fischerspooner have been confirmed to be part of the keynote presentation at this year's MacWorld Creative Pro Expo at the Jakob Javits Centre NYC on July 16th. More details as I get them.

Summer in Berlin
I'll be in Berlin over the fourth-of-July weekend, and I'm overwhelmed trying to fit in as much art, architektur, kultur and musik as I can. I've never been to Berlin before, so I'm looking for suggestions. There's a long list already that includes the Bauhaus Museum of Design as well as plenty of Daniel Liebeskind architecture. But I've got no clue about the bustling Berlin music scene. Any ideas how a traveling robot might best spend his evenings into the wee morning hours or other "musts"? E-mail me.

Wondering if anyone has friends, family, ex's over at Index Magazine. If so, please hit muh!

Yes, the Honda ad has been posted here three or four times, but SO good.

For those in Detroit, your friendly neighborhood record mogul SV4 will be guest DJing at Buddha Bar on 8 Mile Rd. tonight. More info at Ghostly International.

More updates from Form:uLA. Machines are hot.

Tuesday, June 17, 2003

streaming audio and video from sonar 2003. Windows Media Player 9 required.

Monday, June 16, 2003

sonar_2003 over and out...regret to say that i wasn�t up to the challenge as much as i had hoped (overdid the training the previous weekends) but still was a great time..photos, avi�s, and wrap-ups to come from myself and liz....highlight was definitely matthew herbert big band. class

Friday, June 13, 2003



Dave Pinter's superb photos from Movement 03 (formerly known as the Detroit Electronic Music Festival) are now available for your fresh eyes right here. Also, photographic evidence of the 'Dorks, Laptops and 909s' debut at Untitled last Saturday.

Wednesday, June 11, 2003

And for my first official offering to the lab report, I'd like to post the link for the new Luomo video. It's a remixed version of Tessio, which can be found on the new album The Present Lover. Thank you.

Monday, June 09, 2003

ok....my band has a very provisional website, where you can find demo mp3s from misnoma. WARNING: misnoma has very little to do with current electro/techno/80�s trends...sorry, but try living six years in spain and making music that isn�t just a little bit sun-shiny (and that�s something i would be willing to bet a first born son on, seriously).a more trendy awe-worthy site is in the works courtesy of ccs grad design group atmesfer ....more to come from both atmesfer and misnoma

Sunday, June 08, 2003



I remembered to bring the digital camera to Detroit, but forgot the cord back in Brooklyn... photos of the soon-to-be-legendary Theakston vs. Doyle set at UNTITLED will have to wait a week or so. Those in attendance were treated to everything from unreleased Metro Area and Kill Memory Crash to The Smiths and The Cars. Next stop on the tour is NYC: dates TBD. "Dorks, laptops and 909s" (underline 'dorks'), sponsored by AMC (the car company, not the theater.)

Friday, June 06, 2003

Those of us stuck on the west coast, not fortunate enough to catch the Ghostly show have a little reprieve this Saturday night as John Selway orients San Francisco to his unique interpretations of electro, obscure 80's electronica, robot-disco, new-wave and Italo-disco at Further Goes Electro. Also, if you haven't seen it, catch Theater Artaud's second-to-last weekend performance of R. Buckminster Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of the Universe, a fantastic one-man show based on the writings of engineer, philosopher and utopian thinker R. Buckminster Fuller. More info here.



Two doses of Rob: 1) Welcome Mr. Theakston as the newest Burnlab conspirator, and 2) that's right, since most of the UNTITLED resident DJs are in NYC for the big Ghostly showcase at Pianos on Saturday, Rob and I will be taking over the back room of the Shelter for this week's installment of UNTITLED. 10pm-2am, five bucks, cheap drinks, and Mike Servito in the main room. Don't miss the madness!

For those in NYC: do not miss Kill Memory Crash live at the Ghostly showcase. SV4 slipped me a copy of their soon-to-be-released LP "When the Blood Turns Black" tonight. Best thing out since "Anxiety Always". No kidding.

Oh, and this has to be the most fabulous web site ever. The Koneisto Festival For Electronic Music and Arts in Helsinki looks like the place to go. The lineup looks good, lots of Scandinavian weirdness, from Erlend Øye the singing DJ to Bjørn Torske, Jori Hulkkonen and more mainstream fare like Moloko and Seb Fontaine.

Those crazy Finns got it down.



A fun little piece of visualisation, plotting artist Clare Thornton's heartbeat against the stock value of Beate Uhse, German erotica champion.

Tuesday, June 03, 2003



I've been an honored beta tester for Computerlove.net V2.0 the past few weeks, and the public version just went live over the weekend. This may very well be the best graphic design resource out there... one of the best sites on the whole world wide web. No kidding. In addition to the news/portal functions from V1, there are hundreds of superb portfolios, featured galleries, tons of exclusive content and brilliantly tight and flexible navigation. Big cheers go out to Christophe, Fred and the crew over the pond. Well worth the wait!



More brilliant work from the lads at Form:ULA.
Damn these guys are good.

Official designer music: Karim Rashid has released two mix CDs, titled Newyorkelectronew and Newyorkelectropunkfunk. Interestingly enough, several tracks made their debut on Ghostly International's definitive Disco Nouveau compilation. (Thanks to our good friends at Core77 for the news.)

Quick Friendster� geek note: I am NOT Tony Wilson. I might have something to do with Peter Saville, but honestly have no idea who is behind the sharp-tongued Tony Wilson profile. It's not Sam Valenti either.... that would be too obvious, and I checked. Back to your regularly scheduled program.