Giant Robot (magazine)
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Giant Robot (magazine)
''Giant Robot'' was a bimonthly magazine of Asian and Asian-American popular culture founded in Southern California in 1994. It was one of the earliest American publications to feature prominent Asian film stars such as Chow Yun-fat and Jet Li, as well as Asian musicians from indie and punk rock bands. Its coverage later expanded into art, design, Asian-American issues, travel, and much more. Publication history Eric Nakamura (BA '93) and Martin Wong (BA '90) had met when they were both undergraduate students at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where they bonded over their shared interest in punk music and Asian pop culture. ''Giant Robot'' was initially created as a small, punk-minded magazine that featured Asian pop culture and Asian-American alternative culture, including such varied subject matter as history, art, music, film, books, toys, technology, food, and skateboarding. The publication grew from its original format—a small, photocopied zine, folded ...
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Popular Culture
Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a society at a given point in time. Popular culture also encompasses the activities and feelings produced as a result of interaction with these dominant objects. The primary driving force behind popular culture is the mass appeal, and it is produced by what cultural analyst Theodor Adorno refers to as the "culture industry". Heavily influenced in modern times by mass media, this collection of ideas permeates the everyday lives of people in a given society. Therefore, popular culture has a way of influencing an individual's attitudes towards certain topics. However, there are various ways to define pop culture. Because of this, popular culture is something that can be defined in a variety of conflicting ways by different people across diff ...
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Virgin Store
Virgin Megastores is an international entertainment retailing chain, founded in early 1976 by Richard Branson as a record shop on London's Oxford Street. In 1979 the company opened their first Megastore at the end of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. The company expanded to hundreds of stores worldwide in the 1990s, but has lost a large number of stores in recent years, largely with the sale and eventual closing of the British, American, Irish, Canadian, Australian, Italian, Spanish, French, Greek, Japanese and Chinese stores. By 2015, it operated only in the Middle East and in North Africa. History Branson's early business ventures Richard Branson and Nik Powell had initially run a small record shop called ''Virgin Records and Tapes'' on Notting Hill Gate, London, specialising particularly in "krautrock" imports, and offering bean bags and free vegetarian food for the benefit of customers listening to the music on offer. After making the shop into a success, they ...
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Kozyndan
Kozyndan is the joint pseudonym of Los Angeles-based husband-and-wife illustrator team Kozue and Dan Kitchens, known in particular for their whimsical and occasionally absurd illustrations of modern cityscapes. Education and background The pair met while majoring in illustration at California State University, Fullerton. Since then, their projects have included CD covers for bands such as Weezer and The Postal Service, clothing (including lines of illustrated shoes), and posters for companies such as Nike, Inc. Kozyndan care deeply about the topic of wildlife conservation. Video game work The team has created conceptual designs for American McGee's video game '' Bad Day L.A.''. Other video game work includes the cover design for '' The Urbz: Sims in the City'' and artwork using characters from Katamari Damacy. Australia In the spring of 2011, Kozyndan toured Australia, with exhibitions in Perth, Melbourne, and Sydney. A portion of the proceeds went to benefit the Japanese earthq ...
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James Jean
James Jean is a Taiwanese-American visual artist working primarily in painting and drawing. He lives and works in Los Angeles, where he moved from New York in 2003. Early life Jean was born in Taiwan and raised in New Jersey. During his early education, he explored various forms of artistic expression, including the piano and trumpet. He attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City, from which he graduated in 2001.Jennings, Dana"The Power of Fairy Tales" "Comics Canonization". ''The New York Times''. August 18, 2011 Early career In 2001, Jean became a cover artist for DC Comics and Marvel Comics, garnering seven Eisner awards, three consecutive Harvey awards, two gold medals and a silver from the Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles, and a gold medal from the Society of Illustrators of New York. He also worked in advertising, and has contributed to many national and international publications. His clients included ''Time Magazine'', ''The New York Times'', ''Rolling Sto ...
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Zach Gage
Zach Gage is an indie video game developer based in New York City and best known for his iOS games, including '' SpellTower''. Gage learned to code throughout his youth and studied art at Skidmore College and Parsons School of Design, where he created installation and interactive works. With the 2008 opening of Apple's App Store, Gage created multiple apps and games, including the word games ''SpellTower'' (2011), '' TypeShift'' (2017), and collaborative work on Vlambeer's 2013 '' Ridiculous Fishing'' and Bennett Foddy's 2017 '' Getting Over It'' iOS port. Gage also created multiple games based on playing card and board games, including '' Really Bad Chess'' (2016). Early life Zach Gage was raised in Westchester, NY. His mother allowed few game purchases in their house, and coming from a family of artists, encouraged Gage to make his own games. He would retain this do it yourself mentality to learn new creative skills and escape later creative slumps. As a child, Gage create ...
