pic by fredrik skogkvist

Talking about the apocalypse is so hot right now. Be it scientific (climate change) or spiritual (2012), it’s as if a life-erasing calamity will be knocking on our atmosphere shields any second. Say the worst does happen – the Sun sends a microwave message warning that it’s gonna throw a tantrum a bit and we’ll all perish within the next ten years. With our planet headed toward certain destruction, the only option left is to #getoffearth.

Space is the final frontier! Well, it’s the only frontier when you’re facing certain death on your own planet. But we know that if shit really does hit the fan and we go to space, our chances of preserving a living specimen of human are nil.

Unless we figure out how to compress space/time, there is very very very very very little chance a human species will be sustained long enough to establish survival on another planet. Mmmaaayyyyyybbbeeee  it could work on the moon. But even if that happens, only precious astronauts will get to bear this burden.

So knowing that we’ll soon die, the next best thing will be to preserve elements of ourselves and send them into space. Options include blood, dna, eyes, whole bodies, first amendments, pottery, computer parts, movies, art work, books – anything that acts as a time capsule for the human kind.

The option for preserving our DNA will arguably be the most popular. We could believe that our DNA will be discovered by aliens who have discovered the magic of life and could inject the soul back into your body. Or maybe they could genetically create a human being using only a thumb. Or maybe your dna could land on another planet that by the very off-chance will support the very beginnings of life. And maybe, just maybe, it’ll allow you to continue life on another planet.

To have any fighting chance in preserving the human race in any shape or form, we have to go up, and what could result will be very entertaining to say the least.

Most importantly, we will be sending bits and fluids of your body. An industry will develop for preserving and fedexing things out of the atmosphere (in a trajectory of one’s choice. Astronomy and astrology will make huge comebacks). Just as the first Emperor of China wend to mind-blowing lengths to preserve evidence of his legacy for eternity, so will we. Why not send tombs up in preservation capsules? Wouldn’t it be incredible to be frozen forever on a voyage through the expanse of space?

Then of course there are the art pieces. Anyone whose seen 2012 knows how important expressionism is to the continuation of human-kind. We need to send these urinals into the eternal starry night. And maybe, just maybe, an alien will find it, and the legacy of the human-kind will continue on in some way.

Old Domke ad. Strike that pose.

I’ve been working on the last essay of the term for a few days now. Blogging seems to be a therapeutic activity though.

Harrison Boyce and I have recently spent a fair bit of time discussing the design of bags. Yesterday he emailed me a 9mb zip file containing nothing but pictures of bags and I had a blast going through them today. My focus is on bags that strike a nice balance between function, weather-proofing, and (what I think is) timeless style. Wanted to get some thoughts onto screen, so click on for some bag porn.

I find the sand colour a little bland, but maybe it’s what gives this bag such an endearing visual quality. There’s something about the way the small buckles, black lines, leather accents and zipper labels all form a really well balanced and solid composition. I really like the dark-salmon and brown accents.

I really love this thing. Although it seems to be structured like a fairly traditional box-shaped briefcase, the blue rectangular blocks of colour give it an opposing, quirky meaning, and their shapes are wonderfully broken up (and connected) by the blue strap and buckle. The colour combination is really beautiful too.

Photographs often have a hard time representing the material in Billingham and other waxed-looking bags, but this one catches it quite nicely. (Billinghams are made of what they call FibreNyte, a purely synthetic material. More about that here). It’s hard to talk shit on this bag, even just looking at it. Stone grey and tanned leather are a timeless combination, and it looks like it’ll last a lifetime. I’ve never owned one of these bags but Billingham have definitely built an incredible reputation over the years that you will never forget from the rangefinder champions on internet forums.

Must admit that the only time I use a tote this shape is when I go grocery shopping with a reusable tote bag. But this is worth the post just for the lovely, and by logoing standards, fairly subtle way of incorporating the logo into the aesthetic design structure of the bag.

Really great, playful use of texture, and the commitment to white/grey is striking. Both bags have great shape, particularly the second one with it’s interesting handle that plays on the bone rib-cage texture of the main compartment. The texture is obvious enough to be an immediate stand-out on the baggage carousel, but the understated white keeps it in the tastefully (somewhat)  self-effacing category.

