Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
Duuude, it’s, like, 106 in the Val, but shaka brah. Ain’t no shubbies hangin’ at Uppers weekday mornings. We oughta head to HB first, though, yeah? Heard about a young grommet ~ only 14 ~ who was gnar gnar enough to win the 2012 USA under 18s Championship. Mega-ripper be throwing up inverted aerials at Lowers after school. Japanese American guy, been riding since he was three! HB pier local. We gotta check him out before the gremmy media murks him. Why’m I talkin’ this way? Read more about Kanoa Igarashi in FreakSurf and ESPN. http://vimeo.com/45087261
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THREE YEARS AGO, Pittsburgh-born artist Candy Chang was named a TED Senior Fellow for Urban Innovation, and since then she’s been caught up in the vortex of a whirlwind that has sent this architecture-graphic design-urban planning graduate of Columbia University and onetime New York Times graphic artist on a creative journey that has allowed her to leave a mark on communities in faraway places like Helsinki, Nairobi, New Orleans, Vancouver and Johannesburg. Chang’s now-global “Before I Die” project began when she she transformed an abandoned house in her neighborhood in New Orleans into a fill-in-the-blank chalkboard for people to reflect on their lives and share their personal aspirations in a public space. “Before I Die” proved so empowering and uplifting, it prompted The Atlantic to call it: “one of the most creative community projects ever.” And regular folk flocked to its magic ~ and it has expanded to communities in countries around the world, including Kazakhstan, South Africa, Portugal, and Argentina. Catch up with what this child of Taiwanese immigrants is thinking and doing today by reading Karen Eng’s interview-profile of Chang ~ “A Global Family for Life” ~ which was posted July 10 on the TED Fellows Posterous.
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KRAFTWERK’s rendition of their 1975 song “Radio-Activity” at NO NUKES 2012 was sung with a new set of Japanese lyrics including the line “Ima sugu yamero” (Stop it now), proved to be the climax of the Saturday night show, which attracted thousands of Japanese to Makuhari Messe events center, and a cumulative total of more than 216,000 online viewers for the live feed on Ustream. Proceeds from the event will go to the Goodbye to Nuclear Power Plants movement, spearheaded by Nobel prize-winning author Kenzaburo Oe, Academy Award-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, whistleblowing journalist Satoshi Kamata and other prominent figures. The event was also aimed at increasing signatures for a large-scale antinuclear-power petition. The movement has currently gathered 7.5 million signatures. Listen to the iconic German electro-pop band show how relevant they still are in this SoundCloud audio capture Jean-Philippe Demoulin, a French expatriate musician living in Japan.
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What was once a normal Korean American girl named Jennifer Lee was transformed by a primordial soup of an upper-middle-class Torrance, Calif. upbringing, classical piano, R&B, hip-hop and Japanese anime into TokiMonsta, a wildly eclectic contemporary composer with a growing global following. Tapped by Ryuichi Sakamoto a couple of weeks ago to collaborate on his “Odakias” anti-nuclear project earlier this month along with Japanese avant-garde musician Otomo Yoshihide and rapper Shing02, Tokimonsta is blowin’ up! [youtube]zCnmmrYIXrw[/youtube] Yeah, “eclectic:” a truly overused term. But TokiMonsta owns it. Her sound has been described as “vast textural soundscapes by utilizing live instruments, percussion, digital manipulation, and dusty vinyl. ” Okay [youtube]-i5jP5DwrRw[/youtube] “I just like everything. I get bored easily, so having options, like, I can’t make this beat. You know what? On my Google Readers– on the bookmarks– I have pop culture blogs, I have fashion blogs, I have art blogs, I have advertising blogs because I think advertising is also really captivating– the mentality–’Wow! How did they think of that? That’s really clever.’” Get a taste of TokiMonsta’s Sa Mo Jung (2011) To this point in the arc of TokiMonsta, Christine Kakaire’s “monsta” 2,000-word essay-interview with Jennifer Lee is perhaps the mos in-depth verbiage on Tokimonsta evar inked. Or, maybe, the best inside look into Tokimonsta was the Dumbfounded-DJ Zo TokiMonsta podcast of September 2011 on knocksteady.com. Too bad: only a few telltale traces of it remain. [youtube]sn4kVtuEmMU[/youtube]
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In the final gasps of fossil fuels: this. You’ve seen these heart-pumping, tire-screeching, can’t-take-your-eyes-off-’em gymkhana stunt runs, but this one’s about the best we’ve seen to date ~ simplemente la ultima palabra en automovilismo. That’s Ken Block at the wheel of that monstrously modded Ford Fiesta with Travis Pastrana in a dirt bike cameo. Obligatory nod to DC Shoes for bankrolling the JUST-RELEASED th’ang. Steve McQueen is smiling. [youtube]LuDN2bCIyus[/youtube]
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