Hasta La Creative!

LONDON – Lightspeed Research has formed a partnership with EMI Music allowing it to offer respondents one free song or video download for each market research questionnaire they complete.

LONDON – Media Corp has bought the sport.co.uk domain name for £135,000 and plans to develop the site as destination for sports statistics and information.

LONDON – Toshiba is launching its first TV ad in two years tonight, and the first created by Grey, which won the electronic manufacturer’s £25m European account in June last year.

LONDON – Box Television, Emap and Channel 4’s jointly owned music TV business, has appointed Gidon Katz from Virgin Media as managing director.

British artist Paul Fryer has a spectacular exhibition, In Loving Memory, at the Guido Costa Projects gallery in Turin.

Martyr, 2007, stainless steel, wax, Plexiglas, human hair, Tesla coils, computer, light system

The show features only one art piece: Martyr, created specifically for the gallery. This large scale installation represents the synthesis of Paul Fryer’s research into the origins of technology and the labyrinths of science. The actual elements used to construct the artwork – stainless steel, wax and glass – testify to this synthesis.

The origins of the work are bound up in an event which made news at the end of the 19th century. A Western Union lineman, John Feeks, employed alongside others to hang the thousands of kilometres of wire connecting one building to another and providing the city of New York with electricity and information. Freeks was accidental electrocuted and his corpse corpse dangled for hours in a tangle of wires above the Manhattan streets, to the horror of thousands of onlookers. His fate became symbol of the perils of technological advancement, a martyr of progress, and one of the most famous victims of the electromechanical revolution at the end of the 19th century.

What i found striking is that i was sure i had seen a photography of Freeks death somewhere. After some research i realized that what i had seen what a picture similar to the installation. But it wasn’t in the US, it was in Mexico. Jesus Bazaldua Barber, a telecommunications engineer, was electrocuted by more than 60,000 volts whilst installing a new phone line. Toluca, Mexico in 1971 and Enrique Metenides “immortalized” the scene.

Fryer’s installation is a sort of modern monument to the forgotten workers and their anonymous contribution to supplying the electricity to power modernity.

Like Ron Mueck, Fryer uses wax to render anatomical details. However, the reason why the artist chose wax was not to re-create life but rather because it the material that best communicates the rigidity of death.

I took many pictures.

Previously at GCP: The Velocity of Thought.

On view until 31 January 2008, at the Guido Costa Projects gallery in Turin.

LONDON – Scottish Media Group has claimed to have received renewed interest in Virgin Radio from bidders understood to include GMG Radio and Global Radio.

As Alistair Darling outlines government plans to save Northern Rock without apparently resorting to nationalisation, Stephen Foster looks at the deal, as well as the state of the markets.

NEW YORK – Pizza Hut is testing whether politics can sell pizza in a new campaign encouraging America’s youth to use their vote in this year’s Presidential race.

LONDON – Sales of Apple’s iPhone in the UK have fallen short of expectations, with mobile phone firm O2 selling a reported 10,000 fewer handsets than expected in the two months after launching in November.

HONG KONG – WPP is believed to be concluding negotiations regarding the acquisition of highly-rated digital agency Agenda.