The Red Bulletin_1210_NZL

James Bond / Eminem / Moneybrother / Rafa Ortiz / Pet Shop Boys / Casey Stoner / Maria Tsiartsiani / Vincent Ward NZD 6.95

A BEYOND THE ORDINARY MAGAZINE

INSIDE THE 20 MIGHTIEST HTIEST MINDS ON EARTH

OCTOBER 2012

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XC v i d e LU S I V os o E F R E n ou r E Tab le t A pp

GENIUS! Hunting viruses,

wearing robots, farming the sky: the ace brains powering our future October 2012

INTO THE JAWS Shark photography without a safety cage HIGH TIMES Scaling China’s spectacular five-peak mountain

MINI.CO.NZ

are you

well sporty or well posh?

INTRODUCING THE NEW MINI EDITIONS, GIVING YOU MORE DANDY FOR LESS DOSH. It’s elementary my dear driver. The Baker Street Edition has over $12,000 worth of top-notch trimmings*, while the Bayswater Edition comes with over $14,000 worth of wicked kit^. So whether you’re well sporty or well posh the new MINI Editions, with their exclusive spec packages will make you the Londonest Londoner than ever Londoned.

BAKER STREET EDITION:

BAYSWATER EDITION:

DRIVE AWAY FOR ONLY $39,900.

DRIVE AWAY FOR ONLY $49,900.

• • • • • •

MINI Navigation MINI Visual Boost digital display Bluetooth handsfree kit with USB connectivity Black Six Star Twin Spoke 16” alloy wheels Baker Street exterior paint and body kit features Exclusive interior finishes including cloth leather combination

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MINI Navigation MINI Visual Boost digital display Bluetooth handsfree kit with USB connectivity Harmon Kardon HiFi Sound System Black Sandblast 17” alloy wheels Bayswater exterior paint and body kit features Exclusive interior finishes including punch leather

MIN0585

So do hurry down to your nearest MINI garage today. Toodle-pip. Tally-ho! Cheerio. Jolly-good show. *The MINI Baker Street Edition is based on a MINI Hatch Cooper (Manual) with a customised options package valued at over $12,000. ^The MINI Bayswater Edition is based on a MINI Hatch Cooper S (Manual) with a customised options package valued at over $14,000. Contact your MINI Dealer for full specification details.

THE WORLD OF RED BULL

October 20

COVER ILLUSTRATION: ROLAND VORLAUFER. PHOTOGRAPHY: NIGEL PARRY, PHILIPP FORSTNER. ILLUSTRATION: ROLAND VORLAUFER

REAL SLIM SHADY As Eminem turns 40, returns on record and prepares a new album, we ask: will the real Slim Shady please stand up?

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GREAT MINDS From Marissa Mayer to Matt Berg, inside the 20 most marvellous minds on the planet

WELCOME We’re playing mind games at the highest level this month with our list of the 20 cleverest living people.

What makes them so smart? How can we be like them? And what is Plumpy’nut? These questions, and more, are answered within. (Let us know any brainboxes you would have included by emailing us at letters@redbulletin.com.) Meanwhile, we rifle through the photo files of Michael Muller, who swims with sharks without a safety cage to take remarkable shots of nature’s greatest predators. Up on dry land, we go trackside at Laguna Seca in California, to find out why, in a country that loves the motorcycle and all things fast and furious, MotoGP has yet to break into the American mainstream.

All that, plus new music, beach volleyball and the hidden world of James Bond. Enjoy the issue.

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ME AND MY BODY NFL star Reggie Bush needs speed, solidity and someone skilled with a tattoo needle

THE WORLD OF RED BULL

October 38

RIDE THE LIGHTNING At the Red Bull US Grand Prix at Laguna Seca, California, riders, fans and followers explain why MotoGP is so beguiling

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LUCKY NUMBERS It’s 50 years since Sean Connery first saved the world in Dr No. Pay attention, James Bond fans: here’s 007 in digits

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THE NAVIGATOR Vincent Ward swapped Hollywood for the art world, came back to New Zealand, now he’s heading for China

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“ I want to see sharks’ faces in every detail ”

SHARK SHOOTER Michael Muller’s day job is photographing Hollywood stars, like Brad Pitt, but his hobby is much more exciting: he chases sharks with his camera – and no safety cage

08 Gallery: spectacular images and their makers 14 Bullevard: sport and culture on the quick 18 Kit Evolution: an in-depth look at diving gear through the ages 24 The science of powerboats

PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES (2), NIC STAVELEY, KRISTIAN FRIRES, MICHAEL MULLER

BAND WATCH

The stripped-back and wholly haunting sounds of Claire Duncan’s one-woman musical project Dear Time’s Waste

THE WORLD OF RED BULL

October “ It takes

thousands of perfect repetitions to make each move automatic ”

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NET GAINS Pro beach volleyball star Maria Tsiartsiani puts her success down to dedication to the court come rain or shine

82 A REAL WORLD RECORD

Swedish punk-turned-pop star Moneybrother began a unique world tour in May 2010: recording his fourth album in seven countries on four continents

58 GO GO YUGO!

Forget telemetry, carbon, tyre warmers and the Formula One Paddock Club. For motorsport at the bottom of the food chain, you need improvisation, friendship, madness and sledgehammers

more

Body & Mind TRAVEL IDEAS

Facing up to a thrilling and beautiful hike on a sacred five-peaked Chinese mountain

THE BLADE RUNNER

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For 20 years, Alain Thébault has been working on his dream of making the fastest sailboat ever. His current vessel, the Hydroptère DCNS, has revolutionised wind-driven seafaring and is breaking maritime records

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GET THE GEAR

Canoe dig it: Rafael Ortiz and the kit he uses for extreme kayaking

90 NIGHTLIFE

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WORLD IN ACTION

Global goings-on

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SAVE THE DATE

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KAINRATH

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MIND’S EYE

Events for the diary Our cartoonist

Russell Brown praises the unifying qualities of sport and song

A glamorous club, an exotic cocktail, a midnight snack, the best in music and much, much more: everything you need to get you through ’til dawn

PHOTOGRAPHY: SAMO VIDIC/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, JUERGEN SKARWAN, BENIAMINO BARRESE/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, CHRISTOPHE LAUNAY

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P29/19374/RB

Let your weekend live on. Visit sony.co.nz/actioncam

KE Y W E ST, U SA

DEPTH OF FIELD

The USNS General Hoyt S Vandenberg served the US military on and off for 40 years. Now she lies about 40m below the Straits of Florida, sunk there in 2009 to become the world’s second-largest artificial reef.

