Jarvis Cocker covers Eye of The Tiger

Wow.

Musings on nanotech Japanese gummy candy, Karl Lagerfeld's robot body, etc.

Don't know if it's the combination of a rare good night's sleep, a proper diet of coffee, deep-dish pizza and vitamin supplements, the end of Mercury Retrograde or what, but the grey blob in my skull is spitting things out in overdrive today. Not in any productive way, mind you, but entertaining to myself nonetheless.



Some things I've uttered in 140 characters or less this afternoon:

Edible nanotech Japanese gummy candies respond to different food pairings & placement on the body by changing color, flavor, temp & rhythm

Shaped like tiny Zaha Hadid models. Molecules reconfigure into different bots based on chemical input. Will revolutionize cuisine & sex toys

#randomsaturdaymorningideas

I love Lagerfeld's tall shirt collars, but starting to think they just function to cover the seam between his head & replacement body.

Why isn't there a Karl Lagerfeld PEZ dispenser? Seriously.

[Of course the Lagerfeld PEZ dispenser would cost $100K & spit out little Chanel embossed blocks of cocaine, packaged in gold leaf.]

[Zeitgeist alert] Kenyan Sci-Fi Short Pumzi Hits Sundance With Dystopia http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/01/pumzi/

[Bank of Zimbabwe's font is very heavy metal.] RT @benhammersley One hundred trillllllllion dollars. http://twitpic.com/zebi2

Now I'm thinking Lagerfeld probably has a closet full of pre-dressed replacement bodies with various super powers for different tasks.

The necks are fitted with contact rings and a threaded hub, like a steering column.

We saw Lagerfeld in Paris once. Looked up to see what was blocking the sun - a GOLD Hummer with Kaiser Karl in the passenger seat. F'realz.

My mistake. Karl's H2 was platinum, not gold. Those heinous wheels are unforgettable: http://tinyurl.com/ydo8ncd [Still love him anyway.]

The fingerless gloves? Same deal as the collar. His real fingertips screw on to the robot. The tech isn't there to replicate fingerprints.

Listening to Fever Ray cover one of my favorite Nick Cave songs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBDZfzNM7Ew

FAC251: THE FACTORY

20 years since the birth of Madchester, the building that started it all and ultimately destroyed it all....



FAC251: Head office of Factory Communications... Built by Tony Wilson, designed by Ben Kelly & Peter Saville, paid for by NewOrder and broken by the Happy Mondays returns on Friday February 05, 2010.

More info here.

Finches

Yes, it's been over a month since I last posted here and there's a ton of important and awesome stuff backlogged in the queue. [Been participating in more than documenting the Zeitgeist of late - which is good, I think.] For now, please enjoy this:



Céleste Boursier-Mougenot at The Barbican, London

Trained as a musician and composer, French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot creates works by drawing on the rhythms of daily life to produce sound in unexpected ways. His installation for The Curve will take the form of a walk-though aviary for a flock of zebra finches, furnished with electric guitars and other instruments and objects. As the birds go about their routine activities, perching on or feeding from the various pieces of equipment, they create a captivating, live soundscape.

Subjectified

"I did this for the children of the world."

More amazing design humor.
Wow.

Subjectified from Matt Ganucheau on Vimeo.

Thanks Stewart Smith

Neutra Face

Tristan Bynum, Jason Kinney, Forrest Martin and Mark Searcy bring sexy back to design nerdery in this brilliant Lady GaGa parody.

Aire: The Second Fourfold Root exhibition/performance tonight

The Detroit/Brooklyn art cabal gathers for an evening of living fashion installations and music tonight.



NEW YORK -- Devotion Gallery is pleased to present "Aire: The Second Fourfold Root", a live exhibition of dark fashion works taking place on November 14, as part of "The Fourfold Roots of Everything".

