COURTESY OF STARNSTUDIO
Doug + Mike Starn on the Roof:  Big Bambú You Can’t, You Don’t, and You Won’t Stop You Can’t, You Don’t, and You Won’t Stop, Phase 1, March 3rd – April 27, 2010 You Can’t, You Don’t, and You Won’t Stop, Phase 1, March 3rd – April 27, 2010
New York Times, April 23, 2010 (video) Metropolitan Museum of Art 3rd week

News Release The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Communications Department
1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028-0198
tel (212) 570-3951 fax (212) 472-2764
communications@metmuseum.org

For Immediate Release

Contact:
Elyse Topalian
Naomi Takafuchi

Doug and Mike Starn Create Monumental Sculpture
for Metropolitan Museum’s 2010 Roof Garden Installation

Big Bambú to Open April 27

Installation dates: April 27– October 31, 2010 (weather permitting)
Location: The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden
Press preview: Monday, April 26, 10 a.m.–noon

American artists Mike and Doug Starn (born 1961) have been invited by The Metropolitan Museum of Art to create a site-specific installation for The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, opening to the public on April 27. The identical twin brothers will present their new work, Big Bambú: You Can’t, You Don’t, and You Won’t Stop, a monumental bamboo structure ultimately measuring 100 feet long by 50 feet wide by 50 feet high in the form of a cresting wave that will bridge realms of sculpture, architecture, and performance. Visitors are meant to witness the creation and evolving incarnations of Big Bambú as it is constructed throughout the spring, summer, and fall by the artists and a team of rock climbers. Set against Central Park and its urban backdrop, the installation Doug + Mike Starn on the Roof: Big Bambú will suggest the complexity and energy of an ever-changing living organism. It will comprise the 13th consecutive single-artist installation for the Cantor Roof Garden.

The exhibition is made possible by Bloomberg.
Additional support is provided by Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon B. Polsky.
The exhibition is also made possible in part by the Jane and Robert Carroll Fund.
Rope provided by Mammut Sports Group, Inc.

Gary Tinterow, Engelhard Chairman of the Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art, stated: “Although the Starn brothers are best known for their photographs, in fact their abiding interest is in organic systems and structures, as seen in their photographs of trees, leaves, and snow flakes, or here, in Big Bambú.  We are intrigued by the possibilities of this ever-evolving structure on our Roof Garden, which, when animated by the team of rock climbers, will become an organic system of its own.”

Big Bambú is a continually growing and changing sculpture that will be constructed during the run of the installation from thousands of fresh-cut bamboo poles—a complex network of 5,000 interlocking 30- and 40-foot-long bamboo poles, which will be lashed together with 50 miles of nylon rope. Doug Starn states: “The reason we had to make it so big is to make all of us feel small—or at least to awaken us to the fact that individually we are not so big. Once we’re aware of our true stature we can feel a part of something much more vast than we could ever have dreamed of before.” ]]> http://orthrusstudio.com/blog/art_and_design/2010/09/25/big-bambu/feed/ 0 http://orthrusstudio.com/blog/culture/2010/09/25/web-expo-nyc-2-o/ http://orthrusstudio.com/blog/culture/2010/09/25/web-expo-nyc-2-o/#comments Sat, 25 Sep 2010 15:38:30 +0000 Aniekan http://orthrusstudio.com/blog/?p=1403

Program Information

The program at Web 2.0 Expo will spotlight experts, leaders, and under-the-radar innovators, and in the spirit of Web 2.0, there will be ample opportunity for attendees to connect, contribute, and collaborate. Web 2.0 Expo is a place for creativity, engineering, and innovation, focusing on three conversations:

Education: a vetted, cohesive conference program to maximize the sharing of knowledge and expertise around creating the next-generation web
Tradeshow: a traditional tradeshow floor introducing builders of the Web to providers of tools, technology, services, and infrastructure
Networking: a meeting ground fostering face-to-face business development for entrepreneurs, VCs, partnerships, and recruitment

Conference Topics Will Include:

Design & User Experience
Development
Social Media & Marketing
Strategy & Business Models
Analytics
Community
Enterprise
Mobile
Real-time
Cloud Computing
Sponsored Sessions

Who Should Attend?