I still remember the sight of people lining up last year in front of LV stores in Singapore to buy their own little share in the monogram. I must admit it lessened my respect for LV. On one hand, bags featuring the monogram rely on exclusivity to justify the price of the product, but on the other hand it became a victim of its own success. Many new to carrying the monogram looked rather silly, wearing it like some kind of overpriced uniform. – using the bag to elevate their status without thinking of how they could integrate it into their whole look. Eventually these people the destroyed the monogram, over-popularizing to ridicule.

That being said, I really like this bag, and now that it’s a little less popular in the age of stealth wealth, I’ve come to like the monogram a little more again. Sack bags (?) tend to be harder to organize with given the narrow access point, but they tend to look really bomo-chic cool, and the shape and size of this seems well proportioned. The orange accents are a daring and tasteful touch. Would be a great bag to house dirty laundry or like, rags/towels or something. Maybe even groceries, or a sack of rice. (Probably a better buy if you’re a millionaire).

Music blogger and DJ MyManHenri was using one of these bags on the Red Bull Flying Lotus Canada tour this year. Again the white/grey combination is used to nice effect here, but my favourite part about this bag is the shape of the compartments in relation to each other. The rectangular base but curved Z axis at the top (don’t know what else to call it?)  give it a simple but futuristic feel.

Bags serve an innately utilitarian purpose, but that doesn’t mean one should forget to have fun!!

Gotta give it to the heritage brands like Barbour and Filson. By sticking to their guns they’ve found themselves in the right place at the right time, adopted by everyone from hipsters to the monocle crowd. I could not escape these Filson bags this year, whether on the streets of Vancouver, Toronto, or New York. The resurgence of heritage brands has been attributed to Obama and the political focus on nationalism and American/British-made goods. Whatever it is, I’m grateful for it. These bags are functional, timeless, to varying degrees weather resistant, last a long time, and they look great. We need to make everything more like this again.

Jil Sander says DON’T FORGET TO HAVE FUN.

Martin Margiela hold-all. Good example of using block colours to make a bold and memorable statement. Wonder if it’d be cool/possible to make a bag like this, but with the brown bit as a seperate zip-on bag. This would be great through customs as it could be used as a toiletry bag and easily detached at airport security since they’re all so damn paranoid nowadays.

Palmer & Sons is a Father-and-Son Vancouver-based company with some really interesting handmade leather bags. The hard-case could be useful for keeping fragile items like cameras (if the right interior is used), and could also be used as a normal work / throw-around bag without worries of it being scratched up. I once checked out Victoria Potter of demicouture’s Palmer & Sons bag and it was really nicely constructed. Those buckles are really unique and well-priced given the quality and customization afforded to you. Definitely give their site a visit.

Master Piece make some incredible looking stuff. The detailing is perfect and that is a good tone of red – something that brands seem to have trouble nailing. The duality of the suede/nylon material help give this bag a larger-than-life character. It seems so strong and sturdy despite its size. For some reason I think that if the ninja turtles were to use a point and shoot camera, they would keep it in this bag.

I stared at this picture for quite a long time. The whole thing tells such a dense story with so little. The tag on the side features some some pretty interesting typography and its size balances well with the main compartment. That label in the middle has a nice utilitarian feel which contrasts with the red accent of the zipper. Despite my trying to justify it, I still don’t really know why I find this pouch so fascinating.

That’s it. Another bag post soon probably!

Steven Hamilton, sequence taken from his Ride UK interview

Cory Beal recently sounded off his frustration on facebook and twitter saying: “Is pegless street even a style of riding? Sometimes I feel like it’s just less tricks.”

A blogger for thecomeup, I can only imagine how many bmx videos he must go through a day. The repetition is understandably grinding at his nerves as he continues in the FB comments with “[c]an’t even count how many web videos are just barspins, whips, and tuck no handers.”

No one can blame him for this as there’s been rash of videos with desperately imitative riding lately. The limitations to these three tricks is pretty disappointing given that this form of riding has produced a wealth of innovative and important video parts. Here’s a compilation of videos that hopefully inject a breathe of fresh air into the pegless atmosphere.

Mike Hoder – Hoder’s Back!, Lotek

Hoder destroyed facade, then sparing the odd tattoo-related story we didn’t hear much from him for a while (well, sort of). Until seemingly out of no where he bangs out this ridiculous part. Bold pegless at its finest.

