Finally, at long last — feature artists from the Mutek lineup are officially posted online: Matias Aguayo & Roccness, Gui Boratto, Candie Hank, Chic Miniature, Cobblestone Jazz, Colleen, Digitaline, Gangpol & Mit, Heartthrob, Kode 9, Michael Mayer, Mr Oizo, MyMy, Pantha du Prince, Rhythm & Sound, Shackleton, Someone Else, Jesse Somfay, and oh! Wighnomy Brothers. Can’t wait to see what the final lineup is yet, but this seems to promise a solid festival year. Yum.
March, 2007
22
Mar 07
Hi-Tech Cribs in Pacific Heights
Swank certainly describes Lundberg Design’s the newest project, a 7,000 square-foot private residence in the elite Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. Upon client request, Olle Lundberg created an ambitious program to combine two 1950s-era homes into an ultra modern cube. Yes, it certainly set off the neighbors, but the result is simply stunning.
Amongst the subdued color palette of blue, grey, and wenge, every element of the home was considered with luxury in mind. Lundberg worked with Wendy Tsuji to custom design and fabricate both interior and exterior furniture and finishes. The bathrooms alone should receive special note for their stand-out cool factor: volcanic silicate and beveled glass frame a powder room lit with LED lights suspended in glass globes (above); the master bath sports transparent electronic windows that fog up for instant privacy. Check out this cuvacious steel staircase, which Olle Lundberg designed to provide a strong focal point and connect the residence’s three levels on a vertical axis (below). It’s all enough to make one drool in cutting-edge comfort.
14
Mar 07
Toyo Ito designs new Berkeley museum
With the opening of the De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park, the Bay area feels like it’s experiencing a new wave in the institutionalized arts. And yes, the Other Side — namely, the East bay — is certainly stepping up to the plate.
Toyo Ito, one of Japan’s most inventive contemporary architects, has been selected to design a new home for the Berkeley Art Museum (BAM) and the Pacific Film Archive (PFA). After a 1997 campus survey found the BAM/PFA building to be seismically unstable, the call for a new museum endured years of planning and deliberation. The original 1970 museum, designed by Mario Campi, has been retrofitted in part to remain open while current plans are underway.
According to a University press release, programming for the new BAM/PFA facility will combine research, education and gallery space. The future museum’s location has been set at the corner of Oxford and Center Streets on UC Berkeley’s campus, visually connecting the University’s main western entrance to downtown Berkeley. Ito and the University are also committed to enforce high green design standards that either meet or surpass Silver-level LEED requirements. With an estimated total cost of $80-100 million, this may prove to be an ambitious goal indeed. Preliminary designs will be revealed this summer, and museum director Kevin E. Consey has suggested that the new design will include rooftop gardens on a distorted grid.
Sendai Mediatheque
I am ecstatic about Ito’s selection. The design for the Sendai Mediatheque (2001, above) is a brilliant example of his futuristic vision of an interactive arts incubator (a radical departure from than traditional museum’s passive viewing environment). Housed in a transparent cube supported by organically latticed service columns resembling trees, the Mediatheque supports the fine arts, film, digital media as well as an expansive library and open audiovisual studios. Other acclaimed projects include the Serpentine Gallery in London (2002) and the Matsumoto Performing Art Center (2004).
Ito always surprises with his hyper media and design sensibility, which differs from the cutting-edge likes of Frank Gehry or Daniel Liebeskind; in place of glitzy materials and forms that don’t follow function, Ito offers a much more subdued form of visual distortion. With Gilles Deleuze and the natural world as cited sources of inspiration, I can’t wait to see what he dreams up for the new BAM/PFA center.
NB: For those of you who haven’t caught the Bruce Nauman exhibition at BAM, A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960s, run over soon before it closes on April 15. The exhibition also may remind experimental music fans of Matmos‘ latest album, dedicated to philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.
5
Mar 07
Gui Boratto
Music-wise, this week was full of goodies… I received Arpanet’s Interial Frame (Record Makers) from a puppy; received word of Goosehound‘s fifth release, soon to stun the world; had much fun at Oakland’s Bottom Feeder party on Thursday night, where Funky Cozy‘s Jason Short played upcoming Auralism material alongside BF residents David, Brian and Chris. On Saturday, we went out to hear Pantytec’s Sammy Dee and CMYK labelhead Alex Under spin under the full moon at the Endup.
Brazilian Gui Boratto has also been floating in my head lately… check out “Beautiful Life” from his new album, Chromophobia (Kompakt). It’s a fun electro departure touting what sounds like a bassline from a New Order track, kicking in at the end…
2
Mar 07
Of Intaglio Etching
What a week! On Tuesday, I learned the process of intaglio etching using copper plates at the San Francisco Center for the Book. John Sullivan of Logos Graphics, whose cozy print shop is nestled in the Mission district’s Project Artaud, guided me through the various steps.
First, I chose a photograph of the charming King Henry VIII from my Flickr stream. After creating a film positive, I exposed it onto a copper plate and then developed the plate in acidic solution before inking it with intaglio ink. I wiped the plate with fine cheesecloth and placed it onto an etching press with dampened cotton paper, a sheet of newsprint and three felt blankets on top. Finally, I rolled the stack through the press, which put pressure on the inked plate to transfer the image onto the cotton paper above it. Et voila! after lifting the blankets, the final print was complete.
I also was able to play with painting ink onto film (pictured above), which I sprayed with a vinegar solution to create splotches before drying and exposing the film onto copper plate for an alternative intaglio print. More pictures available in my Flickr set.
