NOTICE: I accidentaly deleted all the mail in the mike@burnlab.net account from the past week, much of which I haven't had a chance to reply to. If you sent anything to this address recently, please re-send it. Jeff B, Andy S, and a few others i forget....
My bad. Thanks.

...and a last minute reminder for those in Michigan still looking for something to do tonight: we strongly suggest John Acquaviva, Matt Dear and Paxahau at The Necto in Ann Arbor tonight. Ghoslty, Blackbx, Plus8, Burnlab... can't go wrong.
:)

Happy 2003 to all our beloved readers. For those in the NYC vicinity, a friendly reminder that Olex's Dancing Makes Happy 02 will be the party to beat for the designer/techtrominal crowd, featuring Magda vs. Dinky, Troy Pierce and a special appearance by DJ Traxx. We strongly suggest swinging by Olivia Barry's party in Red Hook beforehand for some neighborhood cheer and more Burnlab programmed audio selections. Drop me an e-mail for directions to the latter and follow the link above for the former.



The Fix is dead, long live The Fix.

Jon Ozias and our friends at Ghostly International kicked off Untitled last week at the Shelter. The free vodka ran out in less than an hour and the door had to be cut off at midnight as hundreds of Detroiters and expats filled the legendary basement club to hear Detroit's next wave craft the future sound of the city. Untitled is poised to make 2003 all about the present and future of electronic music culture, providing Detroit with a weekly dose of fresh talent and good reckless fun not seen since the days of the Bankle parties.

Here are mug shots of six brilliant DJs and one guy badly pretending to know what he's doing. Also be sure to read Robert Gorell's article in the Metro Times with some great quotes from Jon.

On a tangent: there would be more photos, but some wanker lifted my camera at the after-party. How ghetto is that? If anyone tries to sell you a hot Fuji FinePix 6800, give 'em a nice punch in the belly from the Burnlab and a lecture on how to be a decent freakin' human being. I love Detroit, but that crap doesn't happen at parties in Brooklyn.

Sad news for fans of The Clash. Joe Strummer has died of an apparent heart attack.

I'm off to Detroit today. See all you kids at the UNTITLED preview party on the 26th. Be sure to get there early for free drinks and some Wax Trax! classics.

Rem is online - OMA/AMO has a new web presence that is. It's a really strange site, that it is. First the web browser expands to full screen [I hate that] then you get a pop-up window [I hate that too], then on the Mac here a Flash file downloads to the desktop which then has to be dragged and dropped onto Explorer. The super-tiny text is vector, so you can increase the size of the browser window and the text will enlarge in proportion. [That's kind of neat.] There is a ton of information, but something is missing... no images! It's an architecture site, isn't it? Maybe they're still working on it.
Hmm. I like their buildings.

Where's that Prada site by the way?

In other Koolhaas news, OMA was awarded the contract for the CCTV headquarters in China a few weeks ago. [CCTV is the state-run television network.] Images can be found here and here. Apparently the irregular grid represents stress points on the structure. The engineering studies thus provided an equally functional and graphic theme for the building fa�ade. Nice.

Re: Don's post on WTC proposals, I concur that Foster and Partners is the best of the lot. Nothing really groundbreaking [for Lord Norman that is], but the most balanced design and most likely to be a wonderful urban space for the long term. And I love the renderings! Though I appreciate much of their work individually, the team responsible the Hollywood Squares plan managed to make a perversely cold formal study out of an extremely emotional site. "Dreadful" is certainly not too strong a word for it. At least we didn't see yet another version of the tremendously insensitive melting towers from Mr. Eisenman. THINK and United Architects also had some strong ideas. Daniel Libeskind's proposal is both emotionally and intellectually stimulating, though I am leery of a deconstructivist vocabulary for the site. Yeah, for me Foster nailed it with dramatic, sustainable structures, great street level presence and a stunning and appropriate memorial. For the most part, a very good day for architecture in New York. Other thoughts?

