The 11-Year Quest to Create Disappearing Colored Bubbles - Chemical burns, ruined clothes, 11 years, half a million dollars—it's not easy to improve the world's most popular toy. Yet the success of one inventor's quest to dye a simple soap bubble may change the way the world uses color.

Beck's new Hell Yes video features four Sony QRIOs (however, I know for a fact that that there are more than four working QRIOs in the world, as widely reported). Of course, I love the video. Check it out here (requires Real Video or Windows Media). Thanks to WMMNA for the link.

LA artist and all-around nice guy Luke Chueh has teamed up with Kid Robot to produce this customized, limited-edition "Munny". All profits go to Feed the Children, and specifically to benefit children affected by Hurricane Katrina. Only available on eBay.

Posts have been slow lately, what with being in Seattle, then away in NYC for Tokion. I'm back in LA now, and just getting into the swing again.


With that stated, if you're in LA this weekend, don't miss the "Autumn Lights" Gallery Row event. It's a multi-media and light art exhibition set against the backdrop of the Eli and Edythe Broad Plaza at the Thom Mayne designed Caltrans Building located at 100 S. Main Street, Los Angeles. A group exhibit, Autumn Lights showcases digital projections, light box/backlight installations, performance painting, and 3D light sculptures by Los Angeles based artists accompanied by live music.

Fischerspooner has signed on to record a third album for Capitol Records. This news should shutdown naysayers who didn't believe the duo would last. More on Arjan's blog.

Last week I had the fortune of spending the weekend away from LA land, and headed up to Seattle. As usual, the PacNW was full of fun and surprises. Accommodations were handled by the Ace Hotel in Belltown amidst myriad wonderful restaurants and lively bars. After spending some time in the neighborhood, my friend Dave his lovely wife and I set out to attend the world premiere of Seattle artist Trimpin's impressive "Sheng High," a 4000 sq-foot musical installation.

Then afterward we sped over to West Seattle to Easy Street Records to catch a free in-store performance by one of my favorite recent musical treats, Cut Copy. The boys brought their icy synths and jagged guitars all the way from Australia to tour in support of Franz Ferdinand. Simply put, their free show rocked.

The band rocked, the crowd rocked, Seattle rocked. This town loves their music, and it shows (mpeg clip).

The next day, after the haze of the previous evening melted away, I managed to squeeze in some quality tourist time and check out the amazing Seattle Public Library for the second time.

I was equally impressed the second time around. There were even a few new installations. One was a uber-cool, yet creepy video installation along the downstairs escalator by New York video artist Tony Oursler. Three video sculptures are revealed through holes in the walls. Inside the walls, a tableaux of faces and their features are projected among the wiring, studs and pipes and onto white forms, which act as 3-D screens.

In the mixing chamber, Artist George Legrady of Santa Barbara, Calif. has created an impressive motion graphics statement with Making Visible the Invisible: What the Community is Reading, an electronic installation that visually maps the circulation of Central Library, revealing the community's collective reading interests.

Finally, I managed to spend more than time at possibly the best clothing store I’ve come across this side of the Mississippi – Ian. Their well curated collection of Men’s and Women’s clothing was flawless, and included favorites from the likes of G-Star, Martin Margiela and Nice Collective.

Yes it rained, yes it was cold, yes I left hung over and more in debt, but I who cares – I love Seattle!

Everything is contextual. Need proof? Just check out this re-cut trailer for Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.

If living in the country with better health and vital statistics, universal health coverage, smaller health costs, less violent crime, less pollution, higher home ownership, more democratic participation, greater social programs, less government corruption, fewer teenage pregnancies and better education didn’t already appeal to you, add one more to the list of compelling reasons to move to Sweden.


In a bold national move, Prime Minister Goran Persson recently said that Sweden will try to end its dependency on fossil fuels in 15 years by boosting research devoted to alternative energy sources.

Man, I am so ready. At least we seem to be making progress on recognizing some of our country’s biggest crooks.

Listen to a 30-second preview of Tiga's Shake the Disease Remix over at DepecheMode.com.

I've created a new sub-genre of music over at last.fm, it's called robotica. You read it here first.

Upcoming LA Events

9.24.05
CINESPIA - Last screening of the summer, presenting Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.
DATA BETA - Our friends from Data Age bring you Data Beta, younger and louder.

10.1.05
Matthew Dear, Ellen Alien, Richard Devine - Avalon, Hollywood

10.7.05
Cut Copy & TV on the Radio on the Franz Ferdinand Tour - Greek, Hollywood

10.12.05
Miss Kittin @ Key Club

10.29.05
Chromeo @ Little Pedro's, Downtown

D-E-V-O a'la 5th Grade

Awesome! Fifth grade students at Hawley Elementary School made this faithful reproduction of the Devo classic Whip It.

If you're in PDX, SF or NYC do not miss this rare opportunity to see Frankfurt artist Isolée. Sadly, no shows are planned for Los Angeles.

16.9.2005 |US| Portland, Holocene
17.9.2005 |US| San Francisco, Blasthaus
20.9.2005 |US| New York, APT

Helpful advice for the day: How to Create a Robot Army.