Web 2.0 Expo is explicitly designed to address the needs of technical, design, marketing, and business professionals building the next-generation web, including:

Business strategists
Web and UI designers
Product managers
Marketing professionals
CxOs and IT managers
Business managers
Developers in established companies
Grass roots developers and hackers
Companies and organizations tracking emerging technologies
VCs and entrepreneurs

Past Web 2.0 Expo events brought together participants from these—and many more—companies and organizations:

Adobe, AOL, American Greetings Interactive, Apple, BA Venture Partners, BP, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Discovery Health Media, Dow Jones & Company, EMC, Experian Interactive, First Round Capital, Great Spirit Ventures, Hitachi, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, IEEE, Intel Corporation, Intuit, Jet Propultion Laboratory, Labrador Ventures, MTV Networks, Magazine Publishers of America, McGill University, Monster Worldwide, Motion Picture Association of America, Nokia, North Bridge Venture Partners, Northrop Grumman Information Technology, RealNetworks, Simon & Schuster, Standard & Poor’s, Sun Microsystems, Symbol Technologies, The Heritage Foundation, The Wall Street Journal Online, Turner Broadcastings Systems, University of Richmond, University of Southern California, Walt Disney Internet Group, WhitePages.com

What Is Web 2.0?

Defining exactly what Web 2.0 means is still an ongoing conversation. Tim O’Reilly attempts to clarify Web 2.0, digging into what it means to view the Web as a platform, and which applications fall squarely under its purview and which do not.

WEBEXPO WEBSITE

]]> http://orthrusstudio.com/blog/culture/2010/09/02/dc-universe-online/feed/ 0 http://orthrusstudio.com/blog/culture/2010/07/20/broadway-night-out/ http://orthrusstudio.com/blog/culture/2010/07/20/broadway-night-out/#comments Wed, 21 Jul 2010 04:58:47 +0000 Aniekan http://orthrusstudio.com/blog/?p=1360

A Weekly After work Networking Bash

When
Every Wednesday till 8/25  (5pm – 11pm)

Where
Fashion 40
202 W. 40th St (7th & 8th Ave)
NYC

Who
Hosted by: Raqiyah Mays

Details
- Full Menu
- Happy Hour 5p-7p including Drink Specials and FREE Massages  (Courtesy of Just 1 Touch)
- Regular appearances by the casts of On & Off Broadway shows
- Dress Code: Grown. Sexy. Classy. No Sneakers. No Boots
- Last week’s bash had a room full of Film & TV producers, directors, actors, singers, screenplay writers, radio big wigs, and   theater goers. Don’t miss this week!!

RSVP: BroadwayNightOut@gmail.com

Moderated by New York State Supreme Court Justice Colleen D. Duffy, the panel included:

-       Ric Grefé, Executive Director, AIGA

-       Brendán Murphy, Senior Partner, Lippincott

-       Jerry Kathman, President & CEO, LPK

-       John Gleason, Founder & President, A Better View

You can learn more about Willow Garage’s ROS platform HERE, Also see a video about the PR2 and ROS program HERE. In the mean time check out this cool montage of the PR2s in action.

First Attempt

Af first, I decided to employ my photoshop skills to create my custom icon. This turned out to be nothing more than an exploration in the art of  frustration. After a few faild atems and some montroust creations i decided to forgoe this method and look for an easier solution.

Easier Solution:

So my brilliant easier solution was to google for PSD version of the Adobe CS5 icon. I really don’t why i even thought this would yield a viable result, but surprisingly it did, and quite quickly. I was able to download the psd file of CS5 icon which was nicely layered. However after diving into this I quickly realized tht this to would be a time consuming endeavor to which I would not be willing to commit to. So once more I abandoned this method for Yet another

THRID TIME IS THE CHARM

here is how you do it.. quick and easy make your own custom icon themed after the CS5 icons.

Step 1: Designing Your Icon

Go to Icon Generator.  There you will see a screen like the image that appears below.  Everything is pre-formatted for you so all you have to do is type what name you want to use for the Icon and the color combination. For the best visual outcome I suggesting keeping your text down to 2 letters both  in caps (the second capital letter is automatically formatted to be smaller then the first).

Screen Shot of Igenerator Screen

Step 2: Saving Your Icon

Once you finished designing your logo simple click the save button located towards the bottom of the page. The cool thing about this site is that they give you a wide array of  different icon sizes (See image above).  Please note that your Icon file is saved as a zip file so once you download it you must unzip the file. The Icon are saved as a Png.

Step 3: Converting Your Icon

You are not done after designing and saving your Icon. You must now convert it to a file that can be used to make the icon useable.  To do this you go to iConvert. The site is  really easy to use, you simply click the browse button, locate your unzipped file icon and click convert. iConvert also has this cool feature  which they show your recent icon conversion towards the bottom of the page.  NOTE: you should select the largest Icon png file to convert (256  x 256 px).