Bruce Crisman – Best of Bruce Crisman, Federal

From vintage X-Games medal owner to backwards street destroyer. Massive bike control and so stylish about it. I love the way his movements are so quick and precise, and he has the coolest way of applying backwards nose tricks to the street. His facade section is probably more epic than this one, but I love the tone of this video and the riding is really great.

Steven Hamilton – Federal Trafaelio

It would be criminal to not include easily one of the most creative riders of all time. Even the little things like those tyre grinds are so rad. Been hearing whispers about his new Animal part… excited.

Josh Bedford – Tomorrow We Work, Joe Cox

Another piece of great film production by Joe Cox and another great section from Josh Bedford. Gnarly riding combined with some spots that most will probably not even bother considering.

Cameron Wood – S&M Let the Good Times Roll

His 50/50 That’s It section is huge, featuring probably one of the most cringe-worthy crash intros of all time followed by some wild ass riding. But this recent edit by the excellent Justin Kosman succinctly shows one of the biggest reasons Cam Wood is such an exciting rider to watch – he’s willing to take a fun, niche concept and chase it to such extreme lengths that it becomes an incredibly memorable trick in itself.

Ian Schwartz – Up Up and Away, Sunday

I haven’t seen this much talked-about section before until tonight. It’s a bit long and some of the filming’s sketchy at the beginning, but it definitely builds up to the end with some serious bangers. Schwartz is one of my fav riders of all time. I’ve probably seen his split section with Chad Shackelford about a million times, but since we’re nopeggin’ here’s his dope Gone Fishin’ edit:

Ian Schwartz – Gone Fishin’, Sunday

There you have it. Pegless as inspiration for originality and some really quality riding.

I’m a sucker for extended single takes, and this scene from Children of Men is absolutely riveting. It’s provoked praise for its technical prowess and criticism for being technically show-offy, but regardless of what camp everyone is in it’s pretty much impossible to talk shit on how plain awesome this scene is.

The cinematography in this movie has always given me a hard on, and today I stumbled across a few links that shed light on the astounding lengths and ingenuity used to create this magic.

This is the wonder camera machine also known as the ‘contraption’ fitted around the shell of a roofless Fiat. The interior of the car was modified so the actors could duck while a camera, mounted on rails on top of the car, swerved around their heads via remote control. A driver at the front ensured they didn’t hit any trees going forward, and there was also a driver pointing backwards for the reverse bits. F’in amazing. Apparently this scene has a couple seamless cuts in it (wonder where they are!).

As incredible as that scene is, this one made the largest lasting impression on me when Children of Men came out three years ago. One of my fav movie shots ever…

All this while I guessed it was a steadicam shot. Apparently they tried a few takes with a steadicam, but frustrated with the results the director Alfonso Cuarón decided to attempt a take handheld:

This scene took twelve days to prepare for and two days of shooting to get. The shot we see now is the only complete take, and also the last chance they had to do the scene given that available light was fading and they were to lose the location the next day. In an audio interview with the director, he describes yelling “halt” when blood splatters on the lens – but (thankfully) an explosion went off at the same time so no one heard him and he let the filming carry on. NPR’s audio interview also reveals these nice words from Cuarón:

“When you doing these long shots, I can choreograph to the inch every single moment. But once you rolling the camera, everything falls on the shoulder of your character. Because things are going to go wrong, and it’s how he reacts with things going wrong that create the moment of truthfulness.”

Doesn’t incredible cinema make you happy!! Fuck this is so good.

Lately I’ve been especially conscious on the build and quality of the things I buy. This article nicely summarizes why we need to go back to making good, strong products that will last. Have been having a lot of fun visiting MEC and army surplus stores lately just to check out the design of things.

As for the article’s philosophies. Even if you take away their ‘it’s for the environment’ argument, the benefits still outweigh this cluttered, non-nonsensical form of disposable consumer culture we’ve created.

By Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin, In These Times. Posted November 28, 2009.

http://www.alternet.org/story/144204/our_lives_are_filled_with_worthless_crap_that%27s_destroying_the_earth%3A_here%27s_what_you_can_do?page=entire

The way to lower the quantity of energy required to make and distribute short-lived consumer goods is to make them durable, repairable and upgradable.

As the middle-class daughter of a refugee mother and a Depression-era father, I grew up straddling two worlds. My parents could afford much more than they were willing to buy. Most things that broke could be and were repaired. My German grandmother’s aphorisms lingered in the air: “Waste not, want not,” “A penny saved is a penny earned,” “A stitch in time saves nine.”