Since 800 B.C., philosophers sought to identify a single arche, from which all substances are formed. Empedocles was the first to propose a set of archai, which he referred to as "the fourfold roots of everything". These four roots became the four classical elements of Greek philosophy and the reigning dogma until recent centuries. Empedocles argued that these four elements drove the cycle of life and the changing seasons -- water initiates spring and becomes air, air initiates summer and becomes fire, fire initiates Autumn and becomes earth, earth initiates winter and becomes water -- and, thereby, united birth and death into one continuous process.



This second "Fourfold Roots of Everything" event will focus on the second fourfold root, air. Plato regarded air as an intermediate element marked by its mobility, lightness, and ability to penetrate. "Aire: The Second Fourfold Root" explores this penetration/protection dichotomy in full detail, most notably with Cyberoptix Spring Collection "Atmospheric/Pressures". This collection is constructed from surplus military balloons and tatted lace doilies, seemingly disparate materials that stem from the same Victorian-to-Cold-War time period, when they had a shared utilitarian purpose of protection and have, since then, been fetishized.

Rubber has traditionally been used as protective clothing: From rain boots to gas masks, hazmat suits to condoms, it is meant to repel fluids and prove impermeable to corrosives and viral agents. Rubber latex gas balloons have been used throughout military history -- for scientific observation, meteorology, espionage, distribution of propaganda, and transportation of munitions -- all with the purpose of protecting territory while at war. During the height of World War II, the use of military balloons was extended beyond simple reconnaissance missions to a form of tactical offensive: The Japanese sent over nine thousand Fu-Go balloon-bombs into the eastbound polar jetstream, one of the few attacks to ever penetrate the mainland United States.

Fetishists currently use rubber latex in a prophylactic manner, not only to protect and repel, but to transform the wearer into another persona through formation of a second skin. Despite its extensive use as a fetishized fashion object, it has yet to be used in couture in any manner other than echoing the hyper-sexualized second skin aesthetic. Cyberoptix's Bethany Shorb departs from recreating a caricature of this second skin and, instead, isolates the body from the viewer through voluminous gather, ruffles, and masses of goffered rubber fabric repurposed from vintage military balloons. Color, weight, and texture of the latex also play an important role in distancing "Atmospheric/Pressures" from fetish-wear: Mottled shades of ebony and coffee couple with its natural amber color to belie its B.D.S.M. heritage.

Shorb complements the hand-fabricated and -repurposed rubber fabrics, both visually and conceptually, with several forms of modified lace and tatted doilies. In addition to their decorative purpose, lace items were used in a protective manner: A Victorian and Mid-Century home staple, doilies and lace runners isolated fine furniture surfaces from hot cookware, and fabric upholstery from hair- and skin-borne emollients. In Elizabethan times, interchangeable ruffled collars protected garments from food spills and human sweat. "Atmospheric/Pressures" references this penetration/protection dichotomy of lace through restrictive pilot caps, exaggerated dunce caps, veils and other traditional religious head coverings, thereby allowing the underlying untouchable surface to show through.

Shorb's exclusive use and repurposing of these vintage and deadstock materials (and subsequent hand-dying, painting, and screen-printing), combine to envelope the conceptual exploration of penetration and protection in a unified romantic aesthetic. Echoing the dark and Victorian elements of "Atmospheric/Pressures", will be fashion installations by local celebrities Bird Ov Prey (Karbine), Mercantile (Kill Devil Hill), Sinner/Saint (Anthony Malat), and the very elusive VDK.

"Aire: The Second Fourfold Root" will take place at 319 Scholes Street in Brooklyn at 10:00 p.m. on November 14, 2009. This event will include dramatic live performances -- by Brooklyn-based Black Swan, Baltimore-based Death Domain, Detroit-based DethLab, and local hero Violec (Ryan Brogan, Subtrak) -- and interstitial deejay sets by Cowboy Mark and Ghostly's Mike Servito. Admission will be $10 for non-members, and free for members. (Visit http://AreYouDevoted.com for membership information.)
Contact Marie at Press@AreYouDevoted.com for further information and press materials.


