For those who don’t know I was a Digital Art (and English) major at the University of Virginia. Basically what that means is that I spent the first two years doing traditional studio arts (a few semesters of drawing, painting and sculpture) and the last two years doing weird little projects. The beauty of the digital art major was that it was so fluid and new that no one really knew what the heck we were supposed to be doing. We learned Photoshop, created crazy little websites using Dreamweaver, messed around with QTVR and did a year of video production at the Charlottesville Public Access station among many other really strange things (I once had to clock hours loading hebrew national hot dogs onto a small train in Fayerweather gallery for Adam Wolpa’s Condimentalism exhibition).

That’s Adam and his dogs

Anyway, one of my most memorable projects was an email collabo with some students in Krakow, Poland. I was really into advertising at the time so my partner (Jerzy?) and I decided to do our project based on this. He sent me images with descriptions in Polish which I translated and then created mini ad campaigns around. For instance, he sent me a picture of a pair of black velvet panties saying they were his favorite smell and I created black velvet scented air fresheners.

And that, surprisingly, brings me to the point of this post. I just came across this website, Face Your Pockets, which seems to be some kind of Russian/American art project. It is a series of user submitted photos where people empty their pockets or purses and then place the contents along with their face on a flatbed scanner. The result is dope little shots such as the one above. I’m into it. If I ever get around to contributing I’ll definitely post my photo here.

I have a very strong feeling that I’m going to be having nightmares about this ish tonight. I was clicking around on Buzzfeed and came across this new phenomenon called Mouth Eyes. It is essentially this new trend where you photoshop a smaller version of a person’s mouth onto their eyes. Very, very bizarre.

They range from the downright disturbing…

To the disturbingly beautiful.

See more at: Freaking News dot com

I was checking out my Google Reader this morning and struck gold in the form of a CBC documentary entitled, Paris Hilton Inc. I’ve always thought Paris was somewhat genius for the way she pimped the paparazzi, made tons of money and became a household name. Whether or not she has actual talent is debatable. Is she an amazing recording artist, model or actress? Nope, but she did manage to achieve a level of celebrity that most talented singer/model/actresses can only dream of. Anyway, this doc examines Paris’ business savvy while giving an in-depth look into the billion dollar business that enabled her success. Even if you hate Paris (we can meet at 3pm after school to settle that) you can’t deny that her rise says something very powerful about the society in which in live.

Part 1

Everybody is talking about this viral video going around entitled “Two Girls, One Cup.” For those of you who don’t know what it is, urbandictionary.com has a fairly through definition. Everyone that has seen it issues crazy convincing warnings. “Don’t watch it.” “Trust me.” “Don’t do it to yourself.” “I’m scarred for life.” “I’ll never be the same.” I was pretty sure that I would heed their advice. But now that these funny little reaction videos are starting to pop up everywhere it is getting more and more tempting.

Check out Miss Info getting tricked into watching “Two Girls, One Cup.”

Lupe Fiasco “Gold Watch” teaser

Last night some co-workers and I headed over to Atlantic Records for an exclusive listen to Lupe Fiasco’s new album, The Cool, which hits stores 12/18. I was really looking forward to hearing Lupe’s new offering until I discovered that our listening session overlapped with the opening of the first US Billionaire Boys Club / Ice Cream flagship store. Now, I might as well go ahead and admit it. I have a thing for skateboarding rappers. I was definitely torn between Lupe Fiasco and Skateboard P. I figured I could hear all of the tracks and then race downtown to catch the last hour of the store opening… until I discovered that Lupe had 19 tracks on his album. Yes! 19 tracks (minus and intro and intrumental). Here are the highlights upon first listen:

3. GO GO GADGET FLOW - Great high energy start to the album with a crazy Twista-style flow where Lupe rhymes “My tank on full, your tank on E”
4. THE COOLEST - This is the street single which is burning up the net as I type. To me Lupe sounded a little like Lil Wayne at the beginning of this track. I LOVE the hook “Lord please give your sympathy and forgive my young cool history.”
5. SUPERSTAR - First single, blah blah
6. PARIS, TOKYO - This one would be my pic for second single. Great line: “Walk it out like DJ Unk in my John Lennon dunks.”
8. GOLD WATCH - I love any song where a dude can say “I like goyard bags and green Now & Laters.”
9. HIP-HOP SAVED MY LIFE (FEAT. NIKKI JEAN) - Clever song told in the 3rd person about a how hip-hop changes the life of a myspace rapper with a song called “stack that cheese.”
10. INTRUDER ALERT (FEAT. SARAH GREEN) - Definitely a little weird, but I admire the fact that Lupe was willing to attack original subject matter. It’s about a girl that has been raped who gets involved with a guy who is fighting his own deamons.
11. STREETS ON FIRE - Pure poetry “Death is at the tip of her tongue and danger’s at the tip of her fingers.”
12. LITTLE WEAPON (FEAT. BISHOP G AND NIKKI JEAN) produced by Patrick Stump from Fall Out Boy. It’s about school shootings. Lupe has a dope flow on this one.
13. GOTTA EAT - This is the infamous song where Lupe raps from the perspective of a cheeseburger. The song is actually about health in the hood. “My man said life aint easy streets be all like feed me feed me. Niggas gotta eat that’s when shit get greasy”
14. DUMB IT DOWN (FEAT. GEMSTONES AND GRAHAM BURRIS) I already blogged about this song. I love it.
15. HELLO/GOODBYE (UNCOOL) (FEAT. UNKLE) This joint reminds me of Linkin Park for some reason. The lyrics are “Hello darkness, hello sunshine, hello not at all, hello all the time, hello nowhere, hello oblivion, hello goodbye.”

Finally! Today, Chicago rapper Kid Sister dropped her highly anticipated (by me at least) video for “Pro Nails” featuring Kanye West. Though they didn’t break the piggy bank for this video (the budget was 3gs), they definitely made the best of it. I love the airbrushed acrylics and breaking dancing finger puppets. And let’s not for get that Kanye kills it. Ye rhymes, “Ayo this Maf*cker jammin’/ I’m on it it’s an anthem” and I totally have to agree. This joint makes me want to go get a manicure/pedicure stat.