I never mentioned it here and I didn’t manage to vote, but Volvo, Vice Magazine, The Independent and Yahoo ran this competition called Creative 30, to find the leading creative think-ers and do-ers in the UK. The winners have just been announced and the jury chose artist Katie Paterson, while the public vote went to milliner (isn’t that a beautiful word for hat-maker) Will Chambers. Paterson’s pieces are particularly intriguing. She makes various sound sculptures, influenced by science and nature and general cookie-ness. Charming stuff. 

But have a look at the other 28 nominated creative talents and check out their profile films. I particularly liked the work of photographer Jonnie Craig (see picture above), illustrator Mimi Leung, the beach chairs from furniture designer Max Lamb and ‘possible sculptor’ Daniel Mort.  
Nice initiative and interesting to see that a brand like Volvo wants to spend some money on this (Paterson wins £10,000 – Chambers a Volvo).

Apologies for the shocking lack of posting activity recently, but I’ve been on holiday in Japan. And guess what: the internet access there is surprisingly limited. Wireless: forget it. Internet cafés: if you ask, they look at you like they’ve seen a ghost. Because wifi is sooooo 2004-5-6, sir. Everybody over there is on their mobiles, surfing the worldwide wap web. Interesting. 

Anyway, Japan is a crazy, beautiful, funny place with lots going on. And they have good beer. So I’ll try to filter the creative info in my head into a few posts over the next few days. 

The first pleasant surprise came straight when we arrived. 

It turned out that the Tokyo flat that we had rented through a friend of a friend belonged to French ‘conceptual stimulator’ Item Idem. Not just a flat, more like a 3-room-installation-stroke-gallery. Thanks Cyril, for letting us stay in your crazy place. 

Yes, it’s true. Everything and everyone in Japan (or at least in Tokyo) is designed. Even the local laundromat looks cooler than the average London flat. Definitely cleaner. And technology’s everywhere.

So a company like Kenwood happily experiments with the design of their speakers. Check out these 2 beauties, which we saw at the Morphonics launch. The left one is meant to be hugged, so the bones in your body enhances the sound or something strange like that.
And the right one, designed by Claudio Colucci, was completely made in corian and costs something like €60.000.

Colucci is a pretty interesting designer. Some of his stuff is a little too organic for me, but at least he has a sense of humour, lacking in most design. I particularly enjoyed his Mutant Attack chairs, which were shown at the very nice Clear Gallery, next to some Japanese 60s/70s design classics from Shiro Kuramata.  
And he’s a funny chap in real life too. Him, his girlfriend and producer/curator Laurent took us out a few times and fun was had by all. I’ll never forget Claudio’s karaoke rendition of Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’.
Yes it’s true, everybody does karaoke in Japan.