Category Archives: Futurism

Last weekend I was at the Singularity Summit for a few days. There were interesting speakers, but the reality is that quite often a talk given at a conference has been given elsewhere, and there isnt going to be much value-add in the Q & A, which is often limited and constrained. No, the point of the conference is to meet interesting people, and there were some conference goers who didnt go to any talks at all, but simply milled around the lobby, talking to whoever they chanced upon.

I spent a lot of the conference talking about genomics, and answering questions about genomics, if I thought could give a precise, accurate, and competent answer (e.g., I dodged any microbiome related questions because I dont know much about that). Perhaps more curiously, in the course of talking about personal genomics issues relating to my daughters genotype came to the fore, and I would ask if my interlocutorhad seen the lion. By the end of the conference a substantial proportion of the attendees had seen the lion.

This included a polite Estonian physicist. I spent about 20 minutes talking to him and his wife about personal genomics (since he was a physicist he grokked abstract and complex explanations rather quickly), and eventually I had to show him the lion. But during the course of the whole conference he was the only one who had a counter-response: he pulled up a photo of his 5 children! Touch! Only as I was leaving did I realize that Id been talking the ear off of Jaan Tallinn, the founder of Skype . For much of the conference Tallinn stood like an impassive Nordic sentinel, engaging in discussions with half a dozen individuals in a circle (often his wife was at his side, though she often engaged people by herself). Some extremely successful and wealthy people manifest a certain reticence, rightly suspicious that others may attempt to cultivate them for personal advantage. Tallinn seems to be immune to this syndrome. His manner and affect resemble that of a graduate student. He was there to learn, listen, and was exceedingly patient even with the sort of monomaniacal personality which dominated conference attendees (I plead guilty!).

At the conference I had a press pass, but generally I just introduced myself by name. But because of the demographic I knew that many people would know me from this weblog, and that was the case (multiple times Id talk to someone for 5 minutes, and theyd finally ask if I had a blog, nervous that theyd gone false positive). An interesting encounter was with a 22 year old young man who explained that he stumbled onto my weblog while searching for content on the singularity. This surprised me, because this is primarily a weblog devoted to genetics, and my curiosity about futurism and technological change is marginal. Nevertheless, it did make me reconsider the relative paucity of information on the singularity out there on the web (or, perhaps websites discussing the singularity dont have a high Pagerank, I dont know).

I also had an interesting interaction with an individual who was at his first conference. A few times he spoke of Ray, and expressed disappointment that Ray Kurzweil had not heard of Bitcoin, which was part of his business. Though I didnt say it explicitly, I had to break it to this individual that Ray Kurzweil is not god. In fact, I told him to watch for the exits when Kurzweils time to talk came up. He would notice that many Summit volunteers and other V.I.P. types would head for the lobby. And thats exactly what happened.

There are two classes of reasons why this occurs. First, Kurzweil gives the same talks many times, and people dont want to waste their time listening to him repeat himself. Second, Kurzweils ideas are not universally accepted within the community which is most closely associated with Singularity Institute. In fact, I dont recall ever meeting a 100-proof Kurzweilian. So why is the singularity so closely associated with Ray Kurzweil in the public mind? Why not Vernor Vinge? Ultimately, its because Ray Kurzweil is not just a thinker, hes a marketer and businessman. Kurzweils personal empire is substantial, and hes a wealthy man from his previous ventures. He doesnt need the singularity movement, he has his own means of propagation and communication. People interested in the concept of the singularity may come in through Kurzweils books, articles, and talks, but if they become embedded in the hyper-rational community which has grown out of acceptance of the possibility of the singularity theyll come to understand that Kurzweil is no god or Ayn Rand, and that pluralism of opinion and assessment is the norm. I feel rather ridiculous even writing this, because Ive known people associated with the singularity movement for so many years (e.g., Michael Vassar) that I take all this as a given. But after talking to enough people, and even some of the more naive summit attendees, I thought it would be useful to lay it all out there.

