Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Julius Caesar on Gold), 1981

Exhibit at Gagosian until early April.

Punk: An Aesthetic

Text by Jon Savage, William Gibson, and Linder Sterling, Edited by Johan Kugelberg

• Pub Date: September 18, 2012
• Format: Hardcover
• Category: Music - Punk
• Publisher: Rizzoli
• Trim Size: 8-1/2 x 10-1/2
• US Price: $55.00
• CAN Price: $60.00
• ISBN: 978-0-8478-3662-8

Remember when NASA sent into space the Voyager interstellar probe, containing a golden record with 90 minutes of music from all around the world which can play for many millions of years?

How The Internet Has Spread Around The World [Infographic]

From the article: “When Tim Berner-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1991, it was a bit of a misnomer—at the time, virtually all of the world’s five million internet users were concentrated in just 12 countries, and 70 percent were dialing up from within the United States alone.

But, as today’s infographic demonstrates, the WWW has become significantly more worldwide over the past two decades. By 2010, more than 2 billion people—or about one-third of the global population—had access to the internet, up from something like .05 percent in 1990, and less than 10 percent of users worldwide now reside in the U.S”

via PopSci

aycarambas:

Solar System Vintage Chart 1910s Planets Sun Comets at CarambasVintage http://etsy.me/VFbbfN

The Sun, Earth, Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter. Our knowledge of the solar system in 1910.

(via itsfullofstars)

thehort:

Money that grows!

Check out Lea Redmond’s very clever (and handsome!) letterpressed coins made from handmade seeded paper. Each coin is imprinted with “In soil we trust.”

Multi-Denominational Cultivation
Pennies: Mix of wildflowers including Black-Eyed Susan, Spurred Snapdragon, Shirley Poppy, White Tarrow, and Sweet Alyssum.
Nickels: Herbs including oregano, dill, parsley, basil, chive, thyme, and sage.
Dimes: Root crops including carrot, parsnip, and turnip.

Seed money to start growing something.

(via peanutbutterbandwidth)

foreverybody:

From the archives…

This Project.  Humans by Mike Mills.

Mike Mills has a new feature film called Beginners, starring Mélanie Laurent, Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer. It’s good, and you’ll probably like it, yet this post is about something else. Many of you might be familiar with Mills because he did music videos for Blonde Redhead, and Air, and some memorable album covers, including Sonic Youth’s Washing Machine.  What interests me about Mills’ work is there is probably a broader project involved with everything he does, and this project is best seen in Humans.   Some of the images from Humans appear in Beginners because the film is semi-autobiographical, and these images do suit the attitude and atmosphere.  I like to wonder if maybe the Humans images are included for another reason, to tie the film to the broader Humans project.  I was interested to see how his recent film possibly fit into the Humans project, rather than the other way around.  Read Mills’ description of Humans here: 

“The Humans project imbeds highly personal themes into mass produced items … Humans operates in between the art world and popular culture, in between graphic design and an art practice.”

This accurately describes many strengths of the new film, yet this also describes something powerful about most of Mills’ work.  He’s able to use really simple images, lines, and phrases to generate a strong empathetic effect.  There is a tension between the “highly personal” and highly accessible aspects of his work.

Within this tension there is a good and fascinating political implication. Political subjectivity might ordinarily be antagonizing to notions of political community. However, Mills seems to draw on the existential aspects of the subjective to make gestures more universal, to make empathy a rallying point for a unifying “human” politics.  Sure, it’s probably best to not harbour any illusions of there ever being a truly universal politics, yet Mike Mills’ work reminds us that clear unobstructed empathy is probably the best agent.

The last thing that needs to be said is his blog is good, inspired by Henry Rollins’ radio show where he exhibits whatever he thinks is awesome.  A lot of recent posts are about the new movie, and just dig around to find all kinds of interesting stuff about music or film, from throughout history, or by his friends.

(via doremydiatta)

via finalfashion:

Throne of Weapons (made in 2001), from Mozambique

“We don’t manufacture weapons, we sometimes don’t even have money to buy them. How do we get these weapons to kill each other?”

- Kofi Annan

A History of the World in 100 Objects