The CDC App
The Chinese government is working with two of the country’s largest technology companies to track the disease. Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings created color-based systems that record the health of individuals and identify carriers of the coronavirus.
Days after Banksy shocked the world by shredding his canvas Girl With Balloon (2006) with a built in shredder immediately after it sold for $1.3 million at Sotheby’s, the artist announced that the canvas and the frame it is still stuck in now comprise a new work, called Love is in the Bin (2018). The new work has been granted a certificate by Pest Control, Banksy’s authentication body, and will be on display at Sotheby’s New Bond Street saleroom this weekend.
“Banksy didn’t destroy an artwork in the auction, he created one,” Alex Branczik, Sotheby’s Head of Contemporary Art, Europe, said in a statement. “Following his surprise intervention on the night, we are pleased to confirm the sale of the artist’s newly-titled Love is in the Bin, the first artwork in history to have been created live during an auction.”
The auction house also confirmed that the winning bidder from Friday night is proceeding with the purchase, but did not reveal the identity of the buyer, just that it is a “female European collector and a long-standing client of Sotheby’s.”
Photo: Girl With Balloon is one of Banksy’s most iconic images. (AP: Sotheby’s)
Banky’s artwork hammered to the tune of 1.3 million dollars.
Onlookers gasped and laughed after the bottom half of Girl With Balloon, was sucked into a shredder hidden in its frame as the hammer fell, auction house Sotheby’s said.
The artwork had fetched more than three times its pre-sale estimate and equalled a record price for the artist.
“It appears we just got Banksy-ed,” Alex Branczik, senior director and head of contemporary art, said in a statement on Sotheby’s website.
Photo: Girl With Balloon is one of Banksy’s most iconic images. (AP: Sotheby’s)
Banky’s artwork hammered to the tune of 1.3 million dollars.
Onlookers gasped and laughed after the bottom half of Girl With Balloon, was sucked into a shredder hidden in its frame as the hammer fell, auction house Sotheby’s said.
The artwork had fetched more than three times its pre-sale estimate and equalled a record price for the artist.
“It appears we just got Banksy-ed,” Alex Branczik, senior director and head of contemporary art, said in a statement on Sotheby’s website.
Facebook’s Menlo Park Headquarters. Courtesy of Facebook.
Office at Google. Courtesy of Google.
Office at Google. Courtesy of Google.
WeWork Ginza Six. Courtesy of WeWork.
Harvard Business School professor Ethan Bernstein began studying the effects of open office plans.
The work appears uncompleted: the facial features are somewhat indistinct and there are blank areas of canvas. Oddly, the whole composition is displaced slightly to the north-west. A label on the wall states that the sitter is a man named Edmond Belamy, but the giveaway clue as to the origins of the work is the artist’s signature at the bottom right. In cursive Gallic script it reads:
Marta Minujín, The Parthenon of Books, 2017, in Friedrichsplatz, Kassel, for documenta 14. Photo by Ben Westoby for Artsy.
The display is part of the Documenta 14 art festival in Kassel, Germany. Now in its 14th iteration, the Documenta was first established in 1955 an attempt to bring Germany up to speed with modern art, after the horrific years of Nazism. For the current exhibition, Minujín created the structure by sourcing 100,000 donated books from around the
Metal scaffolding mimics the form of the temple, which is then covered in books held by plastic wrapping. All the books were donated by the public from a shortlist of over 170 titles that are either currently or formerly prohibited.
lso emphasising Minujín’s motivation is the chosen site of Friedrichsplatz Park, where Nazi sympathisers burned an estimated 2,000 prohibited books on 19 May 1933.
The installation forms part this year’s Documenta 14 art festival in Kassel, a city in the north of central German state Hesse. It responded to a brief that asked contributing artists to explore the relationship between Kassel and Athens – the festival’s partnering city.
Also emphasizing Minujín’s motivation is the chosen site of Friedrichsplatz Park, where Nazi sympathizers burned an estimated 2,000 prohibited books on 19 May 1933.
