Category Archives: Futurism

While I am the first to admit that I adore ANYTHING with four wheels, I have to say that I rarely become infatuated with an automotive design.

The Volkswagen XL Sport just does it for me.OFFICIAL Paris Motor Show Gallery Sporting a matte blue paint job, the XL Sport to me is a mixture of futurism and aggressive lines. A part of me knows this car is an ode to geekiness, but I don't care if it looks like something Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory would drive.

Of course I think this vehicle merits a second look that really shows you the nitty gritty of its special features. Scope out the details, below!

OFFICIAL Paris Motor Show Gallery

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PARIS MOTOR SHOW: DETAILED! MORE Shots Of The Show-Stopping Volkswagen XL Sport

Cult American label Software has a habit of throwing up fascinating new voices.

Uniting bedroom talents across the globe, the imprint emphasises a communal relationship, with artists on their roster frequently collaborating.

Launching the Mixware series, Software are encouraging their artists to piece together special, intricate mixes featuring old, new and unreleased material. Each Mixware instalment will be available as a free download, alongside a limited cassette issue.

Napolian is next up. The producer has responded with a deft selection, one which intrudes upon left field hip hop while also retaining a love of experimentalism that locates 8-Bit melodies, fluorescent tones and other aural treats.

Clash is able to premiere a new collaboration, which pits Napolian against Dro Carey. Silicon City is gleeful retro-futurism, with those sharpened synths borrowed straight from the Mega Drive era. This isnt some nostalgic trip, though, with the two producers delivering a slumped hip hop beat which could only be summoned in 2014.

Check it out now.

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Premiere: Napolian & Dro Carey - 'Silicon City'

If you pay attention to online gaming, especially in the free to play space, where a game download is free, but extras of all sorts cost money, youll see stories about people spending ridiculous amounts of money in a game far more than a typical $60 disc. For example, theres a report today about a Belgian teenager who spent nearly $50,000 in a single game.

If youre a creator of a free to play game, stories like that might warm your heart. You probably dont want players this extreme its kinda bad publicity but you want to find the kind of players who are willing to spend far more than the price of a typical video game, right?

Wrong.

As it turns out, when you analyze the data for social gaming, the biggest sources of revenue arent the biggest spenders, but rather the most social players even players who dont themselves spend any money at all. Thats been one of the key findings of Ninja Metrics, an analytics firm that explores the data about how players interact with each other in the social gaming space. That interaction, it turns out, is key to predicting how a game will do and what players companies should focus on.

Some influencers spend no money but generate hundreds of thousands of dollars, Ninja Metrics CEO Dmitri Williams told me. That also applies to game time, as well.

The more a game incentivizes players to play together, the stronger this effect is, he continued. For example, the company has used its analytics engine to observe interaction in the game Imperia Online. For that game, the company determined that about 75% of play time is driven by social interaction. That is, Imperia players want to play with their friends far more than they want to play alone.

Using this data, the company can help game developers focus on those social players, rather than the whales, in order to gain new users and retain those influencers.

We can now find out where the influencers came from to find the game and so acquire more users, Williams told me. This helps a game retain the right people and gets them to spend more money when it has them.

This data can also be used to predict churn the likelihood that a player will grow tired of the game and stop playing. So, for example, if theres a player who brings in a lot of revenue through his friends coming in to play the game, you can target that person for different kinds of promotions and see what keeps her playing. But more importantly, a company can test to see what kind of promotion keeps both her and her friends playing the game.

Businesses want to think I have a relationship with my customer, said Williams. But they often forget about the relationships their customers have with each other. But until now, its been hard to see those relationships. That means that promotions and marketing can be less about squeezing particular targets and more about what ensures people have a fun time playing.

More here:
The Moneymakers For Social Games Aren't The Big Spenders

With his fluorescent, physically dominating sound, Bobby Tank is a difficult presence to ignore.

The rising producer has a similar approach to Hudson Mohawke, say, or Rustie in that all three seem to imbue the muscular mechanics of their music with an overriding sense of colour.

New single 'Semi Precious' ft. Cass Lowe drops on October 27th, and it's the perfect entry point into the artist's world. A collaboration with Cass Lowe, the luminous synths are matched to neon atmospherics before making way for a gorgeous, pop-tinged vocal.

The kicks and snares tumble in an echo to Bobby Tank's pop routes, with the vivid production matching 80s machine funk to a lurid glimpse of futurism.

Check it out now.

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Track Of The Day 3/10 - Bobby Tank

From time to time, Gawker's Rankings section is pleased to present rankings submitted by its readers and fans. Today, we bring you "Gawker Media Sites, Ranked," by one Joe Mayes. Ed.

Gawker Media: come for the Deadspin, stay for the Jezebelian man-hate

The internet is big. Huge. Gargantuan. There is no way to fathom its vastness, let along begin to digest even the tiniest fraction of its information it contains.

As a result, it is nigh impossible to whittle down the number of websites to read during fucking-off-from-work-time during the day.

So in order to help you choose, I provide you a breakdown of the top nine Gawker Media sites.