If the Beck iPod isn't enough, more examples of how confused the world is right now:

Alec Baldwin proposes putting a new Yankee Stadium on the WTC site.
Art student arrested for making people uncomfortable.
Recreational cannibalism in Germany. (As one Computerlove.net reader countered reactions of shock and disgust, "Welcome to Germany, dudes!" Hmm.)

Ah, but there are a few who can save us...

Reverend Yohan brings us holiday cheer with some Chomsky quotes at EvilPupil.com. Before you get down on my man for being all dark and cynical, be sure to read the FAQ section. Enjoy. :)
Just in time to reflect on the state of the world with sharp tongue and sharp suit, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds have a new album set for February release and a brand new web site.

The City of Detroit is close to making a decision on the future of the Detroit Electronic Music Festival. The two parties bidding for the management contract are incumbents Pop Culture Media and a group lead by techno pioneers Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson and Carl Craig. Due to a financial loss for the city in 2002 [despite attendance over one million], the government is considering skipping a year. Full article in the Freep.

Burnlab is officially in full support of Derrick, Kevin and Carl's team and we encourage city officials to give control of the festival to those responsible for the music which inspired it, and to allow it to take place in 2003. Those who feel the need to write to the city can find contact info here.
Some other relevant links:
DEMF dot com
Metro Times article on 2001 DEMF drama

If you're the lucky high-bidder, you can roll to your next electro event in style on your very own Fischerspooner designed skateboard. The one of a kind deck is available through eBay, and all the proceeds go to the Amnesty International Music for Human Rights fund.

We apologize for any technical difficulties and hope to correct them soon.

If you're searching for great [free!] pixel fonts visit our friends at Orgdot. Norway is cold and dark this time of year, so send them some love.

The perfect stocking stuffer this season [there is a lewd joke in there somewhere], order your iRobotnik thong today. "Machine Friendly" professionally silkscreened by BitBoy's army of love robots.

Hot on the heels of their smashing party in November, our good friends at OLEX present Dancing Makes Happy 02 on New Years Eve in Brooklyn. Featured on the turntables are Magda, Dinky, Troy Pierce, Ambassador and Plexus - who can be seen holding a PBR at DMH 01 on the Untitled flyer.

More bad music news. Mary Hansen of Stereolab was killed when she was struck by a car while riding her bike. Guess I'll spend this week switching back on to my old stereolab CDs.

just picked up some noteworthy new hip hop______the much anticipated new one from the roots, phrenology, lives up to their reputation of innovation, mixing straight up hip hop and r&b with rock, heavy metal, and even electro (check out the hidden track)_____also, the new one from detroit�s slum village,trinity.although missing cofounder/super producer jay dee (except as producer on a few tracks) and lacking in consistency, the album is still excellent in places (noteably the herbert-sampling "what is this")

Just in time for the holidays, Karim is unloading some rare prototypes and samples at the NYC HQ this Saturday.

Director and former member of Monty Python, Terry Gilliam spoke at the LAMOCA two weeks ago. Previewed at the event was Lost in La Mancha, a documentary about Gilliam's adaptation of Don Quixote which never happened - despite some ten years preparation, three attempted starts and over $32M in the bank. The film, starring Jean Rochefort, Johnny Depp and a troop of life-size marionettes was literally halted by floods and disease. The documentary about the "un-making" of Don Quixote hits theaters on January 31st.

Among the half dozen projects currently on Gilliam's desk are Brothers Grimm (scheduled to start shooting in the spring for MGM) and a film adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Good Omens.

Form:uLA | Dimension Laboratories
Wow. The essence of "Cyberpunk" has never been defined by architecture quite so explicitly. This brings me back to the days of rummaging through scrap yards for parts to build scratch models of parasitic structures for John Bell's design theory class after watching Brazil like three times in a row. Only Form:uLA does it better than I ever imagined. Plus they can draw like Jay Shuster. [Okay, almost... but better than most for sure.]

We are teaming up with Blackbx and Ghostly the night after Christmas at The Shelter. This is a free preview of an as yet untitled event series. The talent consists entirely of fast rising young stars including Tadd Mullinix, Derek Plaslaiko, Matthew Dear, Mike Servito and Magda. Come early for free drinkies and listen to Jon O and I pretend to deejay in the backroom. Info here. [+ don't forget the Victoria Dark event tomorrow night!]

