I missed this show featuring Josef Albers’ designs for the covers of the Command Records.
This label’s releases are described as…
“…the most unusual record you have ever put on your turntable. It is a unique mixture of entertainment, excitement, beauty and practicality.” — Persuasive Percussion (1959) liner notes
My kind of music.
More from the gallery overview:
Command Records was founded in 1959 by Enoch Light (1905-1978), a classical violinist, bandleader, and sound recording engineer. Light went to extraordinary technical lengths, and often great expense, to create recordings of the absolute highest quality possible that took full advantage of new technical capabilities of home audio equipment in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Light specifically perfected stereo effects that bounced sounds between the right and left channel speakers, which was called a “ping-pong effect”.
On each album sleeve, Light would include lengthy technical descriptions about each song, the musicians, the depth and breadth of the sounds, and how they were recorded. In order to fit his descriptions, he doubled the size of a standard album sleeve and enabled it to fold open like a book, thereby inventing the gatefold-packaging format. The gatefold sleeve became highly popular in following decades.
Luckily there’s some great images on the gallery site. Josef Albers was a graphic artist but his massive influence on the profession was through his educational programs, such as his excellent color theory book, Interaction of Color.
I was listening to Terry Gross’ Fresh Air interview that she did in 2003 with Maurice Sendak, author of a trilogy that includes Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen and Outside, Over There. I was struck by his description of the monsters actually being inspired by memories of his older family members, who would come to dinner at his home in Brooklyn and with their hairy noses and moles and big ears would bore him to death at the dinner table with their meaningless dribble and hungry eyes waiting for his mom’s outrageously slow cooked food.
This juxtaposition between loving human connection and fearsome beasts seemed to capture the strange sense that Sendak’s characters don’t really fall easily into any one black or white space in our minds, but rather a blur across that spectrum of love and hate.
This morning I came across the paintings of Austin Power on the Behance Network. Specifically, his new series, titled “21 Portraits of People I Miss“. There’s a longing and sadness to his work that’s obvious, but also a serious and controlled discipline in these seemingly unfinished works, and a use of colors that really strike a chord with me as entirely contemporary and modern. Wonderful work and even more wonderful because they’re watercolors.
His show is opening tomorrow at Satsko, 245 Eldridge St., New York, NY 10002. 6-9pm.
View a selection of his work from this particular show.
View his portfolio online.
I saw this and was totally blown away. Pe Lang and Zimoun are a rare breed in that they’re capturing an incredibly polished and stylized aesthetic while simultaneously creating some amazingly sophisticated sound designing mechanics. Just so cool and so beautifully presented. I encourage you to spend some time listening and observing this installation. The work that went into this is awe inspiring.
I discovered sound and art installation artist’s Pe Lang and Zimoun’s “Untitled Sound Objects” series at the Today & Tomorrow Blog. They create sound textures using machinery driven objects, most performing a simple task or motion. I started watching the videos and was mesmerized, they play like it could be a new ambient/noise composition and they’re all beautifully and minimally designed installations. The rotors twisting the loops of chains is just too cool.
Watch (and listen to) the amazing video of the installation here.
View beautiful and minimal photographs of the installation here.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about the important of ones personal brand. With a tight job market, it makes sense that people be able to understand where they fit and to work towards a unique differentiation strategy for themselves.
With this understanding I thought I’d take some of the strategic thinking typically reserved for businesses and map a quick process for people to use for their professional selves. I’ll keep this extremely simple since I’d like this to be something people can run with and not a long dragged out analysis/paralysis process. I’ve translated the following concepts from the business to the individual, and seeing it this way makes me see the process a little differently. It’s actually eerie how people-brands and business-brands can be so similar.
The 4 Human Experiences Your Brand Should Affect:
1. Perception: What do you want people to think of you? Be this person.
2. Reason: Are you who you say/act like? Authenticity is critical, look for your deeper truth, what’s beneath the surface you may be afraid to expose?
3. Emotion: Are you connecting with people on a deeper level? What do you believe deeply in that you can advocate/evangelize?
4. Resonance: Do you connect with people in a way that’s meaningful to them? Are you reading other’s needs or are you acting on your own?
The Building Blocks of Your Experience:
1. Where do you have the most credibility?
2. Where do you have the most experience?
3. What are you passionate about?
4. What causes are you aligned with personally?
5. How do you define success for yourself? Money, achievement, freedom?
6. What do you stand for?
7. Who are you competing with?
8. How are you different from them?
9. Who would you be excited to collaborate with?
10. Is there a social context to your desires?
11. Choosing only adjectives, how would you describe your best qualities?
I’m really just winging this but in looking back at this post this is some powerful stuff for any person to do for themselves. If you’re like me and you’ve had a difficulty in the past describing what you do to strangers, this would be a fantastic immersive process to take on, even if it were just for 30 minutes.