By the time my own children were born, America was flooded with cheap and cheaply made goods. So while my parents continued working at the sturdy antique desks they inherited from my grandparents and sleeping beneath a hand-crocheted bedspread, my children and their friends became the first and last owners of a seemingly endless supply of plastic toys and particle-board furniture.

I was part of the transitional generation. Building blocks were still made of wood. Comforters were still filled with down. I recall the meticulously machined pencil sharpeners with “made in West Germany” stamped on their sides that lasted until I lost them. Even the cheap items—the ones “made in Japan”—tended to hold up pretty well.

Now nearly everything is produced in China and made to be discarded. According to a 2008 report by the Economic Policy Institute, the United States imported $320 billion in Chinese goods in 2007. In that year alone, this country imported $26.3 billion in apparel and accessories, $108.5 billion in computers and electronic products, and $15.3 billion in furniture and fixtures from China.

The manufacture, distribution and disposal of an ever-growing mountain of short-lived consumer goods has taken an enormous environmental toll. Annie Leonard’s website “The Story of Stuff,” which has garnered more than 7 million views in less than two years, has helped spread awareness of that cost far beyond the usual environmentalist circles.

We can’t, however, only blame the quantity and quality of Chinese goods for the environmental and other consequences of this transoceanic factory-to-waste stream. For that we can blame the two horsemen of the modern consumer apocalypse: functional obsolescence and fashion obsolescence.

Functional, or planned obsolescence is the purposeful decision by designers and manufacturers to ensure things don’t last, so that consumers must buy new ones. Fashion obsolescence is the related decision to offer new features and aesthetic changes to entice consumers to discard their old items in favor of updated and supposedly better ones.

Ironically, product obsolescence was once seen as the remedy for what ailed our country. Lizabeth Cohen, chair of the History Department at Harvard University and author of A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (Vintage, 2003), traces the origins of mass consumption to the period immediately before and after World War II, when a demand-driven economy was seen as the key to our nation’s recovery and prosperity.

“In the 1940s and ’50s, there was a much closer connection between consumer demand and factories and jobs,” Cohen says. “That was a completed circle more than it is today. When people were buying things, they were buying things that were made by American workers.”

The only way to guarantee continued demand was to ensure that people would keep replacing the things they owned. The literature on planned obsolescence makes frequent reference to statements by industry analysts and strategists of that era. “Our enormously productive economy … demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption,” retailing analyst Victor Lebow said in 1948. “We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever increasing rate.”

This applied to male as well as female consumers, and to styling lines on cars as well as hemlines on skirts. Allied Stores Corporation’s Chairman B. Earl Puckett, speaking to fashion industry leaders in 1950, said, “Basic utility cannot be the foundation of a prosperous apparel industry. We must accelerate obsolescence.” And General Motors’ design chief Harley Earl said in 1955, “The creation of a desire on the part of millions of car buyers each year to trade in last year’s car on a new one is highly important to the automobile industry.”

Business people and politicians weren’t the only ones pushing this idea, Cohen says. “Labor really bought into this package. Purchasing power was the answer to how people would be employed and have a better life. Consumers would fuel the powers of factories that would provide jobs that would put money in peoples’ pockets.”

Since then, Cohen argues, we’ve conflated our concepts of ourselves as good consumers and as good citizens. The idea of consumption as our country’s economic engine continues to this day. Indeed, after the attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush implored Americans to go shopping. And frugal as I am and as green as I try to be, during the recent economic downturn I’ve found myself feeling that every major purchase I make is a perverse kind of civic duty. The notion of the citizen-as-consumer clearly runs deep.

But things have changed since the 1940s and ’50s. “When people were making goods that lasted [back then], they were benefiting from the explosion of global capitalism and the expanding of markets,” Cohen says. “Now that we have this global recession, it’s problematic. Where do these companies go if they are going to build goods that last? How do they profit if they don’t sell new goods? I don’t know the answer to this, but it’s a problem that policy makers, economic planners, labor unions—everybody has to think about.”

A Radically Obvious Idea

Although the greening of the American consumer has fostered some deceptive greenwashing campaigns seeking to capitalize on our good intentions, it has also made it possible for us to make better ecological and economic choices.

