Pussy Riot is a Russian feminist punk rock protest group, based in Moscow, with a variable number of Members, approximately 11 women raging from the age of 20 to 23. They have been performing in unusual public places, including the Moscow`s Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Their lyrics are concerned with feminism, LGTB rights, opposition to the policies of Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church. During the performance on 21ts February 2012 which took place in the Cathedral, the group created panic and church security officials stopped them almost immediately. Subsequently three of the group members, Nedezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alykhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich, were arrested. During a court appeal on the 10th of October  2012, Samutsevich was freed on Probation but the other two members were sent to Jail. The public opinion was very divided, many Human Rights group, especially in the west, protested condemning the decision made by the Court, while many Russian religious people welcomed the decision and expressed all their antipathy for the girls. After serving 21 months Tolokinnikova and Alyokina were finally released on December 23 2013, after the State Dumas approved an Amnesty.

This is what they look like

GREAT, right?

……….and this is the collection Pam Hogg designed inspired by them and dedicated to them

For a more detailed story about Pussy Riot watch: Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer. It is a very good documentary and really worth watching.

http://played.to/audhupguwut0

Social medias are internet based applications through which people socially interact creating, sharing and or exchanging ideas,information, pictures, videos and in short user-generated contents in virtual community and networks.
They can be classified in types: collaborative projects, blog and microblogs, content community, social networking, virtual games, virtual social worlds.
Below is a list of few social media i consider to be useful:

ELLO is a new social network, probably one of the few not be owned by advertiser. I consider it a valid and interesting possibility within social medias,it conveys the hope that that’s where the internet world is heading to, the sign that people have started to realize and address the problem of privacy as well as the state of surveillance we all undergo 24/7 by surfing our beloved web. This is in its own word the ello manifesto:

“Your social network is owned by advertisers.

Every post you share, every friend you make and every link you follow is tracked, recorded and converted into data. Advertisers buy your data so they can show you more ads. You are the product that’s bought and sold.

We believe there is a better way. We believe in audacity. We believe in beauty, simplicity and transparency. We believe that the people who make things and the people who use them should be in partnership.

We believe a social network can be a tool for empowerment. Not a tool to deceive, coerce and manipulate — but a place to connect, create and celebrate life.

You are not a product.”

4chan is an image based bulletin board, anyone can post comments and share images. 4chan has given birth to the collective of activists Anonymous. The collective is very multifaceted and has been involved in disparate sorts of debates . It has organized massive protest all over the world against the practice of  the church of Scientology. When pay-pal, amazon and master-card pulled their service from wiki leaks in order to not let people make donation to the websites after Julian Assange release of diplomatic cables, Anonymous took down those sites for 2 days creating chaos.
The activist helped the Egyptian uprising when on January 27/28 2011 president Mubarak shut down the internet for the whole country. Anonymous together with Telecomix (an activist net) helped the people of Egypt to turn their internet back on.
The collective showed that internet is of the people in line with what Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, had dreamed of.

Wikipedia is based on an openly editable model, is a free-content encyclopedia written largely by anonymous internet volunteers who write without being paid. I love the idea of shared knowledge which becomes one stream of consciousness, fluid and changeable…..because the truth after all is never just in one place and certain knowledge like science for example are always evolving and becoming something new through practice and corrections ….
A very first wikipedia kind of website was created by teenager Arron Swarz about 10 years earlier, and it was called theinfo.org. Although winning a competition for the clever project, when Aron presented his idea at school, one of the lecturer was horrified by the idea that anyone could be author of an encyclopedia, making clear to Arroon that this is a job for academics only!!!!

Ted is a non profit foundation, their aim is to spread ideas welcoming people from every kind of discipline. TED stands for technology entertainment and design. I have often found many interesting videos on TED website.

WordPress is an open source project, which means it can be freely used changed and shared by anyone. It allows people to create their own blog, which is always a great way to quickly put ideas together, write about interesting and inspiring subjects, phenomenons or objects and very importantly to not forget about all those things. A blog is a little bit like a sort of diary or notebook which will always surprise you when you go back in time and it will remind you of things you had forgotten about.

Flickr is a photo related social media which allows to save more than 500.000 photos with a 1000GB storage. It also allows to follow your favorite photographers. Their pictures editing tools create quite interesting results. Photos are an important part in my creative process and therefore Flickrs comes really handy.

Etzy is an online market place. People all over the world can buy and sell unique goods. Many people sells their own creation. I appreciate people that do what they love….and when there is love in what you do most certainly the results will tell it.

Pinterest is a very easy and quick tool to pin, as then name itself suggest, whatever you find interesting and inspiring

Soundcloud is an online audio distribution platform. Allows musicians to upload, record, promote and share their music. Having an interest in music and being involved in a music project i definitely consider soundcloud to be a very useful tool.

