Close your eyes and imagine it in black-on-black…

Love it or hate it (there’s not much middle ground on this one), Iranian engineer SIAMAK RUHI DEHKORDI’s new FERRARI ZOBIN concept car is a no-holds-barred design statement. A sleek one-seater modeled after the Italian company’s legendary F1 cars, but designed for street use, the car’s “flying wedge” silhouette is distinguished by its most prominent aesthetic feature: a front structure made of a single metal band which props up the headlights and serves as both the front spoiler and the front fenders providing the vehicle a unique “open-wheels” appearance. Design slaves, start saving your pennies now. Word is the red pony bigwigs like it— A lot. HAVE A LOOK: Read the rest of this entry »

Yeah, SATURN’s cars might suck (and won’t be around much longer, either once GM hits bottom) but this commercial decidedly does not…

Supertouch’s resident world champion cyclist/2009 Tour de France front runner/heavy-duty art collector LANCE ARMSTRONG played host to the second installment of RVCA & CINELLI’s collaborative art exhibition, “Pressure,” this weekend at his own newly-opened cycling shop MELLOW JOHNNY’S in Austin, Tejás. Although the man in yellow couldn’t attend (being strapped into the saddle of a bike at 5:30am everyday to train in the mountains isn’t exactly conducive to partying), Austin’s fixed gear fanatics turned out in droves to ogle the bikes on display customized by a stellar array of artists including BARRY McGEE, PHIL FROST, KAWS, ESPO, ASHLEY MACOMBER, CRAIG STECYK, CLARE ROJAS, DMOTE, and more. The kickoff to a very blurry weekend that began at the art show before sliding over to the nearby 501 STUDIOS where the first-ever installment of the vaunted BICYCLE FILM FESTIVAL was going down, Austinites showed that the fixie movement is alive, well, and flourishing in the Lone Star. To prove the point, San Francisco fixed gearheads/single-speed messiahs MASH dropped in to hold the world premiere screening of their new mini-flick chronicling their recent summer fixie ride through town with Lance. PEEP THE RECAP: Read the rest of this entry »

And you thought London was under surveillance…

French photographer/street artist JR, best known for his technique of photographing inhabitants of an area & pasting the resulting imagery up on grand scale around the community, has taken to the favelas of RIO DE JANEIRO in a grand project to honor the female residents of one of the world’s biggest slums in a hillside installation called “28 Millimetres: Women”. Following in the footsteps of his recent large-scale installation in Spain, JR has truly outdone himself with this massive paste up, the scope of which is simply stunning. HAVE A LOOK: Read the rest of this entry »

Their BMX bikes are more louder than yers…

While the trend of fixed gear cycling explodes around the globe, a distinctly louder single geared biking phenomenon has been quietly evolving in the unlikeliest of places: the suburban backyards of Queens, NY. Fueled by a passionate and tight-knit group of Trinidadian teenagers who squeeze every spare cent into the $4,000+ soundsystems ingeniously integrated into their BMX bikes, the resulting Frankenstein-ian contraptions have become a deafening mobile spectacle in the borough on weekends when members roll out their thundering soundsystems in processions through the streets that can literally be heard for miles around. “MADE IN QUEENS” is a new short film directed by NICOLAS RANDALL and JOE STEVENS chronicling the group, led by teenage master builder NICHOLAS RAGBIR in their quest to build the ultimate bitchin’ mobile ghetto blaster. Explains Stevens, “In this age of obsessive video sharing and social networking nearly every action is designed and packaged for public consumption. Especially with young people. The immediate charm of Nick and his crew is that they’re the exact opposite of all that. There is nothing calculated or self-conscious about who they are. They’re just a group of friends doing something to challenge themselves and have some laughs. It’s a story which would have never come from kids who were born here.” HAVE A LOOK: Read the rest of this entry »

The biggest complaint we’ve got about life in the 21st century, aka: “The Future,” is the near-total lack of the really cool inventions Pop Culture has been promising us for the last 50 years. Yeah iPhones are kinda cool, but you still can’t do a video or hologram chat on one (WTF Steve Jobs?!?), laptop computers have just created a race of modern information slaves, and anyone found traveling by Segway is pretty much guaranteed (or at the very least, deserves) a severe beat down (especially the fat lazy cops who ride em). We want our flying cars, time machines, and jet packs now! And while you can pretty much file the flying car and time machine ideas in the “never” category, this week inventor GLENN MARTIN unveiled the first fully functional consumer-grade jet pack in the futuristic town of Oshkosh, Wisconsin proving that some semblance of a Jetson-ian future might not be too far off. Demonstrating the pack in the video here was the inventor’s 16-year-old son (after all, you can always make more kids, right?) who was prevented by spotters from taking to full flight in public until more test flights have been completed. Designed to fly an average-sized pilot 30 miles in 30 minutes on a 5-gallon tank of gas, the MARTIN JET PACK can be had for a measly $100,000 Earth dollars, and since it is designed to conform to the FAA’s definition of an ultralight vehicle—which weighs less than 254 pounds and carries only one passenger—a pilot’s license won’t be required for users. No word yet on when the death machine will go on sale but we’ve got a short list of “friends” we’d love to gift them to…

Digital artist LENA GIESEKE has created an incredibly captivating 3D video model of PICASSO’s masterpiece 1937 painting “Guernica.” Says the artist of her inspiration: “The idea of creating a 3D version of an influential artwork came out of doing jigsaw puzzles of famous paintings. When you assemble a jigsaw, you study a painting in great detail and you become aware of the very lines, shapes and colors that the painting is composed of and how these elements merge to create a unified expression. Through the puzzle, you explore the artwork, examining details your eye might not have caught otherwise.” For those needing a bit of historical backend, “Guernica” was Picasso’s commentary on the Nazi bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, and is widely considered to be one of the greatest pieces of modern art ever produced whose relevance still seems more timely than ever…

Coincidentally, recent examination of “Guernica” by expert art conservators has determined that the painting is in “serious but stable condition” in its current home at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid and can not afford to undergo any further restorations. The painting’s most serious (and damaging) restoration was undertaken in 1974 when superstar art dealer/actor TONY SHAFRAZI spray-painted the words “KILL LIES ALL” across the work in what can best be described as a cheap fame grab that subsequently catapulted him to the highest echelons of the international art world. Funny how things work, innit? Read more HERE…