PSFK Author:
Adrian Lai

Staple Design and Lomography have collaborated on a new pigeon-inspired Color Splash camera and book project. Dubbed “Colorsplash Chakras,” the concept was to invite user-submitted lomo photos from around the world around relating to seven different spiritual chakas. The idea sounded pretty good when Jeff Staple pitched it on his blog awhile back, but it looks even better having come to fruition.

The book itself contains over 1,000 images submitted by regular people, intermixed with professional images from all-stars such as: Adam Scott, Atsuko Tanaka, Boogie, Brian Milo, Kareem Black, Kreg Holt, Maureen Hufnagel Michael Wong, Nick Rhodes, Wei-I Lee and Yasumasa Yonehara Read the rest of this entry »

One could compare how Marc and Sara Schiller are using the internet to propel street art to the masses with how Charlie Ahearn helped popularize hip hop in the ’80s. Both were outsiders who documented youth subcultures around them. In doing so, they brought the street to a global audience: Ahearn with Wildstyle, the movie, and the Schiller’s with the Wooster Collective.

Thirsty online magazine has a new interview with the couple where they talk about the reasons why they think street art is much more dynamic and intriguing than gallery art. Mainly, the illegal, ephemeral, and accessible nature of street art creates a social context for people to interact with and react to. Many of these points remind us of Relational Aesthetics, the idea of art in relation to its human surroundings and relations, as opposed to within a private space.

We’ll save the deep-dive in theory for another post. For now, check out the interview.

Thirsty interview Marc and Sara Schiller of the Wooster Collective

Group blogs have proven popular within the street culture community. Since Honeyee, we’ve seen a slew of others come and go. The latest group blog to launch is called “Fire walk With me” and comes courtesy of Black Lodges, Steven Vogel’s online editorial project.

Having quite literally written the book on the subject, Vogel has amassed a network of industry heavy hitters.With perspectives from people like Brian Siswojo (852), Bob Kronbauer (Mumble Magazine), Dave Ortiz (DQM), Erik Brunetti (Fuct), and many more, “Fire walk with me” broadcasts the creatively diverse and global voice of the streetwear community. While content is a bit light at the moment, we’ll give it some time to get the momentum going. However, one suggestion we’d like to offer is to add RSS feeds to all the blogs. We’re sure the kids wouldn’t have it any other way.

Fire Walk With Me

Sooner or later some of the creativity, energy and talent that’s driving the currently booming chinese art market was bound to spill into the more commercial territory of graphic design. With the impending Olympics, a global ubiquity of knowledge, and a greater emphasis on art and design as a legal means of illegal political expression, Chinese graphic designers are rising to the occasion. Ping Mag has posted a Q&A with Javin Mo, of the HK-based Milkxhake design collective, about what’s happening now in the country and which designers are leading the pack. The resulting piece is an excellent snapshot of what some have deemed the new Cultural Revolution, complete with links and pictures.  Here’s a taste:

Ping: Regarding influences, Shanghai used to be a great capital of graphic design in the 1920s and 1930s because it was such an international city. Later on, in the ‘50s, ‘60s and during the Cultural Revolution, of course, there was no commercial graphic design apart from political propaganda. I wonder how people started from scratch in the ‘70s and ‘80s… When searching on Amazon, surprisingly there was only one book about Chinese graphic design - from 1990!

Javin: Again, it’s just been ten years! The young people born in the late 1970s and 1980s, like me, had a really strong Western influence. Before, people did not have many imported design books. I talked to one designer from Shenzhen, and he told me that there is a strong community of graphic designers right now. But since they can’t read English, every time they get a magazine, they ask the translation company to translate it to Chinese to circulate it to designers they know.

Read the entire interview at Ping Mag - “New Graphic Design in China”

It’s been four months since Google launched Open Social last November, but we’re still waiting. The initiative, which allows people to create applications that can be used on any of Open Social’s partnering social networks, has yet to bear real fruit, let alone rise to its preconception of being the ultimate Facebook Killer. Paid Content noticed too that things have been relatively quiet on the Open Social front, so they sat down with Google Engineer, Kevin Marks, at SXSW to get an update:
Read the rest of this entry »

Nicholas Panas directs us to a Lego application concept he’s created for the iPhone SDK. It’s a great example of the types of apps we might expect to see in the near future, with the newly unveiled SDK.

“Lego Touch” aims to bridge the creativity of Lego with the portability of Mobile, without any compromise. In his demo, Panas proposes being able to “touch and build while on the move, moving from finger to brick to creation.” Users can also save, share and challenge friends to Build-offs. Looks like great fun, and perhaps an indication that we’re at the cusp of a wave of creativity and innovation that’s going to be possible through the new iPhone SDK.

Lego Touch

What happens when you apply Silicon Valley thinking to a next generation Phone Company? Well, you get Ribbit - the next generation, open platform for Telephony Innovation created by a group of Silicon Valley and Web veterans. Currently still in Beta, and set to launch in the upcoming months, Ribbit recognizes that consumers are no longer communicating on just a couple of “talk channels” and are actually using a variety of applications and services (mostly on the Internet) to connect with each other. For example, instead of simply displaying a caller ID, Ribbit will create a mashup of relevant information culled from social networks like Twitter and Facebook, revealing what the caller is currently doing/reading/watching.

To add to that, Ribbit follows a similar open platform model to Google’s Android, which means developers will have unprecedented access to their technology, through the Ribbit API and be able to innovate at will.

Ribbit.com

[Spotted on Springwise]

If you were at the opening of Design and the Elastic Mind at the Moma last weekend, you may have caught a glimpse of  new Nokia “Morph” concept phone. Developed by Nokia Research Center and the University of Cambridge, the device is part of Nokia’s vision to “reinvent the form and function of mobile devices.” Something like a cross between a Slap Rap bracelet and a Rubber band, the Morph is made of flexible nanotechnology that can be bent, folded, and twisted into radically different shapes, allowing for new applications, such as being worn around the wrist. On top of that, the concept device is self-cleaning and transparent throughout.

But don’t rush to your nearest Nokia Concept Store just yet. It’s going to be at least another 7 years before we see elements of the technology behind the Morph in new mobile devices. And even then, it will initially only be in the highest end of the market.

Additional Reading: BusinessWeek

It seems like so long ago that Viacom filed its $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube. Fast forward almost a year later and it takes us to this week where MTV has inked a deal with imeem to distribute its content. imeem, a site that can be best described as YouTube meets MySpace meets Last.fm, will be allowed to broadcast clips of the Daily show, The Hills, The Colbert Report and more. YouTube already has partnerships with most of the big players in the market (NBC, ABC, etc), so this is a big deal for imeem who’s the underdog in this scenerio.

[via Hypebot]