A Rem Koolhaas-designed Mandarin Oriental hotel caught fire Monday night in the city of Beijing, after being showered with a burst of fireworks. I have never seen a fire this big in my life. More info on the fire here.
Sort of puts our tiny, frail human figures into perspective; because in the galactic sense, this fire probably registers as subatomic.

09 Feb 09  /  Touchpuppet  /  No Comments  /  Zachary Hayes

Here are a couple of images I made from my time spent in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. The image was shot from my hotel room on the 32nd floor at the Cerulean Tower. Part two after the jump (my apologies for the image quality, I just dug these up off one of my hard drives).

09 Feb 09  /  Photography, Touchpuppet  /  No Comments  /  Zachary Hayes

Via: Design You Trust

09 Feb 09  /  Uncategorized  /  No Comments  /  Zachary Hayes

This aired this past weekend apparently, although I managed to miss it. It’s a little awkward. Check out the CBS News article on Kaws here.
Street Art is doing for artists these days what Pop Art did back for Andy Warhol’s generation. BRB, I’m gonna go tag some shit.

09 Feb 09  /  Art  /  No Comments  /  Zachary Hayes

I just came across smArtHistory.org today, and its already probably my new favorite website.
For years we have been dissatisfied with the large expensive art history textbook. We found that they were difficult for many students, contained too many images, and just were not particularly engaging. In addition, we had found the web resources developed by publishers to be woefully uncreative. We had developed quite a bit of content for our online Western art history courses and we had also created many podcasts, and a few screencasts for our smARThistory blog. So, it finally occurred to us, why not use [...]

09 Feb 09  /  Touchpuppet  /  No Comments  /  Zachary Hayes

Its not everyday that I wake up to find new articles written about Pablo Picasso. However, today is one of those days.
Picasso was the first rock-star artist, whose wild visions gripped the public imagination and changed 20th-century art for ever. But his flamboyant personality divided opinion. Was he a playful genius, as some suggest, or a capricious and cruel misanthrope who left battered lives in his wake? On the eve of a new show in London, we speak to his closest friends and family in a bid to unravel the enigma.
It’s a [...]

09 Feb 09  /  Art  /  No Comments  /  Zachary Hayes

And how convenient that I can post this on my first day going back into the real world.
Via: The Heavy Edition

09 Feb 09  /  Uncategorized  /  No Comments  /  Zachary Hayes

Observant readers of Kanye West’s weblog have noticed that Kanye was somehow blogging while at the Grammys. And by blogging, we mean, there is obviously someone else who does the blogging for Kanye. You can see his fans losing their minds in the above image, or watch it happen in real time here.

08 Feb 09  /  Uncategorized  /  No Comments  /  Zachary Hayes