Intricate geometric patterns and rich hues distinguish the  woven textiles of China’s Tujia people, who call the Wuling Mountains home in western Hunan. In the nearby city of Zhangjiajie, the new China Tu­jia Bro­cade Mu­seum will be dedicated to the art of Xi­lan Kapu, or Tujia brocade, to celebrate the culture’s distinctive creativity and preserve an endangered craft. In a remarkable architectonic installation called “The Flower of Tujia,” 150,000 meters of red brocade thread creates an awe-inspiring centerpiece for the main space.

Designed by Yi Chen and Muchen Zhang of Beijing-based design studio YI+MU, the artwork spans more than 1,000 square meters along a grid of 20 beams, allowing the fiber to alternately reveal and conceal the geometry of stairwells and windows as one moves around. “The di­a­mond-shape struc­ture in­spired by the iconic pat­tern of the Tu­jia bro­cade is clearly vis­i­ble from all an­gles,” the studio says. Symbolically interpreting the 30-step process of Xi­lan Kapu into a three-dimensional piece, the design unifies and highlights the museum’s interior and sparks a sense of wonder that verges on the spiritual, a key aspect of YI+MU’s philosophy.

The museum building was completed in 2022 and an opening date is yet to be announced. Find more of YI+MU’s projects on the studio’s website. (via designboom)

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article ‘The Flower of Tujia’ Weaves History and Culture Through 150,000 Meters of Red Brocade Thread appeared first on Colossal.

Getting started in NYC

Dealing with an unpredictable income

How she spends her money

Time is such a huge asset. It’s not necessarily what you make, but it’s what you do with it.

Her future in music and beyond

Whether interacting with architecture or crafting their own sets, photography duo Daniel Rueda and Anna Devís (previously) find endless inspiration in the built environment. Grounded in their training as architects, the Valencia-based pair conceive of visual puns and whimsical ways to augment existing structures and spaces by adding new design elements and donning garments that blend in with the scenery.

Happytecture, a new book published by Counterprint, celebrates the last several years of their joy-filled practice of transforming ordinary locations into eye-catching, witty works of art. Saturated hues and exquisitely produced props characterize Devís and Rueda’s compositions, the result of scouting unique locations and finding imaginative ways to incorporate new shapes, palettes, and clothing. By precisely matching patterns or embellishing with bows, they add new meaning to existing designs and challenge us to see our surroundings differently.

Follow both Devís and Rueda’s Instagrams for updates, and on their website, you can purchase a signed copy of the book with the option to include a print. You can also find the book in Counterprint’s shop.

“I Light What I See”

“Weight For It”

“Strong HER”

“Sandtasy”

“Verti-go or Verti-stay?”

“Pink-a-boo”

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Daniel Rueda and Anna Devís’ New Book ‘Happytecture’ Finds Beauty and Whimsy in Architectural Details appeared first on Colossal.

HARTFORD — A $50 million redevelopment of a historic, but decayed factory in the city’s Parkville neighborhood — a remnant of Hartford‘s industrial past — could further boost an unfolding, next generation arts and innovation district in the area with more housing and start-up incubator space.

Owner and developer Bob Hussain and his family see beyond the broken windows, rotted floor boards and even a few trees growing inside the former Hanson-Whitney Co. factory. A sturdy underlying structure could support 100 apartments on the upper floors of the 3-story building on the southern end of Bartholomew Avenue with business incubator space on the ground level.

The plant, at 169 Bartholomew, is a familiar sight to motorists on nearby I-84 west, some of the upper story windows are painted blue, yellow and red.

“We are committed to this project,” Hussain said. “We will get it done.”

The Hussain family’s factory conversion plan comes as the Parkville neighborhood is making steady gains in building on a base of arts and culture that has existed for years, anchored by Real Art Ways, the independent film theater and live performance space, on Arbor Street. But the area’s gains also come with the growing pains of parking and problems with perception.

