Who knew Street Art meets Singapore Nostalgia could be so retro-edgy?

These are from a stencil and freehand live graffiti showcase by slacsatu and clogtwo from ZincNite Crew for the National Heritage Board’s I Heart Museums roadshow.

I think ZNC are tha bomb, and their work around Youth Park bleeps like a beacon of life in an otherwise grey landscape.

This work’s not on the road anymore, but there’s more from the set at Behance Network.

And after a bit of a low period at Skate Park, there’s a new ZNC piece up there at the moment too.

Getting self-referential for a minute, I’ve talked here before about the tyranny of expensive space here in Singapore for startup creatives and also about the co-working space The Change You Want To See, in Williamsburg, NYC.

I know I go on about it a bit, but it’s a pet subject of mine. I was reading something in the paper today that included the term “building a renaissance city” and I’m sure people a block away heard me screaming from my balcony “they don’t come from blueprints, dipsticks!”.

I digress. Here’s some “I wish we had this here” eye-candy.

The Shelter is a government supported co-working space, which opened this year in Dubai.

For around $80 per month you get:

• ergonomic, flexible workspaces (with provided secretarial services)
• a cinema/auditorium for lectures and screenings
• a library housing over a thousand books on cultural and creative topics (including up to date reference texts)
• a small shop offering tools of the trade as well as design objects
• a brasserie offering affordable and healthful fare
• a garden, for much needed breaks from work

Imagine how valuable this is to small businesses trying to get started in creative industries, not to mention the kind of networking opportunities it must offer them.

pics (and facts) from Core 77

I watched Food Inc last week. If you haven’t seen it then I’d recommend vegetarianism the day you do.

After I’d wiped the really grizzly bits out of my eyes, an image that remained was a big camera pullback on one of those vast American hypermarts as the voiceover explained that although consumers think they have this myriad of choices, some gigantic percentage of the products on the shelves come from 7 corporate giants. At the time my head was still reeling from the cow with the funnel stuck in its side, but I think it was something like 90%.

Scary enough. And then he goes on to say that although you think it’s a wide variety of food, it’s nearly all made from derivatives of the same three crops, cleverly engineered in the labs in different combinations and with a variety of textures and flavours.

All this came flooding back to me because I was in a hurry on the way home from the gym last night and I thought a pre-made sweet and sour sauce might be just the thing to go with the pork and veges in my basket at the supermarket.

I’m a bit of a label reader because I’m adverse to a lot of chemicals in my foods… like the kinds that require 4 litres of water to wash them down, give you night sweats or make your hair drop out. I’m weird like that. Sure enough, the main ingredient of the sauce I picked up was corn syrup, which has become a bit like the Illuminati Pyramid for me since Food Inc. Apparently the American corn industry is quite the conspiracy.

Loose segue now, but it all led me to thinking about Singapore’s hawker food. I don’t think I’d be run out of town here if I revealed a secret we probably try to hide from tourists. It used to be better.

I call it the City Sataying of our hawker centres. Some years ago, a company called City Satay started expanding, and it turned out that they could buy all that meat, trim it, spice it up, thread it on to sticks and accompany it with a bucket of peanut sauce, and then slap a mark-up on it, cheaper (and certainly easier) than hawkers could.

Now it’s not impossible to get a decent satay in this town, but it’s pretty darn hard. Nearly everywhere has an identical product. The same goes for prata curries, prawn mees and a whole bunch of other local staples.

We still eat them, but often the thrill is gone.

The opportunity is there for Makan Inc, budding filmmakers. No charge for the idea, just pick up the fishball and run with it.

pic by creativespark

Yet another reason why collecting MP3s just isn’t as much fun, by Christian Marclay.

I’ve been off the grid for a while, doing all kinds of stuff. A lot of it is actually what my parents would call “constructive”, but there’s been a few time-wasters in there as well, and one of those was the TV show Entourage. I’ve just done the entire 6 seasons.

No idea why, but it was just one of those shows I never got to the first time around. I’m not even sure that it’s scheduled on Singapore TV. I suspect not because it contains adult themes, and our media doesn’t really think we’re mature enough to handle those. That’s not the reason though, because I can’t remember the last time I actually watched something on Singapore TV. Mediacorp… feel free to send me a survey form and I’ll tell you why.

On the surface it’s a guys’ fantasy about 4 friends (and their agent) making good in LA, but I found a lot to love underneath. For a start it’s in a tight, slickly scripted 30 minute format. But also, and perhaps this is because I watched 6 seasons in one continuous run, it’s a lovely example of complex character exploration. You’d think it was going to revolve around pretty superstar Vince (Adrian Grenier), but actually he turns out to be quite one-dimensional in comparison to the others. As an ensemble piece it unfolds quite slowly. The characters you start off hating you grow to love, the ones that seemed to be in the background step into the light, and the relationships between them build in complexity.

I think there’s some beauty in that. In my work and leisure at the moment there seems to be a lot of immediacy. It’s as if attention spans have shrunk to the size of a peanut and so everything has been sliced to sashimi-thinness for easy digestion.

Perhaps that’s true. Maybe we just don’t have the time, motivation or cognitive capacity to take our time with things anymore.

Or maybe everyone is just assuming that it’s true, and we’re giving each other what we think we want.

No doubt there’s a lot of cleverness tied in with immediacy. Punchy copy, lots of take-that-as-read, a great respect for the literacy of the audience.

But as that cycle gets faster and faster, I think at some point a new respect will grow for the long exposition. Because there’s a lot of cleverness in that too.

pic: cast of Entourage by Gavin Bond

So listen, I’ll come out of the cave and say I’ve got a bit of a thing for Batman. It’s harmless and it’s not like I’ve bought the outfit and accessories at one of those seedy Batman sites or anything. Well, none that I’d admit to here.

This mature bad-ass version is a model by Thiago Provin.

pic by creativespark – an ongoing series of experiments with the camera in my phone

pic by creativespark – an ongoing series of experiments with the camera in my phone

“The true hedonist can find as much pleasure in a glass of chilled water as in a feast for a king.” (most likely to have been said by Epicurus)

Back in the day, Greek philosophy was not just about thinking, it was about living. And not just about living, but about living well.

Six main schools emerged, including Stoics, Epicureans, Cynics, Platonists and Skeptics. Each had it’s own approach and it’s own guru and appealed to different kinds of people.

With all that choice, who would you have followed? What’s your philosophy type?

Joshua Hoffine

Zhang Peng