JUSTIN YOUNG

A very long first day of travels, flew from SFO to Atlanta to Manaus which is in the Amazonas state of Brazil. I bought one of those super cheap tickets and had an 8 hour layover from 5am to 2pm. After about two hours of waiting around i hired a taxi to show me around the city. I figured how many chances will i get to see the Amazon. About 15 minutes after we got into the car it started raining heavily, it kept up for about an hour until the sides of the streets were about a foot deep. I didn’t get to get out of the car for the first hour, but heres a few photos from the initial drive around the city.

Manaus-Brazil

Manaus, Brazil

Manaus-Brazil

Manaus-Brazil

We drove to the Port of Manaus and got out of the car to see the Amazon, this was my first glimpse of it, it’s huge!

Here’s some more images from around the area.

Manaus, Brazil

Manaus, Brazil

Manaus, Brazil

Manaus, Brazil

Manaus, Brazil

Manaus, Brazil

Manaus, Brazil

Manaus, Brazil

Finally, my favorite part of the tour of Manaus was the public market. All sorts of exotic fruits and vegetables, meat butchers, fish and spices, it was pretty surreal walking through here after traveling for about 20 hours, here’s a video of the market, and some stills below.

Machete Butcher Manaus Market

Manaus Market

Cow Tongues Manaus Market

Big thanks to my Manaus guide Jirley Lima! Here he is…

Jirley - my guide in Manus

I’m heading south, way south! My first time going to South America and i’m so exited. This is a vacation, i mean it, going purely for fun this time. I will be flying into Salvador, arriving tomorrow, there for a couple of days to meet up with friends then on to an island called Florianopolis. I will be there from Jan 25 – Feb 1st, then off to Rio for a week. I fly home on the 18th of Feb. and have 10 days where I have no itinerary planned. So, if you got any ideas let me know. I will try and post the warmth as often as possible…See you soon!

This is me in about 5 hours, heading south for the winter!

A mobile urban exhibition platform. Think you’ve seen it before? Nomadic shipping container museum exhibits like Gregory Colbert’s Ashes and Snow, or maybe you’re thinking of folks like Art Van who roll up and park right outside some of the fanciest galleries around during major openings and give art away. Well this Artvertiser concept is very unique, which is why i wanted to participate when i saw this post.

“The Artvertiser is an urban, hand-held, augmented-reality project exploring on-site substitution of advertising content for the purposes of exhibiting art. The Artvertiser considers Puerta del Sol Madrid, Times Square New York, Shibuya Tokyo and other sites dense with advertisements as potential exhibition space. The Artvertiser is an instrument of conversion and reclamation, taking imagery seen by millions and re-purposing it as a surface for presentation of art.” Cool right? I certainly think so!

As of now, project initiator, artist, and developer Julian Oliver says: ” The software is stable and working well though is not yet ready for distribution. Currently it runs only on The Artvertiser’s own digital binoculars and netbooks/laptops with webcams. We’re still working on a port for Android.” Artists Clara Boj and Diego Diaz “are focusing on the hardware implementation of the Artvertiser Binoculars (Billboard Intercept Prototype).”

While all this seems so cool now, with hand helds and “binoculars”, i can only think of what the future may bring. Imagine when we’ll be able to plug our glasses into our PDA’s and immerse ourselves in personally chosen data layars. I don’t think it’s that far off. Remember the term virtual reality? I haven’t heard that one in years, but i feel like i hear the term augmented reality almost every day now. I think that augmented reality is going to be such a huge part of our lives soon and far into the future. We’re almost there, but we are already experiencing it in so many ways. There will be mega investment dollars from pretty much every industry i can think of, especially advertising/entertainment. There already is. What excites me about the Artvertiser concept is it will get people thinking about how they want to use this technology and maybe more importantly, how do we design and define the things we want to see in the world through the technology.

And finally… Here’s what i did: “The Artvertiser is looking for artwork to exhibit on urban billboards during Transmediale 2010 in Berlin. We are seeking interesting 2D artworks that criticise, recontextualize and remix the urban advertisements of Berlin.” So they posted a bunch of photos of advertisements on their Flickr page, and asked folks to “remix, alter or produce something entirely new that relates to the advert in question.”

