Recycled Washing Machine Lamps Combine Bold, Unexpected Materials : TreeHugger treehugger.com/sustainable-pr… via @TreeHugger—
Fish & Bicycles (@FishandBicycles) February 10, 2012

The claim was that their tapes were so good you wouldn’t be able to tell a live performance from a recording if you were blindfolded.

Anyway, I thought of that old ad copy when I saw a video at Pitchfork of Bon Iver‘s Justin Vernon performing with The Roots on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

When it comes to music, as I’ve written before, I’m often very late to the party, so I admit that it’s a bit ridiculous that, when Justin Vernon first put his mouth to the microphone and out came this vocal drenched in Auto-Tune, I was seriously taken aback.

The debate’s been raging for quite some time (just Google a while, you’ll see) as to the artistic legitimacy of this technology, a technology that can both correct bad singing or digitally embellish a vocal to create sounds that would be impossible to recreate without it. But, I’m pretty sure that this is the first time I’ve ever seen Auto-Tune used in a live performance, and I have to say that I have really mixed feelings about it.

On one hand, it seems like it’s no different than a tremolo bar or Wah-Wah pedal or a thousand other electronic effects for an electric guitar. It’s just another tool in a musician’s tool box, and it can be used well or used poorly or overused, depending on the quality of the artist using it.

On the other hand, in a live setting it just seems odd. That’s it. Not wrong, just odd.

The truth is, there’s no doubt that Justin Vernon is a talented vocalist, and there’s a wonderful video of him singing a cappella with two of his mates to prove it. At the same time, I had no problem falling in love with his Auto-Tune-heavy song Woods, as I wrote in June 2011.

For now, I’ll leave it up to you. Here’s the clip from Fallon, an extended version of the Bon Iver song Perth.

I’ve become a Christopher “ThisIsColossal” Jobson fanboy.

The thing is, he posts the most consistently interesting, regularly beautiful, and occasionally astounding art and design of any site I know.

Just a week or so ago, I blogged about an artist working with paper, Claire Brewster, whom I discovered at Colossal, and now today I’m blown away at Colossal once again, by another artist working with paper in a painstaking technique that is hard to imagine having the patience for.

But, oh the results! (You MUST click on the lede photo to see exactly what’s going on there.)

By now, rolled paper crafts are fairly popular, fueled originally by a variety of fair trade importers supporting microbusinesses in Africa, and you can now find bowls and picture frames and coasters at art fairs and import stores far and wide.

But Valerie Buess takes this idea to a whole other level, creating stunning objects both abstract and representational. Her work is not confined to this rolled paper technique, so do treat yourself to a nice chunk of time to explore her website, where you can view a vast collection of her work.

Here are some of my favorites:

If you’re like me, you’ve considered doing something to these chairs, to make them attractive once again, but if you’re honest with yourself, you know that they will never really be comfortable to sit in again.

For instance, my wife and I have been shopping for dining chairs for months, when a friend suggested that we collect an assortment of old wooden chairs, each chair different from the other, and then paint them all the same color, high gloss of course.

Sounds like a great idea, huh?

Well, from a strictly aesthetic perspective it is a great idea. But, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, knowing that I want people sitting around my dining table to be so comfortable that they will want to remain there for hours, enjoying food and drink and each other’s company, and I’m certain that people would be squirming around in those hard wooden chairs wishing they were just about anywhere else before the entree is served.

This installment of my Upcycling series, then, takes a look at some very cool ideas for repurposing old chairs, with all but one taking seating out of the equation entirely.

Via Do The Green Thing, here are my faves:

The Boulder EV is the first electric commercial truck capable of reaching 70 mph. bit.ly/zBFwQA—
  (@inhabitat) February 06, 2012

This morning I came upon this tweet by a longtime favorite musician of mine, Aimee Mann…

Listened to Fruit Bats latest record several times to get me through my flight to LA, thank God for great music. @fuitbatsmusic SO great!—
Aimee Mann (@aimeemann) February 06, 2012

…I immediately fired up Spotify and now I can’t thank Aimee Mann enough for turning me on to this great album by Fruit Bats.

As I then explored some of their earlier music, I have to admit that I tended to agree with some detractors who found that Fruit Bats sounded too similar to The Shins, another band I like a lot, to be overly interesting, even though I’ve known about and loved their 2003 single When U Love Somebody for a while now.

But as I made my way through their catalog, I started picking up on their particular vibe, the really, REALLY good songwriting by frontman Eric Johnson (who, ironically, was a member of The Shins for a while), the nice blend of folk-rock and pop that they spin, they’ve evolved nicely, sounding more and more unique, and by their 2011 album Tripper I no longer see any point in the comparisons with The Shins.

Anyway, here’s a great song from Tripper via KEXP.org: