Mt. Sanitas

Lately there hasn't been much spare time, but once there is we're trying to catch some air and enjoy the great outdoors of Boulder. Recently we went on a hike on the Mt. Sanitas trail. For seasoned hikers it's probably not more than a challenging afternoon walk, for me, it felt more like climbing Mt. Everest. Still, the view on the summit was well worth it.

Understanding Group & Leader

The whole of last week we had an intensive course called the UGL (Understanding Group & Leadership) as a preparation for the year ahead at Hyper Island. It was very demanding and intense as we were there for almost 12 hours a day within the same group of people. Yet it was very worth it. There were many individual and group tasks that made us realize how we interact with each other and how we are perceived by others. In between the tasks we reflected on the happenings and the processes. And of course we were fed quite a lot of theory on feedback, leadership qualities and group dynamics.

For me the course was very helpful and if I keep using all the tools learned in the last week I can see myself becoming a much more effective part of a creative group. There are still two days left to reflect on the UGL before we start the next course on Thursday: Team building. All 40+ interactive art directors will go away for two days to a place north of Stockholm to practice group dynamics and become a functional team.

More pictures from last week are here.

What is you favourite deadly sin?

Eating shit, killing babies, beating Jude to death, anal sex, murdering a man of the law, pissing on the stage, throwing shit at the audience, spitting spitting spitting, tearing off Satan’s penis and beating him with it, farting, singing about rape, whores, paedophiles and rotten grandmothers. Those are just a few of the things the Tiger Lillies shared with us last night when they guided us from heaven to hell in the New Player Players Theatre in their new cabaret piece '7 Deadly Sins'.

Ninety minutes filled with darkness, laughter and obscenity left us entertained and our souls stained with macabre joy, greedy for more. In their words: 'Only fools and idiots are optimistic'.

Absolut Icebar

Yes, being a Russian I am a big fan of vodka. Last week I visited the Absolut Icebar in London. I imagined it to be an Absolut Brand experience, whereas it is just a bar. I wasn't really stunned by the architecture, a plain room out of ice. I expected more, stuff like ice sculptures and funky shapes. Even if it' felt more like moneymaking than brand building – it's still a cool place.

AHA!?

Sorry for reporting back on this so late but the weather has been to good to be inside – right.

This AHA! was great, lots of people, different people, more people than last time, thanks everyone for coming around! Thanks to my dear friends from creativistan namely Reinhard, Christos, Sara and Oksana for organizing this together with me!

Besides mingling, chatting and drinking we tried this time to find the ultimate answer on how make life more meaningful. We asked everyone to tell us their secret wisdom of life on an AHA! fortune cookie paper. They did. While people were reflecting heavily about their contributions to what is now know as the 'AHA! way of life', sadly, someone nicked Charles' bag and Lauren's iPod. Have a look at the pieces of wisdom they sacrificed to write:

• 'It's all about the people' Renee
• 'Don't scream at a deaf person' Camilla
• 'The path is hard, but the butterflies are flying' Julien
• 'Star today what you've planned for tomorrow' Christos
• 'Stand on the steeple and piss on the people' A.J.
• 'Always try to remember peoples names, it's just polite, sadly I remember no ones!' Damien Knowles The Kiwi
• 'Going down every little helps' Juliana
• 'Don't get caught in the shower when a fire alarm goes off...' Ann
• 'You are going to have lot of sex, but no tonight!' Anonymous
• 'Don't shit where you sleep!' Agatha
• 'Your shoes will watch your shadow so polish them,
  otherwise you will lose your shadow.' Sara
• 'Arts Lunga – Vita Brevis. If you can't do the best why even bother with the rest?' Oksana
• 'A bird does not sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.' Ray
• 'Peace still works.' Nina
• 'The yellow snow is the tastiest. Don't listen to the rest.' Peter Brown
• ' A Jelly Baby walks into a bar – bar keeper says what's that smell?
  Jelly Baby says 'Oh Fucking all sorts!' Will
• 'To thine own self be true.' Lauren
• 'An idea is like a leaf that needs rescue from the wind' T.C. Jeeves Basu
• 'You can't always get what you want.' Charles
• 'Don't take yourself to serious! Seriously.' Marco Warstat
• 'Pigeon, oiseau à la grise robe, Dans l'enfer des villes, à ma vue tu te dérobes.
  Tu es vraiment le plus agile' Jann
• 'What if OK isn't OK? If this was true, no-one would ever be happy.
  Strive for everything, but there is value in being content' Ant
• 'The Picture has a moustache. It's how you perceive it.' Matt
• 'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.' Tam
• 'A book tightly shut is nothing but a block of paper' Ray
• 'The path is long indeed, but the door at the end is not Blue.' Wal

Enlightened? We hope so. We can't wait for the next one! See flickr (or facebook) for more pictures. And come along to the one in august. AHA!