The city’s strategic plan of development includes the Parkville Arts & Innovation District as one of the 10 projects that could transform Hartford by the time the city turns 400 in 2035.

A major focus of the district is creating innovation space to form startups while providing space for them to grow and creating jobs at all skill levels. While the plan rests heavily on encouraging innovation, it also seeks to create new housing, after-hours dining and entertainment, and a thriving arts community —all aimed at revitalizing a long impoverished area of the city.

The district also seeks to tap into the roots of the Parkville neighborhood, once a hub of manufacturing turning out bicycles, typewriters and automobiles. Bartholomew Avenue is envisioned as the “spine” of the district.

The successful Parkville Market food hall is expanding and its developer, Carlos Mouta — a major landowner in the area — also is embarking on the $92 million conversion of the vacant Whitney Manufacturing Co. factory into apartments and business incubator space.

‘Security is the key’

There is now a push to form a business improvement district in Parkville, patterned after the one in downtown Hartford. Such a district would help oversee security, keep the area clean of litter, launch marketing campaigns and promote events in the neighborhood.

The plans are still in the early stages. But with the help of a $30,000 grant from the Capital Region Development Authority, which has invested in projects in the area, the improvement district could be formed by the end of the year. Hands on Hartford, the 54-year-old neighborhood nonprofit, will oversee the spending of the CRDA grant as efforts go forward to form the new district.

An early supporter of the new district is the Hartford Restaurant Group, the operator of 10 Wood-N-Tap restaurants, whose headquarters has been on Bartholomew Avenue since 2012. The first Wood-N-Tap was established a decade earlier in the neighborhood, at the corner of Sisson and Capitol avenues.

Phil Barnett, co-owner of the restaurant group, said the improvement district is important for the businesses that are located in Parkville but it is also critical for attracting visitors by creating a positive perception of the neighborhood.

“Security is the key to so much stuff,” Barnett said. “If you ask anybody in the suburbs, for the most part, why do they or don’t they go to certain places? It usually comes down to parking and security. And cleanliness is another part of it.”

“So, the perception is that you want to go somewhere that’s clean, safe and you have parking,” Barnett said. “Parkville has so many great opportunities right now, but we’re lacking a little bit of the safety and security feeling, the perception for the people.”

An improvement district can only be formed if more than 50% property owners within the district boundaries approve of the district in a referendum. Becoming part of the district means paying higher property taxes to fund the district, including the staff to run it. The city council also must pass a specific ordinance creating the district.

Mouta, a major developer in the neighborhood, said a half dozen businesses and property owners in the neighborhood have tried informally to assume the role that would be filled by the district.

“It’s been the same five or six of us representing everyone,” Mouta said. “We just don’t have the time. We’re not doing 75% of the things that we could be doing. So, we absolutely need this.”

‘Constraint to growth’

At the same time, the city is seeking to ease another issue in Parkville: parking.

Mouta is asking the city to enter into a public-private partnership to redevelop a surface parking lot that the developer owns near the corner of Bartholomew Avenue and Park Street, diagonally across from the Parkville Market.

The development would include a $11.6 million above-ground parking garage with as many as 400 spaces on the rear of the parking lot and a new building of several stories with 57 apartments over storefront space near Bartholomew Avenue.

“There’s no question that parking is a constraint to growth there, which is why it is part of our plan,” Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said.

The housing, with 30% pegged as “affordable,” or restricted to certain incomes, is expected to cost $17.9 million to build, partly funded with a $5.5 million CT Communities Challenge Grant. The state grant program aims to help fund revitalization projects that will help spur job growth.

The plans for the mixed-use development include a proposed agreement to phase in taxes over 15 years on the housing; splitting the existing lot in two with the city taking control of the rear portion for the garage; and then signing a long-term lease for the parking structure. The proposal still must be approved by the city council, and it is likely Mouta and the city would share in the revenue generated by the garage. The garage also would provide parking for the new apartments.

