Japanese experimental music - Sony Walkman CM

Taeji Sawai

Atsuhiro Ito

Both of them
via Cnet

So you want to be a book author ...

Here's a website with lots of information about how to become an author from someone who's struggled and won. I'd start with the free PDF e-book. Like many successful authors, JA Konrath started out with 500 rejections. Sound familiar? Yep, like the kind of writing we're more familiar with, it's a time and persistence thing. So be not discouraged, be busy.

KAWS, the brand, the history, and his show in LA

An exhibition of KAWS' paintings and sculptures is set to open at Honor Fraser Gallery in Culver City tonight [Feb 21 - Apr 4]. "I Can't Feel My Face," a group show the artist curated, opens at the Royal/T gallery, also in Culver City, on Sunday. Later this year, KAWS' art will be included in a group show called "Plastic Culture" at London's Harris Museum and Art Gallery. And KAWS is scheduled to show new works in a solo show at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Connecticut in December 2010.

Congratulations, KAWS!

Miami Graffiti Artist Falls From Highway Sign, Dies

The 28-year-old man fell from a catwalk on a road sign hanging over the Palmetto Expressway at about 1 a.m. Friday.
Troopers said a pickup truck hit and killed the man on the roadway. The driver of the pickup truck did stop.
FHP troopers found a can of spray paint near the man's body.

The picture in the article is not the sign in question, which was on the 826, according to TV news reports.

RIP Merk TK KC aka Enrique Olivera.

Our deepest condolences to his friends and family.

Creating fake graffiti with Photoshop

Be on the lookout for digital biting and posing.

Harlem Wall of Pride going condo

Better go get some photos now.

Thanks to Omar for the tip. Thanks to James T.O.P. for all you do.

February 20 NYC - An Evening of Hip Hop History

Join The Hip Hop Culture Center as we celebrate Black History Month with an Evening of Hip Hop History.

Friday, February 20th

The Hip Hop Culture Center
2nd Floor of the Magic Johnson Theater
2309 Frederick Douglass Blvd
Harlem, New York City

"An Evening of Hip Hop History" will observe Black history month and Hip Hop through a presentation by Jamel Shabazz, art exhibitions, film screenings, and special performances.

6:30pm-7:30pm ?The Lesson Plan?
Screening of ?The Lesson Plan?, a short film about the impact of Willie Lynch. Q & A
following by director Eddy Duran.

8:00pm-8:30pm Renaldo Davidson?s Obama Art Series
Talented Artist , Renaldo Davidsonintroduces his 44 series, a retrospective collection
of Obama & family portraits

8:30pm-9:30pm Hip Hop Photo Legend Jamel Shabazz
Noted Hip Hop photographer and author, Jamel Shabazzpresents his work and vision.
?Back in The Day?, ?A Time Before Crack?, and ?The Last Sunday in June?. Q & A and
book signing.

9:30pm-10:45pm Hottest Poets host Old School Hip Hop Tribute & Poetry Jam
Rapathon Alumni pay tribute to KRS 1, Nas, Brand Nubian, Biggie, and Jay Z. This
segment will also include Hip Hop Questions for prizes and performances with poetry.

10:45pm-12:00pm After Party featuring DJ Mike Doelo
Music & Mingle

ALL EMCEES/SPOKEN WORD ARTISTS INVITED

MC/Spoken Word Artists with best freestyle of the evening will win cash prize of $100

FREE UNTIL 6:30PM - $10 FROM 6:30PM UNTIL 9PM - AFTER PARTY $15

Call 212-234-7171 for more info

Rime and Persue in China

SHOK-1 art retrospective online

SHOKthen is a major retrospective of the art made by British graffiti / outsider artist SHOK-1 between 1984 and 2004.  He produced a huge amount of work during this period and much of it is being published now for the first time, online.

UK-Protesters denounce jail sentences for graffiti writers

Tragically, a young man hanged himself in jail after being sentenced to a cruel and unusual 30 months for writing on trains.

Saturday 14th February 2009

A PROTEST calling for an end to custodial sentencing for non-violent graffiti offenders took place outside the Royal Courts of Justice today.

Around 50 people turned out in central London to demonstrate against sending graffiti offenders to prison.

Last Saturday 23-year-old graffiti artist Tom Collister from Penge hanged himself in jail.

He had belonged to a gang which carried out a two-year campaign of vandalism on trains and stations around south London.