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ABOUT THE FOURFOLD ROOTS OF EVERYTHING
http://AreYouDevoted.com

"Pherepaphe: The Fourfold Roots Of Everything" opened at Devotion Gallery on All Hallows Eve, October 31, 2009.

The name "Pherepaphe" alludes to Plato's recontextualization of the Greek goddess Persephone as "wise for seeing that all things in the world are in motion" and who, furthermore, is a part of that dynamic quality. Traditionally, Persephone is known as both the Queen of the Underworld and the Goddess of Fertility. These seemingly disparate titles collide each year on All Hallows Eve, a ghoulish day that also marks the harvest and descent into winter. Persephone's conflicting roles point to the cycle of life and ultimately explain the changing seasons, a process Empedocles referred to as "the fourfold roots of everything".

"Pherepaphe: The Fourfold Roots Of Everything" visually resolves the contradictory elements of Persephone, through her recasting as Pherepaphe and the primordial of the fourfold roots. It makes the necessary visual references to the dark and the sacred, but also to the organic and the dynamic, the "in-motion" quality that Plato referred to in his renaming of the dark goddess. This group exhibition includes in-gallery work by Arnold Steiner, Bethany Shorb, Carrie Villines, Dan Tesene, Elisabeth Timpone, Jeffers Egan, Keep Adding, and Sougwen Chung. A living installation of dark fashion works in November will further underscore the dynamic and emphemeral qualities of Pherepaphe.

"Pherepaphe: The Fourfold Roots Of Everything" will remain on display until December 14, 2009. Devotion Gallery is located at 54 Maujer Street (near the corner of Maujer and Lorimer Streets) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.


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ABOUT BIRD OV PREY
http://BirdOvPrey.com

As a practitioner of obsessive ornamentation, Jorden Haley's work encompasses a variety of disciplines, including traditional mixed media, digital media, fashion and jewelry design, graphic design and photography. His work is inspired by the juxtaposition of machinery with the organics of nature, the pristine chaos of the digital world, esoteric occult symbolism, antiquated typographic systems, and bog bodies.


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ABOUT CYBEROPTIX
http://Cyberoptix.com


Schooled in both sculpture and photography, Shorb creates elaborate prop, costume, and set constructions that blur the line between editorial fashion photography and performance art documentation. Model, wardrobe, and set each retain the same visual and emotional weight: A hyper-saturated amalgamation exploring the interstitial space between alluring and repulsive, hedonism and restraint, seductive speed of the expressway and still finality of Last Rights.

Bethany Shorb was born in 1976. She received her Masters of Fine Arts in Sculpture, with an elective in Photography, from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Her works have been widely published in the United States and abroad. As founder of Cyberoptix, she has designed high-tech couture for SIGGRAPH and costumes for screen and stage alike (including Skinny Puppy's 2004 world tour), as featured in FiberArts and Industrial Nation. Her current neckwear line has graced the throats of Motor's Bryan Black and actor/director Crispin Glover, and was featured in the New York Times Magazine, BPM, Nylon, Antenna, Wired Blog, and the Martha Stewart Show.


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ABOUT B.S. MERCANTILE
http://KillDevilHillBrooklyn.blogspot.com

Mercantile is a collaboration between Mary Beatrice Brockman and Mark Christopher Straiton.

Mary Beatrice Brockman attended The School Of Visual Arts to study sculpture. After leaving, she focused her fine-art skills on restoration, and eventually settled on pattern-making and handmade wallpapers. Brockman meshes the absurdly real with decorative qualities, using overheard stories (such as "The Whale Found with a Bomb in its Belly") as a point of departure.

Mark Christopher Straiton is wild at heart and a jack of almost all trades. He is best-known as co-owner of Kill Devil Hill, a widely-lauded antique shop in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.