Ultimately i` d like to talk about  the TOR network. TOR was created by Paul Sylverston and a team of scientist for the USA government. While it is of great importance for governments to spy and surveil us 24/7 is also primary for them to maintain secrecy and keep their own secrets well hidden. Thanks to whistler blower Edward Snowden we know for example that the English government has been tapping wires and checking all our data and information from the GCHQ Bude in Cornwell. The 25% of all internet traffic passes through the telegraphs wires which comes ashore. The data carried through the cable just need to be diverted. A fiber optic cable signal is just a beam of light, pulses of light represents pieces of information traveling through and across the internet. Every 50 miles or so the signal becomes weak and need to be repeated. By inserting an optical tap at this point it is possible to create a mirror image of the million of information and data, one of which goes to GCHQ and the other which carries its original destination. Those information can be replayed for 3 days and can be rewind to see whats going on through the internet at a particular moment. Our lives are then analyzed by computers programs which works in a similar way search engines do. This programs look at our emails and social connection to spots trends or to pick out very specific information to then, if necessary, alert security agency about the need to investigate certain individuals.
In the mid 2000 TOR was handed to a non profit organization, and the network is now represented by Jacob Appelbaum, which dedicated to the opportunity TOR could give to free speech. Appelbaum now travels the world promoting the software which does not create a data trail and gives every person a voice.
TOR is used in China, Iran and every country where internet access is restricted.
Here is how it works: when a user visits a website without wanting to reveal its IP address, it sends a request, three layers of encryption are placed around it as the layer of an onion. The message is then sent through a series of computers which have volunteered to act as relays points, as the message passes from different computes the layer of encryption are removed. All the relay computers sees is the order to pass the message on a last relay computer, which decrypts the inner most layer of the communication but the identity of the user remains hidden.                                                                     TOR is for anyone to use, while you might think you have nothing to hide it is important to understand that when we give away detailed information about us all we also give the power to control.

……A moodboard

some of the garments have been shot to Dover Street Market some others in Selfridges during a university field trip

the moodboards feature garments of designers such as: Vivienne Westwood, Alexander Mcqueen, Gareth Pugh, Ann Demeulemeester, Van Notten, Yohji Yamamoto and Opening Ceremony of Carol Lim and Humberto Leon

FATTY BOOM BOOM

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…….and the making of………………….

1565-70

The tailor (“il tagliapanni”)

Giovanni Battista Moroni

During an object analysis exercise, a question has been raised regarding why, the fabric the tailor in the picture above is about to cut, had been described as a symbol of wealth and luxury.                                                                                     The reason is of course historical and cultural: towards the end of the 15th century and throughout the next century a new trend in fashion for civic and high-status garments spread. The use of reds was abandoned in favor of black. Generally the reason has been attribute to the growing influence of Spain and the importation of Spanish Merino Wool.
Producing a black dye in the Middle Ages was a complicated process. Many dies with wood or indigo would had to be used to obtain the right color density, followed by mordanting. After the Spanish conquest of the New World a superior method of dyeing black dye through the use of logwood, a dyewood native to Mexico and Central America, was achieved. Although at first the new process was poorly received, it was discovered to produce a fast black in combination with a ferrous sulfate (copperas) mordant.
That was the blackest black achieved in the dark ages. Now some British scientist have really produced the blackest black material ever, and is so highly expensive that when Ben Jensen, the firm`s chief technical officer, has been asked about it, he simply answered: “very expensive” – the cost of the material is one of the thing he was unable to reveal.
The black material absorbs all but 0.35 percent which sets a new record. It is so dark that shapes and contour are lost.
If a designer would make a little dress out of the material, limbs and head would seem to float incorporeally around it.
This black is not obtained through a dyeing process but the material is made of carbon nanotubes coating, each 10,000 times thinner than a human hair. Light particles cannot get in them, although they can pass between them a tiny remnant of the light bounces around it untill is absorb.
Its actual application? Enabling astronomical cameras, telescopes and infrared scanning systems to function more effectively. And then there are as usual the military uses that the material’s maker, Surrey NanoSystems, is not going to tell us because “is not allowed to discuss” !!!!!!!!
This is a picture of what the material looks like:

“You expect to see the hills and all you can see … it’s like black, like a hole, like there’s nothing there. It just looks so strange,” said Ben Jensen

When founder Suzanne Lee was trying to imagine what the future of fashion might be, she started questioning scientist and engineers how would they have imagined the future of the industry. One of the people she spoke to, happened to be a biologist. He suggested to her that if she really wanted to rethink fashion, she could have thought of growing fabric from bacteria. They began to collaborate and soon started to brew sustainable fabric, she quickly discovered that the process was very simple, the result was very textile alike not just in feel but also because it could very easily be sewn together like a normal piece of fabric.
One of their most basic recipes is made of green tea, sugar, some acidic liquid (like cider vinegar) from which they start a culture made of yeast and bacteria.
What was going to be produced would have grown on the surface of the liquid and take the shape of whatever container was going to be used.
This process is more similar to the process of brewing beer or making food rather than the traditional textile process.
Normally in the fashion industry once a fabric has been manufactured, cut, sewn and finished into a ready to wear clothing, most of its leftovers are simply disposed of, but by fermenting a living organism the waste is dramatically reduced. When the organism is going to produce the material in the exact form that is intended to take shape of, then there is going to be no waste at all.
Suzanne Lee collaborates with all sorts of scientist which grows materials in the lab using living organism. At the moment the bacteria they use are not being genetically engineered, but in the future it will be possible to give specific quality and characteristic to the fabric created by genetically engineering bacteria, such as being repellent to water for example or deliver some kind of nutritious quality to the people who are going to wear the garment.

     

   

     

A note on bacteria:
Some scientist thought of bringing a small box , “a tool box”, on mars to terraform the red planet. What the box would contain? Bacteria. Those would face some grandiose task: increase Mars’ atmospheric pressure and mean temperature, melt ice to create pools of liquid water, increase atmospheric greenhouse gases, and provide an atmospheric shield to UV radiation.
Obviously at the moment this is all a hypothesis but it is truly amazing what bacteria can do!!!!

Witty, authentic, extravagant, glamorous, horrifying ……………

LEIGH BOWERY

Many have been inspired by his work, from Vivienne Westwood to Alexander Mcqueen, he has also been the subject of many Lucian Freud paintings

…………………………………………………..Enjoy…….

Leigh Bowery, Michael Clark and The Fall

from photos to paintings and vice versa

Apps Alchemy in Nick Knight Steps