We wrote about TS 2 AS some moths ago, while the project was in a premature fase. Right now there up and running, and Parfois wants to support them. At this moment the TS 2 AS boys are gathering money to get to New York and have there first meetings. But for this to happen, they will need your support. Go over to the Times Square 2 Art Square website and donate everything you got! Its for the better purpose.

Its a long time ago since my last post, but i’ve been very busy with some other things. It feels good to be back. At least for now. My first post after the break is about the “The ruins of Detroit” series of photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre. I came across there work at MICK! and I was stunned. I don’t think a need a lot of words to describe the feelings I had, seeing these pictures for the first time. Read on for some Author explanation, more pictures and the link to Yves & Romain’s website.

The ruins of Detroit

At the beginning of the 20th Century, the city of Detroit
developed rapidly thanks to the automobile industry.

Until the 50’s, its population rose to almost 2 million people.
Detroit was the 4th most important city in the United States.

It was the dazzling symbol of the American Dream City with
its monumental skyscrapers and fancy neighborhoods.

Increasing segregation and deindustrialization caused violent riots in 1967.
The white middle-class exodus from the city accelerated and the suburbs grew.
Firms and factories began to close or move to lower-wage states.
Slowly, but inexorably downtown high-rise buildings emptied.

Since the 50’s, “Motor City” lost more than half of its population.

Nowadays, its splendid decaying monuments are, no less than the Pyramids of Egypt,
the Coliseum of Rome, or the Acropolis in Athens, remnants of the passing of a great civilization.

Don’t forget to visit Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre’s website for more incredible pictures.

Very nice idea from Istanbul based designer Beste Miray. Strange that it hasn’t been done before, but I’ve never seen it. Only thing is, you have to fold you envelopes your self from now. Read on to see the rest of the images.

Next artist to undress: Nick Gentry. Nick Lives in Camden and works in Dalston, East London. I first came across Nick Gentry’s work a couple of months ago. From the moment I saw it, I liked it. The way he not only reuses old media, but also gives it an important place in is work (metal center of a floppy disk as eyes) is something I think is beautiful. Two days ago I decided to make Nick my next victim to undress. As I searched the web there was not to much information I could find. A small about on his website and a lot of images on different blogs. To undress him I needed more, so I wrote him an email with some questions about his work and he was so kind to write me back. Click the read more button for the interview and some more work.

From his website:

Since graduating from Central St Martins in 2006, the focus has been to explore how technological advancement is affecting society. Throughout history, information has always been recorded on physical objects. Important documents, favourite songs, videos and more were stored on mountains of tapes, polaroids, cassettes and disks. As media is rapidly absorbed into the World Wide Web the rich variety of formats of the past are becoming obsolete. This represents a big shift away from physical, real world objects, driving towards a human existence that is ultimately governed by billions of intangible data files. This release of information from the physical form allows personal data and identities to now be revealed and infinitely shared online. At the same time many of us consider individuality and privacy to be more precious than ever. Will humans be forever compatible with our own technology? Each floppy disk used in the paintings has a history and story of its own. It represents the increasing pace of the modern life cycle, where objects are created, used and disposed of quicker than ever. To challenge this notion, as these personal artefacts of life are cast aside, the obsolete are now given new life and a renewed purpose by using them as a medium for art.

The Questions:

I was really exited about mailing Nick Gentry to get some more information about his work and inspiration. At first I thought it would be easy, but when I was writing the email and had to come up with the questions it was a lot harder than I thought.

Eventually I came up with seven questions. Nick wrote me a email with one long answer, so i’ll put the questions here, and leave his answer in one piece.

1. Can you tell us some more about your life? Biography Like.
2. How did you come up with floppy discs and tapes?
3. Is there an enviremental statement you wan’t to make? Since you are reusing floppy disks and tapes?
4. The portraits you paint, are that imaginary people or do you use models?
5. Is there a message in you work?
6. Have you tried other styles and art forms?
7. What about the future?

Nick Gentry’s answer:

Floppy disks, VHS tapes, polaroids and audio cassettes. As a child growing up in the 80s and 90s this combination played a massive part in how I learned about the world. Favourite films, albums, games and even personal recordings were all stored on there. The whole world was totally reliant on these physical media formats. Now suddenly we are at a time where they are obsolete, replaced by countless intangible data files. As information is released from the physical form it allows personal data and identities to now be revealed and infinitely shared online. At the same time many of us consider individuality and privacy to be more precious than ever. Will humans be forever compatible with our own technology? In my work I want to simply highlight this new movement, as I believe it to be an important cultural and social transition of our time.

Last year while travelling in Brazil I went to a Vik Muniz exhibition and I was amazed by his use of media. Every piece of material he uses is considered and appropriate to the subject matter. The piece that really stuck with me was a giant world map made up entirely of old computer parts. I started to look at floppy disks and the importance that they have had on the development of our data-driven world.

My first piece of work using floppy disks as a canvas was an image of a fingerprint. To me, this connected the data world with the human physical form using the theme of identity, albeit in an obvious way. After that I looked at using the disks in a grid to create photo-fits, constructing imaginary faces and identities that could draw connections to the personal information stored on the disks.