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ABOUT SINNER/SAINT
http://Sinner-Saint.com

Born in mid-seventies Baltimore, Anthony Malat grew up on the road. Touring extensively with his post-punk hardcore band Universal Order of Armageddon (and later the art punk outfits Love Life and The Bellmer Dolls), he became well-practiced in the obsolete arts of backyard auto repair, hand-poke tattooing, and non-denominational marriage officiation.

His line has taken on many forms over the past few years but one thing has remained unchanged: He works alone, using outdated machines and methods, and has used his lack of formal training to his advantage by inventing unorthodox but practical techniques, giving his work special and unique details.

Sinner/Saint suits have gained an international reputation for being the most unique custom designs available today. Malat's clients include Jon Spencer, Jim Thirlwell (Foetus), Benjy Ferree, as well as members of The National, Interpol, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, the New York Dolls, The Hold Steady, Barenaked Ladies, and even N'Sync!

Sinner/Saint and Malat himself have both been press darlings, with full articles or editorial pieces appearing in GQ, Rolling Stone, Spin, Nylon, Black Book, V, Ha'Ir (Tel Aviv), Soma, Swindle, and countless others. He has sold limited-run ready-to-wear collections in New York City, Chicago, and Tokyo.

Sinner/Saint will be introducing a new subdivision that will be available off-the-rack at limited locations and online, as well as jewelry and accessories in association with the partners of the mentor group VDK. In his limited spare time, Malat continues his musical career with the Bellmer Dolls, and makes furniture and sculpture from reclaimed building materials, as well as restoring Victorian-era homes in the borough of Brooklyn, New York.


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ABOUT VDK

VDK is a collaboration between Anthony Malat and Jorden Haley. The VDK is not what you think it is.


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ABOUT BLACK SWAN
http://000000swan.com

Obsessed with electronics, feathers, Native American art, pagan ritual, fetish, punk rock, and tribal percussion, Black Swan is the brainchild of Phoenix Perry and Margaret Schedel. Connoisseurs of the romantic and ethereal, they create high-impact, hard-to-predict events beyond the realm of normal expectations. Their music is reminiscent of electronica and punk, steam boats and theremins, and breaking glass. All costumes are handmade and designed around the art of Phoenix Perry.


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ABOUT COWBOY MARK
http://myspace.com/CowboyMark808

Mark Christopher Straiton is wild at heart and a jack of almost all trades. He is best-known as co-owner of Kill Devil Hill (a widely-lauded antique shop in Greenpoint) but perhaps better-so as a deejay: He has played some of the most hallowed halls of clubland and some of the darkest basements throughout the United States. Playing dance music of the ages, he is generally thought-of as a rock-a-billy deejay or a techno deejay, but he also plays everything in between.

"The single best deejay in NYC" - Jayson Diamond
"Radical Riot Raver" - Emme Evard
"Mark is techno's Sid Vicious" - Sal P. (Liquid Liquid)


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ABOUT DEATH DOMAIN
http://myspace.com/DeathDomainMotif

Starting as a solo project of the frontman of acclaimed synthpunk band SIDS, Death Domain is an all-analog, minimal electronic act based in Baltimore. As is clearly referenced by the name "Death Domain" (a term referring to biological molecules involved in the regulation of cell death), the man behind Death Domain bridges the gap between his two main passions in life (i.e., science and music) in order to mold a unique sound. Â Death Domain has released multiple cassettes with future releases on 7", 10", and 12" formats."


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ABOUT DETHLAB
http://myspace.com/TeamDethlab

With the Dethlab project, Shorb and Doyle seek to define "the new black" by connecting the dots between trends in music, fashion, design and culture: Mashing Ballardian reality with a romance for the glory days of postpunk and the cyberpunk future promised by Blade Runner. Like a modern day McLaren and Westwood, Doyle and Shorb are obsessive consumers, creators, and curators of all things dark, innovative, and beautiful -- often with tongue firmly in-cheek.