It opened just one week after the restoration of democracy on 19 December 1983, and the following week it was tipped over by two cranes to allow the public to take the books they wanted.
A similar distribution of the books is planned for the end of Documenta 14, although details are not yet confirmed.
Minujín also teamed up with the University of Kassel and professors Nikola Roßbach and Florian Gassner to compile a list of books that are currently forbidden in various locations around the world.
Book burnings took place in cities across Germany in 1933 as part of the Aktion wider den undeutschen Geist, which translates as a Campaign against the Un-German Spirit.
Organized by the German Students Union, the events were intended to bring arts and culture in line with the Nazi ideals and rid blacklisted authors from circulation. Mass burnings were scheduled to take place on 10 May 1933 but Kassel’s was delayed due to rainfall.
The world’s fifth-most-visited website has a long-running problem with gender bias: Only 18 percent of its biographies are of women. Surveys estimate that between 84 and 90 percent of Wikipedia editors are male. Quicksilver, is a software tool by San Francisco startup Primer designed to help Wikipedia editors fill in blind spots in the crowdsourced encyclopedia. Its under representation of women in science is a particular target. Quicksilver uses machine-learning algorithms to scour news articles and scientific citations to find notable scientists missing from Wikipedia, and then write fully sourced draft entries for them.
The summaries it generates are intended to provide a starting point for Wikipedia editors, who can clean up errors and check the sources to prevent any algorithmic slip-ups contaminating the site.
Puma and MIT Design Lab is developing products with a biological makeup. The idea behind this collaboration is that there is a more complete athletic experience when humans wear living, adaptable products.
“Deep Learning Insoles” and “Breathing Shoes.”
The Breathing Shoe has a biologically active shoe material that is home to microorganisms. The material learns a user’s specific heat patterns and opens up ventilation based on those user-specific heat patterns. Every user winds up with a unique shoe.
Kehinde Wiley, Barack Obama, 2018. © 2018 Kehinde Wiley. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C.
Amy Sherald, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, 2018. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C
© 2018 Pete Souza. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C.
The unveiling of the portraits of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama has created an unprecedented surge of interest in both portraitists, especially Amy Sherald, whose work was relatively new to the market before her commission.
For Sherald, a 44-year-old Baltimore painter who produces roughly a dozen works a year, the demand is so strong it’s basically blown up the waitlist for her paintings, which had been growing ever since demand spiked for the artist’s limited number of works, following her first solo show at Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago in 2016.
© 2018 Pete Souza. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C.
“The ability to be the first African American painter to paint the first African American president of the United States,” said Wiley, “It doesn’t get any better than that.”
The Obamas were the first African American family in the White House, now they are the first African Americans in the National Portrait Gallery’s collection of presidential portraits. The National Portrait Gallery was established in 1962, and is housed in the Old Patent Office Building in Washington’s Chinatown.
Adorned with in gilt and gemstones, blackamoor figures are particularly decorative and are commonly seen as furniture, paintings, jewelry and textiles. They are typically swathed in fine robes and almost always wear turbans. Fashion and beauty icons Coco Chanel and Helena Rubinstein collected blackamoor furniture (two Venetian Blackamoors graced the foyer of Chanel’s 
Paris apartment. Vogue magazine editor Diana Vreeland had a famous collection of blackamoor jewelry from Cartier and Grace Kelly owned a diamond-encrusted blackamoor brooch from Nardi Jewelers of Venice .One of the Pointer Sisters’, Anita Pointer has some blackamoor pieces in her collection of black memorabilia. Aleksandr Pushkin kept a blackamoor figurine on his desk; it reminded him of Abram Petrovich Gannibal, his great-grandfather, an African slave who became a successful Russian general and military engineer.The most famous blackamoor figure is the gem-studded Mohr mit Smaragdstufe, which translates to “Moor with Emerald Cluster” . Created by Balthasar Permoser in 1724, it is housed in the Grünes Gewölbe museum in Germany. see below
At times blackamoors are depicted as exotic noblemen, while at others such as statues, take on positions of servitude, as footmen or waiters. Their noblemen status dates to the Moorish invasion of southern Italy more than a millennium ago; their roots are steeped in conquest. However, some find blackamoor imagery to be racially insensitive because some of the statues look like servants. This dates to the European courts in which black attendants were dressed in exotic finery – and, some feel, were objectified as ornaments. This was particularly true of the court of Versailles in the 17th century.When Dolce & Gabbana featured blackamoor jewelry and clothing designs in its spring 2013 collection fashion show in Milan, the firm was criticized for being tone-deaf as to what blackamoors can represent. The firm responded that such imagery was a reflection of the Italian firm’s roots in a country in which Moors were of historic significance.