Hands on Hartford, the planned Petrolhead Cafe, the motorsports-themed coffee shop and bar, plus the expansion of the Parkville Market are just a few businesses that will need more parking — and that doesn’t even count restaurants and other businesses that will open in the future, Mouta said.

“With the expansion of the market — I mean, without the parking — we’re dead in the water,” Mouta said.

Collecting support, approvals

Mouta’s ambitious factory conversion, at the corner of Bartholomew and Hamilton streets, is next door to the Hussain family’s project.

The Hussains and their development company GRHUSA Properties have gathered support from neighborhood organizations and, so far, an approval from the city’s Historic Preservation Commission. But the financing plan for the 90,000-square-foot structure, is still in the early stages. The family hopes to secure historic tax credits and state environmental clean-up grants.

The family also is partnering with the Hartford-based nonprofit Girls for Technology, which seeks to create economic opportunities for women of color, to apply for a state Community Investment Fund grant. The grants are targeted for economic development in towns and cities with an emphasis on traditionally underserved communities of people of color.

Lisa Lazarus, the non-profit’s board chair, said the organization is interested in occupying some of incubator space that would fit in well with the nonprofit’s entrepreneurial goals.

“So when we partner with them, we’re not just lending our name, we’re actually going to be helping them develop ideas for how to use the space to meet the needs of the community,” Lazarus said, during a recent tour of factory led by the Hussains. “And, of course, we want to have an innovative space.”

Lazarus adds: “We’re hoping that it will be a full-blown, live, work, play type of space.”

Since acquiring the property two years ago in a city tax deed sale, the cost of converting 169 Bartholomew has nearly doubled, rising from $28 million to $50 million.

The family also had hoped for $4.2 million from a larger $50 million grant through the state’s innovation corridor grant program, which has not gone forward. The state Department of Economic and Community Development has said applications had not met requirements, which include matching private sector funding.

“So that kind of set us back in one sense, but there are other routes and that’s what we’re exploring now,” Steven Hussain said, on the tour. “And I think we’re making some headway there.”

His brother, Michael Hussain, said the family would considering joining with another development partner, if the fit was right.

‘This is his legacy’

Bob Hussain, a former pharmacist from Ridgefield, has been buying and rehabilitating blighted residential and mixed-use structures in Hartford for two decades, including a recent project on Garden Street. The conversion of the Hanson-Whitney factory would be the largest, and the family acknowledges seeking public funding is new to them.

The plans also have changed from creating expansion space for small- and mid-sized businesses to primarily residential. The proposal calls for 69 “efficiency” units, 16 studios, and five, one-bedrooms, all market-rate, with monthly rents ranging from an average of $1,263 to $2,175. An additional, 10 “affordable” units would have an average rent of $1,125, according to the Hussains.

The factory, long on the city’s radar as one of Hartford’s problem buildings, is also strategically located next to a former metal scrapyard now owned by the city that’s also targeted for future development.

“This is a large historic factory that’s currently severely blighted and a detriment to the neighborhood,” Bronin, Harford’s mayor, said. “We would love to see this building rehabbed and restored, and we want to make sure that it’s done right.”

Increasingly, Bob Hussain’s sons, including Andrew Hussain, are taking over the day-to-day responsibility for the conversion project — and they are pushing optimistically ahead.

“My dad wants it,” Andrew Hussain said. “This is his legacy.”

Kenneth R. Gosselin can be reached at kgosselin@courant.com.

We really, really, really tried to resist writing about AI.

But in the end, we just could not help ourselves.

And no, this article is not written by AI. 01010001010101. Just kidding. Or are we? Yes, we are.

The consensus opinion is that AI will disrupt creative production. But remember that producing creative is just one part of the job of B2B marketing. The first, and most important, responsibility of the B2B marketer is diagnosis: understanding the customer.

So we’re here to offer you a contrarian take on AI.