As for the talks, many of them, such as Steven Pinkers, would be familiar to readers of this weblog. Others, perhaps less so. Linda Avey and John Wilbanksgave complementary talks about personalized data and bringing healthcare into the 21st century. To make a long story short it seems that Aveys new firm aims to make the quantified self into a retail & wholesale business. Wilbanks made the case for grassroots and open source data sharing, both genetic and phenotypic. In fact, Avey explicitly suggested her new firm aims to be to phenotypes what her old firm, 23andMe, is to genotypes. Im a biased audience, obviously I disagree very little with any of the arguments which Avey and Wilbanks deployed (I also appreciated Linda Aveys emphasis on the fact that you own your own information). But Im also now more optimistic about the promise of this enterprise after getting a more fleshed out case. Nevertheless, I see change in this space to be a ten year project. We wont see much difference in the next few I suspect.

The two above talks seem only tangentially related to the singularity in all its cosmic significance. Other talks also exhibited the same distance, such as Pinkers talk on violence. But let me highlight two individuals who spoke more to the spirit of the Summit at its emotional heart. Laura Deming is a young woman whose passion for research really impressed me, and made me hopeful for the future of the human race. This the quest for science at its purest. No careerism, no politics, just straight up assault on an insurmountable problem. If I had to bet money, I dont think shell succeed. But at least this isnt a person who is going to expend their talents on making money on Wall Street. Im hopeful that significant successes will come out of her battles in the course of a war I suspect shell lose.

The second talk which grabbed my attention was the aforementioned Jaan Tallinns. Jaans talk was about the metaphysics of the singularity, and it was presented in a congenial cartoon form. Being a physicist it was larded with some of the basic presuppositions of modern cosmology (e.g., multi-verse), but also extended the logic in a singularitariandirection. And yet Tallinn ended his talk with a very humanistic message. I dont even know what to think of some of his propositions, but he certainly has me thinking even now. Sometimes its easy to get fixated on your own personal obsessions, and lose track of the cosmic scale.

Which goes back to the whole point of a face-to-face conference. You can ponder grand theories in the pages of a book. For that to become human you have to meet, talk, engage, eat, and drink. A conference which at its heart is about transcending humanity as we understand is interestingly very much a reflection of ancient human urges to be social, and part of a broader community.

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Singularity Summit 2012: the lion doesn’t sleep tonight | Gene Expression

Conceptual clocks were set every which way, calendars were meaningless, and the durable Rush trio was right on time for the first of its two shows at the Air Canada Centre on Sunday. The semi-legendary band is touring its latest album, Clockwork Angels, a thematic record inspired by H.G. Wells/Jules Verne-styled retro-futurism yesterdays imagined tomorrow land of steam-powered gadgets, adapted to flavour the bands accessible brand of Byzantine rock.

A three-hour concert saw furnace blasts of fire and belches of steam, literally and figuratively. There were old songs and new, and three drum solos at least. It all ended with a strong exit of parts of 2112, a forecasting album made 36 years ago and now a century ahead of its time.

On a stage of whimsical props and steam-punk gadgetry, the non-misfiring night began with Subdivisions, a thing of grandiose eighties synthesizer rock and tumbling drum fills that concerns urban planning, conformity and the restless dreams of youth. The Big Money followed, set to big-screen imagery of commercialism and cash registers, and cheered by audience members who had paid $70 to $160 to hear bassist-keyboardist Geddy Lee in high vocal shrill.

Lee, in shaded granny glasses, hippie hair and Chuck Taylor sneakers, is rather avuncular at the age of 59. Guitarist Alex Lifeson, also 59, used his collection of Gibson products to produce squealing solos and quick-fingered, high-fretboard note-hitting jumbo-screen close-ups of which enabled us to count the carats of his wedding ring. Drummer Neil Peart, who continues to morph into a sad-faced Buster Keaton look-alike at the age of 60, wore an African prayer cap and sat within an outstanding drum kit that had more chrome to it than a sixties Chrysler factory.

