Remote Control Dead Cat
Cats away! Artist turns his dead pet into flying helicopter after it is killed by a car
Many animal lovers find it hard to part with their pets when they die.
So when cat Orville, named after the famous aviator Orville Wright, was run over by a car, his artist owner decided to turn him into a permanent piece of artwork as the ultimate tribute by transforming him into a flying helicopter.
Dutch artist Bart Jansen first stuffed Orville before teaming up with radio control helicopter flyer Arjen Beltman to build a specially-designed flying mechanism to attach to the cat.
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The end result, named the Orvillecopter, is now on show at the Kunstrai art festival in Amsterdam where visitors can watch Orville flying for themselves.
Jansen said the Orvillecopter is ‘half cat, half machine’, and part of a visual art project to pay tribute to his cat Orville.
Jansen, part of the art cooperative Generaal Pardon, said: ‘After a period of mourning he received his propellers posthumously.’
THE FINAL TESTAMENT OF THE HOLY BIBLE Nabs BMS Best Blurb Nom
BMS shortlists for Best Marketing Campaign
29.05.12 | Benedicte Page
The Book Marketing Society has announced the shortlists for its inaugural Best Marketing Campaign of the Year awards, to take place on 21st June at the British Library. The awards will come in the evening of The Bookseller Creativity Day, to include two half-day Marketing and Design conferences.
Shortlisted in the Best Blurb category are the campaigns for The Final Testament of the Holy Bible by James Frey (John Murray); Tiger Motherby Amy Chua (Bloomsbury) and The Wrong Pong by Steven Butler (Puffin).
Porno Cavo
Cave Painting Porn Discovered
The New York Times reports on the publication of an archeological articleoutlining the discovery of 37,000-year-old cave drawings that show our earliest ancestors had a taste for pornography:
The drawings include what appear to be images of the female vulva, illustrated by circles with small slits on one side. “You see this again and again and again,” Dr. White said. There are also very simple images, in profile, of animals, including horses and lionlike big cats, he said.
The work was discovered on a collapsed roof of a rock shelter at the Abri Castanet site in the Vézère River valley in southwest France. Humans at the time lived in such shelters, Dr. White said, and it was a period of cultural naissance.
A Precursor to Playboy: Graphic Images in Rock (New York Times)
Porno Colosseo
Porn video shot on Coliseum grounds
It’s unclear how the filmmaker got access to the taxpayer-owned stadium or permission to use its field lights.
By Paul Pringle and Rong-Gong Lin II, Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum field is the place where the USC Trojans play football, two Summer Olympics were staged, John F. Kennedy accepted the Democratic presidential nomination and Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass.
It was also a location for “The Gangbang Girl #32,” a hard-core pornographic movie that featured 40 minutes of group sex on the gridiron turf, The Times has learned.
The filming at the taxpayer-owned stadium was done at night, with the Coliseum‘s towering lights blazing and its rows of distinctive red and white seats framing many of the scenes. The video also shows the stadium’s signature tunnel, which the Trojan team charges through at the start of games, as well as a sliver of the iconic peristyle, the arched entrance to the Coliseum.
“I was just in awe that we were at the Coliseum,” said a star of the film, who goes by the name Mr. Marcus. “I’ve made movies for about 20 years and I’ve done a lot of things, but that one really stands out.… I mean, who gets to have sex on the Coliseum floor?”
Prince Jester?
Court Jester: Is Richard Prince Using the Legal System as a Medium?
by Dan Duray
In the 1990s, the critic Rosalind Krauss argued against the concept of traditional mediums, like painting and sculpture, favoring instead the term “technical support,” which to her better describes the way contemporary art works.
Take Ed Ruscha, she wrote in one essay. His photographs of American gas stations and parking lots are conceptual, so it wouldn’t be right to say photography is his medium. Instead of paint, he uses the automobiles themselves, and all the cultural touchstones neatly packed into their trunks.