Last year, photographer and keen diver Andreas Franke exhibited photos taken underwater and in his studio on the former transport ship, using magnets to hang them. He now shows the pics on dry land, altered by algae after their time spent in the ocean. www.thesinkingworld.com Photograph: Andreas Franke

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MOAB, U SA

OOOOHM!

“Hi,” says Emily Sukiennik, welcoming you to her blog. “I’m 25 years old, love coffee, giggling and playing outside.” Indulging her latter passion, she’s a world-class slackliner, and as pleasurable as a java buzz and the giggles may be, they don’t help much when you’re balancing on nylon webbing an inch or two thick. “For me, slacklining is like a moving meditation,” says Sukiennik. Walking a highline across an arch in Canyonlands National Park, she practises her zen and her art impeccably. www.emilysukiennik.com Photograph: Krystle Wright

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SOUTHERN ALPS, NEW ZEALAND

SNOW CAMP!

It’s 10 years since Snow Park opened, and in that time it has remained a world-class, natural terrain, freestyle snowsports venue. For 10 days at the end of winter, the Red Bull Snow Performance Camp brought 25 world-class snowboarders and freestyle skiers to work with three world-class coaches. Given the place and the people, it’s fair to say world-class training and development unfolded. The Spanish-born, NZ-resident ’boarder Queralt Castellet certainly enjoyed the air up there. www.redbull.co.nz Photography: Miles Holden/Red Bull Content Pool

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Renowned as suppliers of quality wares, Bing, Harris & Co. continue that tradition today by proudly trading on old-fashioned values, imbued with new fashion style.

Rediscover Bing, Harris & Co. at Albany, Queensgate and Riccarton.

Sylvia Park opens Friday 5th October. www.bingharris.com

Bullevard Sport and culture on the quick

Once upon a 4/4 time Swapping lyrics for MS Word: four rock ’n’ roll luminaries have autobiographies out soon

Devil’s in the details: the art of Artemio Rodriguez (right)

IT’S ALL GRAVELY

Marking Mexico’s annual brush with the afterlife, a dead good book of departed art

JOHN TAYLOR In The Pleasure Groove The Duran Duran bassist reflects on one of pop’s wildest and most hedonistic careers.

NEIL YOUNG Waging Heavy Peace In 2010, the rock icon nearly lost his life’s archive in a fire; now he’s got it all down on paper.

BETH DITTO Coal To Diamonds Punk, poetry and naked magazine covers: what it’s really like to be the lead singer of Gossip.

PETE TOWNSHEND Who I Am After 15 years in the making, and 48 years of The Who, a rock star memoir of real gravitas.

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On November 2, Mexico wildly and gaudily celebrates the Day of the Dead, with skeletons and bones everywhere, most of them made of colourful papier-mâché or chocolate. The macabre art of Día de los Muertos also crops up in pop culture, with arty skull work evident on record covers and in comics. The Mexican artist Artemio Rodriguez has a new book documenting this culture of death. His work mixes traditional

Mexican symbolism with Pop Art and American consumer culture. The standout piece, which the 40-year-old made with John Jota Leanos, is a 1968 Chevy Impala given a skeletal makeover.

The inside of the roadworthy el Muertorider is equally as Dead-ly as its bodywork, with ‘Radio Muerto’ on the stereo and a death’s head permanently in the rear-view mirror. www.bmoa.org/el-muertorider

PHOTOTICKER

EVERY SHOT ON TARGET

Have you taken a picture with a Red Bull flavour? Email it to us at: phototicker@redbulletin.com Every month we print a selection, with our favourite pic awarded a limited-edition Sigg bottle. Tough, functional and well-suited to sport, it features The Red Bulletin logo.

Austin Dubstep producer 12th Planet enjoyed the Red Bull Music Academy Session in Texas.

Carlo Cruz

Attention, puny human!

Mankind pales in the face of bug achievement

Gunning, and driving, for glory: Nasser Al-Attiyah

PHOTOGRAPHY: PRESS (5), GETTY IMAGES, SHUTTERSTOCK (3), REX FEATURES, GEPA PICTURES/MCKLEIN/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, DDPIMAGES

Double-sport whizz bang on target Last year’s Dakar Rally winner is doing alright for himself in 2012, too: a debut in the World Rally Championship and Olympic bronze medallist in skeet shooting. Nasser Al-Attiyah is a national hero in his homeland of Qatar. “In hotels I put ‘rally driver and marksman’ under profession,” says the 41-year-old. “The two sports have a few things in common: concentration, challenge and adrenalin.

When I’m up against strong competition in the shooting, my adrenalin level is even higher than it is when I’m in the rally car. Even before I had a driving licence, I had a sports shooting licence.

“Each of the two sports has a particular twist to it. Awards ceremonies represent the relevant culture as well as the sport. I couldn’t say which sport I prefer. I keep all of my trophies and medals together, whether for motorsport or shooting. In the next four years I want to win the Dakar again and turn the clay pigeon bronze to gold, inshallah.” www.dakar.com

RHINOCEROS BEETLE The strongest living creature, in proportion to its size. This bug can lift 850 times its own body weight.

TIGER BEETLE Scuttles at speeds of up to 9kph.

In human terms, think of Usain Bolt running the 100m in less than one second.

GO GO BANJO Marcus Mumford and his band make folk music for the people Four Brits with banjos, accordions and acoustic guitars: Mumford & Sons might look like a bunch of bumpkins from the ’60s, but they’re actually the most successful new group of the moment. Their folk songs are hymnal and handmade; their debut album Sigh No More has sold more than four million copies worldwide.

Band leader Marcus Mumford, 25, is hoping for a similar impact with long-player number two.

It’s been a very successful two years for the band.

What’s your highlight?

There were so many. We were on stage at the Grammys with Bob Dylan, we played huge festivals. But the best thing is that our new album sounds

exactly the way we wanted: it’s very personal to us.

Why use banjos and not electric guitars?

If you’re looking for session gigs as a guitarist, there’s not much around, because there are so many good guitarists. That’s why we went straight for the banjo: there’s less competition.

Your music sounds very traditional. Do you actually listen to modern music?

Of course. I really like [French electro duo] Justice. My absolute hero at the moment is Nathaniel Rateliff, an American singer-songwriter.

He has the most powerful stage presence I’ve ever experienced. Every folk fan should own his albums.

Babel by Mumford & Sons is out now. www.mumfordandsons.com

Marcus Mumford (centre) and his so-called sons

FLEA Can jump up to heights 200 times its body size, which is like you jumping clean over the 324m of the Eiffel Tower. Mon dieu!