What good are designers anyway? Pair Affinnova with n_Gen Design Engine and you have the best thing since PageMaker 1.0 turned every wanker with a Mac Classic into a graphic designer overnight. n_Gen is actually a very innovative piece of software... a bit too much effort went into this for it to simply be the elaborate joke it looks like. n-Gen works like this: users select a style ["California Noir�" = David Carson, "Urbivore�" = Peter Saville, etc.], then plug in their own title and text, then the software apparently churns through some algorithms and pumps out a unique graphic layout. The end product is blatantly a stylistic rip-off, but a unique design nonetheless. The best part is that its free! I just downloaded a copy for the Lab, and will be futzing around with it tonight. Could lop hours or days off the design process for club flyers... or even annual reports! ;)
Ughh. So, is design dead?

Really, go download yourself a copy and we'll do a little reader/conspirator n_Gen gallery right here. The good folks at Move Design who created this thing have quite a sense of humor about it. Here is a description of the Urbivore� design module: "Feel the angst and decay of the city in the comfort of your own studio, with Urbivore�. Sophisticated, cosmopolitan and spare, four out of five professional designers agree, it's the most faithful reproduction of minimalist - post - apocalyptic - grit - chic available."

this is the antethisis of design vision, not to mention just plain EVIL. (unless you yearn to be replaced by a focus-group based form generator)

Nice post Olivia! There's so much cool damn stuff going on in Detroit this month. Follow the link in the previous post to see Jeff performing a digitally hot-rodded table saw at the 2000 Detroit Electronic Music Festival, and read the rest of the article this statement was taken from: "I spent a great deal of time attached to a portable cassette recorder used for diary purposes attempting to capture conversations, experiences, numerous moments of my life. My early obsession with recording grew out of a fear of losing that time that was passing. Reflecting on my recorded life ultimately was very beneficial. Reinterpreting the fragmented perception of my everyday revealed things, things that are a foundation for my recent sound-based work."

Speaking of the DEMF, Pop Culture Media's three year contract is expired and the festival rights are currently in the hands of city council to bestow on the best team for 2003. There is the potential for Detroit's biggest annual event to simultaneously return to its grass-roots energy and be transformed into a world class cultural festival on par with SONAR in Barcelona... or even bigger and better. Right now we wait and see.

Ghostly International's next event, Victoria Dark happens this Saturday at the legendary Shelter, under St. Andrew's Hall in Detroit. Performing are Ghostly artists Matthew Dear, Kill Memory Crash [live] and Tad Mullinix, plus the talented and charming Mike Servito and a handful of special guests including Bpitch Control's Kero. All for a mere ten bucks.

UPDATE: Sam Valenti IV graced the cover of the Metro Times this past week. Read the rather detailed article about the history and future of the music industry phenomenon known as Ghostly International here.

Still no word on exactly why Control IV was prematurely shut down last Wednesday night, but you can read Rich's statement on m-nus.com. There is also a four and a half hour video stream of the evening available. Not quite like being there... Skip ahead to about 4:00 to see Sven Vaeth working up to an epic frenzy just before the cops bust in.

Dublin, by the way, was a much needed change of pace and scenery. The Irish know how to live. Imagination's Guinness museum is an outstanding example of good experience design, complete with smell-o-vision and a very swanky circular glass lounge on top of the old brewery. Thanks to Jon O and Caitlin Doyle for all the good tips. No Bono sightings, but U2 is pretty inescapable in Temple Bar pubs. We did see Sinead hanging out in a gallery.

Having recently become a satisfied member of the Apple iPod family of owners, I�m now on the quest for the perfect accessories for my 20gb baby. Some items of note fellow iPodders may be interested in: Colette of Paris sells the limited edition Dior Homme case designed by Hedi Slimane (Hedi's iPod playlist includes: '80s hits from The Smiths, Blondie and The Clash.) While DVForge has created their stunning DVBase for desktop exhibitionists.