I had this song in my head all day.

Spheres is an independent publication by graphic designer Philippe Karrer.
Each issue focuses on the work of one artist, and right now we are preparing a 96 page publication with a range of my work…

Websites, sketches, blog texts, Youtube comments, and a lenticular cover.

It’s all being produced right now. It will be for sale soon.

By now you’ve probably seen Apple’s updates mobile software, iOS7. I received a few emails from friends saying iOS7 looked a lot like my work. I don’t know if that’s true, but Apple is moving away from using textures and I never used textures in my work.

I think textures on a screen are of a denial of material… a screen is made out of pixels, and those pixels can display a range of colors. But the pixels can’t move in 3 dimensional space, they are always on a flat surface. Screen images are really about as flat as it gets. There is no texture.

Painters have always dealt with texture, because they’re working with atoms, not bits. They can use metallic colors, thick paint, thin paint, different canvasses… There are no neon colors on a screen, there are no metallic colors on a screen. You can take a picture of gold, you can upload that picture to a computer, but screen colors are built from 3 colors and those are the limitations. No gold. I’ve always been interested in maximizing those limitations, not denying them.

If you think a bit more, even making flat images doesn’t make much sense. A flat image of a car is a lie, the car on the screen is not a real car, it’s an image of a car. So there’s no real difference in using an image of a texture or using an image of a car.

When you really break it down, I don’t know what is the most honest way of using a computer to make images. Computers think in electrical signals, so that would be it?

The real issue is that humans and computers are very different and don’t really understand each other.

I am happy to invite you to the opening of the exhibition Cold Void at KK Los Angeles, opening this Saturday.

Cold Void is the electronic music group I started together with Luuk Bouwman. The exhibition will be the release of our first album and a very special installation of selfplaying instruments… Come by!

Press release:

Opening Night: June 15th, 7 – 10PM
Exhibit run until July 15th
KK Los Angeles
963 Chung King Rd, Los Angeles, CA

Luuk Bouwman (1977 – Dutch) is an Amsterdam based filmmaker and musician. He was guitarist in the Dutch technopunk band Aux Raus (2003 – 2011) with whom he played over 500 live shows and recorded three albums that were released by Topnotch / Universal Music and by Mexican cult label Nuevos Ricos. He’s worked for TV and directed several music videos and documentary films.

I am happy to let you know about a collabration between me and YOU, dear reader.

MOCAtv is the Youtube channel of the MOCA museum in Los Angeles. In the first installment of the ART x YOU series, we are launching The-URL-Project.

Become part of art history by creating a URL. In this first installment of The ART X YOU Series, we’re proud to present a collaboration between one of the most talented internet artists in the world and you. Rafaël Rozendaal was the first visual artist to sell websites as art and since then over 40 million people per year became part of his community.

The collaboration is simple. You create an original idea for an URL and submit it in the user comments and Rafaël will pick the most inspiring submission and turn it into an art piece itself.

I made a new website: Hex Attack .com

Michael Steil explains everything about the Commodore 64 in 64 minutes.

It’s fascinating to see what can be done with very limited hardware.

Warning: this talk is very technical, but there are some visual bits.

You don’t need an education to know which fruit you like.

You could travel around the world and become a fruit connoisseur, learning about growth, sun, hydration, wind, soil, transportation, nutrients, combinations, chemistry, ancestry, but you don’t need this knowledge to enjoy fruit.

The same goes for art. Don’t let anyone tell you you should “know more” before you can form an opinion.

I’ve started an internet diet. Less E-mail, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube…

I even started turning off my wifi for 3 hours a day so I can focus more.

I hope it will result in more and better ideas.

Let’s see what happens!

I’ve always wondered how computer sketches are perceived. Usually, an unfinished digital work does not look like a sketch, it just looks like a not-so-good-work. Pencil sketches are clear: they are in process, the artist is still searching.

This is a Youtube channel with clips from the TV show “How It’s Made”

How It’s Made shows you how common household items are manufactured.

Ray Harryhausen, stop-motion animation master, dies in London at 92.

Check this movie with an amazing compilation of all of his creatures:

Last night we projected vai avanti .com & stagnation means decline .com
on the corner of Kenmare & Bowery in New York.

Thanks to Mark Brown for making it happen!

New website! if yes no .com

It’s easy to imagine a world in which we are always online. We’re almost there. But what if were online while we sleep? What happens when if we let computers into our subconscious?

Is dreaming inherently introvert, is it a personal experience meant to process your daily experiences? A mechanism to contemplate and reflect? Would it be damaging or stimulating to let others into your subconscious and dream together?

Would you start dreaming in a way to please the expectations of others? Would you start playing a role? Would you start recommending certain dreams to others and share regions of your subconscious? If we can record and visualize the subconscious is it still subconscious?

Over the course of a week in September 2011, James Nares — a New Yorker since 1974 — recorded sixteen hours of footage of people on the streets of Manhattan from a moving car using a high-definition camera usually used to record fast-moving subjects such as speeding bullets and hummingbirds. He then greatly slowed his source material, editing down the results to one hour of steady, continuous motion and scoring it with music for twelve-string guitar composed and performed by his friend Thurston Moore, co-founder of Sonic Youth.

Now on view at The Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Modern Matter is a magazine focusing on art & fashion.

In this issue a number of artists (Maurizio Cattelan, Bjarne Melgaard, me, …) are interviewed,
talking about what it is like to live and work in New York.

Photos by Phillipe Gerlach.