WE HAVE A WINNER!

Naksan Beach John ‘Chuck’ Berry lands after a South Korean winguist flight.

SonStar

Malé All Flatland BMXer Viki Gomez needs to

trick is a bike and terra firma (that of The Maldives).

Mohamed Ahsan

St Petersburg Wakeboard champ Nikita Martyanov (right) teaches B-Boy Lil G how to do it.

Nika Kramer 15

B U L L E VA R D

Modern art is rubbish The 2012 Wallace Art Awards have just been announced, but what of previous winners?

In 2011, Brydee Rood was one, and as part of her prize, the Auckland artist spent three months Brydee Rood’s art in San Francisco. There she dreamed up her latest installation, involving a horse and rubbish bags.

“Waste is something we all share, and how we deal with it is a critical question,” says Rood. “I’m interested in a new culture of waste and in using my art as a means of raising awareness of the everyday rituals and daily disposal cycles of our questionable consumer culture.” Since then, she has exhibited in Germany and Holland, spent time in India as a resident artist, and shown twice in Auckland. brydeerood.blogspot.com

Jaden ‘Babyface’ Leeming, rising star of NZ BMX

TEENAGE KICKS

B-Boy champ Shorty Force

Force of nature It started with a ceremonial haka, and ended with Shorty Force from South Korea winning the Red Bull BC One Asia Pacific Qualifier at Auckland’s Vector Arena. Sixteen B-Boys from 11 countries took part, with Grub D and Akorn flying the flag for New Zealand. Both went out in the first round, but Akorn gave beaten finalist and pre-event favourite Differ a real fright in their battle. “It was so close,” said Akorn, aka Aron Mahuika. “Two of the five judges voted for me and it was awesome to realise I’m not far off one of the best B-Boys in the world.” Shorty Force goes on to the BC One World Final in Rio de Janeiro in December. www.redbullbcone.com

Whistler Brandon Semenuk executes a backflip high in the Canadian mountains.

Scott Serfas

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Jaden Leeming fulfilled a childhood dream last month with a visit to Camp Woodward, a world-renowned BMX playground in Pennsylvania, USA. The 18-year-old, who goes by the nickname Babyface, is known for his smooth, effortless style and big air.   : Your favourite place to ride in New Zealand?  : Gorge Road in Queenstown, but I still mission to Browns Bay in Auckland when I can. It’s considered a crap park for BMX, but it’s where I started riding.

Is it a disadvantage being tall for a BMXer? I’m 6ft 2in [1.88m] so I have to ride a bigger set-up. Internationally there are a lot of great riders around my height, so it’s not an issue.

Filming versus competitions?

I love looking back at footage, but I also want to push my riding to compete on an international level.

Will your US trip help your career?

Coming from New Zealand, it’s difficult to get invited to the big international competitions, because you have to be part of the scene.

So it was good to get over there and measure myself against the pros.

You can watch all the videos you like, but it was great to get amongst it.

Follow Jaden Leeming’s US adventure at www.redbull.co.nz

Kulm On Austria’s largest ski jump hill in summer, they go up instead of down.

Stefan Voitl

Copenhagen David Coulthard and his Formula One car stop off for a quiet coffee.

Peter Nyggard

WORDS: ROBERT TIGHE. PHOTOGRAPHY: GRAEME MURRAY (2), BRYDEE ROOD

Fresh from his first US road trip, one NZ rookie is eyeing big-time BMX

B U L L E VA R D

MEIN KÖRPER UND ICH

MAXI LAXI

4 RIP IT Acil ullutpat, sim quis aci bla aliquisit nummy nummy nos nulla consenim ad tem ME AND essecte consequat ute mod tatum quisit ad tin eugiat utatuerat wissequat, sequis dolor MY BODYsustionsed elis et utat, venim endrem quam vulla feugait exeriu

REGGIE BUSH

VER AESE D TE DOLORE M

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WORDS: ARKADIUSZ PIATEK. PHOTOGRAPHY: PHILIPP FORSTNER

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B U L L E VA R D

KIT EVOLUTION

In Depth Look The view from under the sea has always been the same, but how you see down there has altered radically with the changing of the tides

VISOR

Sheet glass in a brass ring. Advantage: can be opened to communicate above water on land. Disadvantage: if the diver struggles underwater, the glass can break.

MATERIALS

Robust brass alloy.

The white interior is deliberate, as the colour was thought to reduce the diver’s claustrophobia (there is no evidence to support this).

SEAL

The collar of the suit is clamped between the head and shoulder parts and, with outside help, screwed on at three points with bolts. Crude but waterproof.

1971

THREE-BOLT HELMET, USSR

This beast, part of a full atmospheric suit, was used by the Soviet navy on below-waves operations. Air was pumped in via a hose leading back to the surface. However, the diver’s exhaled air stayed in the helmet, which made time in there very stressful. Only when the interior pressure reached a relatively high level did an air vent open to allow the breath out.

Nonetheless, these bold brass suits were very reliable, as far down as 40m. www.rusnavy.com

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The rear: double hose connection for air supply, as well as a one-way valve for pressure balance

Old vs new weight: 18kg vs 14.5kg

VISOR

The helmet’s robust polycarbonate pane is scratch-resistant, keeps heat in and, thanks to internal airflow designed to defog, is guaranteed not to mist up.

MATERIALS

Fibreglass and carbon-fibre casing.

Pressure-resistant, shock-resistant and non-conducting: the latter is of importance when working on undersea electric cables.

WORDS: ARKADIUSZ PIATEK. PHOTOGRAPHY: KURT KEINRATH

SEAL

The diver wears a neck cuff with an aluminium ring where the helmet snaps neatly into place. The interior remains dry, even on ‘head down’ dives.

2012

KIRBY MORGAN 37

The KM 37 was conceived for salvage operations in contaminated waters and is designed to make the diver’s work as comfortable as possible. Air reaches the helmet interior from (back-mounted) compressed air cylinders, the exhaled carbon dioxide flows through the regulator below the visor and an interior ventilation system further improves air quality. Also featuring: reserve respiratory gas valve and radio equipment. www.kmdsi.com

Here, the helmet is connected to the compressed air cylinders. The radio tech is housed below

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B U L L E VA R D

WHERE’S YOUR HEAD AT?

EMINEM

As the biggest rapper of all-time turns 40, returns on record (guesting) and prepares a new album (his own), will the real Slim Shady please stand up?

Marshall Bruce Mathers III was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on October 17, 1972 – not the first time mother and son would undergo public, painful separation.

