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Ad Categories: Culture

Under Surveillance

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Step inside the box. For the next hour, everything you do will be recorded by 24 video cameras positioned at every possible angle. Sound freaky? It didn’t to Metro owner Joe Shanahan, pictured here, one of several local cultural luminaries who were filmed for an hour in a cube designed by Streeterville artist Lincoln Schatz. (Asked to do something that represents who he is, Shanahan, an avid record collector, spun vinyl; other invitees painted and lifted weights.) For a show at Art Basel Miami in December, computers will slice and dice the images, and segue them into one another in no apparent order, a style reminiscent of another Schatz video—this one in the lobby of the brand-new Spertus Museum—that jumbles scenes of the building’s construction.

A First Brush with Moviemaking!

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Here at Chicago magazine, we’re trying something new. Consider it a little “experiment,” if you will. We’ve decided to take a traditional story—a profile of the supercool DJ Colette, by the music writer Mark Guarino—and turn it into a short documentary film. Five years ago, this wasn’t the business of magazines. But today, magazines have two audiences: one for the print version, and one of for the Web. And for you Web folks, every sort of storytelling device—from podcasts to short films to blogs—is fair game…

Celebrity Sightings

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I’ve had not one, but two good celebrity sightings in the past week. In Chicago, I saw Gary Sinise filming an episode of CSI: New York outside the Tribune Tower. I admit it, I didn’t have to work very hard for that one, since Chicago magazine offices are inside the building. Sinise didn’t want his picture snapped directly, but one of the directors agreed that he could “walk by me” and I could “happen to snap a picture.” Um, OK…

Art Imitates Death

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Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife, discusses art, writing, and her upcoming exhibition on Isabella Blow, the fashion icon who died last spring.

Chicagoween

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Not too long ago, I called up the owner of Fantasy Costume Headquarters on Milwaukee Avenue and asked which costumes he predicted would sweep Chicago. His top picks for this year: caveman masks and pirate paraphernalia. He was riffing, of course, off the Geico cavemen character and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

Well, since Saturday, I’ve attended three Halloween parties and a pumpkin-carving fête, and I have not spotted any cavemen. I’ve seen a pirate or two. By far, the most popular costumes I’ve seen are Amy Winehouse (complete with the Blake tattoo over the bosom) and the “d*ck-in-the-box”…