Tactile Mind

Subverting the good 'ol strip club adage 'Look But Don't Touch' with her new book of handcrafted "pop-up" braille erotica, photographer Lisa J. Murphy's Tactile Mind is not only meant to be felt, but "felt up." Certainly a (sex) positive step towards including a population often passed over by the porn industry.

Metal Machine Magnification + More...

Lou Reed has a new iPhone app that enlarges fonts called "LouZoom."
It does not evoke any atonal aural emissions, but Pitchfork provides plenty of snarky commentary about it, here.



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Reed will be signing his new book of photography, Romanticism, at the Steven Kasher gallery this Thursday, from 6-8pm. Exhibition of works in the collection will continue in the back of the gallery through January 9th.


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Just got a great new book with a foreward by Reed and contributions from Mo Tucker (and others) called The Velvet Underground: New York Art. With the inclusion of press clippings, musical scribblings, photographs, poster designs, interviews and tons of biographical tidbits, it is a real objet d'art. Gives further reason to romanticize the era, as if we haven't done enough of that already...

Vampire Taxonomy

This weekend was a big one for vamp fans (no further comment needed on that subject), so I thought I'd mention a new book by Meredith Woerner: Vampire Taxonomy: Identifying and Interacting with the Modern-Day Bloodsucker. Whether you delight in this stuff or think it's a ridiculous teenybopper joke, it's hard to resist the burning vampiric questions Woerner answers (according to the publisher's website).


Diet: Are they waging a never-ending struggle against the temptation of human blood or do they view the world as their personal blood buffet?

Dress: Are they decked out in leather with aspirations of becoming the first vampire rock stars or do they cling to Gothic robes and ruffled collars?

To those who have the constitution to actually read this book, please do fill me in -- I'm dying to know...

Abandoned Asylum Photographs

Christopher Payne's book of abandoned Asylum photographs beckoned me in at St. Marks Books a few weeks ago, and I haven't been able to get these haunting memento mori out of my head since. Dr. Oliver Sacks' forward on the cultural history of mental health institutions is equally full of pathos. New Scientist provides an overview of Asylum: Inside the closed world of state mental hospitals, and includes a sampling of 15 unshakable images.

Dark Entries

Author Eva Hagberg explores 25 spaces designed with a retro-futurist aesthetic in Dark Nostalgia. (Including some great downtown haunts in NYC.) A fusion of timeless materials for fully immersible interiors, we're talking "polished leather, velvet, reclaimed wood, and heavy metals," says a review on Flavorwire...




Purevile! has stitched together a fine new website. Do have a look and support designer Wren Britton's "Post-Apocalyptic-Victorian accessories and clothing for Time Traveling Dandies and Femme Fatales of all ages (and genders!)"

Attn: Poe Folks

As 2009 marks the 200th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe's birth, it's only fitting there would be a smattering of new releases on the author, (as discussed in yesterday's New Yorker article), and a film premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival, Tell Tale, based on his most heart-stopping story.

Dark Art Books

I found myself in Club Monaco (ouch) while shopping in Soho with a friend, and oddly enough came across the book, Black Paintings. It depicts the use of black in painting from the '3 R's' of the 1940's New York School: Rauschenberg, Reinhardt, and Rothko. Finding it amongst a sea of black, despite the overarching artlessness of the clothing around me, was quite heartening.

















Then there was Hell Bound: New Gothic Art, which I saw whilst perusing the shelves at thee best Japanese bookstore in NYC, Kinokuniya. All kinds of contemporary artists are featured inside, most of whom I don't know, which is great...