Robots, enjoy a 2 hour mix by Erol Alkan of London's Trash Club, completely free. Recorded in July 2005, it's got some of the summer's catchier hooks, as well as some I'm sure you haven't heard before. Just point your browser here (Real Player required).

Future Retro
I'm not much for compilations, but the folks at Rhino are releasing one that looks like it'll be good this September. The 2 disc remix project titled Future Retro pairs some of the most influential artists and songs of the 80s with today's top remixers. Check out the track list, the update should get a lot of old favorites new life on the dancefloor:

The Cure, The Walk [Infusion Mix]
Yaz, Situation [Richard X Remix]
Echo And The Bunnymen, Lips Like Sugar [Way Out West Remix Edit]
INXS, Need You Tonight [Static Revenger Mix Edit]
Depeche Mode, Shake The Disease [Tiga Remix]
Erasure, A Little Respect [Electrospect Mix]
Howard Jones, New Song [Peter Black And Hardrock Striker Mix Edit]
Alphaville, Forever Young [Hamel Album Mix]
New Order, Bizarre Love Triangle [The Crystal Method Extended Mix]
Grandmaster Flash, White Lines [Elite Force Mix]
Devo, Girl U Want [Black Light Odyssey Mix]
B-Movie, Nowhere Girl [Adam Freeland Mix]
Book Of Love, Boy [DJ Irene Rockstar Mix]
Morrissey, Suedehead [Sparks Remix]

Greetings earthlings. It's now 2005 and you have found Zolar-X.

New Depeche Mode single, Precious available now in the iTunes music store!

L.A. Restaurants Have No Glass.
An open rant to L.A. restaurants: Plastic water glasses are not OK. Unless you're a greasy spoon, I expect to be served water in a proper, clean glass, free of nasty plastic aftertaste. Glasses are cheap, there's no excuse. It's just plain tacky.

I'm a huge fan of designer Mike Mills, which is no shock once you learn he honed his skills working for Tibor Kalman at M&Co back in the eighties. Just look thru the work he and the other geniuses at Directors Bureau have done...So naturally I'm happy to hear that his new movie, Thumbsucker is starting to get some buzz. It premiers on September 16th here in LA and in NYC, it's tough to tell from the trailer, but I think it's going to be a fantastic film. Quirky in the vein of Napoleon Dynamite, but with more depth and heart.

Over at Spherical Robots they're recreating faces (or anything else for that matter) with the Bitfall. It's a special Wasser-Strukturen (water structure) that allows one to create images on falling droplets of water. Sehr gut mein Roboterfreund! [via Jason]

Time-waster of the day: Ultimate Flash Face
This flash app is amazing and addictive. Select from a comprehensive palette of facial features to draw your very own mug-shot style picture. My mug-shot looks far more dignified than my actual photo!

I'm looking for information on a short film called Stereomongrel about 70's and 80's hip-hop consumerism, but google returned zero results. Any robots with leads?

Boy do I get sick of the attitude I get from some about drum machine music. Drummers are better. Drum machines are better. Well my robofriends, we’ve known the answer for some time now. Real drums played by a midi-driven pneumatic robot trumps all, so put that in your pipe or whatever you’ve got and smoke it. Check out the pictures and video.

For most of us, the joy of flipping through stacks of vinyl records or CDs met its demise at the hands of the digital music revolution. Luckily, for OS X Tiger users, there’s a superb new way of browsing your music collection with CoverFlow. It’s the next best thing to flipping thru a crate, without all the dust.

The Christian Paradox: America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behavior.

I'm not a sports fan. In fact, I'm about the furthest thing from a sports fan, so you can imagine how annoying it is hearing coworkers drone on about their fantasy football or other sports time-wasting fluff. Now, thanks to Fantasy Fashion League, I can be just as annoying by wasting my afternoon with fashion's answer to fantasy football and the like. Pick your favorite designers and earn points when their fashions show up in magazines. Brilliant!

New from Ladytron, check out the video Destroy Everything You Touch directed by Adam Bartley.

Count me in.

I came across this wicked bit of liberal agitprop today (and that's my kind of fun; just In case some jackbooted patriot act wielding Fed is reading this, I didn't write it and don't know who did). It's a bit silly, but it should get you thinking about how badly the Bush administration has ruined our nation's sense of self, our unity, and our common sense.

Dear Red States,

We’re ticked off at the way you’ve treated California, and we’ve decided we’re leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we’re taking the other Blue States with us ... In case you aren’t aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the ation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay.

We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Ole’ Miss.

We get 85 percent of America’s venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition’s, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we’re going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they’re apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don’t care if you don’t show pictures of their children’s caskets coming home.

We do wish you success in Iraq but we’re not willing to spend our resources in Bush’s Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country’s fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation’s fresh fruit, 95 percent of America’s quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners), 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Harvard, Yale, Stanford, CalTech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia. We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we’re discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals than we lefties.

Sincerely,

Author Unknown in New California.

What would you say, given one free minute of anonymous public speech? One Free Minute is a mobile sculpture designed to allow for instances of anonymous public speech. When you call the cellphone inside One Free Minute, you get connected for exactly a minute to a 200 watt amplifier and speaker. The speech produced by the speaker can be heard clearly more than 150 feet away from the sculpture [thanks, Chad].