So what else is on my list? Well, as a kid who grew up in the 80s, pizza, video games, and animatronic-animal robot bands will always be a big deal to me. Therefore, I’m dying to see Thursday night’s showing of that Showbiz Pizza movie called The Rock-Afire Explosion, “the story of a small-town car salesman, a struggling inventor, and an animatronic rock band, that quickly becomes an eccentric portrait of childhood memories, broken dreams, and the resilience of the human spirit.” Sounds fantastically wacky, huh? Check the trailer below.

After Thursday’s robot-con-pizza pleasure fest, the next film on my must see IIFF list is a documentary called Racing Dreams. Produced by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson of Race to Witch Mountain fame, Friday night’s tale of speed chronicles the lives of a group of go-karting kids as they pilot their dreams towards motor speedway glory. With the Tour de France winding down (and up the mountains) and the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard being my favorite spectacle in goofy name choice rather than racing, I’m really counting on Racing Dreams to tide me over until MotoGP in August. Check out a preview of Racing Dreams below.

Saturday, July 25,  marks the end of my film festival rookie season and the beginning of my wait for 2010′s. However, before next year’s IIFF comes around, we all have one more chance to see the films awarded for Best Documentary, Best American Cinema, and Best World Cinema. If you’ve missed the festival so far or were only able to catch a show or two, Saturday is your chance to see the best films this year’s IIFF had to offer.

Click here for a full IIFF schedule.

Phil’s Pharmacy prescribes the following links to combat Monday online anemia.

Indianapolis International Film Festiva (IIFF) – Only six years old and already pulling in some pretty notable films. Opening night had sneak peak of “500 Days of Summer” and last Friday there was a double feature of “Best Worst Movie” and “Troll 2.” Some films I’m looking forward to seeing are “The Dungeon Masters” tonight at 9 PM, “Garbage Dreams” tomorrow at 7:30 pm, and a documentary about the  Showbiz Pizza band, “The Rock-Afire Explosion” on Thursday at 7 pm. Films show throughout the day now through July 25 at the IMA. Full IIFF schedule.

Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption – A thought provoking collection of photos by Chris Jordan regarding the discarded. Here’s a question: if dinosaurs died, got buried, and turned into sweet sweet oil, what happens to motherboards and diapers?

Elizabeth Kolbert: Why are we so fat? – Speaking of mass consumption, “If this was about tuberculosis, it would be called an epidemic.” Ha! Check out this interesting read on some of the science-y theories behind our growing behinds and a scary observation about how people will basically continue to eat so long as there is food in front of them. This in mind, I’m going to have to rethink the compulsive popcorn eating I planned for IIFF.

Monday Music – “Young Hearts Spark Fire” by the Japandroids. Giving The Crocodiles a run for their money.  \”Young Hearts Spark Fire\” by the Japandroids

Phil’s Pharmacy prescribes the following links to combat Monday online anemia.

Henry Wessel: Anything that Catches my Eye – A short ArtBabble video of photographer Henry Wessel talking about his philosophy on photographing and luck. Example excerpt,  “you can do things to prepare yourself to receive the good luck.” Note: In a couple weeks I’m taking a vacation and heading West with a car, guitar, and camera. If you’re feeling lucky, prepare yourself.

Wataru Ito: Castle on the Ocean – Tedium is the message. Learn a few folds for yourself on ArtBabble. Swallow. Duck. Sparrow.

Charles + Ray Eames on TED – Good work to the Internet for making this TED video show up on Digg.com. TED is definitely a cool site, but c’mon, this talk is over two years old. There’s way fresher Digg-able design content on ArtBabble : )

Monday Music – “I Wonder Who We Are” by The Clientele. \”I Wonder Who We Are\” by The Clientele

As you all are hopefully aware, the leader of many a mechanized-two-wheeler assault peloton, Lance Armstrong, has come out of retirement and is competing in the 2009 Tour de France to promote cancer awareness through his Livestrong organization. What you all may not be aware of is that Lance has a thing for art and has commissioned some pretty notable artists and designers to create bikes for him.

For example, Marc Newson, whose designs were included in our recent exhibition, European Design Since 1985, is responsible for the graphic treatment on this time trial bike.

Marc Newson's bicycle for Lance Armstrong

The creator of the iconic Obama “Hope” poster, Shepard Fairey, was also tapped for a graphic treatment for Mellow Johnny (Lance’s nickname).