After that, things settled a bit, with a set list that disregarded well-known material and, after a short intermission, settled into the songs of Clockwork Angels, presented with a string ensemble. The crowd was politely appreciative of (though hardly wound up over) offerings strong in synchronized musicianship and a graceful sort of fury. What I would call a heavy, loud sereneness prevailed.

Rush makes serious music; the Peart-penned lyrics of Clockwork Angels were influenced by Voltaires Candide and John Barths The Sot-Weed Factor. It all distills into a vision, as Peart has explained, of one of many possible worlds, driven by steam, alchemy and intricate clockworks.

And yet part of Rushs charisma is its lack of self-seriousness. Some of the concert experience involved Monty Python-like animations on the big screen behind the band, as well as quirky high-budget vignettes starring actor Jay Baruchel and, as jokester gnomes, the members of the band.

The Clockwork Angels set had begun with the busy, shifting music of Caravan, with the line, In a world where I feel so small, I cant stop thinking big. That kind of thinking is a theme of the bands career a three-piece outfit of high-minded misfits, a group with no time or concern for expectations and naysayers. The train continues, powered by untraditional imagination and weird ticking.

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The future according to Rush runs like clockwork

A$AP Rocky, Schoolboy Q, Danny Brown

The Egyptian Room at Old National Centre

Wednesday, October 10

The pungent smell of weed smoke and Black & Milds wafted down the stairs as I waited in line for my tickets to the LongLiveA$AP tour at the Egyptian Room at Old National Centre. It was a night of post-racial celebration and generational kinship under the guise of military imagery, odes to marijuana and good ol' fashioned hip-hop hedonism. In the words of A$AP himself "It's two thousand twelve, two thousand thirteen. Race doesn't matter. We're not black or white, but we're all purple."

I missed the bulk of opener Danny Brown's short set but luckily caught the last few songs dealing mostly with ingesting various prescription pills and smoking "blunt after blunt after blunt after blunt." Like the rest of the performers on the LongLiveA$AP tour, Brown is an artist who simply couldn't have existed in the hip-hop sphere ten years ago. He pounced around in skinny jeans and a long, slim-fitting V-neck and an asymmetrical haircut, and delivered rhymes like a strangled B-Real after raiding his grandmother's medicine cabinet -- a nasal yap hinting at a special brand of insanity. Brown seems to be a descendent in a long line of hip-hop weirdos -- Kool Keith immediately comes to mind -- and his presence set a precedent for the night i.e. it was a show that refused to fully submit to hip-hop's traditionally heteronormative values.

Schoolboy Q followed Brown and by comparison seemed ludicrously normal. He arrived on the stage in a hoodie and sunglasses, muscling through a spirited set peppered with personal anecdotes about his personal struggles and love affair with marijuana. Green smoke plumes scattered through the air during his set (and frankly, pretty much the whole night) rendering the stage's smoke machines redundant. Q is a dynamic performer though - seeming sensitive, tough and personable simultaneously. His amped set prepared the crowd for the bizarre spectacle that was A$AP Rocky.

As the interim music played on full blast, a giant banner depicting soldiers raising an upside down American flag on Iwo Jima against a beating red sun was unveiled. The DJ table was clothed in camouflage mesh and two upside down American flags flanked the stage. After a spoken-word intro complete with helicopter and gunshot sounds, A$AP arrived on the stage donned in all black and wrapped in the stars and stripes. His set was marked by hits from his debut mixtape LiveLoveA$AP, the somewhat underwhelming appearance of the A$AP Mob and a few more spoken word interludes, including an especially haunting one that paired a washed out recording of The Mamas and the Papas "California Dreaming" with graphic war sounds. It was almost a theatrical production - one that used a war aesthetic to symbolize what he called a "struggle against being misunderstood."