During the 18th century wealthy Venetians employed Moors as bodyguards, as they were impressed by their fighting prowess. The regal bearing of the resulting depictions seem to put these exotic immigrants in high regard; they are beautiful and are not demeaned in any way, as evidenced by this sculpture by Andrea Brustolon (photo, below). 
Blackamoors should not to be confused with emblems of American slavery, such as the more recent “Aunt Jemima” figures. To make this mistake is to make a mistake of history.
In 2011 a diamond, sapphire and gold blackamoor brooch once owned by Elizabeth Taylor sold for $60,000 at Christie’s. One look at the piece, photo left, reveals the delicacy and respect with which the piece was created by the famous Giulio Nardi, an artist of jewelry design .
The inhabitants of the coast wore gold earrings with enamels white and black like amulets to exorcize the danger of pirates or gave to the churches as votive promises. This is for sure the primigenial blackamoor jewelry that anyway arrived in few years to the motherland.
Venetian artisans created various kinds of Moors exploring all kind of jewelry: earrings, brooches, pendants and necklaces with blackamoors in ebony usually adorned with precious stones and enamels. They love to adorn jewels upon black men and women figurines
Blackamoors were a favorite style statement of the Victorian era;
The inhabitants of the coast wore gold earrings with enamels white and black like amulets to exorcize the danger of pirates or gave to the churches as votive promises. This is for sure the primigenial blackamoor jewelry that anyway arrived in few years to the motherland.
Venetian Blackamoor jewelry is known as the most representative example of the typical Italian skill and handicraft that takes his roots in the history of the Venice Republic (“La Serenissima”): since the 16th century the antique moors have become symbols of Venetian goldsmith tradition and still, now they’re part of our culture and legacy
Even today, blackamoors are considered the most wanted and typical expression of Venetian jewelry: testimonials of this everlasting elegance have been icons of the 20th century as Grace Kelly, Ernest Hemingway, Liz Taylor, Barbara Hutton, Arthur Rubinstein and Elton John (cit. Wikipedia)
Exquisite artwork with jewels on black-faced images
Storyboard
The apps dubbed “appsperiments” are available on both the iOS App Store and Google Play. The three apps in question are called Storyboard, Selfissimo!, and Scrubbies.
The first, Storyboard, turns videos into single-page comic layouts on your device. Turning photos into images inspired by art – including comic book art – is something that grew popular with the launch of the A.I.-powered editing app Prisma.
Selfissimo!
Selfissimo! (iOS, Android) is an automated selfie photographer that snaps a stylish black and white photo each time you pose. Tap the screen to start a photoshoot. The app encourages you to pose and captures a photo whenever you stop moving. Tap again to end the session and review the resulting contact sheet, saving individual images or the entire shoot.
Scrubbies
Scrubbies (iOS) allows you to easily manipulate the speed and direction of video playback to produce lovely video loops that highlight actions, capture funny faces, and replay moments. You can shoot a video in the app and then remix it by scratching it like a DJ.
The library soon was the talk on the internet after photographs of its interior and white floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in the main entrance hall circulated on social media.
However, the euphoria was short lived with stories about its “fake books” soon making headlines around the world.
Tianjin Binhai Library, deputy director told Agence France-Presse that the mix-up was because authorities approved by the plan stating that the atrium would be used for circulation, sitting, reading and discussion, but omitted a request to store books on shelves. therefore they can only use the hall for the purposes for which it has been approved.