Of course there are criteria. Any list worth its salt has criteria. This list is no different. In that it has criteria, not in that it's worth its salt.

So, criteria:

9. Kataku: Seriouslywhat the hell is this? Sounds like Robert Blake's bird. Did someone at a Gawker production meeting really think the internet didn't have enough websites for gaming dorks?

8. Jalopnik: I meanit's cars. For car geeks. Great for capturing the coveted 16-18-year-old-boy-in-1971 demographic.

7. Gizmodo: Cool tech shit. Like Lifehacker, but for moneyed Gawkeranians. In other words, has twelve regular readers (including writers and editors).

Read the rest here:
Gawker Media Sites, Ranked: A Reader-Submitted Ranking

The National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) in Barcelona is best known for its medieval art, particularly its collection of Romanesque murals, which is considered one of the most important in the world. But a significant chunk of the museums holdings of around 30,000 pieces is modern art, dating back to the beginning of the last century, and up to the 1950s. Now, around 1,300 pieces, half of them never exhibited in public before, are to go on display in a specially prepared space covering 4,000 square meters of the museums first floor.

The walls of the space, formerly a neutral off-white, have been painted in bright colors, while the paintings have been hung seemingly willy-nilly.

One of the MNACs main tasks is to showcase Catalan art through the centuries, but the collection now on display also includes work by Juan Gris, Julio Romero de Torres, Alfred Sisley and Edvard Munch. These all form part of the collection and help to put it in context, says the museums director, Pepe Serra.

Weve presented a big picture of what society was like, with all its contradictions

MNAC director Pepe Serra

When Serra took over three years ago, he made it clear that he wanted to break with tradition, and put the modern art collection in context. As a result, painting, sculpture, posters, cinema, illustrations, furniture, advertising, photography, and particularly architecture are all on display. Together the pieces tell the story of the beginning of modern art, and how realism gradually emerged as the dominant trend in the early 20th century. Paintings such as Mariano Fortunys The Battle of Tetun, which harks back to the styles of the 19th century, become superseded by more lifelike depictions of events.

The exhibition brings the period to life through the faces of the artists as depicted in their self-portraits, as well as those of their wealthy patrons. We have tried to avoid focusing on styles such as Impressionism, Futurism, Cubism, Expressionism, etc., and have instead presented a big picture of what society was like, with all its contradictions, says Serra. The major works are there as well, and are enriched by being seen alongside others created at that time.

The longer-term goal, says Serra, is for the MNAC to become the benchmark for modernism, a movement that developed in Catalonia, represented by artists and architects such as Ramon Casas, Santiago Ruisiol, Miquel Utrillo, Isidre Nonell, Pablo Picasso and Carles Casagemas. Space has been found to present 20 pieces of furniture created by Antoni Gaud, alongside work by his long-time collaborator Josep Maria Jujol.

Works by Juli Gonzlez, Joaquim Sunyer, Josep de Togores, Joaquim Torres-Garca, Salvador Dal and Picasso are all to be found in the 39 sections that make up the collection. There are also pieces related to the Spanish Civil War, among them photographs taken by Agust Centelles, many of which were exhibited alongside Picassos Guernica in the Republican Pavilion at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne in Paris in 1937.

An epilogue is provided in the form of works lent by the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA) by Antoni Tpies, Modest Cuixart and Joan Pon, members of the Dau al Set, which attempted to revive surrealism in Spain at the end of the 1940s. Despite having 4,000 square meters at our disposal, we ran out of space, says Serra, who says the Baroque and Renaissance areas of the museum are now to be redesigned.

Link:
MNACs modernist makeover

Welcome to Wanderlust, a weekly series on Co.Design where some of our favorite designers share their secret picks and insider tips for the best design cities on the planet. Today, Emily Sugihara of Brooklyn-based bag studio Baggu drops us in a tote and takes us to her favorite design city: Tokyo.

Tokyo! It's really just the perfect combination of the future and the past. Much more than the United States, Japan is super futuristic, but it's like the futurism of the 1990s. At the same time, Japan is very respectful of the traditions of the past, and so the result is this glorious fusion of design eras, everywhere you look. It's a glorious fusion of design eras, everywhere you look.

My favorite is to rent an old house--the more tatami the better in one of the quiet neighborhoods, like Nakemuguro, alongside the banks of the beautiful Meguro River. It's a young, hip neighborhood, but very quiet; I've been to Japan a million times, so I don't like the touristy stuff. I like trying to spend my time there as an average person. Experiencing a different culture's idea of "normal" is so great, and Japan is just so different from my everyday life in New York or San Francisco.

Anywhere with ramen! There's a secret place with a black tarp and a bone I like to go to: Ganko Ramen. You should Google it. But if you can't get there, you can go to any train station and get a bowl of noodles that will just amaze you.

Walking around Nakameguro there a tons of small shops with local people making stuff. And the everyday shopping's incredible: shops like Tokyu Hands, which sells pretty much everything. It's like Muji meets Walmart: you'll walk out of there with things you never knew you wanted.

Also? 7-11! You might think you know 7-11 in the United States, but it's just a whole other world in Japan.

