Busy as a B-Movie star.

Terrible I am! Four straight weeks of working for the tube have kept me away from my blogging duties and if there won't pop up any long breaks induced by excessive rendering of film grain onto noise free colour layers it might take another couple of days until I report back with some of the things that have piled up in the attic. In the meantime you might want to spent some quality time with our all time favourite Reverse Cowgirl and enjoy her latest story, Hardyman.

Just to say I'm still here – K.

Blog Action Day is here.

Well, the day is finally here. We all will be witnesses to wether a thing like the Blog Action Day actually does the planet anything good, or if the vast masses of uneducated citizens rather go shopping online for their next SUV or oversized plasma tv. Greenpeace, in the meantime, finds that the iPhone, on top of being tied to monopolist carriers of the countries it descends upon, features a slew of nice toxins, despite Apple’s promise to be greener with every new product and having the now even more famous Al Gore on its board of directors. In further news today, China vows to be looking after its environment in literally the same second they announce to build the world’s largest dam, forcing millions of people out of the region and obliterating nature in the surrounding area.

Finally, if you feel like you have something important to say or want to express your thoughts about the topic, you might want to join this afternoon’s chat with Stavros Dimas, the EU’s Commissioner for the Enviroment.

YT – Kay

Don't steal music. Buy for free.

The waiting has ended! Radiohead have finally unleashed their new album “In Rainbows” to the world! And released their music it is truly. Without the help from one of those bastardeous record labels they’re promoting and selling the album themselves. You can either buy a pure download (for as little as £0,00) or a gorgeous disc box, which is filled with £40 worth of silvery plastic and jet-black vinyl. The demand for these little gems is actually so high that the server’s almost dying from the load and wouldn’t let me buy a thing before I suggested the sadly low retail price of zero pound sterling. So for now I am listening to the new album and once the shop’s running again, I’ll sure as hell pay for their effort to get music to their audience without neither a record company nor drm. Hail the Radiohead!

YT – Kay

Public space. In my face.

Great! After waking up with summer cold and trying to get rid of it with
a tall SFCC Foo Foo and the usual painkillers I stumbled across this neat little poster. Combine this German love for kink with Cardinal Meisners demand for more sacral art to keep the country clean and christian and you might come up with something like Jack Malebranche’s J.C. Bukkake. But please not while I’m having my caffé latte with mint and paracetamol!

Worship the TENORI-ON!

Last night I took a mini break from my duties in the motion graphics industry and attended a concert of Berlin-Düsseldorf-based band To Rococo Rot at Munich’s Rote Sonne promoting their forthcoming album “abc 123” (wich will be released on Domino Records in October). Not only was the music highly enjoyable but I also got the chance to get close to their brand new TENORI-ON, Yamaha’s über-cool ‘visible music’ instrument which they've obviously got only a few days ago.

In case you’re living in Berlin you got lucky: there will be one last concert on Sunday night at the Babylon.

Cut & Paste in the City.

Bring your stainless steel scissors and the organic glue: Berlin based company Basteltüte presents us a wonderful collection of papercrafts that let you build your very own little shrine of Berliniana. Their sets include every important aspect of the city from the Fernsehturm to the Döner shops and recently even got blessed with the introduction of the brand new Berliner Tussen – a collection of our beloved stereotypes of native girlies.

A sunrise in the East.

I’m glad Russia is finally on it’s way to become a nation less troubled. For starters they now have “The Matrix Goggles”, a device to electronically layer one of seven filters, from ASCII to solarization, onto your reality so decay and despotism look much neater. And if anyone might think to disagree with their ways they will now be coming after them with “The Father Of All Bombs”, one wonderful, radiation-free super nuke that will ensure this country will not be mistaken for a random banana republic by anyone.

iPhone. Unlocked. Free.

Here’s about giving something to the community: Gizmodo feat. the usual suspects presents us with the first working free iPhone software unlock. So apart from running dozens of additional apps you are now free to choose your own carrier, and maybe even hook the little one up to the etherwaves in good old Europe. (World peace to follow soon.)

The good, the bad, and the artsy.

If you’re in Berlin this week you might consider paying a visit to the Illustrative Berlin 07. This exhibition in the Villa Elizabeth showcases a variety of illustration artists from all over Europe, and as can be expected you’ll encounter the full spectrum from beautiful, sophisticated drawings to outright tacky pixel bombardment.

Northbound on the ICE train #1712.

I just caught an early train and now I'm on my way to spend a 42 hour weekend in Berlin. Leaving Munich behind I'm looking forward to once more enjoy some cultural and culinary diversity. And a lot less of those sixties-style houses and mindsets.
YT - Kay

Still five days to go.

Just a short reminder that the Gilbert & George exhibition in Munich’s Haus der Kunst will end on Sunday, 9 September. So get yourself out of the house and have a look at the art while it’s still in town.

Dessau – kaputt.

Our flickr set from a derelict housing block in a city that lost about a third of its 100,000 inhabitants within 15 years after the wall came down. Some of the buildings had even been renovated before they were abandoned, and still contained traces of those who lived there a while ago. (Photography by Kay Friedlein & Claire Sourgnes)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kayfriedlein/sets/1620325/

Day Two. Post four.

I can't believe it's not blogger. Mobile blogging, nearly live from a
subway station that's almost too orange. But it is also, as a few other things in
Munich, slowly decaying behind a facade that has been maniacally
polished so often that most of its original ‘beauty’ has been scrubbed
off by now.

YT – Kay

Sounds pretty good to me.

Getting literally paralyzed by the abundance of brain-damaging ringtones on the internets and in the real world around me, I was pleased to hear about toneShared.com – a library of fantabulous soundbits created by musicians and artists from the electronic alternative music scene. And not only are these tones so much less annoying than commercial ringers, but also they are given away completely for free. So there’s little excuse not to get some decent sounds pronto.

http://www.toneshared.com/

Hold on to your lederhosen!

This as bad as it gets for a proper post: how could someone just come up with the idea of implanting iPod controls into a pair lederhosen? Obviously Berlin is much closer to Bavaria than anybody would openly admit, or how else could this strangely concoction turn up at the IFA 2007?

– via Gizmodo

My visit. Day one.

Bienvenue!

So I entered the twitter zone and the blogosphere. As prententious as it gets, this one’s going to drown in a sea one of a zillion massively useless posts on the interwebs. Just because I feel like I need to blog for the blog’s sake. But if, and only if, anything noteworthy happens, you will read it here first.

YT – Kay