A good resource for both urban and not-so-urban exploring: roadside architecture. (I have a thing for dinosaurs and miniature golf lately.)
Sunday, July 31, 2005
Friday, July 29, 2005
Rob Theakston confirms the earlier comments on Vosges' latest creation...
RT: I just tried a sample of that chocolate. Oh my dear god. You weren't just whistling Dixie.
MD: I used to think Gihraldelli (sp?) was good, but I'm so spoiled now, it's like comparing McDonald's to Red Coat Tavern... Freakin' crack.
RT: I seriously got dizzy about 20 minutes ago.
MD: Rad.
As all of the substance in question at my office has long since been consumed, I'm currently warding off post-lunch sleepies with a 1oz. Sharffen Berger Nibby Bar. Not quite the same serotonin rush, but a formidable and delicious challenger.
Detroit By Design presents
It's Okay, We're Here: Detroit Skate Art and Culture
Guest Curators: Nancy Barr (DIA) and Carlo McCormick. (Paper Mag NYC)
World Famous Skater Bill Danforth and Skull Skates. (Vancouver)
Skate shows by Daykare and Detroit Skate Company.
Runway shows by Superior Belly and Wound's dynamic duo Sarah La and Sarah Lu.
Music and Video by Media Rica, People Mover Productions, Eric Early and Craig Mearns.
Submission sponsors Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit and The Dirty Show.
The event will be a live set for an L.A. film crew's documentary on Detroit 'living legend', Camilo Pardo.
Opening reception Friday, July 29, 7:30pm
Detroit By Design [Bankle Building]
2944 Woodward Ave., Detroit
...and after the skate show, get your maximum dose of minimalism:
Minus presents ALPHA
Heartthrob
Clark Warner
Minx
Ryan Crosson
Friday, July 29, 10pm
21+ | $5 before midnight, $10 after
OSLO
1456 Woodward Ave., Detroit
From the essential classics of the world wide web collection:
Only Anarchists are Pretty
The story of Malcom McLaren, Vivienne Westwood, Sex, Seditionaries and other ruins, as documented by Andrew Wade.
Thursday, July 28, 2005
On the matter of playing electro records through guitar pedals and looking fabulous. (Fabulously silly that is.)
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Gentle reminder: Dethlab at Interstate tonight.
We have new knobs to fuck up your favorite records with.
Fun!
CUMMING the Fragrance by Alan Cumming. see the new commercial for his product. wow. pay attention to his last words. [note: not *exactly* work safe...]
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
The new crack: Vosges brand new Creole Bar with 70% cacao, espresso, cocoa nibs, chicory, and Sao Thome bittersweet chocolate gives the chemistry department at MIT a serious challenge in arena of euphoria inducing substances. I ate less than a quarter ounce half an hour ago, my eyes are dilated, my fingers are tingly and I can't wipe the grin off my face. Wow. This stuff is so dangerous it makes Scharffenberger Mocha (previously the most potent known chocolate bar) taste like Hershey's. It's a good thing Zingerman's, the only reseller in Michigan, is an hour away...
Bloody hell... I totally forgot The Spits were playing in Detroit this past Saturday. :(
I'm going to play Terrorist Attack over and over and over and over, until someone in the office punches me. (Shouldn't take long.)
"Oh my god, it's techno music!"
(sort of...)
Ego Express combine the best elements of dancefloor and listening music, swaying from thick acid lines to dreamy acoustic numbers on their upcoming LP Hot Wire My Heart on Mute DE.
Fugu is a commandline Secure File Transfer (SFTP) application with an intuitive drag and drop Graphic User Interface for OSX. I've been using Fugu since the Burnlab server transfer a couple weeks ago, and have to say it's one of best designed applications I've ever had the pleasure of using. (It has been around for a couple years, but I'm a little slow on this stuff... Burnlab was run from a dial-up connection until 2003.)