A host of clever websites now enables consumers to calculate their own ecological footprints and offer advice on how to reduce the toll. These include:

•MyFootprint.org, where you can find out how many Earths would be necessary if everybody on the planet shared your lifestyle;

•H20Conserve.org, where you can tally your water footprint;

•Wattzon.com, where you can calculate the energy required to sustain your lifestyle.

Some of these calculations become conceptually complex as they try to measure the energy required for the extraction and transportation of raw materials, and the manufacturing, distribution and ultimate disposal of products. It can all get abstract quite quickly, but there’s a far simpler message embedded in all that complexity: Buy stuff that lasts.

Saul Griffith, a 2007 MacArthur Fellow, serial inventor and co-founder of WattzOn, refers to this as “heirloom design”—a term he introduced during a talk at the February 2009 Greener Gadgets conference in New York. The best way to lower the quantity of energy required to manufacture and distribute consumer goods, he argues, is to make those products not only durable, but repairable and upgradable.

Griffith shares this radically obvious idea with Tim Cooper, head of the Centre for Sustainable Consumption at Sheffield Hallam University in Sheffield, England, and editor of the forthcoming book, Longer Lasting Solutions (Gower, June 2010). The Centre, which Cooper founded in 1996, conducts research into consumers’ behavior as well as the environmental effects of the choices they make.

Cooper argues for “product life extension”—making things more durable, using them properly, and ensuring they are maintained, repaired, upgraded, and reused. A key obstacle, he says, is the perception (supported by public policies) that higher levels of consumption yield greater happiness. After all, an increase in the GNP is considered healthy for the economy and can only be achieved if consumers increase their spending.

Cooper calls for “slow consumption,” the consumer purchasing equivalent of the Slow Food movement (which seeks to build consumer awareness and appreciation of food and its connection to community and the environment). “The issue to address is what kind of economy is going to be sustainable in its wider sense — economically, environmentally and socially,” he says. “The current economy is not sustainable. The sheer throughput of energy and materials cannot be continued.”

If products were more durable, Cooper argues, some jobs lost due to the decrease in consumption would be offset by the addition of more highly skilled maintenance and repair jobs. And whereas the lost jobs might be overseas, the repair jobs would be local. “We need to look at new business models that move away from manufacturing and selling more and more products,” he says. Such models might include “products that last longer but have associated services attached to them, so that the supplier guarantees to maintain, repair and upgrade the products for a certain period.”

This might be a hard sell for consumers, however. Cooper cites the results of a survey in which British homeowners were asked what they considered the disadvantages of longer-lasting appliances. Twenty-three percent stated concerns about price, while 30 percent said they feared these products would become “out of date.” He found that consumers were often disinclined to have products repaired because of the high cost of labor compared with the low cost of replacement, thanks to the quantity of consumer goods manufactured in countries with low wages and lax environmental regulations.

When I mentioned this conundrum to one of my ecologically conscious friends, she sheepishly admitted she had just discarded her old DVD player because the repair estimate was higher than the cost of a new one. “The present economic system does give an advantage to the current economy,” Cooper says, “and for the consumer, replacement is often the cheaper option.” That would have to change.

Close Encounters of the Durable Kind

Most of us have had an heirloom design or product life extension epiphany at one point or another.

Years ago, along with an untold number of other caffeine addicts, I succumbed to the then-ubiquitous ads for Gevalia coffee. Buy a couple pounds of beans and get a free drip coffeemaker. That became the first of a steady stream of plastic automatic drip coffee machines of various makes that took up residence on our countertop, none of which lived to see their second birthdays. Each time one broke, my husband and I found that the features available to us had multiplied. We could buy coffeemakers with built-in bean grinders, brew strength controls and programmable timers. We had been cornered by a combination of functional obsolescence and fashion obsolescence.

Then we discovered what any self-respecting Italian coffee drinker knew all along: A $30 cast aluminum stovetop espresso maker lasts forever. Replace the rubber gasket every couple of years, and you’ll stay happily caffeinated for life. We bought a used ’70s model on eBay several years ago and have been using it every day ever since.

Not everything older is better, of course. Visit your local thrift store, and you’ll be confronted by an exhibit of the unnecessary and the obsolete. Did anybody ever need a bread machine, an ice cream maker or an Atari game console?