In addition to deejaying and event production, they are currently recording original music, have facilitated happenings such as Alice In Wonderland themed tea parties and period costumed croquet socials in abandoned factories, and have used nearly as much fake blood as Gwar. Shorb has performed her own circuit-bent instruments around the country as Toybreaker, and as a member of seminal noise band God and His Bitches. Both have collaborated closely with indie-electronic label Ghostly International on package design and merchandise development, and share the notion of "one foot in the gallery, one in the club." The "Machines That Feel" series is the best example to date of their combined interests in art, music and social-commentary.


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ABOUT MIKE SERVITO
http://ghostly.com/artists/Mike-Servito

Mike Servito is a deejay's deejay, a lifelong music fanatic with a truly unique ability to move a dance floor. Fearless in his seamless transitions from one style to another, Servito has an unpredictability and a deep trust in his music knowledge that has garnered him a cult following and made him an in-demand deejay the world over. Although Servito is a NYC transplant, his deejay style is unmistakably Detroit. Inspired by Detroit radio of the 80s and local deejays in the 90s, Servito came of age in a flourishing electronic music scene, making his debut in 1995 and immediately gaining the attention and respect of his peers and local techno heroes. After a brief hiatus, Servito was lured back into the game through the vigorous encouragement of his close friend Magda, and returned to the deejay realm in 2002. Servito redefined himself, finding inspiration in the new generation of electronic-music producers and deejays.

Mike Servito was among the original "Untitled" residents, whose ranks include Matthew Dear, Derek Plaslaiko, Tadd Mullinix, and Ryan Elliott. He has played multiple Detroit Electronic Music Festivals and has held court with some of the best talent in the world, including artists from heavyweight labels such as Bpitch Control, Perlon, Minus, Kompakt, and DFA, as well as hometown legends Transmat, Planet E, UR, and Spectral Sound. In 2008, Servito became the newest addition to Ghostly's deejay roster, and has happily returned to deejaying and traveling the world playing his favorite music.


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ABOUT VIOLEC
http://myspace.com/RyanBrogan

Ryan Brogan, the mastermind behind the Brooklyn-based imprint known as Subtrak, came to New York via Detroit, where he began his foray into electronic music nearly a decade ago. As a deejay, he has shared the booth with everyone from Daniel Bell, Misstress Barbara, Kevin Saunderson, and Juan Atkins, to Troy Pierce, Omar S., and Guido Schneider. As a producer, he has released electro under the alias AudioRiot and minimal techno as The Pale (with long time collaborator Christian Bloch, Denmark's infamous techno guru). He currently has several EPs under his belt, a recent full length album (Toybox) released under his own name, and various side projects (such as the insanely popular mash-up project "Trademark Technique").

Brogan hasn't surfaced to perform since the release party for "Toybox" on July 4th, 2009. In response to a special request from Cyberoptix's Bethany Shorb, Ryan has agreed to debut his intense new live Breakbeat/Dubstep project VIOLEC. (Think Bassnectar meets Soulwax!)


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ABOUT DEVOTION GALLERY
http://AreYouDevoted.com

Devotion is a new gallery, where space exists as a cross-section of the world at-large. This Williamsburg-based location combines science, art, sound, data, and complexity to reveal our existence as part of an integral whole. Devotion Gallery is located at 54 Maujer Street (near the corner of Maujer and Lorimer Streets) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.


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ABOUT 319 SCHOLES
http://319scholes.org

319 Scholes is a new architectural space in the industrial heart of Bushwick committed to the increasing use of trans-disciplinary approaches in order to achieve artistic communication.


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CONTACT: Marie at Press@AreYouDevoted.com
R.S.V.P.: Press@AreYouDevoted.com
RELEASE: http://AreYouDevoted.com/dev-TheSecondFourfoldRoot.pdf
WEBSITE: http://events.AreYouDevoted.com

Puppy

Dusting off my combat boots for Skinny Puppy tonight in Detroit.
Wait... who am I kidding? They've never collected dust.


