PSFK Author:
Allison Mooney

Damien Hirst, the highest paid living artist and most provocative of the YBAs, is becoming a free agent. The art world’s answer to Reggie Jackson says he will sell his latest body of work at auction, circumventing de rigueur gallery sales. “The world is changing,” said Hirst, and as always, he’s ahead of the curve.

Hirst is a rare breed–both artist and salesman. This isn’t the first time he’s stunned the art world with his business savvy (and his dead animals). Back in November of 2003, the artist bought back 12 of his seminal pieces from benefactor Charles Saatchi for $15 million. By owning his key early work, Hirst sought to control his own market, deciding which pieces to hold on to or place in museums or collections. Were these works to be sold en masse, as Saatchi is known to do, the value of his works could have taken a substantial hit. This past February, Hirst also opened a store on High Street called Other Criteria, designed to “democratize” art–or at least commoditize it.

His former rep Larry Gagosian isn’t showing any outward ire. He has already said he’ll attend the Sotheby’s auction in September, paddle in hand. Hirst is hoping to set some new sales records at the two-day affair, titled “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever,” where enough art to constitute two gallery shows will be on the block. The pièce de résistance will be a bull submerged in formaldehyde—head crowned by a solid gold disc, hooves and horns cast in gold—inside a gold-plated stainless steel and glass box. The work, called “The Golden Calf,” is expected to fetch at least £12 million.

[via Slam X Hype]

Grad schools are often incubators of innovation—it’s not rare for a final project to become a successful company or product. This year’s students at Central Saint Martins in London have turned out some very cool concepts, if the pics on Flickr are any indication. Unveiled last week at the CSM Product Design Degree Show, the projects range from octagonal chocolates to toile couches to x-ray vases.

One of our favorites was titled “please keep my secrets.” This “emotional printer” is designed to take ephemeral communications like SMS messages and make them keepsakes. The box receives text messages from, say, your boyfriend, via Bluetooth and prints them out on an antique scroll in a small hopechest of sorts. A swirled design appears on the top when you touch the panel cover and grows as a message prints.

We recently spoke with the designer, Mayuko Sakisaka, to find out more about the project:

What is your background?

I learned Japanese-style painting in university before I studied product design in London. I am certain that I could put my creativity and unique cultural perspective from this experience in product design.

What was your inspiration behind the project?

I keep the letters from my friend, family and boyfriend. I also keep memorable texts, but they are not as tangible or beautiful as the letter.

Letters offer a more poetic and romantic medium than emails or texts. I feel that this is the vanishing quality of the communication in the digital age. I initiated a task to design an electric devise to transfer the potential of this older communication tool to the text message. The fundamental concept is to see how a mobile message from a boyfriend can be kept as a physical object in more emotional way.

How many texts do you think you send in a day?

It depends… around 1-5 texts in a day.

Do you ever handwrite letters or cards? Do you save those that you receive?

Sometimes I do, when I want to convey a special feeling or personal sentiment. And of course I keep the letters that I receive.

Can interested consumers purchase the finished product?

Actually not yet. I am looking for the company to produce this product.

London’s young and restless are experts at finding the after-hours post-pub party. Now they have another way to stay out even later—change time zones.

Whisky Mist, a new club at the Hilton’s Zeta bar, now affords the latest in luxury: private jets for partygoers. They’ve tapped the Private Jet Club to whisk the wealthier among them back in time to New York or Rio to keep their nights going.

The Private Jet Club is ideal for those who crave exclusivity but can’t quite afford it. They specialize in jetpooling, which is just like carpooling. It allows you to join a booked charter or share yours with other members. The service is a mere fraction of the price (£10k to New York versus around £120k). Another nice perk is the drop in carbon emissions.

The new luxury consumer craves an experience—a golden tan over a gold necklace. Services like this one make luxury travel (slightly) more attainable for the less-moneyed masses. Still, for the most of us it’s likely to be a staycation this year.