Bad me for not posting this sooner: The July edition of the Daniel Miller Hour includes the track Placita by 2VM, a.k.a. the super-rad duo Veronica Vasicka [East Village Radio] and Marc Houle [Ron.Stop.Restore/Minus], as welll as many other treasures at the monthly holy grail of new music. Check the playlist. Wuzza!
Monday, July 25, 2005
Dorkwave + Dethwave + Adult Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder:
Realizing that we've somehow landed two high profile DJ gigs and have only played together once, Ms. Toybreaker and I will be getting some practice in this Wednesday night at Interstate. Come buy us drinks and hear us try to mix the most dangerous and infectiously cheesy records we can find, along with Atsiluth [GHB/LowRes] and Sneak [Datavibe]. More info at the brand spankin' new dethlab dot net.
Proper Things in Improper Places: Part 2
What better way to spend a Sunday morning than to put a bunch of art school kids in period costumes, walk right into an abandoned factory and play a nice game of croquet?
The Edwardian dress code (obviously...) was chosen because our site of choice, the Albert Kahn designed Packard Motors Plant was constructed in 1907. (We may be crazy, but we are thorough.)
A noble sport notwithstanding, the game of croquet (as played by the official rules) can be quite dull. Thus, we were compelled to make up rules as the game proceeded to keep thing interesting. "Anything you can build from objects found on the course is permissible." This rule led to everything from simple bumper mechanisms, to more elaborate ramp structures for the purpose of jumping balls over piles of debris and toxic standing water hazards. In keeping with the DIY miniature golf direction the game had taken, it was determined that game-play would be concluded not in the usual manner of striking the starting stake, but by each player launching their ball through a decent sized hole in the wall of the factory, four floors up: a much more satisfying way to end the game, which we my submit to the USCA for consideration.
Friday, July 22, 2005
Bronques of Last Night's Party was on hand at... well, last night's party. Prolific, scandalously candid and often downright obscene, LNP is a place of reverence for photobloggers and a source of shame and regret for thousands of trashed Vice-reading scenesters.
"The Detroit afterparty was nice... They played alot of Prince." [NOT workplace appropriate.]
NYC:
Ryan Elliott and Derek Plaslaiko bring the Spectral Sounds Vol. 1 release tour to APT in NYC tonight. Not to be missed!
Ryan Elliott at Sub Tonic NYC, 2005 | photo by Sneak
Read a recent interview with the kindly maniac Mr. Elliott here.
Boston:
Machine-rock pioneers Chemlab will be performing live for the first time in seven years at the Middle East Club in Cambridge MA, August 10th. This is an experimental one-off performance and will feature an all new line-up, new takes on Chemlab classics, and tracks never performed live.
Jared Louche and "fan" at Lit NYC, 2003 | photo by Gibby
Also performing will be You Shriek, One of Us, Scrap.EDX and *ahem* special guest DJs Dethlab. Click here for more details.
Detroit:
There will be a costume workshop tonight in preparation for this weekend's Neo-Dadaists Society Corquet Social. The Croquet Social is the second installment in our Propper Things in Impropper Places art crime series. 
In basic terms, a group of gentlemen and ladies are going to play croquet and sip mint juleps in Edwardian period costume at the crack of dawn in an abandoned building, and photograph the hell out of it for an upcoming gallery exhibition. This is expected to be considerably more elaborate, ridiculous and well documented than the Mad Tea Party at Fisher 21.
See the Neo-Dadaists Society MySpace group for details.
How much public space is yielded to advertising is difficult to estimate. Our visual panorama is crowded with written word and images that try to sell, directly or indirectly something to us. It's a considerable percentage of what our eyes succeed to embrace. Delete! by Christoph Steinbrener and Rainer Dempf is a plan that has concurred with the artist to cover for three weeks all the advertising in Vienna's 7th District.
Delete!
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Detroit's weekly home of electro-breakcore-metal-disco-industrial-j pop-acid polka-noise mashups, incendiaries, stage blood and general insolence, INTERSTATE has moved from Sundays to Wednesdays. Check out the brand new website!
Doc sez:
"Me and my hetero-life-partner Denis Baldwin will be DJ'ing (poorly) tonight at Interstate, hosted by the ever scandalous Toybreaker and Atsiluth.
