My earnest admiration for pinball machines goes back about a decade, when I inherited a 1990 Data East The Simpsons. The backglass and playfield art are mesmerizing. Open it up and I am daunted by the viscera, and even now am only capable of jiggling the power supply to get things working again. The pinball renaissance has been underway here in Seattle for some time. Arcades have been popping up everywhere, hosting tournaments and serving ice cream (as in the case of the Full Tilts, who recently named a flavor “Mudhoney” after the local band) or beer (Add-A-Ball, John-John’s Game Room, Flip Flip, Ding Ding, etc.). We have a museum and a wonderful zine. I was bummed to miss out on the NW Pinball and Arcade Show earlier this month because I wanted to play an Orbitor 1 again.
I’ve always been drawn to Bally’s Xenon (1979). That art. That voice. Well, as Skill Shot points out in their May 2014 issue, that voice belongs to composer Suzanne Ciani, the first female voice ever featured in a game.
The backglass from Bally’s Xenon. Music and sound by Suzanne Ciani, art by Paul Faris. Photo by Stefan Ulrich.
The flyer.
Ciani is responsible for all of Xenon’s sounds, some of which she intended as the game reacting to the player. A short, delightful doco about Ciani’s involvement with the game:
Seek it out. Try the tube shot.
Takahiro Ueno was in a grunge mood while designing his A/W 2012-2013 collection, “It’s better to burn out than to fade awayâ€. These are some of Kurt Cobain’s parting words and, incidentally, a creative spirit I am sympathetic to. Ueno’s repurposed flea market t-shirts are combined with other, totally unrelated cues from the past to create something entirely unique. “When I worked on my collection, I thought about using book construction as garment construction. Then I came up with the idea of using Japanese bookbinding techniques and I used it as a main detail for my collection. I wanted to make something beautiful, strong and savage, so I researched 15th century Italian menswear and grunge.”
From Takahiro Ueno’s A/W 2012-2013 collection, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away”. Photo by Maria Ziegelböck.
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Was abducted by aliens from Alabama (it’s tough being an alien in Alabama. Their words, not mine.) and it’s only now, after a few days of memory reconstruction, that I realize I’ve dragged space - along with a crowd that resists all attempts at identification (except maybe the guy that looked like he was on his way to the Ink-N-Iron Fest in Long Beach) - with Man or Astro-man?
Man or Astro-man? Defcon 5…4…3…2…1.
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Not really, but it sounds good. Reminds me of something out of So-En:
Styled by Kaarina Bykonen, a student at the Toni & Guy Academy in Bellingham, WA for the Reign of Style Hair Show and Competition last Sunday at the Seattle Center. Original photo by Bettina Hansen for the Seattle Times.
More Toni & Guy magic. This is what happens when you partner hair stylist Efi Davies and costume designer Kate Forbes:
Photo by Stuart Weston, 2006.
Photo by Danilo Giuliani (?), 2010.
Please forgive the free association below. I blame the coffee because I am a product of my culture and we overcaffeinate. (On reflection, it is disturbing that my huge Cthulhu tiki mug has become a perfectly acceptable single serving of coffee.) Really this is just an exercise in sloppily stringing together some of the inspiring fashion items I’ve seen recently.
We begin with a great article over at Tokyo Telephone on Coconogacco, or the Coco-Ten Exhibition at Trans Art Tokyo. The idea here is that the students are able to present their clothes in context before the fashion show:
…the design students of the Coconogacco school curated a series of rooms to contextualize their work which served as art exhibitions in their own right, and it is those that we are going to be looking around today. What you are going to miss out on though is the very real context of these rooms, housed as they were in a deserted seventeen floor building where you could comfortably go 10 minutes without seeing anyone else, all in the chill of the Tokyo winter, the only sound being scraps of found music before you accidentally stumble across a noisecore band rehearsing.
Chiaki Moronaga at The Coco-Ten Exhibition at Trans Art Tokyo.
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When a color scheme is inspired by an urban environment, it’s not so much about pulling together different colors as it is combining shades along a continuum of the same color. Urban color schemes, if not on a grayscale, tend to be washed-out. When traditional urban garb is grayscale, greater attention is paid to the silhouette - the architecture of the silhouette mimics the architecture of a cityscape. This description defines the first of two genuinely urban looks: the Urbane and the Post-Apocalyptic Urban Primitive.
image: Yves Saint Laurent a/w 2006-7 www.style.com
image: Undercover a/w 2006-7 www.style.com
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When I design garments, an issue that constantly distracts like a gadfly is the potential for hideous color combination. The idea terrifies me. Color chemistry is a subjective affair, and I would argue that combined colors are only as pleasing as the fabrics they are dyed or printed on. In other words, it’s hard to go wrong with color, so long as the fabrics used are appropriate for the design concept.
image: Temperley s/s 2006 www.temperleylondon.com
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