Crowdsourcing, hip pop and schizophrenia

Art reviews of the end of the year will focus on two somewhat schizophrenic pieces of work.

One reflect a 5 year long art path of a man crossing the musical bridges.
The other is a bipolar art broadcast, the two works being displayed in a month.

Kanye West new joint "808s & heartbreak" features no rapping at all, autotuned torn sinister singing, sonic pulses, tribal drums and kid A-like fading bass synths. All that is far from warm and soulful preaches of his 2004 debut, the college dropout. In his early career, West first introduced a cinematic approach to the hip hop song, emotional evocations, songwriting and pyramidal instrumentations that are more folk music inspired than Jay Z influenced. Now, bridging the musical gap is complete : as Kanye himself affirms, 808s' single "Love Lockdown is just a great accomplishment in the idea of, like, Thom Yorke in the strip club."
M.West has exploited the current vogue of electro pop, but he has built something far greater in the process for two reasons.
First, the death of his mother and break-up with fiancée Alexis Phifer has unleashed dramatic emotions, which seemed contrary to the current identity of "electro hip pop".


Second, he may have created the first crowdsourcing album of music history. West posted a few songs on his blog during the week preceding 808s' released. A few days later, he re-upped new versions with changes in line with the comments that had been made on his blog. He tooked a similar networking approach in the studio, writing and confronting his stuff with the views of associates -singer esthero, rapper consequence, dj A-Trak and others - and using his travels wisely, making listening sessions with strangers, in airports or planes. How can we not raise the parallel with our new web-social dependant way of life ?


I'm still startled reading the "what are you doing right now" tag of some of my friends on facebook...(on this social website people use to describe shortly what they are doing, anyone being able to access the information) It seems like daily life and decisions are to be audited by the judgement of the community. Website Twitter is devoted exclusively to this way of social communication. One can doubt the legitimacy of this approach. There can be two risks : it jeopardizes the intellectual independency, freedom and roughness, passing thoughts and willings through the filter of common wisdom, it pollutes the factual and somewhat cynical european school of thought with cheerfulness and happiness, forced by the willing to please the reader (i.e. the friend).
About M.West creation process, both risks are minimized. The musician takes the best of the social approach, mining the tastes to create the breakthrough. Entourage input is not a constraint on creation, but a precious and fresh cultural background insight.

Will our web-social dependant way of life bring us the same successfull insight, or be limited to intrusive and friendly "pokes" and "what are you doing right now" tags ?

It's not only Rock 'n' Roll, Baby!

Being in Brussels last week, I had the opportunity to notice how rock star living can disturb one's mind. It wasn't the famous self-derision of the belgian, neither was the "art nouveau" mansion of baron Horta that showed us the depths of someone on the edge.

It was "It's not only Rock 'n' Roll, Baby!", an exposition being shown at the centre for fine arts of Brussels, ironically nicknamed bozar by folks and by the institution itself.
Among others, Sculptures by Bianca Casady, blood paints by Pete Doherty, large scale installation by Brian Eno, light sculptures by Alan Vega can be seen there.

P. Doherty does stuff with his own blood!?

The exposition's aim is to demonstrate the indistinguishable nature of rock and visual arts.

My favorite one is one of Bianca Casady's (member of cocorosie) sculptures :


Amongst her work, a lot of paints focusing on religion or female condition :


Be free to interpret those, I do like looney tunes

Also at bozar, an even more incredible exposition : Sioux in paradise by Johan Muyle

Native from Charleroi, Johan Muyle makes monumental animated paintings and motorised sculptures. Muyle takes a look at modern media streams, disappearance of utopias, radicalisation of religions. At bozar he shows motorised skeletons topped by his own head's replica. These dark and funny characters assault the visitors, revealing provocative messages.

Take the data overload and surveillance for example : one of our skeleton friends rushes towards the visitor, with a board telling "be careful, you're being watched"... One the back of the character there's a small TV linked to a camera that is filming the people in the room... So you're part of the show.
Another favorite one is a TV revealed behind red curtains under a blood rain, and broadcasting "Singing in the rain"...

Carry trade, false alarm?