Shepard Fairey's bicycle for Lance Armstrong

And while there’s no image of the bike yet (that I can find), young British artist, Damien Hirst, is also set to chime in with a bike design for Lance. Stay tuned with a Google search and Lance’s Twitter feed.

In the meantime, my mechanized brother, Chalkbot, who is faithfully chalking the roads of the tour with LIVESTRONG text messages sent to 46453, wants you to check out some of his handiwork and follow him on Twitter.

Phil’s Pharmacy prescribes the following links to combat Monday online anemia.

100 Best Scholarly Art Blogs – For what it’s worth, our little blog is on a top 100 list posted by University Reviews Online.  For what it’s even more worth, we’re sitting with some pretty good company e.g. Eye Level, Brooklyn Museum, and Museum 2.0. URO, thanks for the nod.

The Art of the Brick – Art made from interesting materials is sure to catch my eye. Therefore, you know my eyes were totally caught when I saw that artist Nathan Sawaya has over 1.5 million Lego bricks in his New York studio that he uses to create sculptures like the ones found in his show, The Art of the Brick. Thanks to Abduzeedo.com for the eye catcher.

Speckyboy Design Magazine – A slick design blog that frequently mentions techy things that I care about e.g. Twitter, WordPress, Drupal, robots built with trash, stop motion Lego films, etc. Check out this blog for tools and tips for your creative front and back ends.

Monday Music – “Bull Black Nova” by Wilco. \”Bull Black Nova\” by Wilco

Phil’s Pharmacy prescribes the following links to combat Monday online anemia.

CoolHunting.com – With its emphasis on “ideas and products in the intersection of art, design, culture and technology,” CoolHunting just may be the site I’ve always been looking for. New, neat, and interesting stuff is posted frequently and with a PageRank of 7, I’m totally stumped as to why I’ve never seen this site until now. As for some content on the site that I think is worth a look, I’m into lighting artist, Marcus Tremonto’s The Paper Landscapes which reminds me of a little Tara Donovan mixed with Tron mixed with Portal. Also on CoolHunting, Ryan McGinness’s recent show that I’m now only able to experience via the web.

blublu.org – Home to a very cool stop motion animation film called MUTO that was created on regular old public walls. Street art mixed with stop motion is very satisfying.

Tweetingtoohard.com – I’m pretty self absorbed. However, I don’t think my Internet fans are able to tell that from my tweets. I should get on that. Until then, here’s a page with a stream of hilarious Twitter updates from users that Tweeting too Hard has identified as self important. A taste, “fan belt light came on in the 911 so now I’m driving the Cayenne Turbo S – the backup, backup car. Trying not to think about the Tesla…”

Monday Music – “Ecology” by Anni Rossi. She’s playing tonight at the Wexner Center for the Arts with Camera Obscura. I’ll be there. \”Ecology\” by Anni Rossi

Even though the show has only been over for a few days now, I thought it would be interesting and a little fun to recap some of the online stuff that happened around European Design.

As for interesting, turns out the European Design exhibition website was relatively successful in terms of traffic and Google PageRank. According to Google Analytics, through the run of the show, the site welcomed nearly 30k unique vistors and beat out our last two special exhibitions, Power and Glory and To Live Forever over similar time periods. For a young site with a short span of marketing relevance, European Design was able to muster a PR of 5 before the show ended. This is a little hard to believe but we also managed to keep the site’s bounce rate below 20%. That’s awesome. Good work.

As for fun, who remembers the European Design Facebook caption contest? I know I completely forgot about it until my trusted Facebook associate, Emily, reminded me about all the good ideas she’s had and how that was one of them. Below is a notable example.

It looks like that flower is "sponge worthy"... - Jake on Facebook

As for more fun, we also started up a Flickr group that fed into the EuroDesign exhibition site. Not only did group members get to see their designs streaming through our site but we also gave away a few tickets and some cool prizes like exhibition catalogs and Design Center gift certificates. Check out the Flickr group.

While I’m a little sad to see European Design leave, I’m super excited about what new interesting and fun online stuff is going to show up for Sacred Spain. While I’m not going to make any promises, expect some Facebook activity. And since it’s all the rage, my guess is that Twitter may make an appearance. As always, if you’ve got any ideas or suggestions, let me get ‘em in the comments.

