A Movement in Detroit Music: A Mini Memoir

Ten years ago, when the Detroit Electronic Musical Festival was born, I was working for a Detroit-born record label called 430 West founded by the Burden Brothers of Octave One. The job was perfect for a restless 24 year old —I traveled the world with the 430 West crew, learning the language of the independent music industry and the politics of nightclub promoters, doing something I believed in. The year 2000 was a big year for the label— it was the ten year anniversary... Read More

Ernst Benz Keeps Time: Movement Detroit

Swiss watchmaker Ernst Benz is responsible for designing the 2010 Movement Festival schedule set for Memorial Day Weekend in Detroit. “Our inspiration was a modern interpretation of an arrival board,” said Leonid Khankin, the Managing and Creative Director of Ernst Benz. “We took the global influence of music and applied it to the concept of a flight schedule.” The collaboration isn’t happenstance — like most cool bits of ephemera it’s... Read More

2010 Chevy Malibu: Lee Quinones and Tamara Warren Take Turns

Artist Lee Quinones and Gotryke Editor Tamara Warren have big biased love for everything Detroit made, but with a healthy dose of skepticism. In order to ride through the storm, they believe Detroit must raise the bar. They took turns driving the 2010 Chevy Malibu through New York streets last week.   Here’s what they have to say: Lee: I have a strong suspicion the new 2010 Chevrolet Malibu 2LT is really gunning for the historic Ford Taurus position and not just taking... Read More

Marianne Keith: Tales from the Road

Marianne Keith is a familiar face on the LA scene, a young woman and her guitar singing wistful folk songs with a hint of Stevie Knicks-style sentiment on songs like “Everyone Leaves.” Her third album Cathartic is in stores. Keith spoke to Tamara Warren about overcoming her fear of freeways and learning to live life on the road. On learning to drive: I grew up in Redlands, an hour outside of Los Angeles. My first car was a 1998 Ford Explorer. It was my parents’... Read More

Ride with Tamara Warren: 2010 Mercedes-Benz E350 Coupe

To assess the attributes of the Mercedes-Benz E350 we’re visiting the modern art section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art today. We’ll pay close attention to Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Juan Gris. The cubists are central to our point. Mercedes-Benz claims that the twin-headlight face of the 210  E-Class has cubist-like features. In cubism, objects are deconstructed and redefined in an abstract manner, to accentuate the interplay of angles, creating a sense... Read More

24 Hour Fantasies from Nurburging

I’m reading reports of the dramatic ending of Nurburging 24 and I’m getting recurrent fantasies about making it through a 24-hour race. At the top of my list is the pinncle Lemans, but I’d take Nurburing. 200 cars and 700 drivers.. It’s like the best of both of my coming of age years combined  — all-night clubbing and fast cars mixed in one. In the rest of the world, motor sports of these sports are big news. You have to hang around Speed TV... Read More

Ford Goes Blue with Social Networking

Ford has teamed up with the University of Michigan to launch to the American Journey 2.0, a contest to look on the horizon of social networking through the lens of the college classroom. U of M students competed to make the most innovative tech apps in a course. Their creations include location-based entertainment and fuel economy improvement guidance. The winning entry is a Caravan Track, and a prototype of it runs in a Ford Fiesta research vehicle to the Maker Faire in the... Read More

MIT CityCar at Cooper-Hewitt

The National Design Triennial: Why Design Now? opened this week at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Mobility, a hot topic in design centers, is one the eight themes explored in 134 projects on view at the exhibit through January. Projects range from the IDEA Plug-In Hybrid Electric Fleet Car, a high-speed self propelled train and the IF Mode Folding Bicycle. Each project chosen was created over the last three years and represents a smattering of the innovation that’s... Read More

Finland’s Samuli Putro plays at Scandinavia House

The many faces of Samuli Putro; Foto: Priscilla Vázquez Always on the look out for new and interesting music, I was recently put on to Scandinavia House’s new emerging artist music series, “Out of Scandinavia, Out of Context.” The series features a musical performance by a different Nordic artist every first Thursday of the month from April through August 2010. Last Thursday I headed uptown towards 58 Park Ave to witness Samuli Putro offering his voice... Read More

SolPix at Cooper Hewitt

We love the Design Triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Here is the first of several installments: SolPix, Energy-Positive Media Skin is a solar powered sun shading media wall system created by Simone Giostra & Partners Architects and designed by Giostra. Giostra collaborated with artists Jeremy Rotsztain and Rory Nugent on the installation.Permasteelisa North America manufactured and installed the media skin. It features a large scale color LED display... Read More