The library has about 200,000 books stored and hopes to house 1.2 million volumes in the future. About 15,000 visitors flocked to the library over the weekend
The fifth floor of Harvard’s art museum contains rare pigments. Mummy Brown is a pigment produced by grinding up the flesh of Egyptian mummies. It appeared as early as the 16th century; production continued until the 1960s, when the supply of embalmed bodies finally petered out. While the historical record confirms that artists did purchase the paint, researchers have yet to find an artwork in which the pigment is definitively present. But a newly surfaced studio inventory for de la Cruz lists Mummy Brown among his supplies. If accurate, this portrait will be the first confirmed use of the pigment in a work of art.
Narayan Khandekar stands in front of a 17th-century Spanish painting that may contain Mummy Brown. Photo by Tony Luong for Artsy.
Mummy Brown is a pigment produced by grinding up the flesh of Egyptian mummies. It appeared as early as the 16th century; production continued until the 1960s, when the supply of embalmed bodies finally petered out. While the historical record confirms that artists did purchase the paint, Khandekar says researchers have yet to find an artwork in which the pigment is definitively present. But a newly surfaced studio inventory for de la Cruz lists Mummy Brown among his supplies. If accurate, this portrait will be the first confirmed use of the pigment in a work of art.
Alongside a few tubes of Mummy Brown are other pigments whose origin stories are practically legend. Tyrian purple, an ancient Phoenician dye that requires 10,000 mollusks to produce a single gram of pigment. Ultramarine, a vivid blue made from lapis lazuli mined in Afghanistan, was once more precious than gold.
The Gettens Cabinet at Harvard’s Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies. Photo by Tony Luong for Artsy
Forbes, the grandson of poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, graduated from Harvard in 1895. He set sail for Europe to experience firsthand the great classical, medieval, and Renaissance works he’d learned about in class. He started to acquire art, loaning (and eventually donating) his collection to Harvard’s newly-founded Fogg Museum.
Photo by Tony Luong for Artsy.
Pigments collected by Edward Forbes during a 1932
The ancient Egyptians transformed gold into objects invested with divine associations and ornate decorations for divinely ordained rulers. Gold would quickly come to signify not only godliness, but wealth, purity, and prestige. Indeed, throughout human history, works of art incorporating gold have served myriad purposes, from displays of piety to displays of economic power and luxury.
The earliest gold artifacts discovered by archaeologists were found in the Eastern Mediterranean and date to around the 4th millennium BC. Today, the use of gold is more widespread—you might even find an extremely upmarket dessert coated in thin, flavorless gold leaf.
Though it was considered impious to wear too much gold in Islamic society, the wealthy still owned and sometimes wore it to show their power. The Muslim king Musa Keita I of Mali, for example, who reigned from 1312 to 1337 CE, is considered by some to have been the richest man in the history of the world, even adjusted to inflation, due to his vast stores of gold.
Racist Museum In China
A museum in China has removed an exhibit this week that showcased photographs of animals with portraits of black Africans, sparking complaints of racism.
The exhibit titled This Is Africa at the Hubei Provincial Museum in the city of Wuhan displayed a series of diptychs, each one containing a photo of an African person paired with the face of an animal. In a particularly striking example, a child with his mouth wide open was paired with a gorilla and other works included baboons and cheetahs.
The curator said exhibit was eventually removed after complaints by Africans, including some living in China, All the photographs were taken by Yu Huiping, a construction magnate who has traveled to Africa more than 20 times, has previously won awards for his work and is vice-chairman of the Hubei Photographers Association.
About 92% of the population belongs to the dominant Han ethnicity and ethnic minorities mostly live in the sporadically populated far west of the country. African countries are increasingly important trading partners, but cultural stereotypes dominate Chinese popular discourse on the continent.
