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This technology is just mind-boggling. PhotoSketch may be the coolest program we’ve seen or written about since the invisible speakers.

PhotoSketch is an “Internet Image Montage” project from five Chinese Computer Science and Technology students at Tsinghua University and the National University of Singapore. The basic premise, which they present in the form of a research paper [pdf], works like this:

Step 1. Draw the outlines of the figures you want in your picture – anything from seagulls to a Mercedes, whatever tickles your fancy,

Step 2. Add labels for each of the items, as well as for the background.

Step 3. PhotoSketch will then find real-life images to match your doodles and put them together in a Photoshopped image that will make your jaw drop.

Yes, this thing has such great image recognition technology that it can determine which dog fits best in your canine doodle. Their demo video unveils the true power of PhotoSketch:

Product design is all around us – from the bed we wake up in and the toothbrush we use, right through to the TV we watch and the car we drive. But many people spend their days completely oblivious to the thousands of ways it affects them. Now the enfant terrible of product design, Philippe Starck, is determined to shake up the world of British design.

Claiming there has not been a design revolution here since Terence Conran burst onto the scene in the Sixties, Starck invited open applications for places on a school of design he is setting up in Paris. Hundreds of British would-be designers applied. Starck then whittled them down to the best 12, based on the quality of the drawings they submitted with their applications, and invited them to join him in the French capital.

Design For Life follows the fortunes of the 12 students – seven men and five women – who must battle it out to impress Starck. Ably assisted by top designer Eugeni and his agency's head of communications, Jasmine, Starck will send the weakest home as and when he feels it necessary. At the end of the series, one lucky British designer will be rewarded with a six-month placement at his design agency.

via BBC

PARIS — In an era when even kitchen appliances connect to the Internet, and cellphones have more memory and data processing power than a 10-year-old PC, artists are engaging ever more creatively with computers — or maybe vice versa.
As with video art in the 1960s and early digital work in the ’80s and ’90s, technological progress is providing not only an array of new tools for artistic creation, but also new sources of reflection and new subjects for social commentary. Out of it is emerging a new aesthetic inspired by YouTube and Google.
A global movement is hacking, subverting and critiquing the hardware, software, content, visuals — even the philosophy of the wired world.

Carved letters by Gill at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Photo by Leo Reynolds.

I understand your fascination for the act of writing. But what exactly is so special about letterforms themselves — and why do you revel in painting them, or carving them in stone?

The shapes of letters do not derive their beauty from any sensual or sentimental reminiscence. No one can say that the O’s roundness appeals to us only because it is like that of an apple or of a girl’s breast or of the full moon. We like the circle because such liking is connatural to the human mind. And no one can say lettering is not a useful trade by which you can honestly serve your fellow men and earn an honest living. Of what other trade or art are these things so palpably true? Moreover it is a precise art. You don’t draw an A and then stand back and say: “there, that gives you a good idea of an A as seen through an autumn mist”, or: “that’s not a real A but gives you a good effect of one.” Letters are things, not pictures of things.

«C’était un tel désastre, cette pluie, cette boue, les gens n’avaient rien à se mettre sous la dent, il n’y avait pas d’eau courante, il n’y a pourtant eu ni vol, ni violence ni viol.»

Le chanteur et guitariste américain est décédé à l'âge de 55 ans.
«Willy DeVille s'en est allé rejoindre cette nuit Edith Piaf, Jack Nitzsche et Johnny Thunders»
Après des incursions dans la soul et la salsa, sa musique s'imprègne des influences cajun de la Nouvelle-Orléans, où il s'installe dans les années 90. C'est à cette période qu'il reprend le classique du rock américain Hey Joe (voir la vidéo), en y apposant d'inattendues tonalités mariachi, qui conviennent à merveille à son look de dandy émacié, longs cheveux noirs et fine moustache.