In 2000, mom Debbie sued Em for defamation, via his lyrics; in 2008, she wrote a tell-all book about her son and their difficult relationship.

PASS THE MIC

With a head full of Beastie Boys, Run DMC and LL Cool J lyrics, the teenage Eminem abandons plans to become a comic-book artist and picks up the dictionary, learning new words to make better rhymes. Now living in Detroit, he becomes a champion of live, one-on-one rap battles.

IN FIN ITE PO SS IB ILITIE S

stints In November 1996, after name in rap groups, and stage , comes inem Em to d nge cha M&M ely bar It . first album Infinite ssed sells the 1,000 copies pre on (in 2009, 50 Cent put it up lie Hai y bab h Wit ). site his web , to feed, and a career stalling to. ed turn are gs dru and drink

PICKIN G SLIM

With its musing on Spice Girl fertility and his mother’s smoking habits, the song My Name Is becomes a global smash in January 1999, showcasing the clever, catchy sampling and incredible wordplay that would be Eminem’s stock-in-trade. His name is, we learn, Slim Shady.

OUT OF OFFIC E

Five golden years: albums The Slim Shady LP (1999) , The Marshall Mathers LP (2000), The Eminem Show (2002), Enc ore (2004), and a superb star turn in almost-biog film 8 Mile (2002). Then five years of “limbo”, as he put it, bef ore albums Relapse (2009) and Rec overy (2010) return him to the fore.

PARTNERS IN RHYME

Eminem’s most notable co-worker is Dr Dre. On his Shady label, you’ll find 50 Cent, D12 and Slaughterhouse (the latter’s new album has two ‘feat.

Eminem’ tracks) His strangest team-up: at the 2009 MTV Movie Awards, Sacha Baron Cohen as Bruno descends into Em’s lap. .

Minor chaos, and a PR stunt for Relapse

BIG GER THA N THE BEATLE S

With worldwide album sales of around 90 million, Eminem is the all-time best-selling hip-hop artist. It is somewhat fitting that a controversial artist, for it is he, was the Noughties’ top-selling artist in the US. He sold 32.2 million albums that decade, compared to 30 million by The Beatles.

WH O’S THE DAD DY?

Eminem really is one of the good guys. He adopted his niece and biological daughter’s half-sister, and is the legal guardian of his half-brother. In 2010, two years sober after a methadone overdose, he said, “I love my kids so much, and they’ve helped me through so many things.” www.eminem.com

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WORDS: PAUL WILSON. ILLUSTRATION: LIE-INS AND TIGERS

MY NAM E IS…

B U L L E VA R D

New Zealand boy racer Marcus Armstrong

HARD & FAST

Top performers and winning ways from around the globe With three wins in four races, UK motocrosser Ben Watson (centre) won the MX1 Rookie class at the Red Bull Pro Nationals in Mill, the Netherlands.

Starting from pole position, Dani Pedrosa (SPA) was in a class of his own at the Indianapolis MotoGP, finishing 11s clear of the pack.

WORDS: ROBERT TIGHE. PHOTOGRAPHY: SCOTT SINTON, IMAGO, ASP RED BULL/F. KLINGER, NUNO LARANJEIRA, GOLD & GOOSE/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, ILLUSTRATION: DIETMAR KEINRATH.

ON THE FAST TRACK

Every young motorsport fan dreams of driving in Formula One; one Christchurch youngster is on the path to make his wish come true

Marcus Armstrong was three years old when he started watching Formula One, eight when he convinced his dad to strap him into a kart for the first time, and 10 when he won his first national karting title. Earlier this year he added the New Zealand schools’ title to his CV, winning one of his races from the back of the grid after passing the 13 drivers ahead of him by the third lap.

Armstrong recently turned 12, but he’s so dominant in his age group that next season he’ll move up a class to race against the best under-17 drivers.

“I’m pretty sure I’ll be on the pace,” he says, with unabashed confidence. It’s a confidence shared by his mentor and mechanic, Matt Hamilton. “He’s got everything,” says Hamilton.

“He can race, pass and think about the kart set-up. Most kids can only do one thing at a time.”

This month, Armstrong travels to Japan to race against leading youngsters from across Asia, while in November he will head to Las Vegas and America’s top karters.

“There could be some expensive times ahead,” says his father, Rick Armstrong, who raced cars himself before he started selling them, “but I’m happy to back him. He seems to have a natural ability for it.” www.marcusarmstrongracing.com

“I love Peru!” cried big-wave surfer Carlos Burle (BRA), after taming 30ft swells at the Billabong Pro in Pico Alto, to take the lead in the Big Wave World Tour.

Austrian Climber Angela Eiter triumphed at the Rock Master event in Arco, Italy, becoming the first woman ever to win there six times.

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The Team Abu Dhabi powerboat during a run at the Grand Prix of Sharjah in the F1H2O World Championships

B U L L E VA R D

WINNING FORMULA

SPEED BOAT

WORDS: MARTIN APOLIN. PHOTOGRAPHY: PAUL LAKATOS. ILLUSTRATION: MANDY FISCHER

Powerboating is the Formula One of watersports, but how do those boats get it on offshore?

FULL THROTTLE IN THEORY “There are two things you notice about a powerboat at full speed,” says Dr Martin Apolin, of the physics faculty at the University of Vienna. “Its prow is raised and it barely dives into the water. Why is that so important for good performance?

When you move through water or air, two forces are always at work: lift, FL, and drag, FD, acting against the direction of movement. They can be calculated as follows: FL = 0.5 · ρ · cL · A · ν 2 and FD = 0.5 · ρ · c D · A · ν 2.

“Since both forces are produced in the water as well as in the air, there are a total of four forces at work here. ρ is the density of the medium. Water is about 800 times denser than air, therefore the forces produced by the water are far greater, given the same overall conditions. It’s safe to say that water resistance is enemy number one of powerboats.

“Furthermore, the forces are dependent on lift and drag coefficients cL and c D, which are determined by the shape of the boat, and can be optimised through knowledgeable boatbuilding. Consequently, the forces are dependent on the reference area, A, in the water and in the air. This is the key to understanding why it is so important that a powerboat only hits the water with its rearmost part: it drastically reduces the value of A in the water and thus the overall resistance.

Finally, the forces are dependent on the square of speed and are therefore susceptible to increase as the boat speeds up.

“At rest, the boat lies flat on the water, due to static buoyancy (hat tip: Archimedes). At full speed, however, this is of little significance and here we are not including it in the calculations.

Because the propeller sits deep in the water, the driving force works beneath the centre of gravity. The prow, therefore, begins to rise as the boat starts up.

