Posted by Michael

So i’ve been collecting photos of my computer screen freaking out in these wild color explosions for the last couple years… It just started happening one day, and would leave me with these nice little happy accidents on my screen. I guess I’m not the only one this has been happening to.. As of recently this computer malfunction has been labeled “Data Moshing”. It all happens when a compression algorithm slip-up can introduce surprising colors and patterns but retain strange motion memories of video or images on your video card (ie: the desktop image you are looking at right now while you read this)

Music videos are eating this stuff up.

Chairlift - “Evident Utensil”

Kanye West - “Welcome To Heartbreak”

More Zine Workshop pics / January 26, 2009 / Art , Culture , Fun! / Posted by Michael

Zine Workshop fun / January 26, 2009 / Art , Culture , Friends , Fun! / Posted by Michael

So Randy’s Zine workshop this weekend was really fun. So refreshing to just sit down with an x-acto and get weird on some 8.5×11 cardstock pages for an afternoon. Tons of people showed up, and one giant super zine was created.. Jamie’s 5 year old daughter’s page was probably the best thing made all day! We didn’t have time to paginate everything and print it, but expect a proper offset printed version with scanned in pages of this to be created in the upcoming weeks. Big ups to everyone who came out, And John, don’t worry about stabbing me in my finger with an X-acto.. It’s healing just fine. The amount of blood that can come out of a finger is impressive.

Maid Cafe / January 3, 2009 / Art , Culture / Posted by Michael

So Clay and Elisa took me to a new tea place in Culver City called Royal/T. It’s a big old art space with gallery, maid cafe, and manga book store combined.. I vowed I would never step foot into another maid cafe ever again after my creepy experience with one in Osaka with Eph…. But this one is amazing! It doesn’t look like a pre-school, and the girls don’t sit down with you and draw in coloring books and sing kids songs. Some art collector in LA named Sarah Hancock opened up the space to have shows and also had a soft spot for maid cafe’s..

Also, What would a drive up to LA be without a giant fire on the side of the freeway?

Carl Sagan / October 22, 2008 / Culture , Photography / Posted by Michael

On October 13, 1994, the famous astronomer Carl Sagan was delivering a public lecture at his own university of Cornell. During that lecture, he presented this photo:

The photo above was taken by Voyager 1 in 1990 as it sailed away from Earth, more than 4 billion miles in the distance. Having completed its primary mission, Voyager at that time was on its way out of the Solar System, on a trajectory of approximately 32 degrees above the plane of the Solar System. Ground Control issued commands for the distant space craft to turn around and, looking back, take photos of each of the planets it had visited. From Voyager’s vast distance, the Earth was captured as a infinitesimal point of light (between the two white tick marks), actually smaller than a single pixel of the photo. The image was taken with a narrow angle camera lens, with the Sun quite close to the field of view. Quite by accident, the Earth was captured in one of the scattered light rays caused by taking the image at an angle so close to the Sun. Dr. Sagan was quite moved by this image of our tiny world.

“We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam. ”

The End Of America / October 19, 2008 / Culture , Politics , Video / Posted by Michael

If you have 20 minutes to spare I would suggest watching this. Naomi Wolff makes quite the compelling case that the United States is weeks away from entering a fascist police state.. A compelling argument she’s making.. It seems mass arrests by the military have already started, WATCH THIS. I can truthfully say that if McCain wins this election I am moving the hell out of the USA as soon as possible.

TOO SEXY FOR USA / October 19, 2008 / Culture , Fun! , Totally Awesome / Posted by Michael

Those Love boards just keep making news headlines around the world… Hahah this time Norways two biggest newspapers have a big feature on how this board is “TOO SEXY FOR USA”. Europe is laughing at the US… I love it.

Mega Sunday in Stockholm! / October 19, 2008 / Culture , Design , Travel / Posted by Michael

Stockholm at fall.. You really can’t beat this place. I’ve been here in the winter when it’s shitty, in the summer when it’s nice, and the fall when it’s crisp.. I really need to move here at some point in my life.

Your typical Sodermalm street.

Busy at work in the studio..

Giant Bearbrick at Vincents studio.

Whent out to some bar last night with vincent to have a drink after a long day of work in the studio.. I tried to take a picture out the window but my flash accidentally went off.. I think I like this shot better than what was out the window.

MEGA SUNDAY IN STOCKHOLM TODAY! If you’re in Stockholm come play Badminton with us tonight. Call me.

STOCKHOLM! / October 18, 2008 / Culture , Documentary / Posted by Michael

MOOORE TO COME

The view from the guest laptop couch at Vincents.

More writing and pics to come.. Im beat… SLEEP TIME! Just worked 5 days in a row! Not much sleep!

Is Tuberculosis the next pandemic? / October 4, 2008 / Culture , Documentary , Video / Posted by Michael

James Nachtwey is an amazing photographer from New York.. If you haven’t seen his documentary War Photographer, check it out.. Just released yesterday, James is working with TED to spread the word on XDR-TB which is sweeping across the world. Some really scary shit here, this form of TB is incurable with modern medicine, and people often die within 2 weeks of contracting the disease. Oh and to top that off, every 20 seconds someone in the world is dying from this. Scary stuff.