A popular currency strategy, notably amongst hedge funds, carry trade have been a goldmine for investors hungry for yield. Following this strategy, investors borrow money from a cheap currency, such as the yen, and invest in a currency that offers higher interest rates. For exemple, an investor borrow 1M yen, sells those yen to buy 10 000 $, and then invest in US treasory bonds, offering 4% yield whereas the interest rate is near to 0 on the yen. As a result, the investor profits from the spread between the two interest rates. However, a dollar fall could jeopardize the return and bring huge losses.

Those higher rates paid by countries receiving the cash flow of carry trade can come from a large external deficit. Take US' example : imports exceeding exports, the selling pressure is strong on the dollar, hence the government offer higher interest rates on bonds to compensate the risk of currency depreciation. On the other hand, Japan has a strong external surplus, hence offering low interest rates.

Carry trade has a collateral effect on the economy of countries benefiting from the cash inflow : investor buying dollars to pile in government bonds, the inward pressure keeps the dollar high, which keeps imports cheap, and at the sime time bring the exports down. A few months ago, a lot of people were worrying that a carry trade collapse (for example caused by a strong increase of the yen) could bring currencies of all emerging markets down, pushing oil even higher, and breaking the equilibrium of global economy.

This paradox has been illustrated on the first half of 2008. Risk aversion has dried carry trade money. Consequently, the selling pressure on the dollar has prevailed, pushing the currency down and increasing the oil prices. But on august 2008, it has been revealed that thanks to the cheap dollar, US exports have boomed, GDP growth forecast being re-assessed to more than 3%, nothing similiar to the recession talk that have been thrusted forward since early 2008.

Now, doom-tellers have left the carry trade talk, the health of the banking system seeming like a more important thing to worry about.

So, carry trade, false alarm?

The dunk on McCain

From http://thevagabondset.com/blog/

Obama force one, maybe the best answer to Palin...

From http://thevagabondset.com/blog/

Want your own tee ?

"La Fraise" is a website that sells tee-shirts. So far everything is normal, except that their concept is an interesting one :
Designers submit their visuals, and the NERD members vote for those. The winning visuals continue their life, on tee-shirts impressed in the limit of 500 copies and sold on the website.

Life is colorful par
kiwimee EMPYSTRING

Cereal Killer par
DracoImagem.com EMPYSTRING

Given the colourful visuals and the limited editions, you'll make a friend if you meet someone that has the same tee as you...

Management guru rock star

Michael Eugene Porter is the nearest man to a rock star status when you talk about management gurus :

The thinker 50, which provides a ranking of the most influential living management thinkers, ranked him #1 in 2005 and 2006 (notably ahead Bill Gates or Alan Greenspan), and #4 in 2007.

Among others, he's famous for his Porter's five force analysis, which determines the competitive intensity and therefore attractiveness of a market, and is now a benchmark in the industry. Particularly, strategy consultants use this framework when making a qualitative evaluation of a firm's strategic position.

M. Porter redefined the way companies understand and achieve their competitive advantage. He also advised countries on competition and clusters of competence for regional economic development.

He's famous for his style, the extent he breaks up his thoughts on bullet points, which makes him a thinker frustratingly unquotable. The star has his own Institute for Strategy and Competitivness at Harvard Business School, and he also found the time to set up a successful global consulting firm called Monitor...

Naive New Beaters...

Where the buzz is, since early 2008 ? Certainly it has been built upon Naive New Beaters, an improbable mix between electro beats, old school hip hop yelling and queen-like guitar riffs. The trio brings this mix hard to cope with sometimes, but definitely funny, especially as the weird singer David Boring seems influenced by L.A. sun, O.D.B or "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" Nicholson's crazyness and the shirts of a chilean shepherd. The man lives near to the KFC Goutte d'or (Goutte d'or being some, let's say, interesting part of Paris), but comes from L.A., and has some punchlines and charisma that would be deliver only by few ones, maybe some Ben Stiller on ketamine.

Don't miss their videos :

NAIVE NEW BEATERS "LIVE GOOD"

Naive New Beaters / Bang Bang

The enigmatic painter

What is better than a few days off in homeland, when this place is in the french riviera ? Especially when a delightening experience occurs, a meeting with the "enigmatic painter" in Saint Paul de Vence, a medieval town between Nice and Cannes.

