Gum is a great quasi-food that keeps our mouths salivated and satisfied. But elsewhere, gum litter poses a huge headache for urban sprawls. In Britain alone, the cost it takes to rid the streets of gum is $230 million dollars–3 times more than what is spent on gum itself. So 25-year-old design student, Anna Bullus spent four months in a laboratory testing different ways of creating plastic polymer made of recycled gum; thus spawned the Gumdrop Bin Project. Sprinkled around the streets of central London are bright and buoyant bins that encourage pedestrians to recycle their gum.

The gum collected from these bins are then mixed with secret additives to form a new plastic that Bullus is planning to transform into innovative products like memory foam-like seat cushions called the Chewy Pad:

Can’t wait to see these in Los Angeles!

As we are inundated with countless messages and visual stimuli, companies like Duarte Design make our lives a little bit easier because of their sole dedication to presentation design. CEO/President Nancy Duarte already boasts a successful book, Slideology which contains 296 pages of organizational goodness. The New York Times, Business Week, and Fortune 500 companies have already recognized Duarte’s talents, and as the company continues to expand, they continue to nurture an addictive and informative blog.

Since they are experts at communication, their blog posts are always to the point, highly informative, and occasionally hilarious. This recent blog post made by one of their writers, Eric Albertson, was an ingenius approach at explaining successful presentation skills as he used the lyrics from Justin Timberlake’s FutureSex/ LoveSounds song:

Image via Duarte Design

Today’s VJ feature will be on yet another European-based company, AntiVJ. They’re more like a collaborative of visual and musical artists who offer the complete package: combining art, technology, highly innovative spaces, and really well thought out electronic music to match.

IMAX technology used when this was developed. Holy smokes.

Audio/Visual performance New Sondgo City, South Korea, 2009.

After spending the last hour on their Vimeo page, my eyes still seem to be cross-eyed. One of these days I need to do a VJ tour in Europe. Anyone else want in?

What started at Headlands Center for the Arts Residency Program by Sonny Smith in March 2009, has blossomed into a full-fledged music/ art exhibition a year later! From April 9th to May 31, 2010 Sonny Smith and Gallery 16 in San Francisco will team up for the “100 Records” exhibition. Smith approached 100 artists to help design 45 RPM Record Jackets for the 100 fictional bands and characters he made up. With his strong ties to music (he’s also in a band called Sonny & the Sunsets), Smith wrote 100 songs that each of these fictional bands “wrote.” You have to give Sonny huge props for being able to produce 100 songs–each carefully crafted to fit the personalities of these bands. This Friday will be the opening reception at Gallery 16 from 6-9 PM.

The first 45 record jackets will be exhibited at Gallery 16 along with a jukebox that will be playing these covers. Here are some sneak peaks!

Courtesy of Gallery 16, San Francisco

Courtesy of Gallery 16, San Francisco

Courtesy of Gallery 16, San Francisco

Along the way, Sonny collaborated with fellow musicians to perform for his fictional bands including Kelley Stoltz, John Dwyer, The Sandwitches, and Ty Segall to name a few.

Here’s a list of some of the artists involved as well: William T. Wiley| Mingering Mike| Chris Johanson| Reed Anderson| Jo Jackson| Harrell Fletcher| Chris Duncan| Tucker Nichols| Paul Wackers and 91 others!

Gallery 16 will also take a selection of Smith’s music and create a limited edition Volume 1 box CD set. And Turn It Up Records will create a Volume 2 set of vinyl records as well!

Highly recommended art show, and we want to hear all the SF residents to tell us all about it!

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Sonny Smith: “100 Records”
Opening Reception
April 9, 2010: 6-9 PM
Gallery 16
510 Third St.
San Francisco, CA 94107