We got our first taste of Superchunk's upcoming I Hate Music LP back in May, in the form of a teaser trailer with a few new music snippets and footage of frontman Mac McCaughan spray paint stenciling the album's lettering. The announcement also detailed a deluxe version of the album on colored vinyl with a bonus 7" of two non-album tracks and your very own diecut I Hate Music stencil, which you can check out in the GIF below. Oh, and when you make homemade Superchunk shirts with the stencil, please let it dry before stuffing it back in the sleeve.
I Hate Music is out August 20 from Merge. Head to Pitchfork to see the band's full tour dates.
If you were keeping up with Make Zine's Maker Camp this week, you'd already have built a homemade marimba, a set of tube-driven speakers with LED lights, a one-string Diddley Bow guitar, and by the end of the weekend, an LED organ. In addition to daily DIY tutorials, the Make editors also curate a series of Google Hangout lectures every Tuesday, the most recent featuring sound artist Jesse Seay. Check out the full schedule here, including next week's "field trip" to Pixar.
The Maker Camp is a six-week Google+ based program organized by Make Media for teenage students.
Like Rocky training in a Siberian forest in Rocky IV, Lady Gaga went to the woods to prep for her next album. Artist Marina Abramovic recently took Gaga under her wing to instruct her in the Abramovic method, a kind of meditation which is designed to heighten awareness for performance and long durational work. It appears, in this video, to involve hugging a block of ice in your birthday suit. The clip reminds us a bit of a Fluxus performance piece, but we'll leave you to judge how seriously to take this one.
Arbamovic also has a Kickstarter going to raise money for her Marina Abramovic Institute.
The Abramovic Method Practiced by Lady Gaga from Marina Abramovic Institute on Vimeo.
Relatively unknown street photographer Adrian Skenderovic has been shooting basketball hoops during his travels around the globe. Some are makeshift, some neglected, while others are more than up-to-snuff despite their far-flung locations. The photographer is still exploring different angles and formats. The empty court with tropical backdrop shows up a bit, but also the sun-baked, holding-on-by-a-thread hoop close-up. Both formats are effective in their own way and have us longing for a good neighborhood ballgame, as well as a tropical adventure. Time to work on the fadeaway jumper.
See more Lost Hoops at Adrian Skenderovic's photography site.
You might not be much of a mechanic, but you can still be a fan of these Taylor Stitch Mechanic Shirts like us. Made from tough Japanese-milled 6 oz. sanded canvas, the shirt features single-needle construction and powder-coated aluminum buttons. It’s these kind of exemplary details that set Taylor Stitch’s high-quality, simple shirting apart; not to mention the brand’s world-class signature fit. Wear it on the job, out for errands, or for odd jobs around the house—this shirt can do it all. And they’re proudly made in California.
We've seen some interesting African poster art for imported Western movies, ranging from the simply amazing to the hilariously absurd. But this is the first time we've seen a great collection of Ghanaian posters for African movies—which likely includes films coming out of Nollywood, Nigeria's film industry—brought together in one place. If the films are 1/10th as gory and bizzarre as the posters, we're obviously missing out on some serious midnight movie entertainment.
For more Ghanaian film posters, head over to Mondoexploito.
Picking up where the (now on-hiatus) 20x200 left off, Mammoth and Company sells affordable art online. Founded by CEO and Photographer Troy Moth, the store stocks an inventory of hundreds of prints, usually between three and six works per artist, and titles from a newly launched children's publishing arm Little Mammoth. If a print catches your eye and you order it, it'll ship from the idyllic barn pictured at the bottom of the post, Mammoth and Company's headquarters somewhere in a field in Victoria, British Columbia.
Photographer James Friedman doesn't play golf. At one point, however, he did have an inexplicable collection of golf balls. Naturally he did what any non-golfing photographer would do with such a collection: cut them in half for a photo series called "Interior Design". Considering that most golf balls, stripped of logo, are completely indistinguishable from one other to the untrained eye, the colorful cores discovered in the series are surprising. The golf ball cross sections resemble planetary bodies, some with two or three layers, and others with just a single multicolor filling. Although sporting goods companies might not approve, we're curious to see who manufactured each ball, and some dates would add a welcome context.
See a few more cross sections and some of Friedman's newer work.
Tile is a new tracking system for personal items like keys, wallets, bikes, or any material possession that can hold a tiny chip. The two part system includes a tiny white "tile" that one attaches to the item, and a smartphone app to find it. When it comes time to activate the system, the app shows the distance to a selected tile using a warmer/colder style meter (pictured below). Users can have a bunch of tiles linked to one app.
While a simple tracking system doesn't sound too outrageous in a marketplace that includes GPS-based systems like Apple's Find My iPhone and Find My Friends, the Tile system has a few distinct advantages. First, it's made for short ranges. In other words, GPS-based systems are able to show a user that their phone is indeed somewhere in their house, but Tile can show which couch cushion it's under. Second, Tile has an interesting "lost item" feature that uses their entire network of users to find and report the location of a tile that's gone missing. More on that in the video below.
One unexpected quirk of the system is that the tiles have no user-replaceable battery and only last about a year. Because the chip can't be charged, users have to purchase a new Tile once a year. Don't fret, the old ones are recycled.
Each Tile costs $24.95, with the first shipments expected Fall/Winter 2013.
Penélope and Mónica Cruz have partnered with British lingerie brand Agent Provocateur for the a new diffusion line, L’Agent. Priced between $40 and $150 a piece, the collection contains a wide range of undergarment sets that can be as easily mixed and matched as they can be worn together.
Of course, an Agent Provocateur launch wouldn't be complete without an accompanying film. Penélope Cruz wrote and directed the film which stars Russian model Irina Shayk, as well as a plethora of lingerie models, an extremely pregnant and seductive Monica Cruz and Penélope Cruz's husband and directing partner, Javier Bardem. Needless to say, the clip bursts with sex appeal yet representats the collection.
Select pieces from L'Agent are now avaliable on netaporter.com.