A$AP Rocky seems like he lives inside the pop culture zeitgeist. He's a Harlem native whose sound seems more rooted in futurism and hazy, mid-tempo Houston hip-hop than anything found in New York. He preached a post-racial message that resounded with the diverse crowd. Amidst a financial recession and global anxiety, he told the crowd that, much like him, we could do whatever we wanted to. And that night, it all seemed possible.

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Review: A$AP Rocky at the Egyptian Room at Old National Centre

David Byrne & St. Vincent plus horns in Costa Mesa. Photo: Kelly A. Swift, for the Register. Click for more.

You certainly notice right away the multitude of horns that punch up Love This Giant, the dizzying new result of a slow-soldered mind-meld between legendary innovator David Byrne and experimental upstart Annie Clark, who does business as St. Vincent. The expansive brass band gathered for the duos project announces itself from the get-go with introductory single Who, spitting forth the first of an array of squiggly riffs that 45 minutes later has run the gamut from heady Afropop and feverish JBs funk to mood-yoking motifs la Gil Evans.

Yet regardless of how dominant they may seem on record and even more so when you witness Byrne & Clark & Co. in concert, like their superb performance Friday night at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, which replayed tonight at the Greek Theatre you can just as easily get caught up by how the albums other forces sinuously helix with those horns into one multifaceted strand.

Those forces, to be exact: 1) Byrne, that restless musicologist, never less than intriguing since parting from Talking Heads at the end of the 80s, yet whose imagistic, philosophizing pop has rarely been so sublime and stately as it has been lately. 2) Clark, the curly-haired wisp from Manhattan, who via three remarkable St. Vincent discs (Marry Me, Actor and Strange Mercy) has emerged as one of todays most inventive and important new talents. And 3) drum programmer John Congleton, whose various stuttered patterns prove essential to making this synthesis so smooth.

Byrne (60) and Clark (30) are naturals together, like an eccentric, visionary godfather and his eclectic, virtuoso niece. You can feel their creative camaraderie even in Love This Giants iciest moments, but it was even more palpable in the gracious glances and gestures they gave one another inside the opulent Rene and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, a three-tiered jewel rarely used for amplified performances like this. Their voices are such a perfect blend of chilly and warm, futurism and earthiness, its a wonder they arent biologically related.

But Congletons beats, every bit as textured and syncopated as the adorning horns he helps propel, provides just as much punctuation to these organically developed tales of nature vs. technology, inner peace vs. outer cataclysm. Byrne believes every strain of it intertwines into something distinctly new. I think he might be right.

Whats arguably even more daring an enterprise, however, is what he and Clark achieve with this fusion on stage and with almost entirely different musicians from those who appear on the album.

Though its a minimalist, somewhat black-and-white night filled with stark shadows and martial choreography, people keep coming out of performances with minds blown because they dont often see such invigorating imagination at work, even in these supposedly more sophisticated times of so many other duos (the xx, the Kills, Sleigh Bells, Crystal Castles) concocting engulfing sounds out of sparse situations.

This, though, is an altogether more hypnotic experience, not least because of the mesmerizing eight-piece brass and woodwind ensemble that powers the group with layers of sweetly cacophonous trombone and alto sax, effective interjections of French horn and flugelhorn, all anchored by some of the heartiest Sousaphone blowing outside of New Orleans. Theres no electric bass involved, just those impressive horns, a keyboardist and drummer kept clear to the corners, and whatever guitars are added by Byrne (usually on acoustic) and Clark, whose shards of frantic, distorted leads on her Gibson SG are becoming a signature all their own.

Hello, people of Orange, Byrne deadpanned at the outset of what I believe is his first appearance in O.C. since his 1997 tour behind his fourth post-Heads effort Feelings, which played San Juan Capistranos Coach House.