You should come and make fun of our beatmatching skills (or lack thereof)."
INTERSTATE: tonight and every Wednesday
Forans Irish Pub | 612 Woodward Ave., Detroit | 10pm - 2am
What every windows user have been waiting for the last 10 years
Fold n' Drop is a new interaction technique for seamlessly dragging and dropping between overlapping windows. It allows you to fold windows while dragging objects.
The Fold n' Drop Home Page
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
A bit of a different perspective on all things lost (souls, not buildings) in Detroit - photographer Ryan Keberly runs The Snowsuit Effort. Updated Monday through Friday, it is an extensive project documenting many of Detroit's homeless. Beautiful and sobering.
"I was in an abandoned building, scrapping for aluminum, and the window I was trying to remove shattered. The glass landed in my eye."
Dewayne lives on the streets of Detroit.
Monday, July 18, 2005
designated studio day today, time for a treat of some detroit blight photography. first it was off to the abandoned kung food chop suey chinese restaurant on east jefferson - somewhere i always waned to document but never got around to it. unfortunately i was not able to google any background information on it.)
with the rate that old buildings are being torched and scandalously razed, there is no time like the present to document. in keeping with the mr. science theme for today, next it was off to the rougher end of the Cass Corridor - and it just so happens someone tore the plywood from some old science/chemistry lab, with the contents spilling right out into the street. well holy christmas in july!
generally i try to keep my distance from others when photographing/exploring, but this sweet little lady was a joy. she had some interesting commentary on the other locals milling about, to put it mildly:
more images here.
A little reminder to bookmark Marius' killer new Generator.x blog.
Today's profile on Spanish architect Pablo Miranda Carranza will make your head hurt. In a good way.
pictured above: Swarm Intelligence
Swarm intelligence extends the same space description principle of the tropistic automaton in to tredimensional representations of space. It utilises, instead of a physical body, the search and self-organising capabilities of swarms of digital automata.
Speaking of swarms, now on to today's edition of Mr. Science: While taking an evening walk along Lake St. Clair last night, what we initially assumed were clouds of smoke above the water turned out to be massive swarms of insects. Smoke doesn't tend to expand, contract and shape-shift with such precise rhythm. Realizing it was probably tens or even hundreds of thousands of newly hatched mayflies [Order Ephemeroptera], we were quite creeped out, yet fixated by the patterns - as long as the little buggers kept their distance. A little Google-assisted research revealed that the swarming behavior is actually part of the mayfly mating process, or in plainest terms: bug group sex. I'm not sure I wanted to know that, so of course I'm sharing it with all of you.
The answer to this question:
"Oh my god, what happened to you?!"
Is more often than not:
"Dorkwave."
Regarding Chris' post from Thursday: we have been informed that Plug Research recorcding artist Nobody does indeed have an official website.
[thanks Robert Galo]
loop.pH creates and develops new and reactive surfaces and objects, conducts an extensive range of research activities and collaborates with industry and multi-disciplinary groups.
Based in London Rachel Wingfield set up loop.pH to develop reactive surfaces for the interior and has worked on architectural and fashion commissions, product design and public installations.
Sunday, July 17, 2005
this coming weekend in Chicago...
july 23rd
BELA LUGOSI'S UNDEAD (the fake goth party, dress up)
lineup:
matthew campari (aka josh glazer)
adam killing + johnny love = love kills
biobooster
ian hicks
jaime valentino
RSVP ONLY to johnnylove-at-theopaqueproject.com w/ RSVP in subject line
DRESS UP AS A GOTH (free beer)
It's a tough life...