Last week, lawyers for Richard Prince and the photographer Patrick Cariou went to court in the latest hearing of a copyright infringement case that has begun to resemble technical support, or some kind of extended medium, for the 31 paintings in question. Any case where lawyers argue what is or isn’t art tends to have some kind of critical value, if only because it serves as a kind of plain-English catalog essay reduction. The Prince case goes beyond this, though, and begins to enter the realm of technical support in the artist’s bizarre refusal to defend his works on a basic level, which, regardless of Mr. Prince’s intent, makes a curious statement about them at a time when the courts have, in some instances, become a place for artistic expression.
[ click to continue reading at GalleristNY.com ]
New 180g Vinyl of Selected Ambient Works Vol. II
Selected Ambient Works Vol. II gets limited vinyl repressing
Selected Ambient Works Vol II remains a high watermark of Nineties electronica.
Like its predecessor, Aphex Twin’s classic 1994 collection scoped out novel sounds and textures without ever pootling off into abstraction. Having been out of print on vinyl for some time, the set has now been reissued as a triple LP gatefold edition.
The new edition will be pressed onto 180gm vinyl, and will be released in extremely limited quantities.
Johnny Tapia Gone
Boxing legend Johnny Tapia found dead
Will Webber | The New Mexican
Mi Vida Loca.
The motto Johnny Tapia lived by will undoubtedly become his lasting legacy now that his crazy life has come to an end.
The five-time boxing world champion was found dead in his home Sunday night. He was 45 years old.
Albuquerque police were dispatched to the Tapia residence Sunday evening and found a body inside.
A family friend who was at the Tapia residence Sunday night confirmed the body was indeed Tapia’s. No further information was immediately available.
One of the most endearing and well-known sports figures in New Mexico history, Tapia’s life was rooted in tragedy and hardship.
It was also highlighted by his remarkable talent inside the boxing ring. He burst onto the scene in the early 1980s as an amateur. He quickly rose through the ranks, winning his first professional championship belt in 1990.
That same year, he tested positive for cocaine and was suspended from the sport.
Flamboyant and outgoing, he was a fan favorite despite his penchant for self-destructive behavior outside the ring.
Jørgen Leth – Det perfekte Menneske (1967)
Ars Gratia Genitalis
Japanese man cooks, serves own genitals
AFP – A Japanese artist cooked his own genitals and served them to five paying diners in Tokyo to cover the medical costs, in a bizarre act to raise awareness about sexual minorities.
Mao Sugiyama had his penis and testicles surgically removed in March and kept them frozen for two months before dishing them out — seasoned and braised — to customers at an event hall on May 13, according to postings on his Twitter account and local police.
Diners paid 20,000 yen ($250) for the plate with a portion of genitals. Pictures published on a website appeared to show the meal came complete with mushrooms and a parsley garnish.
The painter, who is reportedly 22, said on Twitter the organ had been removed by a physician and certified to be free of infections.
Redneck Turtle Burgers
You Got A Pipe In Your Banksy There, Mate
Banksy art gets exterminated for third time Down Under
ERIK ORTIZ – Friday, May 18, 2012
Reclusive street artist Banksy can’t seem to catch a break Down Under.
Contractors in Australia inadvertently destroyed an artwork this week by the acclaimed British graffiti artist, the third time that misfortune has befallen one of his works in suburban Melbourne in recent years.
Workers drilling through a wall smashed through a picture of the “Parachuting Rat” that was painted on the brickwork outside. The workers were laying pipes for a new cafe, ABC News Australia reported.
The work was painted in the late 1990s, depicting a rat carrying a suitcase and wearing a parachute.
The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies
Assfishing
Your Read Speed
The Squarepusher Dialectic
Squarepusher Q&A: A Chat With Electronic Music’s Own David Foster Wallace
May 17 2012, 8:03 AM ET
by Philip Sherburne
Tom Jenkinson on video synthesizers, synaesthesia and self-indulgence
Seventeen years ago, Squarepusher (Tom Jenkinson) began his career as a breakbeat gadfly, chopping up jungle with Jaco Pastorius into a style known briefly as “drill ‘n’ bass” (or, better still, “weirdy-beardy”). Since then, across a dozen albums, he has established himself as one of electronic music’s least predictable musicians, capable of infectious 2-step garage, sepulchral ambient, molecular breakbeat science and even an entire album of solo electric bass. Fair-weather fans might snicker, “Spinal Tap Mark II performs Jazz Odyssey,” but anyone who really knows Squarepusher — a gauntlet he threw down with 2002’s Do You Know Squarepusher — recognizes that there’s a method to his madness.