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Live review: David Byrne & St. Vincent spellbinding at Segerstrom Center stunner

Outside it's 2012 and a mlange of wild styles diverts attention wherever you look. Inside the section headers of this year's Best of Nashville issue, however, it's a nostalgic era of equal parts Art Deco, the Jazz Age, vintage Americana and other stylistic influences from the early 20th century. The look is a hallmark of Nashville designer Joel Anderson and his Anderson Design Group, whose work can be seen throughout the issue.

A Ringling College of Art & Design graduate who's lived in Nashville since 1986 his credits extend from the award-winning "Spirit of Nashville" poster series and Olive & Sinclair Chocolate's sumptuous packaging to an Emmy-winning stint in the art department on the locally produced 1988 CBS kids' show Hey Vern, It's Ernest! Anderson says he takes inspiration from "the lost art of advertising design."

With his work for the Best of Nashville issue, Anderson says, he wanted to recapture some of the optimism and exuberance of the poster art surrounding the 1925 World's Fair in Paris, which assimilated styles ranging from Futurism to Constructivism to evoke a world spinning faster.

By going for the World's Fair look and vibe, he explains, he and illustrator Aaron Johnson, an intern from the Watkins College of Art & Design, wanted to reflect a time when "people were really excited about what technology would bring."

In some regards, it may have been too optimistic about the shape of things to come, he says. But in the traces of the style that linger for example, the locomotive and airplane in the Frist Center's interior grillwork he sees "a belief that we could build anything." That hope, and the human touch it represents, is partly what Anderson believes is driving the booming revival in vintage-style print-making.

"Everybody's got a computer now and can make their own graphics," Anderson says. "People are going back to that pre-computer age and those tactile, warm, human feels." See more of Anderson's work at andersondesigngroup.com.

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About the Illustrators

PARIS.- Paintings by Edward Hopper (1882-1967) have the deceptive simplicity of myths, a sort of picture-book obviousness. Each one is a concentrate of the hypothetical knowledge and dreams conjured up by the fabulous name of America. Whether they express deep poignancy or explore figments of the imagination, these paintings have been interpreted in the most contradictory ways. A romantic, realist, symbolist and even formalist, Hopper has been enrolled under every possible banner. The exhibition at the Grand Palais seeks to shed light on this complexity, which is an indication of the richness of Hoppers oeuvre.

It is divided chronologically into two main parts: the first section covers Hoppers formative years (1900-1924), comparing his work with that of his contemporaries and art he saw in Paris, which may have influenced him. The second section looks at the art of his mature years, from the first paintings emblematic of his personal style - House by the Railroad - (1924), to his last works (Two Comedians -1966).

Hopper entered Robert Henris studio at the New York School of Art in the early years of the twentieth century. Henri was a colourful figure; in 1908, he founded the Ashcan School, whose very name was a statement of the uncompromising realism of its most radical members.

Hoppers time in Paris (nearly a year in 1906, followed by shorter stays in 1909 and 1910) offers an opportunity to compare his paintings with those he saw in the citys galleries and salons. Degas inspired him to take original angles and apply the poetic principle of dramatisation. The massive structure of his views of the quays of the Seine was borrowed from Albert Marquet. He shared with Flix Vallotton a taste for light inspired by Vermeer. Walter Sickert was his model for the iconography of theatres and paintings of damned flesh. In Paris, Hopper adopted the style of Impressionism, a technique which he felt had been invented to express harmony and sensual pleasure; Back in the United States he absorbed the gritty realism of Bellows or Sloan, that of the Ashcan School, whose dystopic vision he shared. He earned his living doing commercial illustrations, which will be presented in the Paris exhibition. But it was his etchings (from 1915) that brought about a metamorphosis in his work and crystallized his painting, as he put it. One room in the exhibition is devoted to his etchings.

