The King of Technology died on October 5^th 2011. For many, Steve Jobs was viewed as the Thomas Edison of our century. From an Art & Design perspective, he was definitely one of the most influential figures for young designers, photographers, editors and I pass. In a matter of years, the Apple devices have become the must-have tools when working in the Art industry.

The guy was obsessed with design. He built the bridge between the techy rats and the abstract contemporary artists, fans of beauty, minimalism and practicality. Nowadays, liking gadgets and standing in line for 48 hours in front of a computer store is no longer reserved to no-life nerds.

Your Mac, Iphone or Ipad are tools that have been genuinely created to make the artist’s life easier. Whether you are a graphic or motion designer, editing HD photographs taken from your studio, or scanning a freshly completed painting, your work is much more efficient today than the traditional 50’s artist. Most importantly, communicating and selling Art has never been more straightforward.

One could argue that despite its worldwide success, Apple has never really reinvented the wheel by selling already existing technology products, but instead has thought to the world a series of marketing lessons. However as I am writing this article with my Samsung PC, I will still feel “artistically” supportive of the forbidden-fruit tribe.

Live free,

Morgan Gray.

ControlMad International design competition

We all own shoes and a lot of us have to hang them in a shoes rack. A shoes rack, it’s practical but also ugly, even if in some cases, it’s a must. Your boots are made for walking to Spain during October, because very soon the winner of an interesting design competition will be announced.   If a shoes rack is dull thing for a lot of us, it won’t be the case for young creators participating to the For your shoes competition. This year, the design competition – organized by the ControlMad Advanced Design Center in Madrid – propose to the participants to create furniture that would help us (girls) to see clear in our wardrobe. The challenge? Make boring practical furniture look interesting.

The Spanish young creators are free in their process, their materials and the technique they want to use. Creative, conceptual, ergonomic, their shoes racks still have to fit in specific measurement: 2440 mm x 1220 mm x 200mm. Too small for my own shoes collection, but it adds a bit of challenge. The theme of this year edition comes from the fact that in most apartments, storage of shoes is a neglected aspect. We are not so sensitive about those accessories we used everyday and very fast; they take too much space, which is not ergonomic.

On October 10th, the finalist prototypes will be announced and tend ays later, we will finally know which rack shoes will change our wardrobe’s life. The judges come from design, architecture and engineering world.

The winner will receive a free training at ControlMAD Advanced Design Center, an exhibition, an publication in Ibdaat Architectural Magazine and the chance to see their models materialized.

By Emilie Zaore-Vanie

This week, fall was like an imposture: cloudy sky, people wearing boots AND t-shirt, because the heat was like July. September may be a strange time, but it also time for the Pop Montreal Festival, an event who makes bubbly kinds of art shining. Categories are not that so important. Here, artists make music, and musicians are the exhibitions’ stars.

September the 24^th. It’s a real work out to face the ex Montreal Fine arts School stairs to get to this special event. I finally get to the Raincoats conference.

I was expecting some post-punks hippie moms with big hair, but I find two women with the same black shirt. One looks like my father’s workmate, the other like my mom’s little sister. Nothing disturbing. The two women are Ana da Silva and Gina Birch. Shirley O’loughin, the manager of the ex-band, can’t be there physically, but we hear her voice through speakers connected to a phone. The conference was not about new age philosophy or about blasting pop culture (not really the good festival for this). It was simply about good memories and how music can be as experimental as art especially when you were a visual artist at first.

Formed in the late 70’s, the punk band was the common project of three English visual artists, who grew up in a different discipline. In the next room of the Fine arts school, we could see their work: Shirley’s paparazzi style photographs, Gina’s docu-experimental art movies and Ana’s philosophic graphic drawings. They shared the same passion for live performance.

After art school, the three artists got this desire to scream. That was punk culture growing inside them.  They explain us how they learn partially and very fast theirs instruments and try this experimental music with a lot of attitude: a lot of attitude, but a lot of stress too. Without pretense, they specified that they were not that confident when they first got on the stage, with this less of experience. “I got on the stage and I was hoping that a hole will open in the ground so I could just disappear and all this would be over! I was thinking: Oh boy, what am I doing here?”

Solos projects to come for our three ex punk rock visual artists. They still have a lot to tell and to experiment!

Céline Danhier’s Blank City

By Émilie Zaoré-Vanié

Let’s imagine New York. Imagine New York in a different way that we have seen it during our roadtrips. Imagine the Big Apple before skyscrapers, luxury and high rents.

Blank City, a documentary from the french director Céline Danhier depicts New York at a time were organized weekend trips were probably cheaper.  In the 70’s and the 80’s,  the city that never sleeps – or that doesn’t sleep well – was a gathering place where underground art exploded, especially cinema. The No Wave and the cinema of transgression appereared in this création cradle, during hard times, bad politic and economy, plus violence and criminality. The documentary shows hours and hours of thoses movies made with any materials that directors were able to get. The Super 8 esthetic is consistent with this immersion through a city where ‘’ going home was like going to war’’. The movies mix poetry and a granular black and white photography that still shows the leather coats, bleached hair and porous concrete  textures. We see art works that talk about anti-capitalism, sexuality, violence, riot. Between those provocatives movies, we have interviews with artists from music,  visual arts and cinema, like the very ‘’Blondie’’ Debbie Harry,  John Waters and Amos Poe : interesting stories that depict New York as a dangerous city.

Strangely, the interviews photography was careful : standard light, talking heads, in their home. Pure documentary basis. Reassuring convention or style inconsistency ?  I have to admit that even for today, No wave and cinema oftrangression are not that easy to understand or to appreciate. Is it a king of strategy to give transgressive art a chance to explain itself and to be taken serioulsy ?  Instead of dinning rooms and living rooms, I would like to see more strange locations like the empty bath where Kembra Pfahler was doing her interview, or walls full of graffitis behind Nick Zedd.