Art Car Boot Fair

I enjoyed a whole lot of Brick Lane on Sunday. My quest – to gather inspiration. After checking out Nike's brilliant exhibition / brand experience Made for Skate and a graduate show about Transportation design I visited the Art Car Boot Fair – 'a day of art and frivolity'. It was east London at its best. Besides having lots of cars (seriously retro-pimped) on the Truman brewery backyard there were dozens of small art projects going on everywhere.


Vauxhall did a great job sponsoring this event and appeared as a rather brave car brand turning some cars into great art pieces.


Most of the stuff selling at from car trunks was crap. In a good way. If you visit Brick Lane often you might got the idea that Crap is Cool. It's the new Black. (for more advertising cliches join here).


The whole crap thing shows a great deal about the current materialized lifestyle of people. We want more things, just to have things, we're even ready to buy crap. The only thing missing on these Pooh Cakes is a flashy Brand mark!


After they sold London to you last year, an art group were selling the world. For just three pounds per country. Sadly, I was too late to buy Kazakhstan, my home country and free it from Nazarbayev. Still, I've get my hands on Ukraine. Odessa could be a nice retreat during summer time. I will give this country as a present to my girl. Muah!


Carbon Footprint anyone? An indication that people finally start taking the whole green issue seriously.


For the loners, you missed the chance too buy real love. In bottles. I wonder how 'love potion no.9' is different from no.2. Platonic love?


Action Figures for adults, GI Joe taking care of Guantanamo bay – Great stuff.


There was a huge amount of stands selling drinks (the fun ones). Personally I thought 'The End of the World is nigh' is quite a reason to have one at 2.00 pm on a Sunday – Cheers.

My Trip to Japan

It has been already a while since I have been traveling to Japan but I still wanna show you some pictures of my journey. In march, my boyfriend Rick and me flew to Tokyo. We traveled 9536 miles from London Heathrow to Narita Airport and flew for 12 hours. For those who haven't been to Japan yet there is just a little thing you need to know: Everything is different.

We fell in love immediately with Tokyo and have been really impressed how clean an under control everything there seems to be. The food was amazing even though I had a hard time in the beginning as a vegetarian. The people are so nice and friendly and they where giggling all the time when they saw us. Even if it sounds strange but in Japan are only Japanese looking people living. In two weeks we saw probably around ten "western European" looking people. So you can imagine that a blond girl with blue eyes and a Yorkshire ginger bread man did stand out quiet a bit.

After spending a few days in Tokyo we traveled to Kyoto, than to Osaka, Kobe, Hiroshima, Oji, Nara and back to Tokyo. We checked in and out in hotels for six times, traveled 894,2km with the Shinkansen train of Japan Railways and walked probably the same amount of kilometers around the country. And now i gonna take you on our journey...

This is the Metro in Tokyo. The seats are heated and they are playing weired music to calm you down.

Japanese people are allowed to smoke everywhere. So that's what they do.

Reading the Metro map was a problem we had to deal with everyday. Sometimes it got really frustrating. This is the map of Osaka.

In 2005 Osaka was the second most expensive city in the world, Tokyo is in first place.

This is MushiMushi. Rick did win him for me in one of these crazy game halls.

Vending machines in Japan are holy and you can find them at each corner. You gonna be surprised because they are always working and they are clean. Unfortunately we couldn't find one with used knickers.

To see the world from Japans view is something I found very interesting.

A graveyard in the mountains of Kyoto.

This is part of the Fushimi Shrine. It's the largest and most impressive shrine in Japan. It's 4km long and you walk through red gates. The little shrines are there to pray.

Kyoto is surrounded by bamboo woods and hidden shrines everywhere.

This is a sculpture of a couple I guess. I found it in the mountains of Kyoto in front of a house. I was so fascinated by the sight that I sneaked in the garden to take the picture.