Skinny Puppy - Smothered Hope [1984]

RE.TREAT by Úna Burke

London College of Fashion MA student Úna Burke has crafted this extraordinary collection wearable sculptures.

From the artist:

This is a conceptual collection of wearable art pieces, depicting a series of eight human gestures associated with the cause, the physical and psychological effect and the healing stages of human trauma. Sculptural forms are created around the shape of the contorted female body. A number of pieces are reminiscent of prosthetics and medical braces. This signifies the potential for healing within the boundaries of something which inhibits the body.

Carcass-like in form, each piece is hand crafted from vegetable tanned leather, resulting in a colour indicative of human flesh. They have been produced to be viewed as contemplation artefacts observed in the environment of the gallery and they can be used as fashion accessories when broken down into sections, such as arm pieces, leg pieces, head or neck pieces and shoulder pieces. They could be combined with other garments in flowing fabrics which would create beautiful contrasts with the structured forms of these pieces.

References to medical braces and fetish wear are clearly present, but the intricate layering of the leather bands also makes me think of mummification, segmented crustacean shells and particularly Samurai armor. Whatever images and narratives they may inspire, the concept and execution are both breathtaking.

[via Haute Macabre]

Syntaks

Syntaks - "Twentytwohundred" Video from Ghostly International on Vimeo.

Ghostly International's latest signing Syntaks - Danish visual artist/designer Jakob Skott and vocalist Anna Cecilia - have just released the synesthesia-inducing album Ylajali and the lush music video above for our favorite Ann Arbor/NYC/LA-based label.

The richly layered waves of organic and processed sound and phantasmal voices make me want to compare Syntaks to Scott Cortez and Melissa Arpin-Duimstra's work as Lovesliescrushing, or a number of acts on 4AD. But Syntaks bring a presence all their own to the shoegazey dream pop party, and make some of the finest, most captivating autumn music you'll find anywhere.

From Ghostly:

Syntaks take their cues from the ambient experiments of Brian Eno and Popol Vuh, the film scores of Ennio Morricone and John Carpenter, and the tonal depth of ‘90s shoegaze bands and early 4AD records. Each sound—from the tinkling of a piano to the snap of a snare drum—has been electronically treated, conjuring an air of unreality that belies the music’s organic construction. Syntaks’ newest record on Ghostly International, 2009’s Ylajali, is a romantic fever dream, a post-rock paean to the transportative, transformative power of sound. Syntaks wraps the couple up like a shroud, absorbing their identities in the pursuit of a heart-stoppingly beautiful vision.

In Ylajali’s beautifully scorched sonic landscape, acres of drones run beneath Anna Cecilia’s wordless sighs; beats crunch like autumn leaves while synthesizers swell, flourish, and disappear. Songs either tramp through hazy forests until they fade into the dark (the Boards of Canada-esque “Love Camp 23”), or stack tone upon tone like translucent building blocks, building to forceful, near-operatic crescendos (the epic “She Moves in Colors”). Syntaks’ Jakob Skott is a drummer by trade, and his percussion—both live and programmed, but always lent an otherworldly sheen—plays the sinister counterpoint to Cecelia’s tender melodies. “The Shape of Things to Come” typifies Syntaks’ dreamlike musical logic, drifting through fields of placid melody until sheets of guitar noise, metallic snares, and choir-like vocals rush in. Once the storm passes, all that’s left is the sun, glinting through the mist.