Collister was serving a 30-month sentence after admitting conspiracy to cause criminal damage.

10 privacy settings every Facebook user should know

New legal wall in Greensboro, NC.

"The triangular wall, located on the edge of the lake behind the old tennis courts, is the brainchild of senior Sam Sklover, a sculpture major." [at Guilford College]

Congratulations, Sam!

Light art by Michael Bosanko

I wish they would stop calling this a kind of (or a replacement for) graffiti, but it is kind of interesting. I suppose we'll have machines that do this soon to create 3D light sculptures, but right now, the images are being created inside cameras.

Los Angeles is poised to kill its murals, past, present, and future

I.C.U. Art Response to Revised Sign Ordinance Proposal of 2/12/09
The second version of the Proposed Sign Ordinance was posted on 2/12/09. My comments are below. This ordinance is posted at the following link: http://cityplanning.lacity.org/ on the www.lacity.org web site under ?Plans & Ordinances? ? ?Proposed Ordinances?. Unfortunately none of the recommendations that I.C.U. Art or the Cultural Affairs Commission offered were incorporated into the revised Sign Ordinance. Below is my evaluation of the new proposal. It looks like we are going to have to really fight for this one. One good thing, is that we do have the Cultural Affairs Commission and the Cultural Affairs Department working to support our position.

Public Hearing for the Presentation of the Revised Proposed Sign Ordinance
The public hearing on this issue will take place as a Special Meeting of the Planning Commission at 8:30AM on Thursday morning February 19th in Room 350 at City Hall, 200 S. Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012. Speakers will most likely have only one minute to speak. I encourage people to submit comments in writing in advance in addition to speaking. The meeting will most likely take several hours. The earlier you arrive and submit your speaker card, the early you will speak.

Letters of Support and Contact Info
If you cannot get to the meeting, you can send a letter of two pages or less to the Commission Secretariat, 200 North Spring Street, Room 532, Los Angeles, CA 90012 phone 1-(213) 978-1300. If you cannot get a letter to the Secretariat before the meeting, you may bring it to the actual meeting. You must included 15 copies and the agenda item number. I also encourage you to contact the Mayor as well as any City Councilmembers as well as members of the public who will be impacted by this proposed ordinance so that they may work to influence the content of this poorly conceived of plan.

You can send me letters. Please include your address, and please sign the letter. You can mail letters to Stash Maleski, ICU Art, 2554 Lincoln Blvd #162 Venice, CA 90291 USA or fax them to +1 (310) 414-9932 or email me at icuart@aol.com

CAC Plan Rejected
On 2/11/09 the Cultural Affairs Commission (CAC), working with the Cultural Affairs Department (DCA) presented their plan for how they feel that murals should be treated. I helped to develop this plan, and I feel it is a worthy plan to support. Although the plan is not perfect, I believe it is a good compromise under the circumstances. The letter from CAC with this plan is attached.

Since none of the Cultural Affairs Commission (CAC) recommendations from 2/9/09 were incorporated into the new proposal, I was hoping to hear that the reason for this was because Planning did not have enough time to evaluate the new CAC Plan. Unfortunately that is not the case. Alan bell in Planning told me that Planning did evaluate the CAC plan and decided that it would only be used by commercial advertisers.

Planning believes the only viable avenue for fine art murals of any size is through a public easement program. Planning felt that because a building owner would get more money from a commercial advertiser than a fine art muralist for this 300 sq ft. mural set-aside space ? this space would only be used by commercial advertisers. This is regardless of the constraints of the CAC plan that require a mural to be hand-painted, unique, not to cover a window, include no more than 15% text, and have a mural maintenance program. Planning?s logic breaks down when pressed on this issue as I point out below.

Planning Allows for Fine Art Murals as Part of the Regular Allotment of Signage
Under the new proposal, Planning feels that it is allowing for fine art murals to be put up as part of the allotted space for on-premise signage, which uses a ratio of 2.5:1. This formula basically allows for 2.5 sq ft of signage for every 1 foot of linear street frontage for that building. The problem is that this includes all of the on-premise signage and off-premise advertising. The Planning Department recommends a ?content neutral? approach to signage that would not distinguish between on or off-premise signage. Thus, all or none of the allotted signage could be used for off-premise advertising. If you have a building that has 50 linear feet of street frontage, than you would get 125 square feet of allowable signage to use for whatever you like. You could use it for on-premise signage, you could use it to advertise off-premise products or you could use it for a fine art mural. This is unacceptable for several reasons.