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Japanese American National Museum
The is located in Los Angeles, California, and dedicated to preserving the history and culture of Japanese Americans. Founded in 1992, it is located in the Little Tokyo area near downtown. The museum is an affiliate within the Smithsonian Affiliations program. The museum covers more than 130 years of Japanese-American history, dating to the first Issei generation of immigrants. Its moving image archive contains over of 16 mm and 8 mm home movies made by and about Japanese Americans from the 1920s to the 1950s. It also contains artifacts, textiles, art, photographs, and oral histories of Japanese Americans. The Japanese American National Museum of Los Angeles and the Academy Film Archive collaborate to care for and provide access to home movies that document the Japanese-American experience. Established in 1992, the JANM Collection at the Academy Film Archive currently contains over 250 home movies and continues to grow. History Activist Bruce Teruo Kaji (1926–2017) ...
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David Choe
David Choe (born April 21, 1976) is an American artist, musician, and former journalist and podcast host from Los Angeles. Choe's work appears in a wide variety of urban culture and entertainment contexts. He has illustrated and written for magazines including ''Hustler'', ''Ray Gun'' and ''Vice''. He has an ongoing relationship with the Asian pop culture store-cum-magazine '' Giant Robot''. He once hung his work in a Double Rainbow ice cream shop located on Melrose Avenue. His figurative paintings, which explore themes of desire, degradation, and exaltation, are characterized by a raw, frenetic method that he has termed "dirty style." Early life and education Choe was born in Los Angeles, California. His parents are Korean immigrants and born-again Christians. He spent his childhood in Koreatown, Los Angeles.Jaime Wright,Choe Jams: The Purity of David Choe" ''Comfusion Magazine'', Winter 2002. He has been spray-painting on the streets since he was in his teens. He briefly a ...
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Pop-up Retail
Pop-up retail, also known as pop-up store (pop-up shop in the UK, Australia and Ireland) or flash retailing, is a trend of opening short-term sales spaces that last for days to weeks before closing down, often to catch onto a fad or scheduled event. The modern trend of pop-up retail started in Los Angeles in the late 1990s, and went on to become popular internationally. Pop-up retail was an increasing factor during the retail apocalypse of the 2010s, including seasonal Halloween retailers who operate stores in vacant spaces during the season. In 2018 the pop-up industry was estimated to be worth $50 billion. History Temporary retail establishments date at least to the Vienna December market in 1298 and the European Christmas markets that followed. Seasonal farmer's markets, holiday fireworks stands, Halloween costume shops, consumer expos, and event-specific concessions are other examples of temporary retailing. The Ritual Expo was one of the first iterations of the modern po ...
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Silver Lake, Los Angeles, California
Silver Lake is a residential and commercial neighborhood in the east-central region of Los Angeles, California. Originally home to a small community called Ivanhoe in honor of Sir Walter Scott. In 1907, the Los Angeles Water Department built the Silver Lake Reservoir, named for LA Water Commissioner Herman Silver, giving the neighborhood its name. The area is now known for its architecturally significant homes, independently owned businesses, diverse restaurants, painted staircases, and a creative environment. The neighborhood is also home to several highly rated public and private schools. Geography and climate Silver Lake is flanked on the northeast by Atwater Village and Elysian Valley, on the southeast by Echo Park, on the southwest by Westlake, on the west by East Hollywood and on the northwest by Los Feliz.
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San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of California cities by population, fourth most populous in California and List of United States cities by population, 17th most populous in the United States, with 815,201 residents as of 2021. It covers a land area of , at the end of the San Francisco Peninsula, making it the second most densely populated large U.S. city after New York City, and the County statistics of the United States, fifth most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. Among the 91 U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco was ranked first by per capita income (at $160,749) and sixth by aggregate income as of 2021. Colloquial nicknames for San Francisco include ''SF'', ''San Fran'', ''The '', ''Frisco'', and '' ...
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Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world's most populous megacities. Los Angeles is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Southern California. With a population of roughly 3.9 million residents within the city limits , Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic and cultural diversity, being the home of the Hollywood film industry, and its sprawling metropolitan area. The city of Los Angeles lies in a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the west and extending through the Santa Monica Mountains and north into the San Fernando Valley, with the city bordering the San Gabriel Valley to it's east. It covers about , and is the county seat of Los Angeles County, which is the most populous county in the United States with an estim ...
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Luke Chueh
Luke Chueh (; born March 7, 1973) is a Chinese-American lowbrow, or pop surrealist, painter. His works tends to be a juxtaposition of the cute with the macabre, including various self-portraits reimagining himself as a bear character. Born to Chinese immigrants in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Chueh's family relocated to Fresno, California soon after his birth. Taught illustration at a young age, he became obsessed with interpreting the popular culture imagery he was surrounded by. Trained as graphic designer at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, he was hired as an in-house designer & illustrator at the Ernie Ball Company in 1997. His work during this time garnered him several awards as well as features in the 1998 design annuals of both ''Communication Arts'' and '' Print''. In 2003, Chueh relocated to Los Angeles where he started pursuing a career as full time painter. He posts regular updates on Facebook and Instagram. Life Early years Luke C ...
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