I couldn’t resist submitting something so i threw a couple designs together…

The first one i chose was this Pall Mall ad:

Pall Mall Ad in Berlin

What i liked about this ad is that it’s blatant. Smoke some of this sunshine! “The world tastes better…” I was also curious about the glowing word “tiefpreisgarantie.” Google translates it as ‘ll deliver, another service translates it (i would guess literally) as “depth price guarantee.” Depth price guarantee? I automatically thought death price guarantee, so i reverse translated that and i got this word: todpreisgarantie. Tod means death in german, tod-preis-garantie. Kind of funny…Not sure if it will translate in Germany.

Not sure which one i like the most out of these, there something about all three of them doesn’t exactly work, i think it’s too bottom heavy in the text area. I played with the themes, heaven, death, lung cancer, and money, got a little bogged, then had to put it down.

Remixed German Pall Mall Ad - Heaven

Remixed German Pall Mall Ad - Lung Cancer

Remixed German Pall Mall Ad - Death

And finally i got so tired of looking at that that i quickly gave this one a shot:

la-roche-ad-berlin

Remixed La Roche Ad

I also did these two below, but i’m most fond of the girl above. Although i’m not exactly sure how the technology will render, I thought it would be nice in both submissions to see the remnants of the original ad. Artvertiser is accepting 2d submissions for this project until Jan. 26, 2010.

Laroche Ad Remix

Laroche Ad Remix

Here’s an image I created for Diana Alstad and Joel Kramer’s new book called The Passionate Mind. The book was released July 14, 2009 and i’m proud to be on the cover. If you’re interested in owning a copy, the book can be purchased here from Amazon, or here direct from the publisher.

I’ve known Joel and Diana for a number of years, i met them in the unique Marin beach community of Bolinas, CA.  Bolinas is one of my favorite places in the world. There is really nothing like it that i can think of. It’s a mixture of artists, writers, musicians, farmers, beach bums, salty sea dogs, and even a few isolated conservatives (ex-hippies). Many of the homes are handmade little jems, built like wooden ships or tree houses nestled in the woods. I’ve been fortunate to spent a lot of time there over the years, and I did a private sculpture commission there in the early part of the 2000’s.

The Passionate Mind Book Cover

“The Passionate Mind Revisited takes us on a liberating inner journey that can transform the way we look at ourselves and the world.
In this major new work from two of our brightest minds, Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad boldly address the idea that we are a species at risk and that we must pass through a process of ‘conscious social evolution’ if we are to survive. The authors assert that many of our social problems are products of our limited worldviews, beliefs, and identities and that we must understand and break through this lifetime of conditioning to see our lives and the world in a new way.
In its revelation of why conscious social evolution is both possible and necessary, The Passionate Mind Revisited speaks to thoughtful people of all ages interested in self-awareness and in creating an existence and a world defined by hope and possibility. Kramer and Alstad’s provocative ideas show the vital role of human awareness in meeting humanity’s evolutionary challenges.”
– from the back cover – Published by North Atlantic Books

About the Authors (website) :

Diana Alstad, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, received a doctorate from Yale University in 1971. She taught in the humanities and initiated and taught the first Women’s Studies courses at Yale and Duke. She envisioned the Yoga of Relationship and developed it with Kramer.

Joel Kramer, the author of The Passionate Mind, did post-graduate work in philosophy and psychology and was a resident teacher at Esalen Institute (1968-1970). He is a pioneer and legend of modern American yoga whose evolutionary vision of yoga freed it from its authoritarian roots, re-visioning it for the West.

A very fun couple I know has been trying to procreate for some time now. After what I assume had been many a tiring nights, mornings, moon cycles, and eventually doctor visits, they came to the conclusion that the only way to achieve generation next was IVF. This process is unfortunately cost prohibitive, so they decided to have a family fundraiser, and they asked me to donate a piece.

DNA Double Pop (for M + B)

Knowing what good sports my friends are, I had fun producing this image. I pictured this image as sort of a future visual aid, in the “Textbook of Parenting.”  The section which aids the explanation of assisted reproductive technology to one’s child.

I like the playfulness of this image. The vibrant sky blue birds and bees wallpaper-esque background, monogrammed Popsicle sticks, and the rainbow of colors in the stylised DNA sequence. While the Popsicle may be seen as an obvious reference to the IVF process, I like to look at it as a hopeful effigy to a child that soon, will be enjoying the multitude of life’s flavors on a hot, sunny day.