And yet, thrift stores are also the repositories of time-tested items. The garments sold there are Darwinian success stories. They’ve survived the wrath of washers and dryers and still have significant life left in them. The dishes may be mismatched, but they are dishwasher and hand-washer safe. And I’m convinced that this is where the world’s missing teaspoons come to rest. If heirloom design has a line of boutiques, this is it.

Heirloom design has its adherents in the design and manufacturing worlds, too.

Patagonia, based in Ventura, Calif., was founded by avid mountain climbers who began selling clothing to support their barely profitable climbing-hardware business. From the start, the company was grounded in concern for the environment, and was an early adopter of several socially and environmentally responsible corporate policies, from donating a percentage of profits to environmental groups to offering employees on-site daycare.

Patagonia products are designed to last, and when they don’t hold up, the company stands behind them. Its “ironclad guarantee” states: “If one of our products does not perform to your satisfaction, return it to the store you bought it from or to Patagonia for a repair, replacement or refund.”

Sixteen years ago, my older brother gave me a Patagonia fleece jacket his children had outgrown. He purchased it around 1987 for his oldest daughter, who wore it until she outgrew it and handed it down to her younger sister. When she outgrew it, my daughter wore it, and then my son. At some point, the zipper broke, so I sent it to Patagonia, which repaired it at no cost. The jacket never wore out. That’s heirloom design.

The alternative to durability and repair is remanufacturing. After more than two decades in the modular carpet business, Ray Anderson, founder and chair of Interface Inc. of Lagrange, Ga., heard a talk by environmentalist Paul Hawken and was inspired to green up his company. In addition to other ecological efforts on the materials and production sides, in 1995 the company introduced an “evergreen lease” arrangement, essentially turning carpet into a service instead of a product. By taking responsibility for retrieving and remanufacturing carpet no longer wanted by its customers, Interface was able to keep used carpet out of the waste stream and reduce the need for new materials.

Unfortunately, the leasing concept proved complicated and expensive. The company eventually gave up on it but continued to aggressively pursue discarded carpet—both its own and that of other companies—so that the materials could be reclaimed and remanufactured. Andrew King, a visiting fellow in mechanical engineering at the University of Bristol and consultant with the Centre for Remanufacturing and Reuse, notes that remanufacturing is preferable to recycling because it preserves most of a product’s embodied energy while bringing it back to its original quality. And it creates jobs.

Here’s the kicker: By emphasizing product durability, service and remanufacturing, both of these companies have earned extra dividends in the form of corporate image and customer loyalty.

In Search of Solutions

The question, then, is what would it take to overcome our dependence on cheap goods? Even though obsolescence is no longer a boon for this country’s manufacturers, cheap products are essential for consumers who can barely afford to put food on the table. If a durable coffeemaker costs twice as much as a breakable one but lasts four times as long, it’s still less attractive to someone who doesn’t have the additional cash up front.

Policy would have to play a key role in reversing this unfortunate check-out counter calculation. Legislation on extended producer responsibility (EPR), requiring manufacturers to account for the full life-cycle of their products from extraction to disposal, could affect consumer culture by making disposable items more expensive and reviving an interest in repair.

Such legislation is complicated, however, by the ongoing pressure to protect industrial production. “Legislation tends to get watered and watered until it gets to be almost a hindrance to these breakthrough changes because in order for Big Business to buy into it, it has to become easy for them,” King says. EPR legislation would only be effective if it created a financial incentive for industry to produce more durable goods and for consumers to favor them.

Consumers are certainly influenced by price, but Cooper holds out hope that they also can be persuaded by having more of a connection to the objects they purchase—something referred to as “emotionally durable design.” If that sounds too touchy-feely for a coffee machine, consider the difference between a pair of shoes custom-made for you by your local cobbler and an off-the-rack pair from the shoe store. Which would you be more likely to clean, resole and repair?

Part of the solution might also be having more products available without the burden of ownership. Tool rentals, car-sharing and even laundromats diminish the number of products that need to be manufactured and place a premium on durability and longevity. (This can even be done informally. We’ve shared a lawnmower with one of our neighbors for years.) “We should have much more attachment to certain products but for others we should see that they are services,” King says.

Cooper warns, however, that rental can backfire in some areas, such as electronics. “The danger of the rental model with technology is that as advances are made, people who rent them might upgrade even more quickly than they would at the moment,” he says. But even electronics could have a smaller ecological footprint if they could be updated through the use of modular design instead of being casually discarded. “The trick will be to understand what does and what doesn’t change,” King says.

