lookbookish

23.1.10

IRM

Charlotte Gainsbourg is pretty amazing in a lot of ways. Music is one of them. This is an album she wrote and produced with Beck called IRM:

22.1.10

heartland printworks

Indianapolis is unabashedly conservative. So, growing up in Indianapolis meant spending a lot of time complaining and listening to people complain about the doldrums of growing up in Indianapolis. It was as if we all decided from a young age that this city was a lost cause and that anything worth doing needed to be done elsewhere. I believed that for a while. I moved away for college and travelled every chance I got, but on every trip back home the city would reveal some new and fantastic treasure to me. Most recently it was Heartland Printworks.

Heartland Printworks is home to the German made Cruse scanner--the largest scanner in the world today--and was the first in the United States to acquire one. It can scan objects both 2 and 3 dimensional up to 59x96 inches and file sizes can be as large as 1.1 gigabytes. Basically, it is one badass machine and though it was probably created with historical preservation in mind you could also have a lot of hi-res fun with it at an office Christmas party (if you can sit still for 7 minutes while it scans you).

So, lets say you have a painting you've painted and you want to create prints for affordable mass distribution. You can bring it in to these guys at Heartland and in a matter of minutes they can scan and print your work onto archival paper or canvas with such color and lighting accuracy that you literally cannot tell the difference between your life's work and giant print-out.

Hanging side by side, they are indistinguishable from one another until you run your hand across them. This is the printed image of the original painting. It is completely smooth. Once it's framed and under glass all the evidence of it's inauthenticity will be destroyed. This scanner is like something out of heist film--you really have to see it to appreciate the quality.


They can also scan 3D objects like these eerie antique doll heads they keep around the office and then print them 50 times their size without loosing any resolution.

This iPhone photo doesn't do the print justice, but the scanner even managed to pick up the little specks of dust resting on the doll's glass eyes.

The Heartland Printworks office is downtown in the Stutz building and it's a little pricey to enlist their services, but well worth it if you have the need. I'd really love to see a series of life-sized scanned people. Perhaps for my birthday I'll indulge in a little narcissism and go have myself scanned. I think existing a quarter of a century is an occasion worth celebrating with a full body scan of yourself, maybe I'll even make it an annual tradition and map the passage of time across my body until it becomes a glaringly unhealthy fixation. Sounds like a plan.

6.1.10

hat maker, hat maker, make me a hat

When I enter that financial stage of my life which is accompanied by dressing maids and custom milliners I have decided that Albertus Swanepoel will be that milliner. I'm sure he's counting down the days.

9.12.09

Syrians get kinky, who knew?

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Like many guilty Americans I have a less than healthy curiosity about Middle Eastern culture. So, naturally, when I discovered an article about "strange and sexy Syrian lingerie" in my inbox it became an immediate priority- not to mention my American duty- to dissect, understand, and possibly acquire some material evidence of this completely scandalizing news. The lingerie is strange for sure and kinky, but in a sweetly naive way- campy even. It's playful and innocent, like something a muppet might wear to a suburban key party.

Perhaps most scandalizing, however, is the complete lack of scandal this trend has caused in the Middle East. Kinky lingerie is openly displayed in the markets and frequently recommended by pharmacists as an alternative to potentially emasculating ED medications. It's even common practice for brides-to-be and their female relatives to make pilgrimages to their local unmentionables dealer and buy upwards of 30 of these ensembles.


These leather hands are fantastic. Sadly, the closest thing I could find on eBay were these stupid nipple pasties which I may or may not have ordered under the pretense of improving international relations... one pastie at a time.


To get around pornography laws shop keepers avoid printers by making their own photo album style catalogs for customers to flip through on-site. The models are all Eastern European women with badly shaved bikini lines and cheesy wigs which is apparently a turn-off for Syrian men, and thereby eliminates any moral ambiguity concerning the profession of skivvies peddler.


The above such model on the right is sporting The Curtain- one of my favorites- which functions just like an actual curtain with a rod and everything and (like most of the pieces) conjures up images of swinging Gumnaam style dance numbers (my favorite of which, below, I suspect was Tarantino's inspiration for the Crazy 88 fight scene in Kill Bill).



The book The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie was created by graphic designer Rana Salam and Malu Halasa and has easily become my new favorite hostess gift. Look out.

24.11.09

stunning

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Bus ride through an Australian forest fire (full screen is a must).