By chance I found that the metal circular hub on the reverse side of the disk worked well as a metaphor for the human eye. This development was quite important to me, as the eyes of a person can reveal their identity and inner feelings. In the film Blade Runner they use the Voight-Kampff test, which gauges the reaction of the eyes to a set of carefully selected questions in order to determine if the subject is human or android. I sometimes like to cross out or obscure the eyes, as if to somehow protect the identity of the subject.

I always try and get people to donate the disks and tapes to me but usually I have to buy them online. Over the years billions upon billions of disks and tapes have been manufactured and today they are widely regarded as junk. This makes them an affordable thing to make art with. Maybe in time they will become very rare and the opportunity for creating art in this way will have passed. Reusing objects that would ordinarily have been sent to landfill makes a comment on the throwaway culture of today. Maybe this work can encourage people to think more creatively about the objects that are deemed to be obsolete or useless. Everything has a life cycle and we have become accustomed to look for the next shiny new thing once something has become slightly old and worn. This approach leads to a lot of waste and I think that reinventing something has more charm than things that are created from scratch. What brings the work to life is that blend of the nostalgic and familiar, together with the freshness of a new form of expression.

I live in Camden and work in my studio in Dalston, in East London. I find living in London to be very inspirational with the amazing mix of people that we have here.

Why Nick Gentry?

Gentry’s work really took hold of me the first time I saw it. He uses a lot of old media, like floppy disks and tapes, things I grew up with. I remember the first games and software I installed on a computer using floppy disks. You needed a box full of them to install one small program. I still have boxes with old tapes stacked in a basement somewhere. Every week I recorded the latest songs on tape, to listen to them on my first Sony Walkman. Nick Gentry combines those old memories in his artwork and makes beautiful things with it

More Work:

As always we can’t post all of an artists work here at our blog. But I made a selection of the things I liked most. Other work can be found at his website.

Previously Undressed:

- Jean Shin

- Ron English

Caroline Benech,¬∞1980,¬†is a young French artist with, in my opinion, a very nice style. I love the way she uses pictures of city skylines and ads a lot of creativity to them. Sometimes its just a detail, in other work she painted the whole city with bight colors. Caroline gave this series the well chosen name: “A living artwork”. While for most of us there just adjusted pictures, Caroline has a lot more to tell about her work. Read on for the complete living city serie, and her inner meaning.

Caroline about her work:

“A living artwork,¬†trying to demonstrate and conceive life beyond the
visible: a phantasmagoria, an imaginary world, probable or improbable.
Biomorphic organisms appear intuitively: life emerges, invades
space, organizes itself, and proliferates ad infinitum.
Automatic and surrealist creation, which puts in communication microcosms and
macrocosms, anatomy of reality and virtual, in an infinitely moving flow.”

Vina del Mar.

Shanghai.

Shanghai.

Santiago.

Paris.

New York.

Miami.

Miami.

London.

Hong-Kong.

They look like huge installations, but in fact there just large scale photographs of installations in fantasy exhibition spaces. Pseudo Documentation are a serie of photographs made by David DiMichele, he creates this work by first building scale models of exhibition spaces, and producing original artworks in drawing, painting and sculpture mediums. He puts his artworks into the scaled exhibition spaces and then photographs them to create the final artwork. From my opinion it would be extremely nice to walk true his installations, thats why I think its a pity their just photographs. Read on to see David DiMichele’s other “installations”.

Via: LookinArt

Cameron Moll has his own way of changing letters into art. He uses thousands different letters, in all kind of typefaces. First the example is made on the computer, but the final result is done by hand. His last project was the Salt Lake Temple, in roughly a 100 hours he made it. And now he is working on a new project. The Rome based colosseum. Read one to see a sneek preview movie about his new project. And more pictures of the Salt Lake Temple.

Today, Steve Jobs made rumors come true. The last weeks Apple fan websites were busy with all the rumors about the Apple Tablet. And today Steve Jobs finally unveiled the thing everyone was waiting on for years. As there was no way to watch the keynote live, I followed it at Engadgets live blog. At first I was a bit sceptic, no multitask, no revolutionary design, just a blown up iPhone. But after watching the promotional movie at the Apple website, I was sold. And my question to you readers is, how do they do it? 5 minutes before watching the movie I was like “now way i’m going to buy this thing”. And 13 minutes later, if it would all ready be for sale, I would pull out my credit card and buy myself the full option iPad.

This post is not about how great the iPad is (alright it is great and revolutionary and…), its about the presentation techniques Apple uses in their commercial video’s. We are all Apple fan-boys here at Parfois, but our iMacs, Macbook’s, Macbook pro’s and iPhones are to work on. their not just toys, we need them to do our daily work. I’m not the kind of person that buys everything Apple comes with, and during the keynote (not the movie but at Engadget in text and pictures) I was sure this was not a thing I needed. But Apple’s way of promoting it at this movie planted something in my brain that whispers “Buy the iPad Jonas, Buy the iPad…”. Want to experience it for yourself? Click the picture above to watch the movie, but watch out… It is dangerous for you financials. Let me know in the comments if Apple has imprinted the same special thing in your brain, as they did with mine. Read on to see some more iPad pictures.

Above I’ve stated that this post isn’t about how great the iPad is but off course, from a design prospective, it is fabulous. Look at the pictures below and feel the shiver.