King sees consumers playing a large role in putting pressure on industry to make the necessary changes. “The real issue is creating the demand,” he says. “I work with a large number of large multinationals. When they assign their designers to the challenge—design this for two lives—they rise to the challenge. They just start to think in a different way.”

Ultimately, environmental and economic sustainability won’t be possible until we become less dependent on consumer spending, which currently comprises 70 percent of the U.S. economy. We can’t just keep churning out, buying and disposing of stuff.

“We can diversify the range of goods that are underpinning our economy and providing us with jobs and some prosperity,” Cohen says. “It doesn’t just have to be commodities for the individual consumer. That would be the best hope.”

Checked out the great Best Free Documentary blog for the first time in a while. After clicking around a bit, I ended up on Porn 2.0 which is a technically SFW documentary on, well, how porn went 2.0 (I guess the same way web went 2.0?). Not sure if anyone else will find this interesting but I always find unabashed analysis on the porn industry to be fascinating.

Oh yeah, the pic above is apparently a ‘russian protest’, but I’m using it anyway because it’s cool.

Search ‘biking’ on youtube and the inspired bikes video of Danny Macaskill is the first thing to pop up. Having already clocked 12 million pairs of eyeballs with the one video alone, Macaskill has captured the imagination of a fresh generation of internets and VW has wisely taken notice. They’ve hired TRY advertising from Norway to create a spot that is less car commercial and more biking video with product placement.

No doubt looking to draw a connection with the spot and the first Macaskill video that made such an impact, TRY and VW have copied elements from the original. Again, strangers rush to look over a railing, and again, Macaskill is paired with an unoffensive indie song. But the shots are car commercially filmed, and the editing is sometimes dicey. The combination is a good-looking spot that doesn’t achieve its goal.

Action sports videos rely on honesty to show a whole trick because tricks are the narration of a video. Macaskill does death-defying things and paints a visual picture that most can understand. These stunts (sorry, I tried to avoid the word) have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and they help to communicate the consequences of the riding.

The original video displayed a style of editing that works – 12 million youtube views is no joke. But as far as the VW spot is concerned, cutting out halfway through tailwhips, and switching takes in the middle of a drop degrades Macaskill into a mere visual spectacle, thereby defeating the philosophy of the spot. VW looks less like they are celebrating the rider, and more like they’re only taking advantage of the visual spectacle of his riding. The missed opportunity is especially a shame considering honesty and forthrightness are particularly valuable images for a corporation to project his year.

If time constraints were the reason for the butchering, less clips should’ve been included. Or even a new way of having Macaskill interact with the car dreamt up. It would’ve done a more effective job of connecting the values of Macaskill’s riding and the car. Confident, daring, but (just) sensible enough to not go over the edge.

In the end, what could’ve been another Macaskill hit is merely another car commercial on youtube with just under a hundred thousand hits. It may seem like a small thing to care about, but I get really frustrated when action sports are presented to the mainstream public in a way that misses the mark.

This fantastic video was posted on thecomeup recently, but the excellentness doesn’t end there. Check out what was posted in the comments:

Attention thecomeupbmx.net

This is Sue Miller with the IWF (Internet Watchdog Foundation). The mother of a 12 year old frequenter of your website witnessed her son watching this and immediately reported it to us. Seeing as there is no age warning or verification on your site, we must demand you remove this video and any other age-inappropriate material (we are currently reviewing all content on the website) within 48 hours or face being shutdown.

http://www.thecomeupmx.net
ip adress: 75.119.202.143
flag: inappropriate content without age verification
complaint logged: 9:03 pm pst

It’s bullshit (and she links herself to the Independent Women’s Forum), but the furor it caused in the comments is funny. Well played, anon poster, well played.

How you have failed me, invisible lines that pull image onto my screen. Those lines that trawl information from afar. Friends had to scoop them up and mail them before you find the nugget bytes first. Like links to whorecraft real-life porn via a girl in korea (nsfw). or a dope music blog via a giffer in Vancouver (#gifgang). yes, whorecraft to music blogs. the world is a perilous place.

here’s another that took a year for the lines to find. History of Our World – one of the most compelling image and text blogs I have come across in a while. Most blogs consist of image and text, but this one’s really really good at image and text. Particularly the jpgs.