1924 was a turning point in Hoppers life and career. The exhibition of his watercolours of neo-Victorian houses in Gloucester, in the Brooklyn Museum and then in Franck Rehns gallery, brought him recognition and commercial success which enabled him to work full time on his art (he had previously sold only one painting, at the Armory Show in 1913). Hoppers watercolours open the second major section of the exhibition, which shows the American artists emblematic paintings and iconography. The chronological presentation permits visitors to appreciate the continuity of his inspiration, the way he explored his favourite subjects: houses infused with a near psychological identity (House by the Railroad, 1924, MoMA), solitary figures sunk in thought (Morning Sun, 1952, Columbus Museum of Art), the world of the theatre (Two on the Aisle, 1927, Toledo Museum of Art), images of the modern city (Nighthawks, 1942, Art Institute Chicago).

The apparent realism of Hoppers paintings, the abstract mental process that prevails in their construction, destined these works to the most contradictory claims. The bastion of the American realist tradition, the Whitney Museum of Art, regularly showed his work. And yet it was the MoMA of New York, the temple of Formalism, which gave him his first retrospective, in 1933. The MoMAs director, Alfred Barr, hailed an artist whose compositions were often interesting from a strictly formal point of view.

The complexity of Hoppers oeuvre puts it at the intersection of the two historical definitions of American modernity: one derived from the Ashcan School which claimed the Baudelairian principle of modernity linked to the subject, and the other taken from the lessons of the Armory Show which, in 1913, revealed the formalism of European avant-gardes (cubism and cubist futurism) to the American public. In the fifties, the surreal strangeness, and metaphysical dimension of Hoppers painting led to comparisons with De Chirico. At the same time, in the columns of the magazine Reality, the painter joined American realist artists in denouncing abstract art, which, in their view, was submerging collections and museums.

Only a few months after the artists death, the curator of the American section of the Sao Paulo Biennale, Peter Seltz, reconciled realism and avant-garde art by organising an exhibition of Hoppers works in conjunction with paintings by the Pop Art generation.

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Exhibition at the Grand Palais seeks to shed light on Edward Hopper's works of art

Phil Erli with Ringgold Telephone Company will be the featured speaker at the Walker County Chamber of Commerces October Membership Luncheon speaking on Watershed Events of Technology in the Future. The event will take place on Tuesday, Oct. 23, 11:30 a.m. at the Walker County Civic Center.

During the program Mr. Erli will discuss futurism in business. He will inform attendees on the ways technology and its growth will affect the ways in which persons conduct their business and personal lives.

Mr. Erli is a frequent speaker and has addressed many groups associated with the telephone industry including USTA, NECA, NTCA, OPASTCO, The International IP Forum and various state telephone associations. He has also spoken at the International Consumer Electronics Show on the subject of IPTV and addressed the National League of Cities on the subject of Futurism in Business.

A Promise Walk Community Center will have a featured spotlight table at the event. Attendees will be invited to visit this table during registration and after the event. The spotlight table host will also be given two minutes each to describe their organization during the program.

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For a fortnight, tents across the city have held up for scrutiny the autumn/winter 2012, Resort 2013 and spring/summer 2013 collections at both Prague Fashion Weekend and Dreft Fashion Week, two of three such events vying for the top spot in Prague. With a week's worth of hindsight to digest and reflect on the parties, catwalk schedules and influential collections, we can now better determine who came out of Prague's annual fashion top dog (so far).

Czech designers have been known to love futurism and minimalism more than most, sometimes verging on the side of unwearable or just downright bland, but Pavel Brejcha's autumn/winter 2012 collection turned minimalism on its head with a tonal blue palette that was reminiscent of Calvin Klein. Using fabrics with motion that seemed to sway ever so slightly down the catwalk, "clothes for the modern woman," as Brejcha has called them, should continue to bolster the career of the designer.