The full House Appropriations Committee voted to approve FY2018 funding for libraries. By a 28-22 margin, the committee approved the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (LHHS) funding bill, which proposes roughly $231 million for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)—including $183.6 million for Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) programs, and $27 million for the Department of Education’s Innovative Approaches to Literacy (IAL) program—essentially at 2017 funding levels.
In addition to saving the IMLS, the LHHS bill includes level funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. However, it funds the Department of Education (DOE) at $66 billion—a cut of $2.4 billion from 2017, which includes the elimination of some important library-related programs, including the DOE’s Striving Readers program. ALA officials said they would work to restore it.
Meanwhile, on July 18, the House Appropriations Committee approved by a 30-21 margin the FY2018 Interior and Environment Appropriations, which includes $145 million each for the NEH and the NEA, roughly equal to FY 2017 funding levels.
The key votes come after President Trump’s call in May to eliminate IMLS and virtually all federal funding for libraries, as well as a host of other vital programs and agencies, including the NEH and the NEA. And, it comes after Congress, earlier in May, passed a belated 2017 budget that actually upped the IMLS, NEH, and NEA budgets.
Researchers have created a unique atomic-scale identifications based on the irregularities found in 2D materials like graphene, making it possible to fingerprint them in simple electronic devices and optical tags. Because of the materials used, the small tags could be edible and coated onto medicines.
The counterfeit industry is a huge market with imports of counterfeited or fake agoods costing nearly $500 billion in lost revenue around the world annually, with counterfeit medicines accounting for nearly $200 billion alone.
The team is also showcasing the new technology through a smartphone app that allows people to check on their own the authenticity of a product by reading whether a product is real or fake.
The customer can scan the optical tag with the app that matches the 2D tag with the manufacturer’s database.
The researchers expect the patented technology and smartphone app to be available publicly in 2018.
When light is shone on graphene, tiny imperfections shine causing the material to emit light that can be measured as a signal, unique only to that small section of material. The signal can be turned into a digital fingerprint with a number sequence.
The study was published in 2D Materials.
On the other hand in another report by the European Union, says this
– See more at: http://www.blackpast.org/aah/greene-beverly-loraine-1915-1957#sthash.3nYxURDX.dpuf
Beverly Loraine Greene, believed to be the first African American woman architect in the United States, was born in Chicago, Illinois on October 4, 1915. She grew up in Chicago and was raised by her father, James A. Greene, a lawyer, and her mother, Vera Greene, a homemaker. Greene earned a Bachelor of Science degree in architectural engineering from the University of Illinois in 1936. One year later she earned a Master’s of Science degree in city planning and housing from the same university. On December 28, 1942, at the age of twenty-seven, Greene was registered in the State of Illinois as an architect.
After completing the second degree, Greene returned to her hometown and initially worked for the Chicago Housing Authority. Greene was one of the first African Americans in the agency. Despite her education and her official recognition as an architect, Greene found it difficult to obtain jobs in the profession. She moved to New York City in 1945 to work on the planned Stuyvesant Town private housing project in lower Manhattan being built by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Given her past experiences, and the Company’s prior announcement that African Americans would not be allowed to live in Stuyvesant Town, Greene believed she would not be hired. She applied anyway and to her surprise she was the first architect employed on the project. Greene quit however to accept a scholarship at Columbia University where she would study urban planning. She received a Master’s Degree in Architecture from Columbia on June 5, 1945.
Greene went on to work for a number of notable architectural firms. Her employers during that period included the architectural firm headed by Isadore Rosefield which specialized in health care and hospital design. She also worked with Edward Durell Stone on the arts complex at Sarah Lawrence College and in 1952 on a theater at the University of Arkansas. During her time with the architectural firm headed by Marcel Breuer she worked on the UNESCO United Nations headquarters in Paris, France which was completed in 1958. Her next projects included buildings at New York University (NYU) which were completed between 1956 and 1961. Greene never saw most of the buildings at NYU she helped design. Beverly Loraine Greene died on August 22, 1957 at age forty-one in New York City. Ironically she had also designed the Unity Funeral Home, the building in which her memorial service was held.