“From this angle of attack, the dynamic lifting forces increase; a similar effect is produced when you stick your hand out of a moving car and hold it at an angle. As the boat increases speed, it will lift out of the water. Unfortunately, this also increases air resistance and water resistance, FD, because ν, A and c D also increase. With lift comes drag.

“The maximum speed is therefore reached when the sum of resisting forces from the water and air are as great as the driving force. Because only a small part of the stern is now in the water, there is a much higher terminal velocity than if the boat was lower in the water. That’s how the powerboat outsmarts enemy number one.”

FULL THROTTLE IN PRACTICE It takes just four seconds for Thani Al Qamzi of Team Abu Dhabi (left) to accelerate his powerboat from zero to 160kph.

His 425hp boat has no brakes, but it does have a protective ‘crash box’ that cocoons him during a serious accident.

Powerboat world championship: www.f1h2o.com

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B U L L E VA R D

LUCKY NUMBERS

JAMES BOND

It’s 50 years since Sean Connery first saved the world in Dr No, but mankind still needs cinema’s greatest secret agent – Daniel Craig is back this month in Skyfall. Pay attention, 007 fans

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Roger Moore (seven films as 007) is the debonair Bond, Pierce Brosnan (four) the savvy, Daniel Craig (three) the tough, Timothy Dalton (two) the emotional, while Sean Connery (six) is the essential Bond. And what of George Lazenby, the enigma?

The Australian is the only actor not from the UK or Ireland to play the part, and, aged 30 when On Her Majesty’s Secret Service premiered, the youngest.

He was earmarked for more than one Bond film, but making the movie was not a happy experience for him or the producers, and he quit. “I probably would have had three or four Hollywood wives and become a drug addict,” he later joked.

From Ursula Andress to Olga Kurylenko, via Halle Berry and Jane Seymour, James Bond’s thirst for the ladies has been quenched by a string of beautiful actresses.

Only two women playing Bond Girls have been older than the man playing Bond opposite them: Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore in Goldfinger and Diana Rigg as Teresa di Vincenzo in Desmond OHMSS. Women also dominate the films’ Llewelyn opening credits, with all but two so far featuring sexy silhouettes. Only Dr No and Casino Royale (2006) kick off lady-free.

Vodka martini

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George Lazenby

Bond actors perform many stunts themselves, although Roger Moore had a double for his running scenes, because he felt he looked clumsy. For part of the pre-credits sequence of Moonraker, in which a mid-air Bond wrestles a pilot for the latter’s parachute and then shakes off villain Jaws, stuntmen were filmed in 88 jumps over five weeks.

There’s a Bond high-dive you can sample for yourself: a bungee jump from the 220m-high Verzasca Dam in Switzerland, as undertaken

by Pierce Brosnan’s 007 in GoldenEye.

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Ursula Andress

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Stanley Kubrick

Sir Ken Adam is the secret genius of the Bond movies. He designed many of the series’ remarkable sets, including villains’ lairs and Fort Knox in Goldfinger. A rocket launch pad inside a dormant volcano, built at Pinewood Studios for You Only Live Twice, with a working monorail and moving helipad, cost as much as the entire budget of Dr No and required 700 tonnes of steel girders. During filming for The Spy Who Loved Me, Adam needed help lighting a double submarine dock inside a supertanker, so he sneaked the director Stanley Kubrick on set for four hours one Sunday, and the two old friends figured it out.

Sean Connery preferred his vodka martinis “shaken, not stirred”. Roger Moore never ordered 007’s signature drink using these words. When asked by a barkeeper how he wanted his cocktail in Casino Royale, Daniel Craig snapped back, “Do I look like I give a damn?” In Quantum Of Solace, Craig is seen slightly the worse for wear after drinking six special martinis on a plane.

And yet: Mr Bond’s most frequent onscreen tipple is not a martini, but Champagne. In the 22 official Bond films before Skyfall, he sips champers 38 times.

Verzasca Dam

Jan Werich was cast in the role of Blofeld in You Only Live Twice, but the film’s director, Lewis Gilbert, had him replaced after five days by Donald Pleasence, because Werich looked like a “benevolent Father Christmas”. Desmond Llewellyn enjoyed the longest 007 career, playing Q, the man responsible for Bond’s gadgets: the cars, the exploding pens, the watch lasers. The Welshman appeared in 17 Bond films over 36 years – the most instances of a recurring role in film history – but he had only 30 minutes of screen time in total.

Skyfall opens in cinemas late October: www.skyfall-movie.com

WORDS: ULRICH CORAZZA. PHOTOGRAPHY: SHUTTERSTOCK, GETTY IMAGES (4), PICTUREDESK.COM

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YOU CAN‘T JOIN EVERY RED BULL EVENT. BUT SOON YOU CAN. WITH THE WORLD OF RED BULL APP.

COMING SOON www.redbullmobile.com/worldofredbull

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shark SHOOTER MICHAEL MULLER’S DAY JOB IS PHOTOGRAPHING HOLLYWOOD STARS, LIKE BRAD PITT, BUT HIS HOBBY IS MUCH MORE EXCITING: HE CHASES BIG SHARKS WITH HIS CAMERA – AND NO CAGE Words: Anne Philippi Photography: Michael Muller

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ichael Muller has just returned from surfing at Zuma Beach in Malibu, his face still glowing from the sun. “It was unbelievable, we had the waves all to ourselves! No one there!” West Coast natives like Muller get excited about waves and water. He looks the part, too: black jeans, trainers, surfer T-shirt, neon yellow chewing gum in his mouth, tattoos in all the right places.

Every couple of minutes, Muller’s iPhone beeps. As a photographer of major film, rock and sports stars, the noisy mobile marks the rhythm of his busy days. His passion, however, is sharks. Fat great whites with nasty jaws. Muller’s pupils dilate when he hears the word ‘shark’. On his left arm is a tattoo of a tooth of a bull shark. (Right next to it is a tattoo of a wasp, because, says Muller, “I’m more afraid of them than sharks.”)

When he was eight years old, Muller, using his first camera, took a picture of a picture of a shark he found in Life magazine. “My friends thought that I took it myself. The horror in their eyes when they saw the shark – I never forgot that.”

Many years of talking and thinking about sharks later, with Muller established as a successful photographer for the likes of Spin and Rolling Stone, his then-girlfriend, Kimberly, paid for a trip to Guadalupe Island, 450km off the coast of Mexico in the Pacific Ocean, where the water teems with sharks. It was here that Muller got his first close look at a live great white. “I was standing on the boat, very early in the morning.