This enigmatic painter is Charles Debouk, at least as he calls himself. We found him in a paint shop, in the middle of the village's small streets, exposing Gerard Salomon's work :

As interesting Salomon's work might be, we've been a lot more entertained by the shop's keeper.
Loud voice with an eastern Europe accent, kind of picasso's 60 deep and dark look, for sure the man is charismatic enough. The man welcomed us and expressed some of his contempt for others artists exposing in Saint Paul : he thinks that they aren't giving praise to art, but just offering supply for the market, being boosted by the entertainment wishes of wealthy individuals, hence they paint monet looking, innocent landscape of the countryside...
He seemed to think little better of his friend Gerard Salomon, cleverly eluded the topic, and show us his own work as the real thing, beyond financial and art market considerations :


Charles Debouk co-created the art mouvement called Enigmatism, with his friend Gerard Salomon. Here's the definition of this mouvement :
"Enigmatism is a school of art in which figuratives images are presented in their original visiomental perspectives, projected directly from the mind's eye without interpretations or readjustements imposed by the standard of our optical measure"
Fine...

Debouk told us a story that sums up very well his ends in art. It involves himself and a rich buyer :
Buyer : paintings are too dark. I need something joyful, that will match my lifestyle
Debouk : art reflects the creator's feelings. It is fundamental in my work. It reflects my feelings toward the world status right now
Buyer : what's wrong ? Somebody died ? I don't see so much trouble to put all that black gouache on the canvas !!
Debouk : you really want to know ? When I painted that i was inspired by all the kind of rotten stuff there's in your head !!

The story says the buyer never came back ...

Another Charles Debouk paint to finish :

There's more stuff on http://www.enigmatism.com

Religious diversity and disease load : astonishing link

It has been proved by Corey Fincher from the university of New Mexico that the following correlation is true : in traditional societies (ie non urban), the higher the religious diversity, the lower the disease load of the society.

What kind of relation lies underneath this fact ?

In more religious diverse places, people tend to stay with their community (which tend to be smaller when there are a lot of different religions), hence minimizing the spread of diseases. The same is true with other cultural phenomenon than religion, as language.

The following step is to find if there is a real causal link between religion and disease :

1. Has religion diversity increased, caused by the fear of disease (high death rate in a society where disease is rampant pushing people towards god's protection...), thus decreasing afterwards the disease load ?

2. Or has religion diversity increased, totally regardless to the disease load of the place, caused by factors different than disease, and then decreasing the disease load ?Make your own way, then put it in the poll besides !

Thanks

I've got a problem with spending before I get it...

...Used to say rapper Kanye West, in his platinum single "All falls down".

"All falls down", that is precisely what happened to the keepers of america's business model axiom : "spending before I get it".
Those keepers are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, mortgage giants who faced serious balance sheet troubles in early july, being rescued by the US government, and indeed, by the taxpayer.

Those firms' model was created so as to provide liquidity to the housing market. Fannie and Freddie bought the mortgages issued by the banks, then repackaged these loans as collateral for bonds called mortgage-backed securities. The debt issued so as to buy banks' mortgages was very cheap : fannie and freddie are GSEs (government sponsored enterprises), which means that the investors were conscious that the governement was ready to back the papers in case of default, hence the low interest rates. They made their earnings issuing cheap money on the market, and buying high yielding, more risky mortgages : this provided liquidity to the housing market, boosting the "spending before i get it"...

This model was doomed to failure, some says. The investors knew that the GSEs would be back by the governement in case of default, and then provided cheap money to GSEs. Which mean that investors were conscious that the government and the taxpayer were those bearing the risk, not Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

GSEs' system goes against one simple principle of capitalism : those who get the profits should take the pain. On our story, GSEs managers get the profit, US' governement takes the pain. Profits are privatised, risks are socialised.
But can we say that all profits from this model are privatised. On the opposite, should we say that the liquidity provided by the GSEs has helped poor americans to buy easily their own homes, the profits being socialised too?
Arguing this position would be hard, given the huge rate of disclosure : in some areas in the US, 1 of every 100 houses is disclosure, pushing poor citizens at jeopardy. Moreover, economists minimize the impact of the GSEs on the cost of borrowing and the access to credit