Posted inOpinion

Swoon’s First Community Center Inaugurated in Haiti

Last week, the “first real inauguration of the [Konbit Shelter] community center with workshops and events brought by Ayiti Resurrect and Ayiti Cherie Healing” took place in Bigones, Haiti. Spearheaded by Brooklyn-based artist Swoon, the Konbit Shelter Project was created with the idea that a group of artists, engineers, architects, and builders could pool their individual knowledge, resources, and time to make a lasting difference in post-earthquake Haiti. [Konbit Shelter blog]

Posted inOpinion

Who Needs Bricks When You’ve Got Pixels?

Production outfit The Third & The Seventh has made a movie that allows us to experience architecture better than ever before, showing iconic buildings in multiple perspectives simultaneously and suffusing them with soft, unearthly light. Viewers would be excused for thinking that these clips were shot on a real camera, but the really amazing part? It’s all three-dimensional computer rendering, created by hand. Incredible.

Posted inOpinion

Starbucks Logo Goes Meh

Global coffee retailer Starbucks is turning 40 this year and they’ve announced a new logo to coincide with the occasion. Looking at the sweep of logos from the original topless two-tailed mermaid — though the company often calls it a siren — that appeared on cups at their first store in Seattle’s Pike Place Market to the more modern version, I can’t help but notice the march towards abstraction and a less coffee-centric brand. Gone is the word “coffee” and the color brown, and in its place is an almost Holiday Inn-like bland greenness that zooms in even closer on the increasingly de-nuded mermaid. What this redesign suggests is that Starbucks will continue to look beyond coffee and go more downmarket as it continues to grow.

Posted inOpinion

Ben Davis Sez Art Criticism Isn’t Dead, Just Maimed

‘Tis only a flesh wound! Newly-crowned Artinfo deputy editor Ben Davis (née Artnet) posts a rant about the State of Art Criticism, pointing out that even though serious criticism may look dead, it’s actually just become increasingly eclipsed by the more hit-friendly version of art writing he deems “art news.” Davis conflates this new world of web-based art criticism with a drop in quality, but I think serious criticism is actually more relevant now than ever. While we may not have journals full of October-style criticism, we do have an engaged community of artists, curators, reporters and critics who all contribute to a group dialogue that is a composite of so-called art criticism and art news.

Posted inOpinion

Ambient Poetry

Last October, Luzinterruptus participated in the 2010 Poetas por km2 poetry festival in Madrid with an installation of illuminated poems. They filled the garden with 1,000 white envelopes containing poems written by numerous poets specially for the occasion by the poets who participated in the festival. [Luzinterruptus Blog]