This entire allowance of sign area will be maxed-out by on-premise signage. Any remaining square footage of allowable signage could be sold to a commercial advertiser ? with no limits on text and no requirement that it be hand painted. So using the Planning Departments own logic ? that space would be sold to the highest commercial bidder ? not a fine art muralist. Most likely the signage would not be hand-painted. There would be no restriction against digitally printed signage on vinyl for example.

The 2.5:1 ratio is a reduction from the current regulations which allowed for up to 4 sq ft or sign area for every linear foot of street frontage (4:1). Even under the current 4:1 ratio, this formula did not allow enough square footage that would allow an artist to create something in-scale that could really be considered a mural. Primarily this is because most buildings have more than enough existing on-premise signage to use up the entire allotment. Thus, the reduction to 2.5:1 will hinder mural production under the nomenclature of a ?sign?, even more.

Must Be A Set-Aside for Murals ? CAC Plan
There has to be a set-aside for murals that is in addition to on-premise signage. The CAC plan was a fair compromise. The majority of the muralists who attended the Artist Meeting on ?Murals and the New Sign Ordinance? at Crewest Gallery on 2/11/09, support the CAC plan. Although artists generally feel that 300 sq ft is small for a mural, and that they have some concerns, they were willing to back the plan as an acceptable compromise with the condition that artists help craft the details of the Mural Easement Plan for murals over 300 sq ft.

Improper CEQA Findings and Fines for Murals

The Planning Department states in this new proposal that it revisited CEQA findings for this revised ordinance and saw no reason to change any of its findings. I strongly disagree with this assessment. With the new proposal the situation has gotten much worse. With the new proposal, enforcement and fines for any sign found out of compliance have been greatly increased with no respect for VARA or CAPA laws. Since murals of any sort are being defined simply as a type of sign, murals will be greatly affected. This is because most murals are very large ? and the new fine structure has greater fines for larger signs. With the new ordinance there will be more inspectors with greater resources going around citing signs that are out of compliance. Any fine art mural that did not get a permit from DCA will be cited as an illegal sign. If the mural is 300 square feet (which is a relatively small mural) it would be assessed with a $6,000 per day fine. Much more for larger murals- up to $12,000 a day for the first violation for a sign over 750 sq ft. Property owners and occupants within a 600-foot radius of a sign in violation of the sign regulations would also be allowed a ?private right of action? whereby they would have the right to bring civil action against and collect damages from the party cited. The only remedy to contest the citation would be an appeal ? which would cost $3,434 just to file. This sum would apparently not be returned even if the artist won the appeal. In fact, even those murals that were issued a DCA mural permit from 2002 to 2007 would be out of compliance and could be cited, as there is no language in this ordinance that would protect them.

Proper CEQA Findings
The proposed ordinance would jeopardize the existence of a large number of important fine art murals throughout the City of Los Angeles that were painted by important, well known and culturally significant artists. Many of these murals are larger than the maximum area allowed by the proposed ordinance and would therefore be considered illegal.

Many of these murals never received formal city permits, but are clearly protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. These murals are also protected by VARA and CAPA laws which require 90 days notice before a mural can be removed. In the past, citations for out-of-compliance signage (aka murals) have allowed only 10 days for compliance.

Just because a fine art mural did not get an actual permit does not effect whether it is a Cultural Resource or an important work of art. This is especially true since no permit for a fine art mural has been available since 2002 according to Planning.

The actual section of CEQA that covers this issue is as follows,
?CEQA - 15064.5. Determining the Significance of Impacts to Archeological and Historical Resources
(A) Is associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of California's history and cultural heritage;
(B) Is associated with the lives of persons important in our past;
(C) Embodies the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, region, or method of construction, or represents the work of an important creative individual, or possesses high artistic values;?

The CEQA Initial Study for this sign code should have stated that there could be ?Potentially Significant Impacts? in sections ?Ib and Ic? under ?Aesthetics? and in section ?Va? under ?Cultural Resources.? An Environmental Impact Report may be required for this ordinance.