Screen shot of the iConvert screen.

Step 4: Downloading Your Converted Icon

If you successfully completed this task you will be taken to another page which says in big nice letters “Conversion Success” and you will be giving options on download packages.  Download packages are based on the type of OS you are running. Here is where I branch off for mac users only as I only have a  mac, therefore only downloaded the Mac OS X package. For PC and Linux users i am sure you can pull a tutorial online that will show you how to switch your icons once your downloaded your package.

Screen shot of the iConvert Success screen.

Step 5: Converting your Converted Icon

I know this sounds very confusing and even myself still can’t figure why this step is necessary, but for some reason your mac won’t be able to use your converted icon till is process through a program called Icon Droplet. But now worries the program is free on Versiontracker and you can download it HERE . Luckily using Icon Droplet is simple as well. Once you open the program you simple located your converted icon, open it, and Icon Droplet does the rest saving the file in the same location where you selected it from. Now your ready to use your newly designed Icon.

Step 6: Changing your old Icon the New Icon

locate the application whose icon you want to change in your Applications folder and hit ” Command” key  and “I” key together at the same time. This will open an information box where the current Icon will for the application will appear in the upper left hand corner of the box.  Note I made this tutorial after I already changed all my icons that is way the itunes icon is the same as the designed Icon I created. Repeat this process for the Icon you just processed through the Icon Droplet program. Once you have both information boxes on your screen (like the image below) you  first click on the  newly designed icon, if done correctly the icon will be highlighted,  then you hit  the” Command” key  and “C” key together at the same time to copy the icon you just created. Then go to the information box  for the application Icon you want to the change and click on it, then hit the ” Command” key  and “v” key together to paste and replace the old application Icon with the new Icon.

Screen shot of the Information Box.

Step 7: Create your arsenal of cool icons

Repeat steps 1-6 for as many application icons you want to change on your system

Step 8: ADMIRE YOUR WORK!

My Desktop with it’s new pimped out Icons

Nevertheless this blog is part of our company thus needs to be kept updated and fresh. So for the past few weeks I have been doing my best to keep the blog looking good with new posts. Which I must say myself, I have been doing a solid job seeing that I already have two full time gigs and no real blogging experience. With that said though keeping the blog looking good is actually all I have been doing.

My main focus up until this point was crisp, interesting images and videos, but who can blame me,  just look at our blog… it is sleek, simple and clean, a work of Design Art (I can see our lead designer cringing as he reads design and art being used conjunctively in the same sentence).  But sticking to the topic at hand, I only have been focusing on the visual presentation of our blog more than its substance. For a quality blog you need both…“Looks to attract and substance to retain.”

All my recent postings have been light on the content side of things, often featuring 1 or 2 images with about paragraph of accompanying text. Though they are quick to create, only taking about 20-30 mins per posting they are even quicker to read through which can be done in 2 – 5 mins depending on the post.

Not to bash the light content type of approach, which many blogs do infact employ. However these blogs which lack in substance make up in the sheer number of postings, some doing as many 50 postings a day which keeps there viewers busy clicking away. For us on the other hand who do about on average 2 postings a day, are at disadvantage.  Seeing that I am not about to bang out 50 daily postings anytime soon the answer was obvious…give our postings more content making them more interesting and valued to the reader.

This is easier said then done because the question as I conveniently pointed out in the beginning of this posting is…what to blog about?  What content can I bring to this blog that would create interests for our readers and add the value to our blog?  After some serious soul searching, a few red bulls, and a sleepless night I think I found a good starting point.

I will only blog about things that meet a certain criteria. Postings my be  A) Useful & Interesting to our readers, b) Cool or Unique, c) Serve some Practical Purpose, and D) Would most likely benefit those reading it in some shape or form. I know this is pretty general, but I have to keep my options open and I wouldn’t want to be pigeon holed in anyone category.

I am also opening this blog to suggestions for post. So if anyone out there knows something  that they are interested in and would meet at least 3 of the 4 criteria laid out above please feel free to contact me about it. I will certainly do my best to learn more about your topic suggestion and blog about it.

You can email me at: Blog.Orthrus@gmail.com

Which predator movie was your favorite and do you think this one will stack up to it or follow the path most squeals do, and fall short?

Learn More and See the Trailer Here