Brooklyn Borough-Wide Workshop. Image courtesy of Hester Street Collaborative and Create NYC
New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA)a report detailing the results of roughly seven months of public engagement conducted in the lead up to the city’s forthcoming cultural plan. The agency engaged 188,000 New Yorkers—via focus groups, phone surveys, and hundreds of community events—in order to compile its brief.
The plan’s website Residents are also invited to provide in-person feedback at city-wide events through May 31st. DCLA commissioner Tom Finkelpearl says The responses will be “data points,” used to further refine the city’s first-ever cultural plan.
A poet, musician, and graffiti prodigy in late-1970s New York, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s painting style consist of obsessive scribbling, elusive symbols and diagrams, and mask-and-skull imagery by the time he was 20. “I don’t think about art while I work,” he once said. “I think about life.” Basquiat drew his subjects from his own Caribbean heritage—his father was Haitian and his mother of Puerto Rican descent—and a convergence of African-American, African, and Aztec cultural histories with Classical themes and contemporary heroes like athletes and musicians. Often associated with Neo-expressionism, Basquiat received massive acclaim in only a few short years, showing alongside artists like Julian Schnabel, David Salle, and Francesco Clemente. In 1983, he met Andy Warhol, who would come to be a mentor and idol. The two collaborated on a series of paintings before Warhol’s death in 1987, followed by Basquiat’s own untimely passing a year later.
American, 1960-1988, New York, New York, based in New York, New York
Yusaku Maezawa, the Japanese e-commerce billionaire, purchased Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (1982) at Thursday night’s Contemporary Art evening sale at Sotheby’s. The canvas was hammered down at $98 million after a dramatic 10-minute bidding war, coming to $110.4 million with the buyer’s premium. It marks the highest auction price ever for an American artist—unseating Andy Warhol, whose $105 million auction record was set by Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) (1963) at Sotheby’s New York in November 2013—and the second-highest price for any contemporary work.
There’s a new website that provides citizens a way to get artistic with their political grievances. Artifax allows constituents to fax a work of art to their elected officials, in protest of Trump’s proposal to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts. Artifax is the brainchild of Los Angeles design studio Use All Five, which has worked with clients ranging from UCLA to the Guggenheim.
The site was launched last week featuring work by 20 artists, designers, and studios. Visitors to the website first select a work of art, scroll page down, and enter their zip code. Artifax then pulls up a list of elected officials for that district, and users can send a custom or auto-generated message to the representative of their choice. (You don’t have to print anything—the message is faxed digitally.) Eight days since launch, people some 800 faxes have been sent in total.
Jan van Raay, Faith Ringgold (right) and Michele Wallace (middle) at Art Workers Coalition Protest, Whitney Museum (1971). Courtesy of Jan van Raay, Portland, OR, 305-37. © Jan van Raay
construction workers painted over an original piece by the legendary street artist tagged on the outside wall of a three-bedroom villa at the GeeJam Hotel in Jamaica. The street artist is Banksy and his work can easily fetch millions. When the mistake was realized, painters and owners were mortified.
The British newspaper reported that the hotel’s owners are friends with the secretive graffiti artist, and after spending time at the establishment, Banksy’s left his mark 11 different times—
The hotel is trying to strip away the two layers of paint to see if they can restore the Banksy rats. It’s unclear how much the three stencils were worth, but the Mail values them at about $5 million.
Berk’s collection of more than 18,000 books and 300 pieces of comic-book art goes on display March 11 at the Metropolis Gallery in New York City. He will then sell it off during an online auction at ComicConnect.com that begins May 15, 2017
All images of public-domain works in The Met collection are available under Creative Commons Zero (CC0). So whether you’re an artist or a designer, an educator or a student, a professional or a hobbyist, you now have more than 375,000 images of artworks from our collection to use, share, and remix—without restriction.