The biggest disruption won’t be creative. The biggest disruption will be diagnosis.

AI has the potential to change market research forever. And for the better.

Welcome to the world’s biggest B2B panel

If diagnosis is so important, then why don’t B2B marketers invest more in market research?

We’ll give you a simple answer: because most market research is slow, expensive, and flawed. We ask the wrong questions and spend $100,000-plus to wait six months for answers. In B2B, market research is doubly difficult. While it’s easy to recruit a panel of humans with teeth for your dental floss brand, it’s hard to recruit a panel of IT decision makers for your ERP brand. The cost alone makes market research inaccessible to most B2B brands.

But over the past few years, there’s been a quiet revolution in market research. Professor Jenni Romaniuk has published two seminal books that help marketers ask better questions of B2B buyers. In AI-speak, Professor Romaniuk’s “better questions” have helped fix the “prompt problem”. She is teaching marketers what questions to ask. But how to answer those questions quickly has remained an unsolved problem… until now.

AI is starting to solve that problem.

So why is AI so good at quick and accessible market research?

Because GPT is essentially trained on a copy of the internet, including trillions of collective sites, links and reviews. AI, like GPT, can ‘survey’ the world’s biggest online panel – the internet – to make brand performance assessments. And it can return preliminary answers significantly faster than traditional market research surveys, and at a fraction of the cost.

We recognise that speed and cost aren’t everything – data quality matters enormously, and humans still need to review and verify AI’s outputs. But when it comes to brand research, we’re in the “all models are wrong, but some are useful” camp. In our early tinkering, we’ve run two tests to analyse AI’s usefulness as a market research ‘co-pilot’.

And now we want to share what we’ve learned with you, our beloved readers.

B2B brands shouldn’t fear rejection, but being unknown

ChatGPT on category entry points

We believe that category entry points (CEPs) should form the foundation of B2B brand positioning.

Buying situations are what cause the 95% of future buyers to finally enter the market. To grow, your brand needs to get remembered in as many of those situations as possible. But before you can forge that link, you need to understand what all the different buying situations look like in your category.

So, on a sunny Friday morning in New York City, we decided to ask ChatGPT to generate a list of 32 distinct reasons why buyers might purchase CRM. In about 20 seconds ChatGPT gave us 32 answers. Answers like “to give support teams a 360-degree view of the customer information, leading to personalised and proactive support”. See an example below.

These are all viable CEPs for CRM marketers, generated in 20 seconds at a cost of $0.00.

It’s important to note that “elicitation” of buying situations is only the first stage in proper CEP research, as described by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. Prioritising the right situations based on the ‘3Cs’ (common, competitive, credible) still requires a follow-up survey to assess the relative value of different CEPs for your brand.

But in the meantime, ChatGPT can also write a survey to determine which brands come to mind in which situations. This is the kind of survey you would need to field to measure and optimise your mental availability:

Dall-E on distinctive brand assets

Professor Romaniuk has coined the term ‘distinctive brand assets’ (DBAs) to describe branding devices like logos, taglines and characters. But our foul-mouthed mentor Professor Ritson has a competing term called ‘brand codes’.

We’ve always preferred the word assets, since that’s a financial concept that resonates with CFOs, who secretly run most marketing departments. But recent developments in AI may nudge Ritson ahead in this rhetorical race.

Why brand codes over distinctive assets? Because brand codes are no longer theoretical concepts. Brand codes are now technical requirements. If your brand cannot be translated into code, then it will be impossible to harness the power of AI like Dall-E.

Most B2B categories are a sea of sameness with few distinctive brand codes.

