Fujiko Nakaya’s Fog In Toronto @ Nuit Blanche

starting last night at 7pm and going on till 7am the next day (er… i suppose that would be today, at some point..), toronto held host to its first ever free sleepless evening of art and performance called Nuit Blanche.

a first for this canadian capital of culture, toronto follows in the footsteps of great art cities such as paris, den hague, and london. this coordinated project is the biggest art initiative i have ever see in toronto and involved local and international artists presenting all forms of work and performance in over 140 locations spanning the city.

hands down, my favorite installation was found at the outdoor location of philosophers’ walk created by japanese artist, fujiko nakaya. i think i enjoyed it so much because it was the type of installation that as torontonians we are not often exposed too, and it was nice to see my peoples reacting so well to an art form that i felt i had to leave toronto to practice for fear of its ill reception, many years ago. it was also reminiscent of the works of one of my all time favorite artists, olafur eliasson.

nice to see that toronto still has hope, as a city of art and culture. i look forward to seeing what’s in store for next year, and even tho there were many things working against nuit blanche (crappy weather, for one), i feel that it was a success and hope it lays down the proper foundation for city wide art initiatives to come.

Technorati Tags: art, artist, fog, Fujiko Nakaya, installation, philosophers’ walk, smallcaps, villainous.biz

in the mean time…

as you may have noticed (or may not have noticed… nuts to you) i have been a little inactive.. i am currently in toronto enjoying time with my family and friends, so i haven’t really been perusing the metaverse as frequently as i would like to, but here is a vid to keep you entertained;

to use this great music video by weird al called white and nerdy as a lubricant; in october i will be starting my new studies in london, england so until i am fully prepared to face the new challenges ahead of me, i probably wont be updating this weblog too frequently, or at least less frequent than what is commonly perceived as frequently… which would make this authors frequency of posting not so frequent after all. i hope you enjoy this video like i have so frequently. stay tuned for more use of the word “frequent” real soon.

(^_^)

Technorati Tags: music video, puppy, smallcaps, villainous.biz, weird al, white & nerdy

curriculum vitae / portfolio

thanks to maedelmaedel, the beta version of my current portfolio (web-download edition) is now available for download. links to the .pdf can be found on the villainous.biz frontpage, in the footer of this weblog and also here. i welcome any feedback (or job offers!). thanks for looking.

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making planets

these are some first attempts at making planets using some of my old panoramic photography. yup. ah, that’s it for this post… ok… you can go now… thanks for visiting.

Technorati Tags: art, artist, panophotography, planets, smallcaps, villainous.biz

illustration friday

here is my first entry for illustration friday on illustrationfriday.com. the topic for this friday is “safe” and the title of my entry is “there is some mom in you yet”

better then have me tell you what this site is all about, here is a quote from their webpage:

Illustration Friday is a weekly illustration challenge. A topic is posted every Friday and then participants have all week to come up with their own interpretation.

Topics are picked each week from a list of suggestion that have been emailed by participants.

not only is illustrationfriday.com a platform for people to submit and get news about various creative issues, but it also maintains a forum where people can discuss all manner of topics regarding illustration, from technique to feedback, inspiration and more.

participation is open for everyone, even for illustrating posers such as myself. here is a link to how you can get involved.. not that i know any illustrators that would enjoy this project… smarch are you reading this? now if i could only convince them to publish my joiners…

Technorati Tags: illustration, illustrationfriday.com, art, artist, villainous.biz, smallcaps

EYE LUV -= L o c o R o c o =- H@H@! LOL!!!

this game really makes me titillate like a japanese schoolgrrl.

i stumbled upon this wonderful game for the psp while doing my ritualistic combing of one of my favorite websites. innovative right from the getgo, loco roco fuses light-hearted gameplay, great music, spiffy character design, and some unknown addictive element akin to heroin to make a wonderfully playable journey through a curious world.

its quite easy to pick up the game mechanics. you direct your lovable, singing smiley blob through various obstacles, picking up pieces of your house and friends along the way. by pressing the left and right buttons on your psp, you are able to tilt and rock the entire environment (and sometimes the environments are the innards of snakes or intestinal passageways of penguins… maybe our sexless protagonist is some type of bacteria?) using gravity to roll your soon-to-be chubby buddy through the labyrinth-like landscape. its quite a nice concept, for game play involves using the environment to move your rotund hero and not direct manipulation of the character. No computer game slaves at the whim of a perverse gamer in this game!

another nice feature about loco roco is that when you grab particular flora and fauna within the stages, you can reproduce. that’s right. somehow the hero of the game can clone itself when touching special flowers. in no time at all, you will find yourself rolling and bouncing around 20 little communistically driven buddies of gelatinous cute-ness into one huge super blob (or mob) and vise versa.

in order to unlock certain elements of the game, you need a minimum number of blobby-fun-dudes. this mostly entails having enough of the little buggers to have a big enough chorus to sing parts of the landscape awake.

