Modern Iranian Fashion

Folk, traditional culture and modernism seems should not go together. However, the beauty of life allows us to be alchemists and to combine various particles of our culture. This is one of the main features of the 21st century. We are not only able to go beyond the traditional lifestyle, but to come back and visit our roots, pick the best parts of the old world and go further to the future combining different elements of human culture.

Naghmeh Kiumarsi - Modern Iranian Fashion

Beautiful examples of inter-dimensional manifestation, mix of old and contemporary worlds, are works of a post-modern Iranian fashion designer Naghmeh Kiumarsi. She is one of the leading designers in the Iranian women's fashion industry. By combining traditional Iranian textiles, Persian poetry and modern fashion she creates alchemical gold in the fashion world.

Her fashion as well as clothes designed by POOSH design and Farnaz Abdoli goes hand in hand in liberating Iranian women from the pressure of the old world. However, for women living in Europe and the Western world, who are tired of a superficial pop fashion, Kumersi's kind of fashion brings back something real, something natural.

Energetic consistency of a traditional folk culture developed quite naturally during the period of thousands of years. It avoided influences of commercial market trends which were much weaker than it is now. That is why folk culture is so magnetic. Deep, almost mysterious ethno-culture combined with dynamic, independent force of modern human can create miracles.

POOSH design - Modern Iranian Fashion

Modern Iranian folk fashion is one of such miracles. I believe such style like Kiumersi's or POOSH design would perfectly fit women living in the New York city or other Western metropolises. The modern Iranian folk fashion tends to liberate Iranian women from traditional dogmas while for Western women it is like a fresh air in the commercial and soulless environment.

Moreover, beauty & human culture, including fashion, shouldn't have boundaries which are made up by politicians.

Iranprimer.usip.org - Modern Iranian Fashion

POOSH design - Modern Iranian Fashion

POOSH design - Modern Iranian Fashion

Naghmeh Kiumarsi - Modern Iranian Fashion

Post Scriptum. Another example of modern alchemists work is a song Leyila (Liepa) where ethno cultures of Africa and Europe come together. It is made by musician from Mali Baba Sissoko and Lithuanian world music genre group MaLituanie. One Love, One World.

MaLituanie feat. Baba Sissoko - Leyila (Liepa)

Why SEO is important for artists?

The answer is simple: SEO for artists can make them & their artwork more visible.

There are a lot of creative people; thousands and maybe millions of good painters, sculptors, writers, singers and etc. However, most of them stay invisible, unheard and unrecognized.

Ambition, talent and hard work is not enough. Artists and their work have to appear in the right way, on the right time and in the right place. Or in other words - if you want to sing for a large audience in a stadium - you need to have an adequate sound system for that.

Nick Gentry - Digital Montage Number 3

Some artists are lucky to meet a good manager or join a decent art gallery which professionally promotes their artwork. And some managers and galleries are lucky to have right connections and friends which help their artists to climb the career ladders.

However, not every talented artist is lucky to find right connections. In that case implementation of marketing and PR strategy becomes crucial. This is when SEO (optimization for organic search) for artists can help to improve a visibility of their talent.

Digital world is a great place where artists can expose their talents and one of the first steps should be an optimisation of a website (SEO). Artworks or art products should be find as easy as possible online by those people who might be ‘googling’ for it. It is very important to know what keywords are used by your target audience.

Thousands of people are searching for art galleries and an art for sale on their computers or smart phones. But it seems that many artists and galleries still ignore digital way of communication. However, professionally implemented SEO strategy could make a difference for the art business.

I wonder, how many art galleries think about keywords on their website? (the UK monthly searches from Google Keyword Planner tool)

In these postmodern times digital communication becomes a key factor in spreading culture and its products. If an artist wants to increase his/her chances to be discovered and recognised he/she has to enter a digital world.

Digital communication & SEO for artists are becoming more & more important

P.S. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is not just about keywords, there are lots of information about it in sources, like: http://moz.com/blog, http://searchengineland.com

Zygmunt Bauman's thoughts about the Digital Revolution

In October 2013, there was a lecture by Zygmunt Bauman at Vilnius University about a relation between online and offline worlds. Zygmunt Bauman, one of the most eminent postmodernist philosophers, expressed his thoughts on how digital world influences us and I want just to bring a small review of his lecture on this important, but often ignored topic.

Zygmunt Bauman talks about digital world

Fear. A fear of being alone and forgotten. Digital technologies allow us to talk to someone whenever we like and constantly remind about our existence to the world. 