At Dreft Fashion Week, it was Black Card winner Jindra Jansov whose delicate layering of organza created a sophisticated collection that is far beyond her young years as a designer. The autumn/winter cuts went with the oversized coat and jacket trend, but did so in a way that still allowed the wearers to maintain "womanly" shapes. Another minimalist standout was Lenka tpnkov, who blended silks and leather to create a very tough female persona by using mostly grays and blacks with pops of tangerine orange: The collection certainly set her apart from her other design counterparts.

Finally, Czech minimalism was done right.

The mix-up du jour of bold, bright colors and patterns came from the spring/summer 2013 collection of Dreft Fashion Week darling Alexandre Herchcovitch, which mixed mad-hatter and Boy George in seamless harmony. Checkered suits, blouses and skirts were paired with plaid trousers or oversized jackets, while clutches incorporated smiley faces la Forrest Gump or safety-pins in a heart design. Quirky? A bit. Facetious and jovial? Absolutely.

Prague Fashion Weekend was not without color or crazy patterns, either: The Berlin-based designer Marcel Ostertag used tangerine orange, bordeaux and cherry red in silks, satins and lace to create a spring/summer 2013 line that was easy and clear. The silhouettes were feminine, allowing a small waist to take precedence over everything else. The designer, who opened up his own show by donning a red, silk chiffon number, was the epitome of grace as he sauntered down the runway.

La Formela, the spectacular design trio, went with "Good News from the Far East Palace" in a nod to Chinese artist Zou Fana for spring/summer 2013. Invoking psychedelic Chinese gardens by mixing lady bugs and koi fish with backdrop colors of bubblegum pink, lime green and marigold yellow seemed so effortless that is was easy to forget just how young the design team is. There were sheer blouses in black mixed with printed high-waist trousers, halter dresses with just a border hem of printed gardens, or a fully printed trench coat which would undoubtedly make for perfect outerwear in spring's fussy weather. The color harmony, which is so often out of place with Czech designers, was executed by a La Formela team living in a minimalist world that was able to overcome those barriers in one fell swoop.

Of course, the young talent that is emerging on the local fashion scene will determine whether or not the industry is propelled forward or pushed back. In both fashion weeks, the organizers painstakingly picked budding talent whose accolades would eventually be far-reaching.

The Awkward Collection by Lucie Jelnkov and Monika Novkov was one such budding talent that debuted two collections of varying tastes at Prague Fashion Weekend and Dreft Fashion Week. At PFW, it was the dinosaur shoes that won the type of recognition normally saved for celebrities. The collection of Velociraptors and T-Rex footwear in various colors were meant to create "memories of childhood, when we discover the world through color, Lego figures and plastic dinosaurs," explains the design duo behind the collection. At Dreft Fashion Week, it was their collection of sheer silk blouses and dresses with the drizzling of silicone to create a bodice, military details, accessories and shoes that were the scene stealers.

In the end, Prague Fashion Weekend and Dreft Fashion Week will each have to decide whether to show autumn/winter or spring/summer collections for the 2013 edition of these events. Cannibalizing each other in an event to win "September" is silly and won't necessarily allow the fashion weeks to grow and garner the type of attention each are aiming for, i.e. international press and buyers.

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Review: Prague's weeks of fashion

LV / Photo by Jason Turner

"People presume that what they think of as South African elements on the album are actually that, but the connection is the guys that we were doing this with, rather than any idea of what the music would sound like."

Who:This South London trio Simon Williams, Gervase Gordon, and Will Horrocks has been subtly absorbing and reinvigorating underground British dance sounds since 2007. But Gordon's bi-continental birthright (he's British and South African) has acted as a fresh conduit for their latest album,Sebenza, and the producers collaborated with some of South Africa's brightest young MCs including Spoek Mathambo, Okmalumkoolkat, and Ruffest to integrate contemporary Johannesburg futurism with London's dance-floor avant-garde. While British beat trends shift every time the Queen walks her Corgi, LV have taken the gleaming, syncopated rhythms of UK funky, kwaito, kuduro, electrofunk, and straight-up house to forge their own distinct, holographic path.