The shark rocketed to the surface from out of the dark. He was big, like a car with teeth.” Muller was hooked. “Fear, excitement, more than one adrenalin rush,” he says, describing the kick it gave him. “Afterward, I knew I couldn’t do without it.”

(Kimberly is now permanently on Muller’s arm: as his wife and, in name, inked alongside the bull shark’s tooth and the wasp, and the names of his three daughters. “She completely understands my need for this kind of adventure,” he says.)

Muller applied his professional skills to his new-found fixation. He spent “an insane amount of money” developing a lighting system for underwater photo shoots. The Travel Channel greenlighted his pitch for a ‘shark hunt’ TV show. Now, aged 42, he’s down with the sharks as often as he can be.

“You have to look them straight in the eye and touch their nose and mouth with the camera,” he says, of his close-up technique. “That irritates them. Then you’re safe.” Safety is important to him: “My daughters should grow up with a dad.”

He admits to being scared sometimes.

On one shoot, a member of his team suddenly disappeared underwater, and Muller, visibly unsettled as he recalls the moment, “really thought he was dead”, but it was a false alarm.

His dealings with sharks have also helped Muller to put into perspective a group of predators he encounters working his day job: angry Hollywood publicists.

“I think to myself, ‘I’ve just been swimming with 40 bull sharks,’” he says, breaking into In deep: Michael Muller is passionate about sharks a laugh. “‘You can’t scare me.’”

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“YOU HAVE TO LOOK THEM IN THE EYE, TOUCH THEM WITH THE CAMERA. IT IRRITATES THEM”

ACTION TAURUS APART

The bull shark (right and below) is thought to be responsible for most attacks on humans, because it is the shark that lives in waters closest to human populations.

NOT ON THE MENU

There were 12 fatal shark attacks on humans in 2011, out of a total of 75 reported incidents. “Sharks don’t eat humans,” says Muller, “they like other meat.” Most commonly, say biologists, a shark attacks because a diver or swimmer has disturbed it, and so it attacks to defend itself.

Another theory suggests a shark attacking through a case of mistaken identity – it thinks a splashy surfer is prey, bites once, realises its mistake and swims away.

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“I ADMIT IT: I JUST WANT TO GET CLOSE TO SHARKS. I WANT TO SEE THEIR FACES – EVERY DETAIL”

INESCAPABLE

“Once you’re locked in a great white’s jaws,” says Muller, “you’ll never get out.” Knowing that did not stop him taking this remarkable photo.

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LIGHTS , CAMERA, MEH

“The sharks don’t always notice the lights,” says Muller, “especially if they’re eating. Here they just kept eating some tuna and let us get on with the job.”

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“Actually,” says Muller, “sharks are extremely elegant creatures. I even find them graceful.”

CREDIT:

SYNC AND SWIM

ACTION BULL SHARK AT LUNCH

CREDIT:

“I wouldn’t recommend feeding bull sharks by hand,” says Muller. “They have the highest testosterone levels of all sharks. We only do it in order to get a good photo of the teeth and jaws.”

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HORROR FILM

“All kinds of people have tunnel vision when it comes to sharks,” says Muller. Much of that is to do with the movie Jaws, and its powerful effect on audiences.

Even the young Muller “wouldn’t swim in our pool anymore” after seeing a rubber version of a great white. In real life, the shark’s impact is far, far greater.

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AT SURFACE, NO TENSION

After a successful – ie safe – encounter with sharks, Michael Muller achieves a certain serenity, which helps in his day job, in the photo studio, dealing with temperamental Hollywood types. www.mullerphoto.com

“IF YOU DON’T ACKNOWLEDGE THE SHARKS’ POWER, THEY CAN KILL YOU WITHIN THREE SECONDS” 37

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RIDE

THE LIGHTNING

MotoGP is the third-largest televised sport in the world after football and Formula One. Nearly one billion people tune in to watch every race. It is the fastest sport on two wheels and the most perilous. At the Red Bull US Grand Prix at Laguna Seca, California, riders, fans and followers explain why MotoGP is so beguiling Words: Nicolas Stecher

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PHOTOGRAPHY: GIORGIO AUGUSTO NEYROZ

“I love Laguna Seca. Coming here is a bit like home,” says Australian MotoGP Champion Casey Stoner, here ahead of Spaniard Jorge Lorenzo

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Top: The track at Laguna Seca is known for its challenging elevation changes.

Above and right: One of those features, the corkscrew, claimed fan favourite Valentino Rossi on the 29th lap of the race, sending his motorcycle flying into the barrier as he tumbled off the course

on his face. If an engineer approached to hand him boxing gloves and a gumshield it wouldn’t seem the least bit inappropriate.

Sure he’s listening, but it’s clear a single focus is congealing in his mind, making any new suggestions superfluous.

One by one, engines begin sparking to life in garages all around. The ambient volume rises from football game car park to opening-band riffage. A vacuum cleaner-like starter is rolled from the edge of the garage and placed under the rear wheel of Bradl’s bike. Airport-strength earmuffs are passed around. Bradl stands, fits the helmet over his head and throws a leg over the bike.

The starter flies into motion, turning the rear wheel as the prototype Honda roars to life. The sound in the garage explodes from opening-band riffage to 747 flyby. Even at 50 per cent speed, the wail emanating from these silencer-less, hand-built, million-dollar engines is enough to pop your eardrums. They pull the starter from under the tyre, and with a chirp Bradl zips out of the gate to join his fellow Grand Prix riders on the morning laps.

Laguna Seca has come to life for the biggest MotoGP weekend on the calendar in America.

“I love Laguna Seca,” says current MotoGP World Champion Casey Stoner in his thick Australian accent.

“I like it when we can get overseas. We have so many

PHOTOGRAPHY: GIORGIO AUGUSTO NEYROZ

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obs of MotoGP fans froth in a sea of bright shorts and ubiquitous Oakley sunglasses. The sun is beaming down on the wide open expanse of black asphalt at the heart the track, bathing everything in a hot, white light and casting sharp, dark angles everywhere.

Exposed flesh is reddened by the scorn of the California sun. Across the small foothills that surround Laguna Seca and separate it from Monterey, a thick fog blankets the city’s residents, keeping them cool.

There is no such mercy here, only the scorching breath of a hot wind to abate the heat.

Pushing through the sweaty din of the pitlane, a small army of guards lining the entrances to the private garages offers a moment’s respite. The security is tight, as if approaching the hangar to Air Force One; interlopers are not only unwelcome, but looked upon with the suspicion of corporate spies. Given the rumoured multi-million-dollar annual budgets of the factory teams, this seems appropriate.