We even met Geisha in Kyoto. I saw them on pictures before many times but seeing them real was overwhelming.

The highlight was sleeping in a Japanese house with paper walls and grass mats on the floor. We found this little place in Oji and it is owned by a guy from Leeds who settled over nine years ago together with his Japanese girl. It was fucking great, an unbelievable inspiring place. We're gonna go back there once.

Guys, I could load up pictures endless because there are so many beautiful things I would like to show you. All in all I only can say that Japan is an extraordinary, bizarre place worth going any time. Kyoto with all it's shrines was something which really touched me and I found a quote which is spot on saying "Who doesn't love Kyoto doesn't love life". Sayonara

My special place

Just before our current placement I spend a week with my girlfriend in this very very calm place. We went to Sylt, an island in northern Germany. It used to be part of the main land but is shrinking due to erosion by the Northern Sea.

It was such a refreshing time without the hectic stress and all the people. Only this very small island – surrounded by the northern sea. Ah, that truly was a good place to get ideas, I close my eyes and try to go back there now as the briefs keep coming in and ask us for creative solutions... it's a retreat in my mind, to go back to, and be inspired, by the emptiness and calmness.

Crossing over with our car on a train towards the sun

The nature there is quite unique, very much untouched

Most of the houses on Sylt have 'Friesen' style roofs, they look lovely. © Túrelio (via Wikimedia-Commons CC-BY-SA) 

The whole east coast of the island consist of wadden sea, as the tide goes back you can walk it

We were lucky to catch some sunny days – kisses to you Zhanna!

Sand impressions

The west coast is covered with one of the most beautiful beaches in Germany – we shall go back during summer

We surely couldn't miss out on preparing some delicious 'Spinte mit Kräuterbutter'

Drink, listen & learn

I was just checking on iris's website, the agency we had our first placement at and discovered they have this most wonderful thing going on next week.

'Dry and drafty lectures have given way to inspirational talks and, er, draft beer. Monotonous tutors have been swapped for splendifferous speakers.'

They call it Under the Influence and it's a day – Thursday the 12th of April – where they gather a huge bunch of speakers from all the sweet disciplines such as creative, planning, digital advertising, graphic design, trend watching and more. All these people will speak about their stuff in four pubs around Borough Market, London Bridge. Check it out on their website and make sure you register yourself for coming along if you fancy – it's absolutely free, even some beers are. We'll be there.

ps. we're off for easter & we hope everyone will enjoy this long weekend!

Podfight

“8 teams, 1 winner! You decide who lives & who dies!”

Yesterday night the first official Podfight took place in London/Shoreditch. It was an unbelievable spectacle - full of crazy people ready for this big battle. For those who don't know what a podfight is - I'm gonna explain the rules quick: 9:30pm and eight teams are competing against each other in four rounds (for the first time). But there are only two teams fighting in one round at the same time. Teams are chosen randomly. Each team plays one song alternately. After five songs from each team the audience has to decide which team they want advance into the next round - so you have to make some noize! The loudest one measured, was 120dB. Guys, 120dB that's louder than standing next to a jack-hammer. And it goes on like this till there are only two teams left. Musicwise there are no rules, a energetic drum n' bass song is followed up by 'I'm a barby girl'! 2:00am and we have a winner - M.I.A. & friends, actually I am not quite sure, later it became just a great party with bizarre music. Anyway, if the Pods are fighting in your town next time, don't miss it! This was like the best party in London for us so far. For more infos, the line-up and maybe pictures visit their myspace page.

Confession

Found on Brighton Beach last sunday

When you rolled into my life, you really hit my heart and took everything of me, and of my room, and my garden, and my friends. Together we grow big and bigger and I am sure... we gonna roll on till we are old and gray.
I love you Katamari.

Monday at Short & Sweet

We enjoyed an exquisite fresh line-up of short films last night at Short & Sweet. If someone would like to join in and have a drink with us afterwards – we're there every Monday from 19.30 o'clock on. Location is the Cafe 1001, 91 Brick Lane, E1 6QL.

In order to stay interested we love watching and attending new things, we usually would not look at – or would not know about it. We think: Staying curious – that's one of the key skills in being a creative person.

A cozy place to enjoy some eye candy


Daniel, was curious enough to join in for last nights S&S