Also, Anour Brahem was born on October 20th 1957. Happy birthday yesterday fifty two years ago Brahem! It’s crazy it took that long before his music graced my headphones. I recommend hitting up this dope post on the greatest conversation to hear and read for yourself.

I made hainanese chicken rice today for the first time. the end result was average due to my not so very good skills but the experience was amazing (nothing tastes like food from home). My hands still smell of garlic and ginger. Mmmmmm.

School is going interestingly. Taking a film studies 100 class which has been blowing my mind a bit. In an art history / archeology of China class, our prof told us about an emperor who had a pool built where the reflection (or illusion) of the moon could be seen during the day. I think it’s supposed to be in or near a cave and there are seven holes around the pool and if any of them were blocked, the reflection would not work.

It’s a mystery to everyone how the reflection works. Apparently when the Japanese occupied the area they built an exact replica of the set-up but were still unable to replicate the illusion. Our prof explained that it was created with an entirely different philosophy and technology to ours, which is why it baffles us so much. I find this incredible fascinating, but cannot find any more information on this reflection pool. It’s supposed to be located at Bishu Shanzhuang in Chengde. If you do know anything more about this and would like to share the knowledge, I’ll hug you for an email!

Travel-wise, I’m a bit shocked at how many air miles I’ve put in. For work I’ve visited toronto six times this year, montreal four times, and a host of other Canadian cities a bunch (I should be in the ‘air canada top tier’ section soon. It means free scotch in the airport lounge, looking forward to this). Considering I hadn’t really been out of BC before this year, I feely very grateful to have seen this much of canada (even halifax!) and learnt more about this incredible country. Overall, photographing the flying lotus tour is still one of my favourite gigs ever. thank you kenny mac for that.

Am shooting a job in toronto next month, and will be flying from there to new york for a job later that week. Never been to new york, really excited for it.

On the internet front, I’m not entirely sure what to do with We Mine Deeper anymore. I’ve got quite a few blogs going right now and as has been said, ‘dude you’re spreading your blogging thin.’ WMD has always been a nice place for me to spew out whatever I wanted though. Imagine if I posted all the random nsfw stuff on my ‘proper’ photo blog…. Or maybe I should.

Whatever it is, a new david lang photo is in the works by andy chung who just started a new blog. I might be keeping with my usual URestlessL behaviour on this revamp. Other stuff in photography… Am procrastinating on a print requested by Day 19 which is dumb of me because they are incredible photographers and this is an honour. Speaking of day 19, harrison boyce went to visit them recently and came back with this fantastic photo.

Bloggingly, there is an interview that needs to be transcribed for some blogging news happening soon. On the work front, I sort of agreed to take a job that happens over my birthday, as I had a momentary lapse of memory on which day I was born on. For whatever reason, I’ve always wanted this to happen.

Really liked Where the Wild Things Are. It’s fucking good, but I must admit it’s a film that is sometimes more groundbreaking than it is pure fun to watch. There is a lot of love and certainly a lot of hate for this movie. I want to watch it in cinemas again, and this time round with a note pad to jot some writing down and maybe try to defend these waves of hatred. A salute to spike jonze for sticking to his path and somehow managing to put this film on our screens.

“He has developed an extraordinary sense of meaningful whimsy as in such music videos as [etc. etc.] where psychological tension is conveyed through original, iconoclastic scenography. Jonze’s sensibility is an authentic development of the music-video era’s generational split—which is also an aesthetic split. He doesn’t exploit pop rebellion but has a counter-intuitive slant on what’s funny, sad, universal.” – armond white in a review of the film.

I think jonze is doing something incredible with wild things, but how people take influence from it remains to be seen – which is a bit scary. This direction has so much potential but will look particularly stupid if used in the wrong hands. I think we’re in for a lot of face-value meandering filmmaking and photography soon; you can imagine how interpretations of the aesthetics and narrational style can be utterly dreadful (yes I know some of you already think this is bad). Whatever it is, the new kanye X jonze video We Were Once a Fairytale Where the Kanye’s Are -a.c. is dope, and you know it.

To finish – am actually falling for that Glee tv show, I have no reservations about playing with a sony psp on the bus and the vancouver locals can continue to look at me strange all they want, chicken rice is the best, and yup.