After badges are waved and security is cleared, the dark entrance of a garage greets you with a blast of industrial-strength air conditioning. It is not just a shift in temperature, but a shift in time and space.

As loud and chaotic as it is out in the paddock, inside the garages it is starkly quiet, eerily calm. All preparation, all engineering, is complete. Now there is time for only one thing: to take these thoroughbred bikes out on the practice track and test their mettle.

In the corner of this garage for the LCR Honda team, rider Stefan Bradl sits huddled over, listening to his chief engineer repeat directions to him in a calm and measured voice. The German rider has the hyper-focused look of a prizefighter, nodding his head absentmindedly with a thousand-yard stare

IN THE PADDOCK OF THE LAGUNA SECA RACEWAY, EVERYTHING IS MADNESS

Right: Dani Pedrosa’s bike is readied for the track. Casey Stoner won the race at Laguna Seca over polesitter Jorge Lorenzo, with fellow Spaniard Pedrosa coming in third

races in Europe, in the same countries, that you don’t really get a big broad spectrum of people and different cultures, so coming to the US is a little bit more like home. The track is very technical, tricky.

I like the ups and downs to it, but it could have a longer straight, or a couple of faster corners would be good. But it’s so unique that it’s got its own personality, and I enjoy riding every lap.”

No conversation about the current state of MotoGP can begin without talk of the complex, polarising, controversial, outspoken, diminutive rider from Down Under. The elfin frame of Stoner 42

betrays a monolith of stature, and it would be very easy to imagine the reigning and two-time World Champion (2007, 2011) as the idolised face of the sport. Yet he also defines its present shortcomings.

Things are not idyllic in the Kingdom of MotoGP, as the global economic downturn has caused an across-the-board decline in sponsorship money. In apex motorsports like MotoGP and its four-wheel equivalent Formula One, which subsist on being the most technological, and highest-performing of all, the cost of racing has become so high that the sports’ respective governing bodies are struggling

PHOTOGRAPHY: TAZ DARLING

Jorge Lorenzo basks in the adulation

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THINGS ARE NOT IDYLLIC IN

THE KINGDOM OF MOTOGP

to fill their starting grids. As technical costs skyrocket and sponsorship money evaporates, teams are dropping out of MotoGP’s top class. For the first time ever, MotoGP is allowing non-prototype CRT (Claiming Rule Teams) bikes, which are not only considerably lower in cost, but also in performance.

U Dani Pedrosa focuses on the race ahead

nfortunately for Stoner, and many of the factory riders, the solutions provided have proved to be more frustrating than they’re worth. On May 17, before the French Grand Prix, the current champion shocked the racing world when he announced his retirement at the end of this season. For a 26-year-old in his prime the move was unheard of, and caused a shockwave of reaction. For while there is no question about the virtuosity of Stoner, his charisma and popular stature are not so cemented. He has been dubbed ‘the Alien’ by some, as much for his otherworldly riding talent as his chilly approachability. But after his retirement announcement, Stoner has become somewhat of a new man. He seems liberated, free, beholden to no one, and he’s letting his words fly.

“There’s going to be a few riders that I’m going to miss, but I’ll probably catch up with them away from the track anyway,” he says. “I’m sure I’ll visit 43

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a couple of the races here and there. Make sure they’re really cold, miserable races, and I’ll be sitting there with a nice hot chocolate or coffee or something, and be laughing at them freezing their butts off!

“I mean, I’m not retiring from life, I’m not 60 or 70 years old. I’ve still got a lot of challenges ahead, a lot of life. There’s a very good chance I could end up racing V8 [cars] in Australia.”

After winning the Moto2 series in 2011, rookie German rider Stefan Bradl was bumped up to MotoGP for this season. After the race, he told RedBull.com that he almost crashed at Laguna Seca because of the chatter and grip on the course. “We finished seventh... this is one of the hardest weekends in the calendar,” he said. “We did the best we could”

NOT EVEN F1 DRIVERS SEE THIS LEVEL OF DANGER 44

These racers are not some overpaid NBA prima donnas puffing their chests out under the glittering lights of Madison Square Garden, knowing full well that any threat of a brawl is an empty one.

It is not someone kicking a defenceless opponent on the ground without fear of retribution. This is cold, merciless physics, bone and muscle on steel, sinew and flesh excelling in the perils of sport.

Despite the recent domination of Rossi and Stoner, several other racers, particularly Spaniards Dani Pedrosa and 2010 World Champion Jorge Lorenzo, have eyes on the throne. And although Americans Ben Spies and 2006 World Champion Nicky Hayden compete hard as well, the 2012 season, with Stoner requiring surgery, has now boiled down to a battle between Pedrosa, and Lorenzo, with the duo podiuming regularly.

“I think the level that they’re at as riders is very similar, and it often depends what mood they’re in when they get out of bed that day – how immortal they feel, how up for it they are – that makes a huge difference,” says Neale. “But assuming they’re all in a good mood and are up for it, it does become about the bike.

“That’s something that’s actually very hard to understand: how personal the set-up is. Little things can vastly change a bike. For instance, Bridgestone made the tyres softer in response to the fact that many riders were crashing on cold tyres. This had a powerful effect throughout the various garages; Stoner and Pedrosa both say that the Honda doesn’t run as well on these new tyres, and the Ducati doesn’t seem to work at all with them. If you gave Jimi Hendrix a Les Paul

PHOTOGRAPHY: GIORGIO AUGUSTO NEYROZ (2), TAZ DARLING

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o me its baffling that a guy who’s struggled for all these years, and he’s now in the best team, and he won the Championship last year with Honda, with the best bike, that the next thing he does is quit.

It’s like, you go your whole life to get there, why not enjoy it?

Why not live it up for a couple of years? He’s 26 years old!” says filmmaker Mark Neale, director of the award-winning MotoGP documentaries Faster and Fastest. “In my experience Stoner, away from the cameras, is a happier guy, and a nice guy, and a lot of the riders say the same thing about him, but there’s something about him that does not work on camera.”

Neale has peered into this insular, nebulous universe through a unique telescope. He tells many stories about Valentino Rossi – the seven-time World Champion, current global superstar, most famous man on the circuit and the focus of his two feature films. Such as the time Rossi’s rival Max Biaggi stuck his elbow out on a corner of the Suzuka race track in 2001 and put Rossi in the dirt at 240kph, a move that could have seriously injured the rising talent. When Rossi finally overtook Biaggi in the final laps, he greeted his nemesis with an extended finger – on camera, in front of tens of millions of fans watching worldwide. Or when he rode a victory lap with an inflatable sex doll representing Claudia Schiffer – another direct jab at Biaggi who was famously dating supermodel Naomi Campbell at the time. “Rossi was very entertaining,” Neale says. “He brought the sport the kind of glamour and humour and intelligence that nobody else ever had. He’s the last guy to have that kind of rock ’n’ roll swagger.”