We first realised this after we saw a tool built by a friend of ours, Noah Brier. Noah has a joint marketing and coding background and built a tool called CollXbs, which uses AI to generate collaborations between famous brands. He explained the connection between AI and branding to us in powerfully simple terms:

“In some ways, the goal of branding – to create recognisable patterns – is perfect for the tool of machine learning, which is, effectively, to recognise patterns in large datasets. AI seemed to understand which brands were strong and which were weak. When you run a collab in the system with Hermès, for instance, the other brand must have a strong aesthetic, or Hermès will drown it out. As a rule, the strong brands seemed to come out with better and more realistic results.”

In other words, brands with clear codes will soon have a clear advantage in creative development.

The best way to test the strength of your brand codes today is with Professor Romaniuk’s ‘Distinctive Asset Matrix’. But again, that is a survey-based methodology that costs money and takes time. Instead, you can run a preliminary test of your brand codes by asking Dall-E to generate ads for you.

When we asked Dall-E to generate a Guinness ad for the LinkedIn mobile app, we got the below image.

This ad is not going to win a Lion at Cannes and imminently unemploy any art directors. But the ad does tell you that Guinness has three very strong distinctive assets, the harp, the font, and the black-and-white colour combination. And it tells you that the Guinness brand has been so faithfully and consistently managed over the centuries that even an AI can create a recognisable ad. That makes Dall-E a fast, cheap, useful supplement to distinctive asset testing.

We tried to replicate the same experiment for our B2B clients, and the resulting ads were generic and could have been attributed to any brand. Most B2B categories are a sea of sameness with few distinctive brand codes.

Again, it is easy to imagine a future in which AI can scan thousands of ads in a category and generate a list of the strongest brand codes to use in your marketing communications. And Dall-E can keep us busy while we wait.

AI is made ror B2B market research

We will conclude this column with some final thoughts on the word “prompt”.

There is lots of conversation about the need for a future job called ‘prompt engineers’. But to a large extent we already have those kinds of professionals within organisations… they’re called marketers. After all, AI uses ‘prompts’ to return answers just like marketers use ‘prompts’ to measure metrics like prompted awareness.

AI will expand the market for marketers and market researchers. Every B2B (and B2C) brand needs to understand their customers at scale to build better marketing and build better products. Diagnosis is often slow, expensive and optional. It’s about to become fast, accessible and essential. And that’s what disruption looks like.

Peter Weinberg and Jon Lombardo are the heads of research and development at the B2B Institute, a think tank at LinkedIn that studies the laws of growth in B2B. You can follow Peter and Jon on LinkedIn. 

The City of Sparks Parks and Recreation Department has been awarded an $18,750 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The grant money will support the commission and installation of a public piece of artwork on Victorian Avenue.

“This project will create a gathering space around a piece of art in the Sparks community, as well as articulate the cultural identity of our city,” said Raquel Monserrat, City of Sparks Special Events Supervisor.

The City of Sparks’ project is among 1,130 projects across the country, totaling more than $31 million, that were selected during this second round of Grants for Arts Projects fiscal year 2023 funding.

“The National Endowment for the Arts is pleased to support a wide range of projects, including the City of Sparks’ commission of a public art piece to be installed in the Victorian Square Cultural District, demonstrating the many ways the arts enrich our lives and contribute to healthy and thriving communities,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, Ph.D. “These organizations play an important role in advancing the creative vitality of our nation and helping to ensure that all people can benefit from arts, culture, and design.”

The City is partnering with its Equity and Inclusion Advisory Board (EIAB), The Generator, and 39 North Downtown, to guide the public input portion of this project. 

The EIAB will help with the project’s marketing efforts, make connections with arts organizations serving minorities, and make recommendations on how to elicit feedback from the target audiences.

The Generator will serve as the chief art consultant in areas of the engagement events, ensuring that artists and art are central. They will also be key advisors on the technical portions of selecting, building, and installing the artwork, and assisting the selected artist to see that the project is successful.

39 North Downtown is a downtown merchant association that will support the Generator’s activities with marketing and volunteer support. Representatives from partnerships will serve on the selection committee alongside members of the Arts and Culture Advisory Committee.