Nice Collective Time Machine

For their Fall 2009 runway debut entitled Time Machine, San Francisco's Nice Collective plunged into the murky dreamscapes of H. G. Wells, Chris Marker and Terry Gillian-offering a distopic, but euphoric vision of blurred timelines and epochs. Time Machine presents the full realization of the brand's ethos, which is less about clothes than the creation of a full immersive experience. The specially designed runway/installation was the joint collaboration of Nice Collective and friends, who labored with a full team for over three months on the complex schematics. Assembled from hand picked materials (including a salvaged turn of the century carriage, aged steel, antique leather and burnt wood), the resulting environment provided a timely homage to the fashion spectacles of the early nineties.

Sesame Street at 40

Happy 40th, you old bird. And thanks for the synesthesia and ordinal linguistic personification!

[Is it any wonder?]

Ghost Riders

Some photos and clips of The Horrors live Detroit last week:







The lads from Central Saint Martins have traded in their ghoulsih growls and stomping garage beats for swirling melodies and sweet arpeggiations. Well... mostly. Their live sound is still massive, but more of a smoldering, just-barely-controlled detonation than explosive bolts of plasma and sonic sex. This isn't to say ears weren't shattered and souls destroyed. Oh they were.


Sea Within a Sea clip


Ghost Rider [Suicide cover] clip

Full Flickr set here.

You Are Here

Just because it's a sunny, cold autumn morning, and I woke up with this song in my head.


Nathan Fake You Are Here [2007]

Future Fashion

Fashion predictions for the year 2000 in the 1930s
[clip via Benson, via T0ybreaker]

Fantastic film reel above. They nailed it with at least one prediction.
I wonder if many at the time would have imagined something like Gareth Pugh's "dark euphoria."
Actually... probably yes! He's like an anachronism from the golden age of science fiction:

Merlin Mann on Time and Attention (Getting Things Done)

Continuing on the subjects of creativity and working methods, here's a talk Merlin Mann gave at Google last year.
(Great to listen to in the background while you're getting things done.)

Work smarter, not harder.

Rarely do I ever re-post an entire article, but I've been preaching this method to mostly deaf ears much of my professional career. So glad Fast Company published this piece.

The workforce is full of what I call "inefficient martyrs": people who believe that putting in long hours, sucking up to people they know are unqualified to be in management, and sacrificing their personal lives is somehow equal or superior to accomplishing something significant with smarter methods and less effort. Good planning, time management, allowing yourself pleasure, traveling frequently, daydreaming, actively making time and effort to expose one's self to different cultures and radical ideas... just taking time to experience things outside of "work" which make one a more insightful, productive and valuable contributor to the workplace [and ultimately society] has all been demonized by American corporate culture as lazy and flaky. These "lazy and flaky" afflictions on corporate America are the ones who innovate, become successful entrepreneurs, speak at TED conferences, and generally make the world a better place. The inefficient martyrs will rise like stars within their companies, be paid too much to leave, contribute nothing of value to society and continue to hate their lives - while livin' The American Dream.

Fast Company | Design & Innovation | Hard Work's Overrated, Maybe Detrimental.

A co-founder of Flickr argues that hard work often doesn't amount to much--and neuroscience offers some backing for the claim.

Caterina Fake, who, with her husband Stewart Butterfield, founded Flickr, knows a thing or two about bliztkreig work schedules. But she points out that late nights are seldom very useful in the grand scheme of things. Hard work? Overrated:

When we were building Flickr, we worked very hard. We worked all waking hours, we didn't stop. My Hunch cofounder Chris Dixon and I were talking about how hard we worked on our first startups, his being Site Advisor, acquired by McAfee--14-18 hours a day. We agreed that a lot of what we then considered "working hard" was actually "freaking out". Freaking out included panicking, working on things just to be working on something, not knowing what we were doing, fearing failure, worrying about things we needn't have worried about, thinking about fund raising rather than product building, building too many features, getting distracted by competitors, being at the office since just being there seemed productive even if it wasn't--and other time-consuming activities. This time around we have eliminated a lot of freaking out time. We seem to be working less hard this time, even making it home in time for dinner.

Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on. Paying attention to what is going on in the world. Seeing patterns. Seeing things as they are rather than how you want them to be. Being able to read what people want. Putting yourself in the right place where information is flowing freely and interesting new juxtapositions can be seen. But you can save yourself a lot of time by working on the right thing. Working hard, even, if that's what you like to do.

That raises the question: How do you set aside the mind space to see patterns, make connections, and read what people want? How do you find the right thing to work on?

Fake points to the salient example of Watson and Crick's discovery of DNA. They spent a lot of time lollygagging and goofing off, going to parties and bullshitting over coffee.

That might seem like a historical footnote, but our everyday experience vindicates it. After all, have you ever had a great idea at your desk? But how often does that bulb go off in the shower, or in bed?

Modern neuroscience actually vindicates this apparently lackadaisical approach. It turns out that the best way to find breakthrough ideas might be to avoid working hard. As the Wall Street Journal reported this summer:

By most measures, we spend about a third of our time daydreaming, yet our brain is unusually active during these seemingly idle moments. Left to its own devices, our brain activates several areas associated with complex problem solving, which researchers had previously assumed were dormant during daydreams. Moreover, it appears to be the only time these areas work in unison.

"People assumed that when your mind wandered it was empty," says cognitive neuroscientist Kalina Christoff at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, who reported the findings last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. As measured by brain activity, however, "mind wandering is a much more active state than we ever imagined, much more active than during reasoning with a complex problem."

She suspects that the flypaper of an unfocused mind may trap new ideas and unexpected associations more effectively than methodical reasoning. That may create the mental framework for new ideas. "You can see regions of these networks becoming active just prior to people arriving at an insight," she says.

The researchers found support for the idea that blinding insights favor a prepared mind--that is, you've got to really internalize the problem at hand if you're to find any sort of solution. (More more on that, check out this article from last year in the New Yorker, by Jonah Lehrer.) But to actually bring those insights to life, you've got to step back. (See why graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister advocates taking time off.)

But if the daydreaming hypothesis is right--and it seems hard to deny--more hours at your desk are actually counterproductive. You'd do better by setting aside lots of playtime, to let your mind wander. Only then will you stumble your way onto what's important.

Modern office design is actually converging upon this idea, without any prodding from neuroscience--for example, Facebook's new offices seem to be organized more around living rooms and DJ booths than cubicles. Elsewhere in office design, conference rooms are quickly being crowded out by lounge spaces. In other words, the very types of places that Watson and Crick found so useful.

Boba Fett + Front 242

[If you're reading this blog, no explanation required.]

The Large Hadron Collider is being sabotaged from the future?

“For those of us who believe in physics, this separation between past, present and future is only an illusion.” -Albert Einstein



This is equally insane and awesome.

Basically, two very credible scientists came up with a theory that perhaps the Large Hadron Collider's string of misfortunes is no accident, but a deliberate result of a future event to prevent observation of the Higgs boson - an as yet unverified elementary particle. Nuts? People have believed in crazier things.

New York Times: The Collider, the Particle and a Theory About Fate

Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter or even black holes that eat the Earth. No, I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, put this idea forward in a series of papers with titles like “Test of Effect From Future in Large Hadron Collider: a Proposal” and “Search for Future Influence From LHC,” posted on the physics Web site arXiv.org in the last year and a half.

According to the so-called Standard Model that rules almost all physics, the Higgs is responsible for imbuing other elementary particles with mass.

“It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck,” Dr. Nielsen said in an e-mail message. In an unpublished essay, Dr. Nielson said of the theory, “Well, one could even almost say that we have a model for God.” It is their guess, he went on, “that He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them.”

This malign influence from the future, they argue, could explain why the United States Superconducting Supercollider, also designed to find the Higgs, was canceled in 1993 after billions of dollars had already been spent, an event so unlikely that Dr. Nielsen calls it an “anti-miracle.”

Read on.

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