Sneaux makes skate shoes, and specializes in antics– their spokesman, after all, is Steve O from the Jackass Films. Their new ad is a stop-motion masterpiece called the “Human Skateboard.” It was directed by PES, and although it’s short, it’s super entertaining and well-done. It’s mind boggling to think about how long it took to shoot even a short stop motion film like this. I also advise browsing the other films on the PES site; they’ve shot some really good ones. Josh told me his favorite is the “Roof Sex” video– I have to agree, it’s pretty funny!
Via Notcot.org

I’m headed to London tomorrow for the week– Although I anticipate having little free time, as usual if you have a tip for me to check out a shop, restaurant, club, art gallery or run an agency of some type and want me to pop by and say hello, please feel free to drop me a note. Also, I’ll be spending the weekend in Amsterdam and am always looking for tips for cities I haven’t visited yet. See you on the other side of the pond, Cheers…

B&B Italia has expanded its horizons from home-only furniture with it’s Project Line. The Project Collection is B&B’s response to the increased use of it’s ‘for home’ furniture in office and restaurant settings by its devout customers. The new line employs all of the contemporary Italian styling of the ‘for home’ furniture, but introduces thoughtful business-specific features that make it great for places like offices, hotel lobbies, and other public use areas. The design team for the Project Collection consists of a well-balanced group of both established and newbie designers– I think they nailed their initial attempt to expand to a new niche market, don’t you? Who knew that B&B would be where it is today when it was born as a capricious experiment in 1966 by Piero Ambrogio Busnelli and Cesare Cassina?

I’ve really enjoyed watching the evolution of Japanese artist Aya Takano. She uses acrylic and diluted gouache paints to create fictional, erotic, and sullen images featuring thin, big-eyed Geisha girls– there’s a taste of sex, sadness, and the future all at once. She has been showing her work all over the place in the past few years, most recently at the MOCA in Lyon, France, and currently at a group show at the Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Miami. I’ve heard that she may be expanding her feminized world in the near future, so maybe some men will be popping up in her new works. For now, Aya, along with her cohorts at the Kaikai Kiki Collective, are really setting the bar high in the world of modern Japanese art.

As green building technologies push forward, we’re seeing some great architectural minds push the envelope to create truly inspiring buildings that combine sound design and sustainable technologies. Chad Oppenheim’s COR project is setting a great example in the way it “represents a dynamic synergy between architecture, structural engineering, and ecology.” Set to be completed in 2009, this 25 floor condo building overlooking the design district in Miami will utilize, among other things, the latest advances in solar hot water generation and a heat-efficient ecoskeleton shell that will at once combine thermal mass to insulate, natural shade, armatures for turbines, and enclosure for balconies. Chad has a ton of other great projects in the works, so be sure to follow his progress. There’s a great alumni profile write-up on Chad on Cornell’s Department of Architecture site if you want to read more about him.

French artist Denis Darzacq’s La Chute work is unnerving, unique and fascinating. My French is rusty so the only translation I could find explains his work as somewhere between the take off and the fall– where the social elevator is broken you have to know how to bounce. Check out the entire picture series to better understand what he is talking about. His style of work reminds me of Le Wei’s Stunt Photos. If these two photo geniuses got together I can imagine the results would be very, very interesting.

We’ve seen Jonathon Keats‘ profound conceptual art projects before, and were blown away by their social relevance. The key breakthrough that led to Keats’ interest in the Agrifolk Art Movement was made at the MacNamara Foundation on Westport Island in Maine, where Keats was a fellow earlier this year. From his studio, Keats observed how spruce saplings moved in the wind– sensitive to their surroundings. He fastened a pencil to some of the tree branches, and put a piece of paper with each, and let the trees show their artistic abilities. You see, trees are non-sentient artists– so they don’t get tired like we do; their artistic output can happen 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And Keats had a large supply of drawing implements– because he’s a conceptual artist, he wasn’t doing much with them, so providing them to the trees was a no brainer. Now that you’ve seen the first installment of this documentary, check out the second and third; and you can access the original press release here. I hope this project gives you the laughs it gave Josh and me.

The guys at Trovota (that is, whoever is left there) are offering a 30% discount through what seems to be the end of February. An anonymous reader sent the code in claiming it was some type of discount “member” code– we think membership codes are foolish, so I thought why not share it with the world. Maybe a sign of things to come– and hopefully the ability to finally buy the good looking spring line on the internets. Either way, go knock yourself out and enjoy a savings of 30 cents on every dollar with the following code: FEBBRAIO

While we were all a little overexposed to OK Go’s treadmill finesse, a little trip to YouTube (or TRL) may still be in order to view the group’s latest video, “Do What You Want (Wallpaper Version).” I don’t think this offering quite matches up to treadmill video (then again, what could), but I am interested in finding out if anything’s behind the similarity of the video’s concept and color scheme when compared to Banksy’s controversial painted elephant (shown at the artist’s Barely Legal exhibition in L.A.). I don’t know whether to call it a coincidence, a collaboration, or blatant imitation, but the red and gold paisley print, along with the camouflage motif (shown after the jump)… is certainly not as original as playing hopscotch on gym equipment. What’s the story, OK Go?

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