Advertising: Movies, TVs and Magazines Work Together in Web Campaign

As major marketers shift more of their advertising spending to the Web, media companies like Hearst Magazines are scrambling to keep up.

New York Times

World Premiere of Sufjan Stevens' "BQE" [Brooklyn, NY; 11/01/07]

Nostalgia for modernism + urban planning + indie rock + Brooklyn reference + orchestra = Sufjan Stevens' "The BQE"

Constructed between 1937-1964 as part of infamous city planner Robert Moses's master vision for New York City's social reality, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway rose as 11.6 miles of neighborhood-severing, money-eating, limited-access overhead highway grimness. The book about Moses's modernist cruelty and obsession with cars over human needs is called The Power Broker, a relentless, detailed portrait of one man's egomania in urban planning.

Which is part of the reason why, when Sufjan Stevens said he had written a symphony about the BQE, people got so excited. Maybe Stevens would, through the power of art, convey this bleak inter-borough piece of citywide dismay as something majestic, the way he had transformed Detroit or Decatur.

Known for his chamber-pop miniatures about humble white working-poor life, Stevens has become indie's populist orchestrator. But he's also enough of a fool to try his hand at large-scale composition, having boasted of writing 50 albums extolling the dignity of local culture. Fans who celebrate his outsider ("indie") ambitions to excel in academic forms clap for his being at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave festival regardless. Given classical's lust for young flesh and filled seats, the crossover of Stevens's rapt fan base into three nights of sold-out crowds already deems the event a success.

Pitchfork

Devendra Banhart and Paul Klee at SFMOMA

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is presenting an exhibition that pairs the artwork of Paul Klee with the drawings and beautiful freak folk music of Devendra Banhart. According to the SFMOMA, the exhibit, titled Abstract Rhythms: Paul Klee and Devendra Banhart, "explores the relationship between music and visual art." It features more than a dozen of Klee's works on paper along with thirteen of Banhart's drawings, created along with his new album Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon. Seen here at left, Klee's "Der Verliebte (Man in Love)" and, at right, Banhart's cover art for "Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon." From the SFMOMA:

BoingBoing

Welcome to the Rat Race: Steelcase's Desk/Treadmill Mashup

Anyone who reads the fine site Book of Joe knows that the man behind the blogging empire is religiously devoted to working out while writing, and prides himself on having integrated a treadmill into his workspace. Well manufacturer Steelcase thinks that this trend has grown beyond one individual multitasking in his underwear, and is poised to introduce a nicely-designed product called the Walkstation which seems more at home in a CEO's office than your messy living room.

Engaget

Sheba Is a Punk Rocker

Most Arab countries aren't exactly known as hotbeds of rock 'n' roll fervor, so, sadly, few Western bands have actually played the Middle East. But wouldn't a concert tee look cool if they had? That's the idea behind 26-year-old graphic artist Brendan Donnelly's newly unveiled collection of shirts, which sport the logos of bands like Joy Division, the Velvet Underground, and the Ramones (left), all translated into Arabic.

Style.com