Via Urban Junkies London

In the NYT Freakonomics blog, Stephen Dubner questions whether eating foods grown locally is really all that green. In fact, he maintains the reverse: that growing food yourself may create a larger carbon footprint than dialing up Fresh Direct.

Really? This seems contrary to common sense. The whole benefit of the Locavore “movement” (consuming local foods or even growing them yourself) is to cut down on the environmental cost of shipping a mango in December. It should also be tastier and better for you (no pesticides and preservatives!) as well as cheaper (no overhead or markups!) But Dubner systematically shoots down each one of those arguments:

1) While “deliciousness” is subjective, no one person can grow or produce all the things she would like to eat.

2) There’s a lot to be said for the nutritional value of home-grown food. But again, since one person can grow only so much variety, there are bound to be big nutritional gaps in her diet that will need to be filled in.

3) Is it cheaper to grow your own food?… Let’s say you decide to plant a big vegetable garden this year to save money. Now factor in everything you need to buy to make it happen — the seeds, fertilizer, sprout cups, twine, tools, etc. — along with the transportation costs and the opportunity cost. Are you sure you really saved money by growing your own zucchini and corn? And what if 1,000 of your neighbors did the same?

4) Keeping in mind the transportation inefficiencies mentioned above, consider the “food miles” argument: We find that although food is transported long distances in general…the GHG emissions associated with food are dominated by the production phase, contributing 83% of the average U.S. household’s 8.1 t CO2e/yr footprint for food consumption. Transportation as a whole represents only 11% of life-cycle GHG emissions, and final delivery from producer to retail contributes only 4%. Different food groups exhibit a large range in GHG-intensity; on average, red meat is around 150% more GHG-intensive than chicken or fish. Thus, we suggest that dietary shift can be a more effective means of lowering an average household’s food-related climate footprint than “buying local.”

In fact, the “specialization” method of food production and distribution is “ruthlessly efficient,” he says. It means less transportation, lower prices and more variety. If you want to save money on tasty food, wait for restaurant week.

[via Freakonomics]

Over the past few years, gaming has evolved into a mainstream social activity. Thanks in large part to the Nintendo Wii, video games have come out of the basement and into the living room. Last year, they even made it into bars at Wiimbledon, a Wii tennis tournament held in Brooklyn. While it was no Championship Gaming Series, Wiimbledon let “casual gamers” show off their geeky athleticism on a national stage.

Now Wiimbledon is back for a second year, capping off New York’s Internet Week (Wiik?) on Saturday, June 7th. Like last time, it will be at Barcade in Brooklyn and will be as much as style as skill. Contestants will be competing to win in a number of prize catagories including the Sampras Has Back Hair Award for Best Costume, the McEnroe Was a Dick Award for Most Dangerous Player, and the Andre Agassi Memorial Mullet Award for Most Stylish Player. Besides 15 seconds of fame, you could win tickets to the Brooklyn Cyclones, Brunswick Wii Bowling Bags and Prince tennis rackets. The competition will likely be fierce. Last year we spotted Mario and Luigi, the “A” and “B” controller buttons, lots of 70s-style sweatbands, and general Halloween-like self-decoration.

Sign ups for the 128 open slots commence this Sunday at noon then again on Monday at noon and Tuesday at noon. First come, first serve. As a testament to its popularity, last year’s spots went within 30 seconds each day. While the novelty may have worn off by now, the thrill of the virtual fight is eternal.

Sign up at: wiimbledon.net/signup2008iskillinallyoujiveturkeys.html

Core 77 points us to a new space-saving design concept from Sandy Lam called Spaceless, perfect for those of us who are exactly that. The modular system allows tables and benches to FOLD INTO THE FLOOR, disappearing from view entirely. These don’t need to be built in during construction either. While they can be permanent structures, Spaceless furniture can also added on as a removable/detachable solution.

Originally designed for balconies, we can really see this concept taking off for indoor furniture, especially in space-starved yet style-conscious urban areas such as Hong Kong and New York.

Spaceless

To travel, or not to travel? That is the question in our globally-conscious eco-conscious age, and it has become a catch-22 for many. To effect global-level change, we must travel to far-flung places. But in order to get there, we must take the planes, trains and automobiles that harm the environment.