Anyone can just go over to the Metropolitan Museum’s website to search for images to download — just be sure to tick the check box for “Public Domain Artworks.” If that is too broad and you can’t be bothered to look for the “CC0” tag, you can always just choose from 20 thematic sets that the Met has arranged
Google created Tilt Brush, an app for the HTC Vive VR headset in May 2016. The app allows the user to ‘paint’ in three dimensions, using a simple handheld controller as the ‘brush’. Brushes – including ink, snow and smoke effects – and colors are selected from a virtual palette. Users can share their creations as animated GIFs.
Actor George Lucas billion-dollar art museum is set to open in 2020, LosAngelas. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will feature pieces from Lucas’ personal art collection, which includes work by traditional artists such as Norman Rockwell as well as more modern artists like comic book legend R. Crumb. The museum will also feature movie matte paintings, props, and memorabilia from Star Wars and other films.
The chocolate chamber. Photograph: Bebeto Matthews/AP
Photograph: Bebeto Matthew/AP
For the month of August, a studio space across from the Whitney Museum has been transformed into the Museum of Ice Cream where visitors can swim in a pool of rainbow sprinkles. The six-room experience is a sensory delight that looks like a hipster paradise – all the wall art is selfie-friendly, and the sprinkle pool has a mirror hanging above it.
The American Black Film Festival (ABFF) was founded in 1997,and a yearly event dedicated to showcasing entertainment content made by and about people of African descent to a worldwide audience. Today it is recognized as the premier pipeline for Black talent in front of and behind the camera.
On exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute proves that a combination of fashion and technology can go hand in hand. Techniques like 3-D printing, digital printing, laser-cutting, ultrasonic welding and computer modeling can be just as intricate, painstaking and creative as the more traditional arts of embroidery and lacemaking. On display until August 14th, “Manus X Machina: Fashion in the Age of Technology” explores how designers are reconciling the handmade and the machine-made in haute couture and avant-garde ready-to-wear.
There are hand-embroidered vintage gowns with futuristic, sculptural 3-D printed dresses. Another, sparkling sequined piece rests next to a dress digitally printed with a trompe l’oeil sequin pattern. The exhibit also has dresses made of drinking straws and silk capes hand-embroidered with ostrich feathers. The centerpiece of the show is a 2014 haute couture wedding dress by Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel with a 20-foot train, its pattern hand-painted with gold metallic pigment, machine-printed with rhinestones and hand-embroidered with pearls and gemstones. Details of the embroidery are projected onto the domed ceiling above.
Here’s a sneak peek:
Louis Vuitton spring/summer 2016 dress, featuring a hand-appliquéd overlay of ivory silk-synthetic net, bonded with laser-cut silver metallic strips, hand-airbrushed with blue and gray pigment, hand-grommeted with copper metal
Around the first week of April , librarians, bibliophiles, book artists, and food lovers around the world gather to celebrate the book arts and the (literal!) ingestion of culture. Participants create an “edible book,” which can be inspired by a favorite tale, or just the shape of a book (or scroll, or tablet, etc). All entries will be exhibited, documented, then EATEN!
http://www.uc.edu/news/NR.aspx?id=23075
(Photo: Google)
Akilah Johnson, a 10th grader from Washington, D.C., is Google’s first African American winner. Drawn as a box braid, Johnson’s doodle, entitled “My Afrocentric Life,” was brought to life with color pencils, black crayons and Sharpie markers. Akilah’s doodle depicts African-American culture, weaving from left to right childhood experiences and shades of her personality with such current-day themes as the Black Lives Matter movement, influences that she says made her who she is today.
Johnson will receive a $30,000 college scholarship and her school, Eastern Senior High School, will be awarded a $50,000 education-technology grant. She will visit Google with her mom and teacher.
Oculus Touch devices are used here
This illustrative look and feel, was created by the Story Studio team that built an internal production tool allowing the film’s illustrators to paint entire scenes in VR using Oculus Touch,
Now you can pay virtual visits a concert venue and even experience a performance from onstage. Google has made an online collaboration that made its debut Tuesday with more than 60 performing-arts organizations around the globe. The Google Cultural Institute, an online platform that uses the company’s technology to share art and culture allowing users to experience dance, drama and music from over 60 different organizations all over the world.