Unwind from the weekend by the sea:
Tonight (Sunday, July 17):
Chiringuito Nueva Ola (Nova Mar Bella)
SENSORAL
food and music
Dj Rebecca West (aural-fixations)
dj residente fedx
cocina mr. ja
enlace jero
Friday, July 15, 2005
NYC:
against nature
July 20-26, 2005
theXpo at Gallerie (63 Pearl Street, Brooklyn NY 11201)
Music and artworks inspired by Against Nature, the scandalous fin-de-siecle novel by Joris-Karl Huysmans. Huysmans' obsessive language, fantastical plotline and bizarre interpretation of nature form the backdrop for a week-long post-modern investigation into the synthetic. New compositions by Tim 'Love' Lee, performances by internationally acclaimed musicians and sonic artists, and accompanying visual exhibition by Eric LoPresti.
Guest Performers:
Nicole Atkins
Tim Goldsworthy of The DFA
Gavin Russom
Gary Hustwit, head honcho of Plexifilms and his experimental ensemble War Slut
Maxime Pasquier
Melissa Dubbin & Aaron Davidson, recently featured in Airborne at the New Museum
Ken Macbeth, Scottish composer, audio engineer and designer of the M5 modular synthesizer
Tony Maimone, veteran bassist with Pere Ubu and proprietor of the infamous Studio G
BCN:
July 15, 16, 17
CCCB (C/ Montalegre 5, 08001 Barcelona)
copyfight will open for three days several areas for documentation and debate as a contribution to the general effort to inform cultural producers and consumers. Panels and keynote presentations, workshops, screenings, download areas and legal counseling open to all visitors will take place in a decentralized way for three days focused on creativity in such areas as digital production, music, literature, and audiovisual culture.
Participants include:
Lawrence Lessig
Cory Doctorow
Wikipedia
Illegal Art
Downhill Battle
John Perry Barlow
The July edition of Badwidth happens tonight at The Works in Detroit. Many of our favorite D'Luvers will be playing records for your pleasure, including the ever charming man known as Mr. Keith Kemp [live!], the always lovely and awesome Ms. Jan "Champain Killah" D., Mr. "goldmine crates" Ken "Stormy" Electropunk, and my personal favorite [obvs...] the [stage] blood goddess of bass synths and gourmet cheese Ms. Bethany "Toybreaker" Shorb.
Bandwith: "Chinstrokers vs. Poplockers"
Friday, July 15
The Works
1846 Michigan Ave., Detroit
18+ | 10pm | a mere five bucks
p.s. Please save some energy for total Dorkwave birthday madness Saturday night at Les Infants Terribles, up the block at Corktown Tavern.
p.p.s. Wonka!!!
Thursday, July 14, 2005
tomorrow evening in barcelona, a visit from NOBODY, seems to be a cool dude but couldn´t find an official site so i just linked the spanish promoters write-up (time to learn spanish anyway people, or maybe chinese?). NOBODY has worked with prefuse 73, bla bla, and schmeeer schmeer among others (sorry but these collaboration-based props are beginning to annoy me). should be good nonetheless, with previously-burnlabbed/jocked JAHBITAT opening. check czech it out.
by the way, welcome back burnlab. i missed you.
This is pretty brilliant: Momus' notes towards a definition of 'moronic cynicism'
"The moronic cynic uses cynicism as a way to prepare for the worst. The worst consequently arrives.
Moronic cynicism is still believing that there's a big simple thing called truth, then saying "They're lying to us!"
The moronic cynic's pleasures are always guilty pleasures.
Moronic cynicism is the narcissistic mindset of a fragmented individual in a culture where all individuals resemble each other, and everybody is secretly miserable.
The opposite of moronic cynicism is love."
I personally find the following principles to work quite well:
Prepare for the best.
Truth is a myth.
Find no guilt in pleasure.
Resemble your dreams.
Love.
The work of the 2005 Emerging Artist Mark Moskovitz and nine graduates of Cranbrook Academy of Art will be presented in an exhibition this summer at DaimlerChrysler Services in Berlin. A concurrent exhibition of work by Artist-in-Residence Beverly Fishman, Head of the Painting Department and a 2005 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship will also be presented.
For those of you in Berlin, Opening Reception: Thursday, July 21, 2005 5:00-7:00 PM. The Atrium of DaimlerChrysler Services, Potsdamer Platz Berlin.