The industry has responded to this with what they call “offsets,” i.e., planting x trees for y miles flown. Whether this actually reduces the carbon footprint though, is debatable.

So does being green mean we don’t travel at all? That would certainly be taking the local movement to the extreme.

SustainableLifeMedia recently reported that outdoor gear retailer REI’s eco-travel business accounts for nearly a third of the company’s total carbon footprint. However the company stated that despite their emissions from air travel, the unit does more good than harm. For example, travel to endangered rainforests makes such areas a “tourist destination as opposed to a source for timber,” says Kevin Hagen, head of REI’s social responsibility programs. “We hope people who go to these wonderful places come away as stewards.”

It’s a solid argument. The question is: Does one kind of good make up for another kind of bad? What about travelers who are green ambassadors? Who are helping developing nations? Discovering renewable resource? Opening people’s eyes to the beautiful world they should be preserving? Politicians and global leaders who’ve been busted for their big footprints, like Tony Blair and Al Gore, are helping the world, one could argue, just in a different way. Is this offsetting? Or offputting?

Agenda Inc recently pointed out that three luxury players, including Karl Lagerfeld, made Time’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world this year.

Why Karl? It appears that between brunches with his boy toy posse, Lagerfeld has been turning fashion on its head.

According to profiler Zaha Hadid, designer of the Chanel Mobile Pavilion, “the initial context of his work demanded a kind of radicalism. Before Karl, we all looked to couture for inspiration and direction. Now, through his work, fashion originates from the street, the media—anywhere.” Thus Lagerfeld has contributed to the health of the often incestuous fashion industry. Its former tendency towards self-reference and regurgitated repetition brought to mind inbred royalty—a dumbed down pastiche.

It must have been a risk: would “low” culture translate to high? It seems it certainly has. This reverse aspiration has fueled the mad popularity of Marc Jacobs’ Amsterdam arthouse grunge to Patricia Field’s hi-lo pairings and Heatherette’s outrageous neo rave punk.

This street-sourcing approach can also be seen in another of Time’s selections, Takashi Murakami. The Japanese pop artist is behind some of the most inventive, whimsical art of this century, inspiring pop culture icons from Marc Jacobs to Kanye West. For Jacobs, Murakami transformed the iconic Louis Vuitton logo. Another case of popular culture influencing and subverting the staid world of haute couture. This sort of “street luxury” will become increasingly important to an industry overrun by counterfeits, especially in China where Japan is synonymous with cool.

The Time 100

A balloon dog, a shiny red chocolate heart, and a silhouette of Piglet from a “Winnie the Pooh” are looming large atop the Met. Some may say that the three giant steel sculptures by Pop artist Jeff Koons could have been done by their kids, but this is untrue, for several reasons:

1. They are much too large for a child to reach, let alone build.
2. The New York Times described one as “loaded with…erotic perversity.” Let’s hope your kid isn’t.
3. Winnie the Pooh is totally off the radar of the modern-day anklebiter. If it doesn’t plug in and have it’s own social network, it may as well be a stapler.

But what was Koons thinking? According to the New York Times, Sacred Heart (one of the sculptures) “acidly comments on the commercial debasement of emotional and religious experience” and Coloring Book “reflects the youth-obsessed infantilism of modern culture and society.”  As for Balloon Dog, the one filled with perversity, it’s a modern day Trojan Horse. Innocent on the outside, filled with Trojans on the inside. That is dirty.

The sculptures are breathtaking; the problem is the space. “But placed on the architecturally nondescript patio, where there are also shaded areas for patrons of the Roof Garden Cafe, the sculptures too easily turn into benign, decorative accessories,” the Times says. Still, they are “worth visiting under any circumstances.” Considering the amazing weather in New York, we can’t think of a better time to go on a roof and look at a huge phallic balloon animal. The special exhibition, on view in the Cantor Roof Garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, opened yesterday and will continue through October 26.

[via Gothamist]