The fashion and art publication Visionaire has continuously used a variety of unique formats to present its content. For the 57th issue, the publication draws inspiration from the two-seater Smart Fortwo car. Visionaire 57 “2010″ will be the first plug-in electric issue in the publication’s history. As seen in the photo above, the plug is shaped like Daimler’s compact automobile. The magazine uses electricity to illuminate 365 pieces of art displayed in the form of a daily calendar.

Visionaire 57 was assembled by 52 renowned guest curators and culture icons, including artist John Baldessari, museum curator Klaus Biesenbach (MoMA), fashion designers Raf Simons and Marc Jacobs, and the architect Zaha Hadid. Natalie Portman and Tilda Swinton also contributed to the publication. Visionaire began in 1991 and now publishes three times a year, each issue with a drastically different format for delivering avant-garde and cutting edge artistic presentations. Visionaire 2010 is limited-edition with only 4,000 copies and will be available for $295 in October.

[Via Design Crave and Auto Blog Green]

We are seeing a trend where marker drawings are playing an interesting role at fashion events in New York. This past Sunday was the closing party of the Wish You Were Here Swap in the LES, a retail pop-up project featuring goods from London’s Newburgh Quarter. At the party we noticed the London-bred artist-in-residence, Shantell Martin, decorating peoples’ faces and bodies with markers which she called Line Drawings. These animations truly seemed to echo Martin’s work. Her series of line drawings are created in sync with the energy of the live performance during the closing party.

This week marker art was seen again. For Rodarte’s latest collection for New York Fashion Week, WWD captured body art on the models’ arms and necks drawn with heavy black markers.  The marker art appears to add a mesmerizing, tribal-quality to the pieces of destroyed leather, scrap beads, and burnt knitwear that comprised of the collection. The drawings produce a darker dimension to the futuristic aesthetic which the Mulleavy sisters are known to create. The “idea that someone could ‘be scarred and still beautiful’ was the collection’s leitmotif,” as described by Style.com. One would think it’s about the clothes, but it’s interesting to see this decorative art at staged fashion events.

Photos by Shantell Martin, Style.com and WWD

Shantell Martin

Rodarte

Bijin-tokei is a Japanese website that photographs girls on the street in real-time and with non-stop updates. Every minute of the hour, cute girls are featured holding up a blackboard with the time written in a white marker. Bijin-tokei call themselves “a 1 minute automatic update site” and refreshes a new photograph every minute. Details like the girl’s name, birthday, hometown, height, blood type, occupation, favorite website, and even body measurements are recorded for a heightened voyeur appeal.

The photos appear to be taken in shopping centers around Shibuya and Harajuku in Tokyo, featuring what seems to be real girls with a fashionable edge. Though bijin-tokei is an amusing concept and interesting to share with friends, the purpose of the project still remains a mystery. It’s also available to purchase as an iPhone app.

bijin-tokei (English)

New York now probably has the grandest Wi-Fi hotspot in the country. Yesterday, the New York Public Library opened its elegant Edna Barnes Salomon Room in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building as a reading room specifically for online users. In recent years, the room has been used mostly for special exhibitions and rental space for private engagements.

Built in 1911, the Schwarzman Building houses the library’s research collection. The Beaux-Arts room is decorated in the classical style with 4,500 square foot of rectangular space and boasts dark maple wood floors. It has seating for 128 people on brown leather chairs and custom-made black walnut tables, according to the library.

You can bring your own laptop or borrow one for free starting July 28.

This augments the Library Renaissance trend by offering technology and connectivity in a historical space during times of need.

[via LA Times]