COMET, PJAY, DUSTER, CAP, SEEN - canvases and sketches

For sale, in France.

info: contact@blkmarket.fr

Where to get those cool Obama artist stickers

El Mac, Shepard Fairey, Ron English, David Choe, and more! These stickers are big, vinyl, nice collectibles and the proceeds go to making more stickers. Limited to 5000 by each artist.

John McCain's Rage is a National Security Concern

Scary stories.

Banksy's Pet Store in New York

Banksy's "Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill" will be open until October 31st (Halloween) daily from 10am until midnight. And you can see the stuff through the window too, so just go.

While New Yorkers have been consumed by the stock market meltdown, a tiny little pet store quietly opened four days ago at 89 7th Avenue between West 4th and Bleeker Street in the West Village of New York City.

It's an installation with no live animals (finally). And it's stencil and graffiti free. It would be hard to believe it's Banksy's if Wooster Collective hadn't said so. Follow the link to see their video of some of it.

Wooster: From Banksy:

?New Yorkers don?t care about art, they care about pets. So I?m exhibiting them instead. I wanted to make art that questioned our relationship with animals and the ethics and sustainability of factory farming, but it ended up as chicken nuggets singing. I took all the money I made exploiting an animal in my last show and used it to fund a new show about the exploitation of animals. If it's art and you can see it from the street, I guess it could still be considered street art."

DJ Z Trip - Free music download: The Obama Mix

"DJ Z Trip, recently named in the top five DJs in the United States by DJ Times, has created a free downloadable mix for all to share called "Obama Mix". Perfected over months, the Obama Mix is one masterful 54-minute mp3 track. "

"Presented along with the now iconic Shepard Fairey Obama HOPE print, Z Trip's Obama Mix showcases exactly how Obama is changing the way youth culture views and engages in politics."

"In a note to his fans, Z Trip urges people to get informed and to vote, 'Please share the message. Educate those who may not know what is really going on. There is still time. I encourage you to make it a priority to speak to your friends, family and co-workers. Speak to anyone who will listen. This election is WAY too important for anyone to not get involved. Together we will vote to change our current course and reclaim a leadership of which we can be proud' "

Good news: Data driftnets rejected as both bad and wrong

In an astounding feat of intelligent analysis and courage, a privacy and terrorism commission composed of technical experts funded by Homeland Security (USA) has reported that sifting through everyone's information about everything will not be an effective way to detect terrorists. Plus it would cause a lot of innocent people's doors to be kicked in, which is "un-American." They recommend revamping privacy laws to make them more coherent and protective and using traditional methods to look for terrorists.

Truly a triumph of mathematics and civil rights over fear.

Next let's elect people who will prevent the government from collecting and purchasing and seizing data on everyone. Because that's un-American too. And un-British, and un-Australian.

Anyway, a little good news in our handbasket to hell this week. Check the comments on the article too. Some intelligent life is out there.

Election Dirty Tricks: Scaring Student Voters

Fooling people into not voting through intimidation and trickery. Oh joy. You have been warned.

Some cave art may have been painted over millennia

"The results so far are in line with archaeologists' hypothesis that sudden flowerings of cave art came as rapid climate change was causing Palaeolithic cultures to move quickly about Europe, first as the coldest period of the ice age approached, and then as the ice age drew to a close and inhabitable areas expanded."

"There have been surprises, though - in several caves whose art had previously been assumed to date from the same period, the new dating technique has revealed that the paintings were done in several phases, possibly over 15,000 years (25,000 years ago to just 10,000.)"

Imagine living in English caves for tens of thousands of years waiting for the ice to go away again.

Olbermann: Palin's own anti-American associates (her husband, for one)

In case the mainstream media forgets to mention it ... here's a little concrete. This woman who would be president is looking scarier (and more desperate and out of control) by the minute.

US Voter registration is ending in days - are you ready?

Check your deadline to see if your state has closed registration yet for the presidential election. You can register online at the same site and get questions answered in their FAQ.

Oakland graffiti - on KPFA radio

Meeting of Styles in Oakland last month was covered by KPFA community radio, who interviewed members of the TDK crew on graffiti art and its role in society and politics. You can listen to it in MP3.

Dream.TDK RIP. The legacy lives on.

Dondi prints for sale for charity

Purchase link (see link above for the image of the print)

"Happy Birthday Dad" by Dondi White (published by the Baurmann Gallery/Dondi White Estate)

In honor and commemoration of Dondi White, a special charity silkscreen edition of 129 will be released for $129 + shipping on October 2nd, 2008. Dondi White passed away on October 2nd, 1998. "Gods Love We Deliver" helped him tremendously in the final years.

Seattle gets lovely mural

NKO and Scratchmaster Joe have incorporated ghost signage into their crystalline, 100x65 ft mural on Monique Lofts between Pike and Pine streets on 11th Avenue, and the result is strikingly wonderful.

The mural is a collection of crystalline geometries; a site-specific, improvisational painting reacting to the architecture and vibrancy of the location it occupies. The mural seeks to represent the history of its surface through the preservation of raw concrete and ghost signage, while acknowledging contemporary urbanism through palette, form and materials.

Google offers $10 million for ideas that can change the world

You ever have a great idea and think, dang, I wish I could tell someone who could make that happen? Well, here's your chance.

The link above goes to the Google page for the project.
CNN's article

The plan is to attract good ideas from as many people as possible and to fund the ones they think will do the most good. You don't have to have the expertise to make your idea work, either, and you can submit more than one idea. Some people and ideas will be connected with charitable organizations that can help implement them also.

