Urban Design

Amateur Magazine - Smash137 After number 6 and 7 as well as 8 and 9, recently the 10th issue of Switzerland-born Amateur Magazine was published and surprised me again… To publish the first double-digit issue is a good reason to party for every mag, especially when it’s released just twice a year. Nevertheless, it seems that in the case of Amateur, the team didn’t party before the release but tried to produce the best issue ever - and in my eyes, this totally worked out! ...

A few days ago, the Welcome To Detroit exhibition by Evan Roth (the guy who invented the Graffiti Markup Language) finished and after presenting several new works, combining popular culture with a certain hacker’s philosophy, what persists is all those great short-films, Roth created documenting his Propulsion Paintings series… Evan Roth has been living and making new work in Detroit for the last month, gearing up for a solo exhibition that opens this Wednesday at Eastern Michigan University: Welcome to Detroit. His new series of artworks is called: Propulsion Paintings. As part of his residency at Eastern Michigan University, he’s teaching a course called Art and Hacking where he had the students create their own Propulsion Paintings as their first project. (todayandtomorrow.net) ...

In April, Berlin’s one and only sticker-museum Hatch Kingdom and illustrator Ink-a-zoid are going to present a group exhibition of the finest contemporary Berlin illustration styles! Presenting latest works not just by Danny Doom, Hr.v.Bias, Aro and Ink-a-zoid himself but also by other illustration-inspired artists, the show combines computer-generated artworks with dirt and coffee made ones and graffiti-influenced stuff. Hence, Modern Dopeness mirrors not just a current particle of Berlin illustration, but gives a insight into this new generation of mixed-media artists I already wrote about yesterday… ...

Telephone Helicopter Applause Gunshot is the name of a sweet electronic track by Lorenz Rhode, who says his music sounds like Rick James dating Chaka Khan, dancing to Daft Punk and Technotronic, making sweet love to a Stevie Wonder ballad, when suddenly a group of German robots and a Yellow Magic Orchestra come rushing into the hotel suite and… they all decide to go to France instead. But today it’s not about his music, but about Anne Lucht’s fantastic Space Invader-inspired Telephone Helicopter Applause Gunshot video, which is nominated for the German AAA (Academy Approved Art) Web-Video Award (which will be selected tomorrow) and was decorated with 13 Visual Music Awards 2011… ...

Wow, this urban artists collaboration between urban design crew 44flavours and our personal hero, 3D cardboard installer Clemens Behr is like really hot sauce dripping through these rough beats of the same video… The urban illustration duo as well as Clemens (I decided to put him on my top urban artists list!) are both part of a certain new urban artists generation in Berlin, pushing forward new styles, and spreading especially their love for mixed media artworks. Filmed by Editude Pictures, they created this nice, temporary wood and cardboard installation. Good work, good guys, good sound! ...

Old-school ways of printing, like screen printing, are currently re-experiencing another revival with artists, using those very technical and manually adjustable proceedings to create limited print editions with a rough and sometimes vintage style… Regarding Paul Collier, another of these revival experiencing printing techniques is letterpress printing. When I stumbled upon the nice and intimate Upside Down, Left to Right letterpress film by Danny Cooke, I immediately felt like a small kid watching his grand-dad working! I’m a big letterpress fan, mainly because of that certain feeling you have by stroking the printed surface and the knowledge of how difficult creating good letterpress prints can be, for what reason I really loved this short film. ...

As if those countless street art iPhone apps are not enough (there’s already an augmented reality tagging app, the All City street art app, an urban art guide app and several others), Geo Street Art launched two new street art iPhone apps this week for locating street art in NYC and London, as RJ recently mentioned. Curated by a global network of experts, working in collaboration with Geo Street Art, the Geo Street Art Apps comprise comprehensive guides to the global street art scene. ...

No, Usugrow is not one of those new, trendy sorts of schnapps, it’s the name of a bloody brilliant Japanese calligrapher and painter, skateboarder and punk rock enthusiast… Punk Calligraphy *While developing his vision and technique, Usugrow worked designing promotional graphics for Japan’s punk and metal scenes. His unique, stylized combination of traditional Japanese artwork and punk iconography soon made him the visual identity of Tokyo’s underground. As a conscious leader of his community, Usugrow has been using his fame to organize and promote a new Japanese art movement consisting of a tribe of highly talented artists with roots in the metal, punk, hip hop and tattoos, all of whom share his elegant aesthetics.* ...

Japanese skateboard sculptor Haroshi, who became infatuated with skateboarding in his early teens, creates impressive art by recycling old, broken skateboards and is still a passionate skater. I just stumbled upon some flicks from his latest exhibition in Los Angeles, which includes in addition to other skateboard sculptures, an amazing fuckfinger made of skateboards which is really killing it! Skateboard Sculpture Art In my eyes, being able to create those skateboard sculptures requires lots of technical skills as well as the right machines as it is mentioned on Haroshi’s website: ...

Do you remember those nice DIY Graffiti Umbrellas by the Dutch graffiti artists Sons and Romeo? Ema just wrote me about the young, German urban creation start-up Choke, which aim is to combine everyday products with artful designs from around the globe… They have a collection of quite nice umbrellas designed by famous urban artists like A1one from Tehran, Papermonster from New York and Cabaio from Buenos Aires! By the way, the inspiration which lead to those Choke Umbrellas came from the rainy streets of Glasgow, Scotland - the monotony of a modern metropolis on a rainy day is sometimes really depressing. ...