“We will host five community engagement programs to solicit input for the project. These arts-based engagements will target diverse communities that represent Sparks,” Monserrat said. “We are also encouraging the community to take our arts and culture engagement survey.”

A call for artists will be distributed widely to identify artists to present design concepts to the committee and community. Up to three artists or artist teams chosen will present concepts based on the wide-reaching information in the arts plan and a tour of downtown with residents and business owners.

The final design will be chosen from three artists’ designs through a public meeting to allow input.

For more information on other projects included in the NEA grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.

(City of Sparks) 

DAVENPORT, Iowa (KWQC) – You have a chance to experience a wide variety of art, and not have to pay a single dime while doing so.

The Figge is offering free admission during the month of July. Visitors can saunter through various rotating exhibits, including “Beyond the Classroom,” which includes artwork created by k-12 teachers within 45 miles of the museum, and the “Life and art of Charles M. Schulz,”who created the famous comic strip, Peanuts. Peanuts.

“Our mission is to bring art and people together. We just want people to come and check it out and stroll the galleries, experience what we have to offer here. You never know what you are going to discover here, and it’s just a good time to come here and experience the art firsthand. If you came for free admission in april, it will be a completely different experience in July. There is always something new to see,” said Natalie Dunlop, marketing and communications for the Figge Art Museum.

Free admission to the Figge is being sponsored by Jill and Cal Werner. To learn about the various classes and programs offered at the Figge, click or tap here.

Copyright 2023 KWQC. All rights reserved.

Young people are increasingly using AI for various creative processes like making music, according to a charity.

Tee Peters, musician and programme director at Sound Connections, has been using AI in the process of making his music for years.

He said that for him, AI acts as the “perfect assistant” when it comes to mixing and mastering songs.

“Throughout my journey so far I’ve had times where I’m alone – I don’t have my full team with me, I don’t have my producers, I don’t have my engineer.

“Software and tools that are run by AI help me fill that void of the people that are missing in the room.”

Mr Peters also uses it to help create cover art and marketing materials.

“I spent a lot of time while doing music kind of figuring out how to do so many things as one person with a short amount of time.

“If I spent so much time doing a bunch of tasks that aren’t to do with the music that I need to complete, it’s kind of counterproductive, so AI has helped me a lot.”

According to a new survey by Youth Music, 63% of young creatives aged 16-24 years old are using AI in various ways, including music making.

The charity spoke to 2,829 people of all ages across the country, and identified that people over 55 were sceptical of using assistive AI – with only 19% making use of the technology.

Matt Griffiths, Youth Music CEO, said AI is particularly useful in helping improve accessibility and removing barriers that young creatives often face.

“So much of the industry has often been about privilege, and actually this gives people a chance who haven’t got that privilege to get involved.

“I think some of the positives are that for a young creative that’s often doing it for themselves so they don’t have the resource to buy in other people to help them.

“They have access to AI which enables them to write song lyrics, write press releases, write marketing copy and all those important administrative things that they can do themselves.”

Read more:
Marvel criticised for using AI to make new show’s credits artwork
Lawyers used ChatGPT to help with a case – it backfired massively
AI could make actors in TV shows and blockbusters unnecessary, experts fear

Singer songwriter Paul Martin said he questions the use of AI.

“There’s some things that can assist creativity, and there’s some things that can stem creativity.

“For example, beat generation, melody generation and lyric generation – if you’ve got machines doing that for you, there’s no point of even doing it.

“It’s supposed to come from the heart or the soul when you come up with a rhythm, it’s supposed to be a flash of inspiration.

“If a machine is doing it for you, it’s like, why am I even making music in the first place?

“On the flipside of that – you can get inspiration from AI that helps you learn melody, lyric writing, rhythm.”

He said there were also concerns around legal challenges that AI could introduce.

“AI generated music has learnt from hundreds of thousands of melodies and songs from original artists.

“Who do you sue in a copyright case?”