Bring comfy shoes. All of Tokyo is a design destination. Spend your day on foot and get really lost.

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Baggu CEO Emily Sugihara On Why All Designers Should Visit Tokyo

Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser (Credit: Sierra Nevada Corporation)

Sierra Nevada Corporation announced on Friday that theyve filed a legal challenge with the General Accounting Office over NASAs decision to select Boeing and SpaceX for its Commercial Crew program to develop spacecraft that will deliver astronauts to the International Space Station.

Sierra Nevada was one of three finalists for the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap), along with Boeing and SpaceX. Unlike those two companies, which are both developing capsule spacecraft to transport astronauts, Sierra Nevada is developing what it calls the Dream Chaser an airplane-like spacecraft thats capable of landing on a runway.

One of the reasons for the companys challenge is the cost difference between its proposal and that of Boeings proposal, and noted that its proposal was the second-lowest priced of the three.

With the current awards, the U.S. government would spend up to $900 million more at the publicly announced contracted level for a space program equivalent to the program that SNC proposed, the company said in a statement. Given those facts, we believe that a thorough review must be conducted of the award decision.

Sierra Nevada also noted that in terms of NASAs other mission criteria, it believes theres very little difference between the three proposals, making cost a primary issue. In its statement, the company said that NASAs own Source Selection Statement and debrief indicate that there are serious questions and inconsistencies in the source selection process. SNC, therefore, feels that there is no alternative but to institute a legal challenge.

The GAO has until January 5th to make a decision about Sierra Nevadas challenge.

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Sierra Nevada Corporation Files Protest Over NASA Spacecraft Selection

Photo: Imaxtree

Anyone looking to find calm in Paris on Friday would have done well to avoid the Louvre. The crowd rubbernecking at Dakota Fanning and Carla Bruni before that afternoon's Dior show was intense. But inside, things were far more tranquil: The venue was divided into circular salons, isolating editors and buyers from the celebrity scrum.

Raf Simonss collection built on his sober, down-to-earth couture show in July. Said the designer in his show notes, For this collection I wanted to continue; I thought there was more to explore. The show was called Providence (Extended Remix) and many of the looks had an angelic feel: Many were all-white and voluminous, inspired by 18th-century court coats. They also referenced astronaut uniforms, with a touch of '60s futurism. The last two looks featured sweeping gilets in bright pink and gold, a stunning visual complement to Simonss white canvas.

Issey Miyake let loose a bunch of white balloons in his show tent, an image of calm and cheer that jibed nicely with a collection that was inspired by clouds. The balloons were attached to strips of audiotape, an invention of the composer Ei Wada, who played them during the show. The haunting experimental music paired nicely with Miyakes white cumuluslike creations, many in a new proprietary fabric the company is calling 3-D Steam Stretch, used on oversize jackets and puffy dresses.

Isabel Marant always has pieces you want to buy and wear straight out of the show, and this season was no different. She jumped on the serenity bandwagon with looks like a loose white tunic with origami folds and a rope belt, paired with perfectly frayed white pants. When she wasnt going full Zen, Marant squeezed in some sex appeal, in the form of shimmery micro-minidresses, perhaps for when youre feeling less contemplative.

Moors Gaze was the title of Hussein Chalayans latest collection, and he drew interestingly on Moroccan paneled windows, which found their way into a black-on-black print on a silk dress. Another intricate print looked like the aerial view of a Moorish garden, an enclosed oasis of peace. Of course, the designer, whos celebrating his 20th anniversary, had to shatter the calm with a note of provocation: a series of prints of women in burqas, with fiery red nails.

See the full Christian Dior collection here. See the full Isabel Marant collection here. See the full Issey Miyake collection here. See the full Chalayan collection here.

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Its Oh So Quiet (Except Outside the Shows)

Alien: Isolation Extended TV ad - Distress [INT]Alien: Isolation

Sega is ramping up the fear factor with its latest promo for the upcoming Alien: Isolation, a two-minute slice of space-bound horror that evokes the tense, helpless environment of Ridley Scott's 1979 original movie.

Like the game itself, the ad keeps in line with the retro-futurism of the classic film. It evokes the same technology envisioned as futuristic back when the film was made, opening with a flickering screen of faded, worn VHS. Amanda Ripley's voice crackles in, recording her distress beacon. Lost and alone on the Nostromospace station, searching for clues to her mother Ellen's disappearance, she finds she's little more than prey for a single, monstrous creature....

It's a brilliantly edited piece, with Andrea Deck's imbuing her performance as Ripley Jr with the right mix of fear, desperation, and determination. In both acting and scene setting, it bodes well for developer Creative Assembly's sci-fi survival horror. Written by Dan Abnett, Isolationtakes place while Ellen Ripley is in stasis following her escape from the Nostromo at the end of the film.

Having played the VR test build, we can safely say it's one of the scariest games in years, and although the version released to retail on 7 October will only be for consoles and PC, hopefully it will prove similarly terrifying.

Alien Isolation will also reunite much of the cast from the 1979 film, including Sigourney Weaver returning to the role of Ripley for the first time in nearly two decades.

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Alien: Isolation teaser uses old video techniques for new fear