Pirate Anthems:"People presume that what they think of as South African elements on the album are actually that," says Horrocks. "But the connection is the guys that we were doing this with, rather than any idea of what the music would sound like." The trio insists that there was no grand plan to explicitly link Jo'burg with London. But both South Africa and England have built formidable dance scenes largely inspired by pirate radio, and if anything most resemblesSebenza's beat clatter, it's the clamor of electronic beats on fuzzy renegade airwaves.

Snatching Victory from the Jaws:LV spent three years assembling tracks in both London and South Africa, and at various points, they thought the project wouldn't pan out. "The fact that it came together and that it has a coherent vibe?" marvels Williams, "I think it's quite standard to get halfway through and be like, hang on, is this as good as I think it is? Am I just making my life difficult for no good reason? But we're fueled by defeat," he adds, wryly. "That's how we roll." Once the songs sat side by side, though, notoriously selective Hyperdub boss Kode9 requested an album and an EP, with stray singles and instrumentals from the sessions to come.

Majoring in Beatmaking:Three is an odd number for collaborating on production, but LV doesn't know anything else, having discovered their mutual love for music-making while ditching class at university together. "We started skipping lectures to play with incredibly poor keyboards and my MPC," says Williams. "We used to record bass guitar on MiniDisc and then re-sample it onto an MPC, while Gerv played lamentable, regrettable chords." The crew still owns the music, but it won't be seeing the light of day anytime soon. "I'd like it if people bought [Sebenzafirst], but I think that's implied," he says, laughing.

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LV: Brit Dance-Music Production Crew Conspire With South African MCs

In the annals of "Fine Art History," graffiti is usually placed squarely outside of the mainstream dialogue. Usually, its relegated to a foggy category sometimes called Urban Art--or worse, Urban Contemporary. Those are not terms that came from the graffiti or street communities, says writer and theorist Daniel Feral. They may be a result of categories created by the auction houses. I usually hear the terms used when discussing sales of art.

Click to enlarge.

Feral is the creator of the eponymous Feral Diagram, a map that revises the role of graffiti and street art in the canon of modern art. From Ferals perspective, graffiti and street art have been critical drivers of the art world for well nigh 40 years now. Framing them as outsider art is not only lazy, but incorrect. As an alternative, Feral has literally redrawn art history, showing how 1960s graffiti and street art emerged from major mainstream movements, from Pop Art and the Situationists to 1940s Art Brut. By way of looping arrows and signs, he also demonstrates how street art evolved, conceptually, alongside the likes of Gordon Matta-Clark and Jenny Holzer. And thankfully, Feral also parses out the boilerplate-in-their-own-right terms, graffiti and street art, into specific groups and movements, like Wildstyle and Otaku-tinged Childstyle.

Whats clever about the Feral Diagram is that it utilizes the visual language of another very famous diagram, created by the first director of MoMA, Alfred H. Barr, in 1935. In his visualization, Barr used looping black arrows and Futura type to explain how Cubism and Abstract Art evolved from a mixture of high art and pop culture influences, ranging from Japanese prints to the Neo-Impressionists. I wanted to honor Barrs intellectual brilliance, Feral writes. By utilizing his visual language to tell a story other than that sanctioned by the Fine Art establishment, it made me feel like I was subverting the system too. It made me feel like I was doing what my friends were doing: reclaiming public space.

MoMA director Alfred H. Barrs 1935 original.

A special edition of Ferals diagram was released this week in support of a new film and book, Futurism 2.0, documenting an emerging school of street artists known as Graffuturism, which began a few years ago as a secret Facebook group and has blossomed into a full-fledged movement. Now, Feral explains, it deserves its own mention on the diagram. A gallery show of Graffuturist art opened at Londons Blackhall Studios on September 28th.

You can buy a poster of the diagram here.

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