Freedom. Digital world gives us a sense of freedom. For example, we have more freedom of expression and now everyone can make his/her own music video and to show it to the world.  

Security. Now people can escape to the virtual reality and avoid unpleasant encounters in the offline world. However, it may result in a loss of communication abilities in an eye to eye environment.

Memory. Digital technologies may result in people’s memory capabilities loss.  Zygmunt Bauman argues that nowadays we don’t need to remember so much because everything is on Google or in a USB key. 

Hall of mirrors. According to Mr. Bauman, the online world can easily become a hall of mirrors, where we can see just ourselves and our own opinion. In the digital world we don’t need to confront unpleasant ideas, we can  just go to a website where we can see what we want to see. 

Impatience. People may become impatient and even intolerant to a delay. When digital technologies allow us to get everything relatively quickly we might become impatient when it comes to, for example, building long-term relationships with a partner. 

Summary

Every change in a society brings new opportunities and new dangers. The same applies to the digital revolution of the XXI century. 

Perhaps the greatest risks are an increasing alienation between people and a hall of mirrors which was mentioned by Zygmunt Bauman. I believe that these dangers can be reduced only by changing the educational system which still resembles an industrial age in many countries. We should emphasize more the importance of cooperation and compassion in schools, universities and media. Also, schools and universities have to become sparkling forums where ideas clash and new ideas are born.

But these reforms can be done only by the government which is highly socially responsible and progressive.  

Zygmunt Bauman

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Contemporary French Punk - La Femme

Well some people say that punk is dead. And for some people French culture is an opposite of a punk rock. But the French band La Femme perhaps would slap those people in their faces with a CD named Psycho Tropical Berlin, which is their debut album released in 2013 (it has a nice cover).

La Femme - Psycho Tropical Berlin

This psyche-punk rock (according to Wikipedia) catched my ear on a radio and I was happy to find it on the internet and to study it a little bit more. Melodic vocal of a French girl ads some romance to the sound, keybords bring a feeling of a modernism and a punk rhythm makes you to move your head. Also I have to add that male vocal perfectly fits in too. Love this combination. 

Glad to see a new form of punk (they might be not the first), punk of a 21st century style, which is evolving. Maybe La Femme is not very rebellious, but it sounds in a subtlety way and it still have a fire.

La Femme - Sur La Planche

La Femme online

http://lafemmemusic.com/

https://www.facebook.com/lafemmeressort

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One of The Best Art Installations of 2013

One of the most magnificent artworks of 2013 I would call "Little Magnificent" which is an installation made by young artists Gediminas Šiaulys and Andrius Kirvela. This example of a digital contemporary art tells us a fairy tale in a modern way where a composition of simple objects becomes a three dimensional screen. A harmony between shape of figures, visuals which are projected on those figures and hypnotizing music brings a spectator to the warm fantasy world, somewhere near childhood.

Here is video of this installation filmed at Contemporary Art Center in Vilnius, Lithuania. 

No other installation fascinated me so much this year like an artwork by these Lithuanian artists. One of the reasons why it is so strong is that the spirit and the body of an artwork ideally fits each other.  Well crafted visuals and sound creates an aura of a fairy tale (spirit) and then a spectator is amazed by the surprising technique how the visuals appear on blank figures (body). In that way it endorses the sense of a mystique and brings viewer even more into a stance of  a childish dream. 

Little Magnificent - Gediminas Šiaulys and Andrius Kirvela

This installation was made as a scenography for a theater play "Daddy's Tale", where an imagination of an audience was manipulated by using a combination of modern technologies and live acting. 

A Lust For Clicks

A click. Today a click can mean profit. More clicks on a news website can result in more revenues from advertisement, more clicks on an ad of an online shoe selling shop can lead to an increased number of sales. The more clicks you get the more money you earn. Some people think so... However, this kind of belief can bring you to a big loss as well. The video below illustrates that just perfectly.

You have to know what kind of clicks your ad or a website gets. There are many tools which can help you to analyse a traffic and a quality of clicks. One of the most popular is Google Analytics which is free and every website should start with it.

So if you love clicks, you have to know them better ;)

Digital is Natural

The digital technology is changing the way we behave and think. By being an inseparable part of our daily life, new devices are becoming natural to us. The video, which was promoting Europe’s biggest digital technology event ICT 2013, shows the natural relation between people and technologies.