Wordwide Womenswear Digest – WWWWD is a webzine draped in a satiny attire that some people call the Onion of fashion news. I call it the perfect prescription for costume curators down in basements, FIT dropouts turned librarians, and a childhood friend of mine that is about to pop out of Parsons. Way to go, Jon! Thanks to local fashion blogs Haute in the Heartland and ballcaps and neckties for the tip.

Amazing iPhone Art – I’m amazed.

$20 Per Gallon – A soon to be released book by a senior writer at Forbes named Christopher Steiner. The full title, $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives has stirred the green in me and makes me wonder what a sharp rise in energy prices would do to the museum world. Can’t wait for it to hit the library.

Theo Jansen – Here’s an artist that could probably help out in an energy crisis. I’m thinking a commission from a kinetic sculptor with a penchant for wind power would look really good next to an Energy Star certification. Check out one of Theo’s amazing wind powered creations on YouTube.

Monday Music – “The Strangers” by St. Vincent. Apparently, I have a thing for saints.\”The Strangers\” by St. Vincent

facebook.com/imamuseum – I’m a real trooper. On Friday night, nay, Saturday morning at 12:01 am, Facebook started allowing vanity URLs. As the IMA’s main Facebook logger-in person, you know I was poised at the keyboard right before the witching hour, ready to blast-type in the nine characters that would once and for all slap the collective Facebook faces of our main IMA rivals, the museums for Internet Memes and Artifices and the Iconoclast Museum of Art. Oh yeah, I also snagged facebook.com/artbabble. For you web folk, here’s some geeky Facebook URLs for ya.

EnvironmentalGraffiti.com – Came across this page as I was doing my normal morning search for shadow art made from garbage/junk. Don’t question my queries. Anyway, I’m into clever uses of materials and space so you know my eyes were like “let’s pop out this skull” when I saw a post on their homepage about green roofs. As I’m aware, the IMA has a green roof above its parking garage. Good looking out, EnviroGraff.

BadArtists.jpg – Speaking of graffiti, as reported by CNN, “artist Banksy, famed for infiltrating museum collections without their knowledge and spray-painting public buildings around the world, is holding his first major exhibition in years.” Neat! Here’s a link to some pictures. @dincandela – Check out this show if you have the chance. It’s at the Bristol museum.

Monday Music – “Last Dance” (Demo) by The Raveonetttes.\”Last Dance\” by The Raveonettes

The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists…never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little. – Banksy

Slow and self-obsessed? Way harsh, Banksy. I’m not going to chime in on that part of your quote. However, I do often think about the possible art the super bright, creative, and ambitious people in the IMA’s Design Studio would be creating if they had unlimited time and money and weren’t grinding out ads for me about Free General Admission (shameful plug). Of course, that’s not to say that great art is always created from pure passion without hopes of compensation, but haven’t artists mainly paid the bills by creating art for other people? I mean, I’m no art historian but a lot of great art was commissioned in some way, right? And while I understand Banksy’s criticism, today I’m going to point out a few examples of what I think are artistic advertisements.

The advertisement above is a general one for HBO’s programming. I’ve seen a few films in my day and have even been known to make distinctions between “films” and “movies.” Had the “short film” not ended with an HBO message, I could have easily believed this was some student’s art film project. Maybe HBO even hired an art film maker to produce this ad. Perfect use of music. Perfect use of voice-over. A subtle story twist. Nice.

AAF Addy Award - Best of Show 2008

The advertisement above is for Downy Wrinkle Releaser. Pretty funny. A clever artistic fold turned something as unremarkable as “wrinkle releaser” into something memorable and humorous. I like it and could definitely see it hanging on the wall up in the contemporary galleries.

AFF Addy Award - Special Judges Award 2008

The advertisement above, again utilizing some humor, is for pizza. Again, pretty funny. A clever combination of objects with a message you don’t normally associate with pizza sauce. Very nice. If it were in a gallery upstairs underneath a vitrine I wouldn’t have ever known it was an ad.

Banksy may not believe it (although I’m pretty sure he’s not as cynical in person as he is in print), but I’m convinced that bright, creative, and ambitious people aren’t necessarily wasting their time creating ads. As the examples above hopefully go to show, there can be art in advertising. If you have examples of your own, let me have them in the comments.

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