Alfa60

ALFA60

Words by Jez Burrows, Thursday 15 November 2007

Yes! So many nice things coming out of this design collective in Lithuania! They certainly justify a handful of exclamation marks, anyway. Book arts, graphic design, audio, interiors and industrial design are all here, not to mention a fantastic website.

Activism, raving and vintage cookbooks – highlights from Nicer Tuesdays June 28 June 2017
Patrick Savile’s dreamy designs draw from 70s airbrush art, Roger Dean and Turing patterns 28 June 2017
Illustrator Nathan Cowdry depicts an unusual dialogue between two strangers in his new comic, Shiner 28 June 2017
Our round-up of this year’s UK grad show identities and show designs 28 June 2017
Nathalie du Pasquier opens first solo show in UK for almost 25 years 28 June 2017
Photographer Ian Kenneth Bird shares his top photobooks 28 June 2017

Work / Digital Sexual, surreal and disturbing: the weird work of super-skilled Claudia Maté

What if women were stripped to robotic facsimiles of themselves, composed of blank-eyed stares and heightened sexual characteristics? What if an online shop resembled a clinical, peculiar office space – a water-cooler orbited by signs and symbols of capitalism and digital culture? What if David Bowie’s eye became a disembodied globule, floating in space?

Emily Gosling — 25 May 2016
Work / Art The problems with digital art and why moving image is so important: a chat with Daata Editions

The problem with the relative newness of media like video, digital and internet art is that unlike a canvas or a sculpture, people can struggle with the ideas of how to show, sell and “own” them. In a culture where film, gifs and other forms of creative work are available online, everywhere, to many people the idea of what is and isn’t art, and how you own it, is confusing. While everyone accepts that video art and digital art are still valid and important media; there are few organisations making the leap into viewing them in the commercial art world in the same way we would more traditional formats.

Emily Gosling — 20 April 2016
Work / Web New Adult Swim project from the bonkers people behind some sexy Craigslist animations

Earlier this year we found ourselves mesmerised by a series of floating dismembered boobs, gently bobbing about to the sound of rather NSFW Craigslist ads read aloud. This project – Love Letters from Craig – perhaps makes it crystal clear why its creators at Cartelle Interactive were approached by Adult Swim to create content for its new online platform Etctera. The agency’s cheeky, surreal concepts seem the perfect match for the channel; and the piece they worked on, Giraffaconda, took the form of a game based around a “floppy neck giraffe.”

Emily Gosling — 27 November 2015
Features / Web Marc Kremers talks us through his new Tumblr-esque curated online video platform vvatch

Alongside its power to host a gif for every occasion, help avoid forming actual awkward physical connections with people in pubs and enable easy cheating for GCSEs/degrees/wayward spouses, the internet is glorious for its breadth. You name it, you can read about it on the internet – and you can almost undoubtedly see a video of it too. But while this never-ending stream of moving image is a blessing, it can also be a curse. With so much there, it’s incredibly tricky to find something you actually want to watch. It’s a problem digital creative Marc Kremers felt needed addressing, and the catalyst for his creation of new video platform vvatch.

Emily Gosling — 21 October 2015
Work / Web Nicholas Felton releases final ever personal Annual Report

Back in 2005, when people still talked about Pete Doherty on Libertines forums and Tony Blair was still Prime Minister and this writer was still in short trousers, a man named Nicholas Felton somehow managed to set the bar for the “quantified self” movement that’s exploded over the last few years. And boy, did he set that bar high, creating an Annual Report each year that laid out his personal data, from weight to how many miles he’d flown to the books he’d read and the photographs he’d taken.

Emily Gosling — 16 October 2015
Work / Web “Legs eleven, droopy drawers, dirty knees”: A clock that uses bingo calls instead of numbers

Everyone should experience the dusty glamour of a bingo hall once in their life. Sitting in a worn fabric chair, while eagerly clutching a dabber, waiting for your numbers to be called with a watery glass of rosé by your side. And the bingo calls! There are few games that allow numbers to take on such a typically British lexicon so indulgently.

Rebecca Fulleylove — 09 October 2015