Ged Carroll

Category: culture | 文明 | 미디어와 예술 | 人文

Culture was the central point of my reason to start this blog. I thought that there was so much to explore in Asian culture to try and understand the future.

Initially my interest was focused very much on Japan and Hong Kong. It’s ironic that before the Japanese government’s ‘Cool Japan’ initiative there was much more content out there about what was happening in Japan. Great and really missed publications like the Japan Trends blog and Ping magazine.

Hong Kong’s film industry had past its peak in the mid 1990s, but was still doing interesting stuff and the city was a great place to synthesise both eastern and western ideas to make them its own. Hong Kong because its so densely populated has served as a laboratory of sorts for the mobile industry.

Way before there was Uber Eats or Food Panda, Hong Kongers would send their order over WhatsApp before going over to pay for and pick up their food. Even my local McDonalds used to have a WhatsApp number that they gave out to regular customers. All of this worked because Hong Kong was a higher trust society than the UK or China. In many respects in terms of trust, its more like Japan.

Korea quickly became a country of interest as I caught the ‘Korean wave’ or hallyu on its way up. I also have discussed Chinese culture and how it has synthesised other cultures.

More recently, aspect of Chinese culture that I have covered has taken a darker turn due to a number of factors.

  • Amerigo Gazaway + more

    Amerigo Gazaway

    A great summer soundtrack by Amerigo Gazaway who do some of the best blends of hip-hop with soul. More on Amerigo Gazaway here. Amerigo Gazaway has produced some amazing hip-hop versus soul and blues mashups including the likes of Marvin Gaye and BB King. 

    Unsafe At Any Speed

    I got this crash test video from an old college friend who had studied industrial design. The crash test of a modern car versus a 1959 model tells you a lot about how safety and design has come on in leaps and bounds.

    The massive improvements in car safety design depends a lot on owes a lot to Ralph Nader’s Unsafe At Any Speed. In his book Nader posited that cars were deliberately designed to be unsafe. I don’t think that it was the result of intentional design decisions, I just think that it didn’t explicitly put safety on the design brief.  

    I find it fascinating how the kinetic energy of the crash ripples through the Bel Air as if the car was a jelly mould as the metal and glass explodes to get out of the way of the Malibu. It’s also sad to see a car that has survived more than 50 years go out in a display of wanton destruction. More on design here.

    Unlimited Future by W&K for Nike

    Weiden & Kennedy for Nike came up with the Unlimited Future campaign. Nike opponents pointed out that it could be construed as a reference to their sweat shop factories. Either way you don’t see other sports apparel brands doing powerful brand anthems like this

    Manhole covers

    Pirate Printers: Shirts and Totes Printed Directly on Urban Utility Covers | Colossal – just waiting for a Stanton Warrior t-shirt or using city and prefecture customised Japanese manhole covers

    Marlene Dietrich as you’ve never seen her before

    US public broadcaster has been bringing some of its vintage interviews to life like this video featuring Marlene Dietrich

  • MasterCard logo + more

    MasterCard logo redesign struck a nice balance between  change and heritage. Wired magazine has more details on the MasterCard logo redesign and how it has changed or evolved over the years. More on branding related stories here.

    Snoop Dogg on a US game show via Zak Agency’s ‘cool sh*t‘ email newsletter. Legendary undersells the Doggfather.

    Masaaki Hiroi’s wooden toys look amazing. They are a great example of how Japanese artisan crafts continue to manage remaining relevant.

    Our Iain switched me on to Snoring (music to sleep by) from IGLOOGHOST. Which makes a lot of sense given the amount of focus on mindfulness and white noise generators in smartphone app stores.

    I went to see The Avalanches play their new album at Oval Space back in June and there were a number of people in the audience ignorant of their process and exceptionally vocal on social media.


    I honestly don’t know what they were expecting – Led Zeppelin type stage antics? They didn’t realise that The Avalanches are producers and turntablists. I guess this is what we get when people only know their music through their favourite playlists on Spotify rather than being able to read album notes.

    This was in advance of their new album drop Wildflower. The album is tremendous; Wildflower has been on heavy rotation in/on my iPod. It moves on from the ethereal quality that their first album had to something more confident in nature. Buy it, gift it to friends and relatives.

    The folks at who sampled put together this great run through of where all the pieces came from. Given The Avalanche’s creative process, this is a long but very worthwhile video walk through the Wildflower album.

  • Nice & other things

    Nice

    Nice murder-by-truck incident – My social media feed filled up with poor ad placements against news about the Nice murder-by-truck incident. Sesame Street’s handling of the event on the social media accounts was a paragon of how these things should be done on Twitter and YouTube

    Hat tip to our Ana

    Culture

    INDUSTRIAL JP / Record Label of Factory – really interesting Japanese record label that takes the principles of music concrete and turns them in to great house and techno tracks. The videos that accompany the tracks are hypnotic.

    My soundtrack for the past week has been The Avalanches new album Wallflower and this epic Paul Daley (Leftfield) mix from five years ago with an Ibizan vibe that belies cruddy summer weather we’ve been having

    This is what happens when you let Rus Khasanov loose with glitter and ink. The music is by Dmitry Evgrafov

    Web of no web

    Virtual reality lets Chinese customers shop Macy’s New York store on the world’s biggest shopping day – really interesting e-commerce offering. It is an illustration of how much China-international e-commerce is so important.

  • ABZU & other things

    ABZU

    I like my computer entertainment trippy rather than action packed like this trailer for computer game ABZU

    Best battle of the bastards meme after the Game of Thrones episode caused an outburst of video creativity. Equating Jon Snow to Leeeeeeeroy Jenkins was genius. Whilst we talk about the fragmentary nature of online content, mainstream media is still providing the key cultural moments.

    Design

    The outlandish Rolls-Royce self-driving car of the future: Vision Next 100 | ExtremeTech – it has more of the design language of a Bristol than a Rolls Royce. Mercedes has an interesting take implying that UNHW individuals would still like the choice to drive rather than a self-driving car

    Amazing analysis of typography in Blade Runner. The level of detail is impressive. It also speaks volumes of the set designers and visualisers like Syd Mead

    FMCG

    Even the world’s biggest candy company doesn’t think you should be eating this much sugar | Quartz – there is another explanation to consider. Does having M&Ms in a McFlurry cheapen the brand or act as an economic substitute for a bag of M&Ms?

    Philadelphia Is the Nation’s First Major City to Pass a Soda Tax | Time – research on the effectiveness of this could be decisive in future legislation. It is interesting how it has also being rolled out in Mexico and discussed at a policy level across Europe

    Online

    Grandma with incredibly polite Google searches | BGR – it reminds me of my parents ‘Ask Google about…’

    US asks to join Irish data protection court case – Schrems argues that the use of these clauses does not change the fact that Facebook is still subject to the US mass surveillance program, and that the CJEU has already found them to be in conflict with EU law

    Software

    Samsung to Buy Joyent | WSJ – interesting move by Samsung. It makes sense for them to by as software and cloud has been a weaker capability than hardware design

    WeChat Moments – The Holy Grail of Social Media Marketing In China | Racepoint Global – my ex-B-M and Racepoint colleague James on WeChat

    Web of no web

    Biz Break: Apple Watch outlook may be dimming | SiliconBeat – the rationale is interesting and is category-wide rather than an Apple-specific platform. More on the Apple Watch here.

  • Velvet by Brubaker & Breitweiser

    Velvet is the antithesis of mainstream comics. In a world of Marvel-dominated culture, it is hard to imagine more realistic material. Ed Brubaker got the freedom to publish Velvet after several years at DC, Vertigo and Marvel.

    Velvet is a welcome antidote to the superhero genre of graphic novels. Instead, you get a cold war era spy drama with modern storytelling. Velvet tells the story of a middle-aged Anne Bancroft-like secretary and one-time agent. The story gets going when she is set up for murder by persons unknown.

    In this respect, it outlines the kind of spy plot that would be familiar to readers of Len Deighton or Alistair Maclean. Brubaker’s choice of the early 1970s goes back to a pre-cellphone and computer age. This provides him with a broader canvas to work with.

    The story feels modern in its non-linear narrative that moves back and forth between 1956 and 1973. The story zips through Europe across both sides of the Iron Curtain as Velvet tries to find who set her up. The comic features highly kinetic action reminiscent of Matt Damon-era Jason Bourne.

    The first two volumes of it are available here and here. Volume three is due out in September. More book reviews here.