CISA, which passed by a vote of 74-21, grants legal immunity to private companies who share cyber threat information with the Department of Homeland Security. The House passed two versions of the law earlier this year, but privacy advocates had been pressing for the Senate to either reject the bill entirely or pass amendments tightening controls over personally identifiable information that might get swept up and sent to the government.
One Senator has senator called it a “surveillance bill”.
CISA, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (S. 754), will allow private companies to share cyber-threat data with the federal government, including personal user data, in an effort to prevent cyber attacks, such as those on the scale of Target, Home Depot, and Sony. Companies that share data with federal agencies, including the National Security Agency (NSA), will be given legal and liability protections from lawsuits relating to data sharing.
Boston public library officials say two rare and valuable artworks that vanished last month have been found – and they never left the library.
Library officials say the 1634 Rembrandt etching and 1504 Durer engraving were found on Thursday in the library’s print stacks. Officials say the artworks were misfiled. Both pieces of art that were reported missing in April, an engraving by Albrecht Dürer, valued at about $600,000, and an etching by Rembrandt worth between $20,000 and $30,000, were found Thursday in the library. A spokesperson says they were simply misfiled and found by a conservation officer who had been searching the library’s print stacks. The disappearance of the art pieces eventually led library president Amy Ryan to announce her resignation on Wednesday, effective on 3 July, saying her leaving would end a “distraction”. Mayor Marty Walsh released a statement Wednesday saying he respects Ryan’s decision and “looks forward to working with the Boston Public Library to ensure a smooth transition
Adding to the controversy, a retired library employee later revealed that gold coins have been missing from a Boston Public Library collection, potentially for decades.
The Board of Trustees Boston Public Library detailed new security measures including new locks, cameras, tougher access and inventory management. An outside group hired to do a security assessment is expected to hand in its report at the end of June.
Investigators are probing whether the artwork was stolen through an inside job.The library reported both pieces missing to police on April 29, after a BPL supervisor discovered they couldn’t be found on or around April 8, according to a police report obtained by the Herald. Police estimate the piece by Durer, a German Renaissance master, which depicts Adam and Eve, is worth $600,000. The Rembrandt, a self-portrait, is worth an estimated $20,000 to $30,000.
The city is looking into how the library system — which lays claim to being the country’s “first large free municipal library” and has a $41.6 million operating budget — keeps inventory of its assets, as well as an exact chronology of who handled the items. Both Rembrandt (1606-1669) and Durer (1471-1528) are considered icons of the art world
The film, which is reportedly titled “Chiraq”has created a lot of controversy because it compares the city’s violence to the war zones of Iraq. Mayor Rahm Emanuel reportedly expressed his disdain for the title to Lee himself. According to NBC Chicago, Alderman Will Burns also called for the city council to cut Lee’s tax break unless he changes the film’s title. Chiraq was popularized by Chicago rappers Chief Keef and later used by stars like Kanye West, who was also raised Chi Town.
Spike Lee says “Wait until the movie comes out. You don’t like it, you don’t like, but wait, see it first.” The film is about “Truth,” “justice” and “peace.” Gang violence.
Lee reminded his audience that one of his earliest movies, “Do The Right Thing,” also generated criticism before its 1989 release.
“There were people who said this film is going to cause riots all across America, that black people are going to run amok,” Lee said.
Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Didier Muller/House Work, BauFachFrau, Marta Wengorovius/João Wengorovius.
Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Didier Muller/House Work, BauFachFrau, Marta Wengorovius/João Wengorovius.
Courtesy of Hannah Airey/Gap Filler
Courtesy of Didier Muller/House Work
Courtesy of Little Free Library
Harper Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman” And Basford’s two coloring books are entirely sold out. Coloring has a calming effect.
A small group of artists
to NSA-leaker Edward Snowden in a the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in Fort Greene Park, a site built to honor more than 11,000 American prisoners of war who died aboard British ships during the American Revolutionary War. But it was gone by midday.
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