Jenkinson is famous for meticulously constructed rhythms and audacious, even alienating, stylistic shifts, and both qualities are readily apparent in a conversation with him. He’s cordial, candid and 100 percent engaged, but I’ve never heard another musician speak in such analytical terms about his own work — terms that might sound cold, until you realize the extent to which his right-angled career is as conceptual as it is wildly expressionistic.
Three Point Supercut
Still Love To Love You Baby – Disco’s Queen Donna Summer Gone
Donna Summer dies at age 63
The Queen of Disco Donna Summer died Thursday morning from cancer, TMZ reported. She was 63.
Known for belting it out on “Last Dance” and “MacArthur Park,” the singer had been trying to continue making music while keeping her condition secret.
“We spoke to someone who was with Summer a couple of weeks ago … who says she didn’t seem too bad,” TMZ said. “In fact, we’re told she was focused on trying to finish up an album she had been working on. “
She shot to fame in the 1970s singing a string of classic disco hits, including” Love to Love You Baby,” “Bad Girls” and “Hot Stuff.”
A Century Of Cheever
A toast to John Cheever on his 100th birthday
The master of the short story is remembered with a reissue of his classic tales and tribute events
SIDNEY FIELDS/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Long before Don Draper, there was John Cheever. The master of the American short story was the original purveyor of midcentury mystique, especially its darker facets.
The endless drinking, ever-present cigarettes, infidelities, secrets of suburban life and anxiety regarding America’s place in the postwar world — they’re all in the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Stories of John Cheever.”
That book is getting an updated edition from Random House come May 27, on what would have been Cheever’s 100th birthday.
Go-Go Godfather Chuck Brown Gone
Chuck Brown dies: The ‘Godfather of Go-Go’ was 75
Harry Naltchayan / The Washington Post
Chuck Brown, the gravelly voiced bandleader who capitalized on funk’s percussive pulse to create go-go, the genre of music that has soundtracked life in black Washington for more than three decades, died May 16 at the Johns Hopkins University hospital in Baltimore. He was 75.
Known as the “Godfather of Go-Go,” the performer, singer, guitarist and songwriter developed his commanding brand of funk in the mid-1970s to compete with the dominance of disco.
Like a DJ blending records, Mr. Brown used nonstop percussion to stitch songs together and keep the crowd on the dance floor, resulting in marathon performances that went deep into the night. Mr. Brown said the style got its name because “the music just goes and goes.”
Top 10 Most Read Books In The World
Bitfest @ Tiffany’s
from AP via Crain’s New York Business
Breakfast at Tiffany’s to enter the digital era
An e-book version of Truman Capote’s novella will be released this week for the first time. Other Capote classics will also debut in digital form, including In Cold Blood.
(AP) – Welcome, Holly Golightly, to the digital revolution.
Vintage Books announced Monday that Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Truman Capote’s classic New York City novella, is coming out this week as an e-book for the first time.
Other Capote favorites, from The Grass Harp to Music for Chameleons, also will debut in digital form. Vintage, a paperback imprint of Random House Inc., is planning paper reissues of Capote’s work, including the true crime classic In Cold Blood.
O Leica 2.8
Leica camera auctioned in Austria for record $2.8 million
VIENNA (Reuters) – A rare 1923 Leica went for 2.16 million euros ($2.8 million) at an auction in Vienna at the weekend, making it the most expensive camera ever sold, the auctioneer said.
An anonymous buyer won the bidding battle for the German camera, which still works and is one of around 25 test versions of Leica 0-Series cameras produced in 1923, two years before the start of serial production. Only half of them have been preserved.
Wes Lang @ HALF GALLERY
Carroll Shelby Gone
Legendary racer Carroll Shelby dies at 89
by Nomaan Merchant – May. 11, 2012 04:27 PM
AP
Decades after a heart condition forced him to retire from racing, Carroll Shelby still loved to drive muscle cars. Well into his 80s, the legendary car designer spent hours testing his last Mustang Shelby GT500, which sets a new record for horsepower and hits a top speed of more than 200 miles per hour.