"People are encouraged to submit their ideas, in any of 25 languages, on http://www.project10tothe100.com/index.html through October 20. Entrants must briefly describe their idea and answer six questions, including, "If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?"

"Google employees, with the help of an advisory board, will narrow the submissions to 100 semifinalists by January 27. Between January 27 and February 2, the public will vote online for their favorite ideas. A panel of as-yet-unnamed judges will then review the top 20 ideas and announce up to five winners in mid-February.

"Funding, from a pool of $10 million, will be awarded in May. If the judges decide to reward five winning ideas, each will receive $2 million. If only two ideas are chosen, each will receive $5 million, and so on."

INSA - shoes

Spike heels for the ladies by the UK writer INSA. Hot stuff.

Party in Rio - Rio Cruzeiro, a Favela Painting Project

Haas & Hahn proudly announce the inauguration of Rio Cruzeiro, a Favela Painting Project, on 17-19 October 2008

Rio Cruzeiro, an artwork by Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn. A +2000 m2 painting of a japanese style river based on a design by master tattooist Rob Admiraal. Painted together with kids from the community of Vila Cruzeiro, the most infamous favela of Rio de Janeiro.

The weekend of the 17th - 19th of October will feature an opening party, photo exhibit and video installations in the center of Rio de Janeiro. On the 18th the painting will be unveiled, followed by a huge blockparty. There will be photo opportunities for the press, guided tours through the community and the whole day will be planned in cooperation with the IBISS Community Center.

Join the Celebration! A once in a lifetime experience to visit this favela and the Favela Painting Project! Book your flights to Rio now!

Those of us who can't fly in for the party can drop them a note on their blog to congratulate these brave and hardworking artists.

DFW RIP

David Foster Wallace, college professor and author of the mindblowing book, Infinite Jest and many others, has apparently killed himself this weekend. Every newsthing is already covering the story of his life, but I have to say a few words because his work and his passing mean a lot to me, and to all of his readers.

His honesty was something I really appreciated ... and every word in that phrase is an extreme understatement. His candid point of view was a blue-white cutting torch with an escape plan. People compare him to Pynchon often, but in my heart he was closer to Vonnegut and Brautigan.

His work is so much fun to read because he invested all of himself in it, he expressed himself in an original way, and he was as hilarious as he was brilliant and insightful. For those lucky people who have not read him yet, please take the time to sample any page in Infinite Jest. I think you'll be very glad that it's a big book.

There's a little taste of him at the link above, a university commencement speech he made. I hope it inspires you too. I sure wish he had stayed a lot longer and said a lot more.

Toronto gallery show closes after local writers complain

This is the second time I know of that something like this has happened. The most recent other example was the 2007 Tattooed Walls show in NYC, where very similar stuff went on. In that case it cost the photographer his book as well.

In this case, the photographer was selling photos of writers' pieces for an outrageous sum: CAN$2800, but she did not acknowledge that the artists had rights to their work or indeed to any of the money. They were also not properly credited.

Understandably, the writers felt disrespected and ripped off. In fact they were, and further, this sounds like a clear-cut case of copyright violation, particularly if the photography was quite documentary in nature. Idiotically, the photographer took the attitude that she was doing the writers a favor. Just as stupidly, the gallery let this all happen.

What if writers had printed copies of her photos and sold those for thousands of dollars - to do her a favor of course - without bothering to mention her name? Right.

It's unfortunate when graffiti art shows (or books) go down in flames, but in cases like this, it's the only right thing to do. Some photographers assume they can do what they like with graffiti photos because they think the artists can't defend their work or that they are not going to notice. Others arrogantly assume that their photos are legitimate art and the paintings are not. Nothing could be further from the truth. Graffiti writers win copyright cases all the time. They also tend to play nice with non-predatory, respectful photographers and galleries.

Crayone's Obama T-shirt fundraiser

Proceeds go to the campaign.

Physical Reality

Congratulations to all the particle physicists in the world! Some have been waiting 30 years to do their experiments on CERN's Large Hadron Collider, which was switched on for the first time September 10. The real party though, is for the many engineers who designed and built this incredibly large and complex machine in France and Switzerland over the last 10 years. It's the biggest, most ambitious and complex engineering project ever undertaken by humans.

"The LHC was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and lies underneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland. It is funded by and built in collaboration with over eight thousand physicists from over eighty-five countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories. The LHC is already operational and is presently in the process of being prepared for collisions. The first beams were circulated through the collider on 10 September 2008, and the first high-energy collisions are planned to take place after the LHC is officially unveiled on 21 October."

The first video, above, explains why this machine is interesting, but you have to watch the whole 15 minutes to get the story. The second video is just silly, but it has footage from the inside of the LHC and it's bound to make you feel great about your own MC skills.

Physicists aim to explain how the universe works, and in the process, they ask some very interesting questions. A good book on the topic is A brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, which lays it out in words and pictures for everyone to understand.

Vote 411

Everything you need to know about getting registered to vote, local deadlines and polling places. Don't wait till the last minute, because many deadlines are in October to register for the November election.

Against the System - trailer

Photos from Style in Progress, Toronto Canada

Separating the facts from the BS

Factcheck.org exists to keep the news media and politicians honest by examining what was said and finding out what's true. Unfortunately there is a lot of disinformation published and broadcast during presidential campaigns, so when you get suspicious "news", you can go here to see if it's hogwash or not.

"Bummer" burner at Burning Man - Peter K and Pose 2