One of the best record labels you probably haven't heard of, Square Root Records release their first compilation this month.
Catalog, the inagural release from Square Root Records, collects two songs from each of the seven artists on the record label. The album serves as an introduction to the label's diverse electronic sound. The music included ranges from the sprawling, epic post-techno of Spectral Mornings to the compact electro-pop of thirty (over) thousand, from the intense post-rock of A Ferret Named Polo to the minimalist-influenced compositions of Padreg Jageillon, and beyond.
Look for several Square Root artists performing at the I Made it Myself Festival August 20th in Bay City Michigan.
addendum to last night's music and culture: In keeping with what appears to be de rigueur for weeknights at Foran's (and who doesn't like a good bloodbath or zombie invasion before work anyway?) Just a little evidence of the fabulous mess that transpired:
Kozmo likes a plentiful helping of brains with his industrial.
And Sam had just collected some blood money:
Unfortunately there is no documentation from this camp of anyone actually performing, the zombies were eating camera batteries along with braaaaiiiins.
The CD Sequencer is an innovative new concept for interactive CD packaging. You can use printed postcards to remix music and store your mixes or share them with friends. Remix uses conductive ink to let you control music using a simple pencil. The object includes cardboard packaging, an enhanced audio CD and a set of printed postcards.
More on the CD Sequencer and other works by recent RCA grad Matthew Falla.
[via ProteinOS]
* tech note: I have no idea why some editors have full names and others have only first names. My best guess is check your Blogger profile settings (make sure your profile is public, for one.)
On to music and culture: Kill Memoery Crash played a killer laptop/DJ set last night. Considering all their live gear was stolen in NYC, Adam, Alex and Kero are major troopers for continuing the tour and kicking serious ass. Also, Kozmo gets a gold star for not only showing up in full-on zombie costume, but for keeping in character all night... on a Wednesday... for no good reason, other than zombies are cool. Photos to come. Detroit art school kids continue to blow my doors off with their absurdist genius and superb execution.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
"Not Bigfoot, just a guy in a shaggy outfit"
If that's not enough of a reason to love Michigan, don't forget about the Fourth Street Fair -- starting much earlier than L.I.T. -- on Saturday, July 16. Intersection of Fourth and Holden in Detroit. One of the summer's best gatherings.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
I'm thinking about breaking my motor city tether for.... internationally renowned artist, designer, author, and technologist Joshua Davis for a day creative workshop. We've all ripped JD one way or another, we all might as well show up and get it from the source.
Read:// anything you can code, Josh can code better
Toronto, ON Canada
July 29-30, 2005 (Fri-Sat)
9am to 5pm
Location: Ryerson University, Room KHE321(A)
wednesday night, 07.13 - get your glitchy industrial thing on. Kill Memory Crash will be at Foran's with special guests Kero, DM and Nida, all of detroit underground infamy.
Foran's Irish Bar | 612 Woodward Ave | Detroit | 313-961-3043 [huge flyer here]
a small side note - i got the unfortunate word last night that their tour vehicle got broken into after their new york show, and EVERYTHING aside from their laptops is gone. the show will go on (half live, half dj), but please come out and support. projectors and analog gear are not fun to replace. at least come buy them a comforting cocktail!
p.s. if anyone has a video projector that they could borrow for the evening, please contact me. bethany@cyberoptix.com
Did you miss us?
Still working out a few bugs, broken links and missing images here and there, but Burnlab is back! Even websites need a little vacation from time to time.
Big thanks to Datavibe for the spiffy new virtual home, and to Bethany for picking up our slack on design, art, music and culture blogging.
Without further ado, this is a fine time to mention that this Saturday night is the July installment of Les Infants Terribles. We'll be celebrating the birthdays of both Rob Theakston and Mark Lazar with special guest Nick Calingaert a.k.a. Common Factor.
Les Infants Terribles: Endless Summer
July 16, 2005
Team Dorkwave vs. Common Factor
Corktown Tavern, 1716 Michigan Ave., Detroit
18+ | 10pm-? | always free
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