Burning Man or Bust!

Man, 2009

Tomorrow is the day I leave this world as I know it and enter into an alternate universe of art, radical self-expression and dust. Lots of dust.

I’m attending Burning Man for the first time this year with my good friends Allie, Zack, Ioana + co. Everything (and everyone) has come together well so far that this simply had to be the year I attended—it was divine fate.

The Temple, 2009

Burning Man is an annual event held in the dry lake known as Black Rock Desert in Nevada where as many as 50,000 people come together and create a temporary community.  The event is governed by 10 principles:   -Radical inclusion

-Gifting

-Decommodification

-Radical self-reliance

-Radical self-expression

-Communal Effort

-Civic Responsibility

-Leaving no trace

-Participation

-Immediacy

This year’s theme is Metropolis: The Life of Cities.

As I’ll be incommunicado beginning Monday August 30 to September 6 (at least), you can follow along and live vicariously through Burning Man’s live radio stream at www.bmir.org.

Wish me luck! I’m sure I’ll come back with enough stories and pictures to fill this space for weeks.

Caroline

Go tell it on the mountain (top)

On a Mountain Top is the creation of graphic designer Alex Fuller. It's like a cross between Post Secret and Big Giant Helvetica and allows users to say whatever they want. Once your entry fades to white, it's gone forever. Now's your chance to tell the world what you really think. There's almost a zero percent chance your boss/ex-lover/current object of desire for whom you posted a Craig's List "Missed Connection" will be reading at the same time. Almost.

alexfuller.com

Caroline

Russia in Colour

I felt like I was transported back in time with these color photographs taken between 1909 and 1912 of the Russian Empire by photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images. I've only included a couple from this site, which itself only selected a couple from the hundreds of images made available by the Library of Congress.

Do check out the site for captions for the photos I attached. I am left in awe.

Thanks COURTNEY for the cool find!

Caroline

Adventure much?

I haven't even left for Burning Man yet, but already have this unwarranted, inflated, self-important "ain't no desert/crazy cracked-out naked hippy person gonna get the best of me" attitude. Thus I'm thinking ahead to what other extreme adventures I can subject my body and mind to. Imagine my glee when I found the Mongol Rally. Unlike the Gumball Rally, you're not speeding through Europe at 210 mph in a $500,000 exotic sports car (although that sounds like a blast, too). You're driving in a compact car or mini van through foreign lands in demanding conditions. It's rough, dirty and unglamorous. You may have to bribe your way out of a situation or your car may run out of gas/break down in nowhere Russia or the middle of the Kazakh desert. There is no route you follow. There's the start: a large European city and there's the end: Ulaan Baatar, the capital of Mongolia. Everything in between that (roughly) four week period is up to you. Starting September 1, you can sign up for the 2011 Rally right here. 

Now, if four weeks is too much time to take away from your cubicle, I offer you this: the Rickshaw Run. It takes place in the Indian Subcontinent and lasts about two weeks, taking you through 5000km of dirt tracks, tropical jungle, monsoons, and either the Himalayas or the Rajasthan desert. If you're not familiar with a rickshaw, imagine the fastest, safest all-terrain vehicle and then imagine the complete opposite + one less wheel. There are three runs from which you can choose.

I absolutely want to do both of these races. Who's with me?

Caroline


PS I just burnt my tongue on tea and I'm crying.

JJJJound

Yesterday I finally got around to checking out jjjjound.com, the photo-curating blog by Justin R. Saunders. If you're not familiar with Saunders, he's a freelance graphic designer who is into skateboarding, traveling, graffiti and art in general. From time to time, he is featured in "The Moment" with T Magazine to share his picks for classic seasonal menswear. Basically, he is a fusion of everything I like, incarnated.

Saunders describes JJJJound as "an archive of dope" that he started in January 2008. No text, just images. Beware, you can waste hours looking at his stuff. I know I did/will continue to do so.

Here are a few of my favorite photos I saw.

If you have your own version of jjjjound in folders on your computer, I invite you to start uploading them to the photo-sharing website pinterest.com. What I like about this site is that it allows you to grab a photo directly from a web page and then credits the photo source. You can also upload your own photos. This is yet another site on which you could spend hours. I have a profile that you can view here: pinterest.com/carolineksmith/pins

Caroline

WORDS

WORDS from Everynone on Vimeo.

I don't know why, but I always associated NPR with women speaking in monotonous British accents. Thus when I saw them host one of the first showcases I caught at SXSW featuring Sleigh Bells, I was surprised. Now they've worked with Radiolab and NY/LA production company Everynone to produce a charming and artistic video called WORDS. It starts by taking the word 'Play' and showing all the different meanings, but then transitioning into different words with commonalities. I think one of my favorite segments was when 'Split' changed to 'Run.' See if you can catch all the words on the first viewing!

www.everynone.com

Caroline

Cool thing of the day

... And I'm back! After multiple people asking me whether I have a blog and after using my Facebook page as the receptacle for interesting things I find, I've decided to once again try my hand at maintaining a blog. Hopefully it will be more interesting than my middle school angst Xanga days. Hopefully.


Today I started a game with a few friends called 'Cool thing of the day' where I share with them something interesting and they ideally send me something equally as cool in return. No rules, no theme. It can be anything from a picture to a video to an article to a good story. Here's my cool thing for today:



OFFF Paris 2010 Sponsors titles from Julien Vallée on Vimeo.


This video was was made for the OFFF festival in Paris by Canadian filmmaker Julien Vallée. It demonstrates a considerate way of getting a set of sponsors into a promotional piece. If only all adverts could be this creative and witty. May this be the beginning of the end to the tacky notion that sex sells.

On that note, if the wild world of advertising interests you, I highly recommend the documentary "Art & Copy." 

Caroline