A one-time chicken farmer, Shelby had more than a half-dozen successful careers during his long life: champion race car driver, racing team owner, automotive consultant and safari tour operator. His fabled Shelby Cobra sports car became an automotive and cultural icon, and he was later credited with injecting testosterone into Ford’s Mustang and Chrysler’s Viper.
Shelby first made his name behind the wheel of a car, winning France’s grueling 24 Hours of Le Mans sports car race with teammate Ray Salvadori in 1959. He had turned to the race-car circuit in the 1950s after his chicken ranch failed. He won dozens of races in various classes throughout the 1950s and was twice named Sports Illustrated’s Driver of the Year.
Classic Games 2 Dubstep
Vidal Sassoon Gone
Vidal Sassoon dies; hairstyling trendsetter popularized wash-and-go
By Adam Bernstein, Published: May 9
Vidal Sassoon, the British-born hair-care magnate who built a global enterprise of salons and hair products and helped liberate women from time-consuming beauty parlor coiffures by popularizing a wash-and-go approach to hairstyling, died May 9 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 84.
Trim and dashing, with a baby face and cultured manner that belied his Cockney upbringing in a Jewish orphanage in London, Mr. Sassoon became an international sensation in the 1960s with his vast network of salons and styling schools.
Mr. Sassoon, long a vivacious fixture on social circuits in New York, Los Angeles, Paris and London, gained instant household recognition by appearing in television commercials for his shampoos and sprays. His tagline: “If you don’t look good, we don’t look good.”
Jaime Gets Pinned
MCA Gone
`CH-CHECK IT OUT’
One Goat, on Account
To the Editor:
I had the great pleasure of reading your unsolicited critique of the “Ch-Check It Out” music video [“Licensed to Stand Still” by Stephanie Zacharek, May 16]. It took some time to get to me, as it had to be curried (sp?) on goatback through the fjords of my homeland, the Oppenzell. And in the process the goat died, and then I had to give the mailman one of my goats, so remember, you owe me a goat.
Anyway, that video is big time good. Pauline Kael is spinning over in her grave. My film technique is clearly too advanced for your small way of looking at it. Someday you will be yelling out to the streets below your windows: “He is the chancellor of all the big ones! I love his genius! I am the most his close personal friend!”
You journalists are ever lying. I remember people like you laughing at me at the university, and now they are all eating off of my feet. You make this same unkind laughter at the Jerry Lewis for his Das Verruckte Professor and now look, he is respected as a French-clown. And you so-call New York Times smarties are giving love to the U2 because they are dressing as the Amish and singing songs about America? (Must I dress as the Leprechaun to sing songs about Ireland so that you will love me? You know the point I make here is true!)
In concluding, “Ch-Check It Out” is the always best music film and you will be realizing this too far passing. As ever I now wrap my dead goat carcass in the soiled New York Times — and you are not forgetting to buy me a replacement! Please send that one more goat to me now!
Nathanial Hörnblowér
Manhattan
The writer, whose real name is Adam Yauch, is a member of the Beastie Boys. He directs their music videos under the pseudonym Nathanial Hörnblowér.
Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio
Self-Published Author Lands Book Deal After 125 Years
By Jason Boog on May 3, 2012 3:23 PM
125 years after it was first self-published, Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio by naturalist and artist Genevieve Jones will be published by Princeton Architectural Press.
Inspired by viewing John James Audubon‘s The Birds of America collection, the 29-year-old author wrote and illustrated a lovely volume before her tragic death. The new $45 book, America’s Other Audubon, contains 68 color illustrations, the original field notes and new text by Joy M. Kiser.
Check it out: “Her brother collected the nests and eggs, her father paid for the publishing, and Genevieve learned lithography and began illustrating the specimens. When Genevieve died suddenly of typhoid fever, her family labored for seven years to finish the project in her memory. The original book, sold by subscription in twenty-three parts, included Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and Theodore Roosevelt among its subscribers. Only ninety copies of the original book were published in 1886, and fewer than twenty-five copies now remain in institutions and private hands.”