Concessions this Round to all Parties Except Muralists
The revised Sign Ordinance proposal has made a large number of concessions that allow for more pervasive signage of many sorts, yet does not give up anything to muralists. There continues to be no definition of a mural. Any issue related to murals is pushed off, to be dealt with at a later date through the easement process modeled after Portland. This is a big mistake because murals need to be incorporated into the sign ordinance now as an important piece of this complex puzzle.

For example, Planning removed the 35 foot height restriction on signs. A sign just has to be below the building roofline. Now they are allowing large identification signs above 100 feet for high rises, and they have increased the amount of allowable on-premise signage from the 100 sq ft. maximum to a sliding scale based on the amount of linear street frontage. Pole Sign heights are increased. Restrictions on the SUD Sign Districts- which in the previous draft insisted that there be a minimum of 5 separate owners within a single Sign District and that the Sign District include a minimum of 10,000 linear feet of street frontage- have all been changed in a way that favors the large commercial sign companies ? but does nothing to open up these districts to fine art muralists.

Conclusion
In conclusion, I see no other option at this point then to rally all our resources to fight the passage of this proposed ordinance. All channels of influence must be utilized to force the Planning Department to reconsider their approach, and to recognize the value of murals to the cultural and economic life of this city.

Stash Maleski
Director
ICU Art - In Creative Unity
stash@icuart.com
http://www.icuart.com/

Please repost this, especially to people in Los Angeles!

Homeboy Industries and solar power - WSJ

We need a lot more people organizing like Homeboy Industries has, to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the new green businesses.

Origins of Break Dancing, and a battle

via Kottke.org (who links to more of these), thanks to Andy


Battle of the Year 2003 Gambler (Korea) vs Fireworks (Japan) - some of the best moves happen after the 6 minute mark.

A cautionary tale about Facebook, porn, extortion and punishment

Teenage guy poses as a girl online, collects nude photos of dozens of male, underage classmates. He blackmails some of them into having sex with him. Police bust him for a bomb threat and find his photos, etc. Sounds simple at first: he's up against nearly 300 years in jail, case closed, right? Wrong.

It will be awhile before we know how many of these victimized teens end up being prosecuted too. Clearly there's one bad guy and lots of victims, but the law is not completely on the victims' side, unfortunately.

The number of teens being prosecuted as sex offenders for trading nude photos of themselves with other kids is skyrocketing. In a better world, the law would discriminate between a little skin among friends and child porn, but it doesn't yet. Some teens have even been prosecuted for statutory rape for simply having consensual sex with their teen friends. Peeing in public is even a sex offense now. We're deep in Crazy Land here.

Sex offender penalties are awful and they are apparently forever, so if you have any photos of the naughty bits belonging to you or your friends, do yourself a big favor and delete them before they ruin your life. And ... of course ... never send racy photos of yourself to anybody. Never. Your friends today could be your enemies tomorrow, and photos on the Internet never die. Ever.

Plus you won't have encrypted them, so the NSA and all the sysadmins at your ISP and at school and at work will all have a chance to scoop your photos up in transit. Gmail and other webmail systems will save them (possibly forever). And as always, lots of the apparently teenage girls you may meet online are actually boys, sex offenders or FBI agents, so it really pays to be paranoid.

Alex Pardee on Harley-Davidson

Check out Alex's fabulous characters on gas tank and drawing.

Hilary Hahn vs Beardyman in Munich

Make fonts from your own lettering

Interesting free online tool lets you make fonts from your own hand-drawn alphabets.

Thanks to Nowon for the tip

UPDATE: More insanity from Australia-Girl gets 3 months in jail for first offense

UPDATE: Her sentence was reduced on appeal so she won't go to jail. Finally some common sense is applied

---

Previously:
She wrote her name on a cafe wall with a marker. The cafe wants $200 AUD for restitution. And yet somehow this resulted in a 3-month jail sentence for Cheyene Back, a first offender. This cruel and unusual punishment, way out of proportion to the crime, is counterproductive in terms of social outcomes -- and not what one would expect from a civilized country. Did she even have a lawyer?

Hiphop with the Sims on YouTube

Too bad that some of these were pulled by short-sighted rights holders (not that web-deletion works, given everyone's diligence about reposting stuff - so it's probably still there if you look around a bit).

You can't buy this kind of internet love.


M.I.A. - "Galang"


Lil Mama - Lip Gloss


Beyonce - "Irreplaceable


UGK (feat. Outkast) - "Int'l Player's Anthem"


Ice Cube - Down For Whatever

More Sims hiphop on YouTube