This game is addictive. “How?” you may ask? I am writing this review with the knowledge of only playing 2 stages of this super game until my psp was stripped away from me by a certain maedelmaedel. For someone who says they were never into video games as a child…

Here is a link to 1up.com, which has a nice interview with the game’s director and some nice media to get an idea of what loco roco is all about.

Technorati Tags: loco roco, psp, sony, smallcaps, video games, villainous.biz

the nonsensical political antics of a “neutral” country

on the 1st of october, austrians around the world will join in communion and vote in their new supreme overlord of the once great and prolific habsburg empire, which pretty much conquered the entire known universe (earth, heaven and all) by sending sons and daughters to various european empires to essentially sleep their way to the top of the euro-charts, in and around the 18th century.

like how most kookoo politicians around the world do, various tactics are employed to woo (that’s “to woo” not “tha wu” ’cause tha wu-tang clan ain’t nuttin’ to fuk wit) the hearts of the plebeian voters. this phenomenon is no different in austria. here is a song performed by the austrian educational minister from the 70’s. the title of the song translates roughly to “hands of my pussy” in english and is a testament to the sons and daughters that this fine nation has produced, and lays the stage for the next generation of austrian leaders who will be voted in next month.

my dad in china

my dad recently made a journey to the motherland (china) with some survivors of the Nanjing Massacre. here is an excerpt from his most recent blog entry:

Her story was one of horror and sexual terror; she has become sterile and barren, and has a fear of men. Unable to bear any children herself, she adopted two boys, one of whom (man on her right) is now looking after her in her old age. Surprisingly, she displayed no hatred for her oppressors; like all the other victims, all she asked for was an apology from the Japanese government.
Everybody in the audience was moved by her story. At one point, Flora, who was translating her story for the teachers, broke down in tears. By the end of her story, there was almost not a single dry eye in the room.

continue reading the weblog of eugene koh here.

GarageBandHer0: first year beginner strings

this is the first track of the latest net-album by GarageBandHer0. the name of the track is called a different tune and is from the album first year beginner strings.

idonno about you, but to me it sounds like the soundtrack to a really bad 90’s hong kong cinema police crime story gangsta flick where the only saving graces of the film are the mad-crazy scenes involving guns and blood, and the quatro stagioni sound track :^)

it takes some time for the track to roll in so please give it a chance before deleting this webpage from your bookmarks list forever.

the last day of mankind (or, maedelmaedel grad 2006)

not only was i in enschede in the month of june, but i also had a chance to catch maedelmaedel’s graduation in graphic design from the university of applied arts in wien, austria.

finishing as magister (the german education systems’ equivalent of masters degree) and with honors in the class of fons hickmann (for some reason, the professor of the class is important to point out in the austrian/german education system… oh, and btw beware of pop-ups!!!… intelligent design… ha!), her grad project involved the creation of a visual language to move beyond the confines of the simple illustration of an obscure austrian play about war, revolution and the human condition.

using the tools/skills/imagination that were afforded to her through trial, error and experience, the contextualization of the the piece Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (which translates to the last day of mankind) involved illustration, character design, font design, layout and dialog that came together to form a huge, multi-panel poster that was presented on a public viennese poster column. not only was a font created specifically for the project, but she also managed to draw 175 individual caricatures to interpret each character that appears in the play.

I believe in regards to the pertinent dialog within the text, it was almost necessary to point out the importance of such a play as Die letzten Tage der Menschheit, especially in regards to our own day and age… not that i have read it, or anything.

in october maedelmaedel will move to london to begin her studies at the illustrious central st. martin’s college of art and design, where she will be doing her masters in creative practice for narrative environments. congratulations and good luck, we’ll need it!