Even Formula One drivers don’t expose themselves to the level of danger and real-world vulnerability of MotoGP. These riders are not encased in shells made of carbon fibre with crumple zones and five-point harnesses. They are literally inches from the track blurring by at 300kph, with only leathers to protect them. Last October, beloved Italian rider Marco Simoncelli lost his life at the Malaysian Grand Prix after colliding with Rossi and American rider Colin Edwards.

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Above and left: Casey Stoner is considered by some to be the best rider to ever race in MotoGP; earlier this year, the two-time world champion announced that he was going to retire.

He’s 26 years old. It is unlikely he will hold onto his title in his final season after injuring his ankle and requiring surgery

instead of a Stratocaster to play, he would sound different. And he might say, ‘Well forget this, for me to do my thing, I need my Strat back.’ It involves a physical interaction that is very subtle and different for each rider.”

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t’s Sunday at Laguna Seca. Race day. In the previous day’s qualifying session, Lorenzo claimed pole position, followed by Stoner and Pedrosa. Everything is exactly as expected in the world of MotoGP. The race flies by in a haste 40 minutes, highlighted by a thrilling manoeuvre on the 21st lap when Stoner passes Lorenzo cleanly, securing his fourth victory of the season.

Watching from the grandstands with dark sunglasses visoring half of his face, and a long grey beard that adds a wizard-like gravitas to his demeanour, is the unofficial ‘Mayor of Laguna Seca’, OB Gold.

“It was a real treat this weekend to watch Casey Stoner race,” Gold says. “Casey’s not the most liked person in the paddock – he’s very rough on his fellow competitors, you know bumps them with his shoulder, very aggressive, not friendly necessarily to the press, definitely not friendly to the MotoGP establishment – but Casey Stoner rides a motorcycle unlike any other person on the planet.”

Gold has been coming to Laguna Seca for 42 years and has never missed a race in nearly half a century. He is the author and publisher of The Hot Pot Handbook – a guide to the healthy, safe and rational use of cannabis – and certainly looks the part. He has the sagely wisdom of Gandalf, the kind amicability of Santa Claus. He expounds upon Stoner’s indelible will – “Casey Stoner won this race in practice; this was preordained” – and the Australian’s loss of interest in the sport and disapproval of the CRT teams. He sincerely praises the cleanliness and sterility of Jorge Lorenzo’s style: “He drives utterly free of drama; it looks as if he’s driving taxi cab.”

But OB Gold’s parting shot is his most passionate. It concerns the magnetic spell this sport holds for him and millions of others, for those who cannot go a summer without watching the unfurling of its annual theatre.

“MotoGP is the pinnacle of motorsport excellence.

It requires the highest level of physicality for the riders, it has the greatest level of danger, and it’s colourful and exciting,” Gold says in an even, gravelly voice as if he were Moses delivering a Commandment. “I can’t stay away. It’s tremendous.”

Death defying: www.motogp.com

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VINCENT WARD

The Navigator He swapped Hollywood for the art world, came back to New Zealand, now he’s heading for China. But plotting a course through to creative success is more challenging than ever Words: Robert Tighe During the preparations for his exhibition at the Shanghai Biennale, Asia’s most prestigious contemporary art event, Vincent Ward decided he needed to get away from it all. Instead of lying on a beach somewhere, he took off to Thailand for a week-long Muay Thai training camp.

“Nobody was in danger, except maybe myself,” says Ward, “but I like things that

“You experiment and you fail, but from the failures you build up a body of knowledge” are physical. I ride horses, I kickbox.

I like things that have got some element of danger to them, not ridiculously so, but just enough to make you feel alive. I may be adventurous, but I’m not foolhardy.”

That open-minded yet calculated weighing-up of options goes some way to explain why Ward walked away from a 25-year career as a film director to turn his hand to another art form. After movies including The Navigator, Map Of The Human Heart and River Queen, he has spent the last three-and-a-half years working on a multimedia project that incorporates moving images, photography and his first love, painting.

Ward studied fine art at university, and made the concept drawings for his films. While making What Dreams May Come, starring Robin Williams, he used the aesthetic of old paintings to visualise the afterlife (the film won an 46

Photography: Nic Staveley Oscar for its visual effects). That way of thinking is inherent in his current art project, which began by accident.

When he began selecting screen grabs from his movies to put on his website, the images inspired him to write a book, The Past Awaits, a career retrospective and memoir. The stills also caused Ward to get out his paints and easel.

“I’ve always loved painting and it’s a very similar process to making a movie,” says the 56-year-old. “You shoot a scene or you paint something, then you stop and think about it, do something else and go back to it. You

Ward’s work is a hit at box offices and biennales

experiment and you fail, but from the failures you build up a body of knowledge. You play and you learn.”

Ward is the first Kiwi to be invited to the Shanghai Biennale. His exhibition, Auckland Station: Destinies Lost and Found, contains moving images and huge paintings 8m tall, site-specific works he made after visiting the old cathedral that will host his exhibition for three months.

Ward feels that Shanghai’s biennale – now in its ninth year – is not far behind Venice’s in terms of its impression on audiences and importance to the art world.

“It’s a great place for work to be seen,” he says, “and a great opportunity for me to have a dialogue with the rest of the world and see what other people are doing.”

In China, other people will see that Ward is expanding on the work in his twin solo exhibitions held earlier this year in Auckland, and their accompanying book, Inhale/Exhale. He photographed and filmed nude women in a fish tank at Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater World in Auckland. His subjects, including dancers and an underwater hockey player, were submerged along with food dye and opaque plastic wrapping, resulting in a series of striking, foetal images.

Instinct, and his accountant, tells Ward he’ll need to go back to making movies next year to finance his moves in the art world. Last year, he thought about putting his LA home up for sale to raise money, but a tough market put paid to a sale Ward would have been happy with.

This year, a campaign, backed by Robin Williams, to raise biennale money on the crowd-funding website Kickstarter, came up just short, but he made it to Shanghai regardless. Directing job offers still come in from America, but this is a different Vincent Ward to that which headed to Hollywood all those years ago.

“I’d like to be doing feature films and art exhibitions in New Zealand, but there’s never any money here,” he says. “I don’t know how anybody does it in the arts, except Peter Jackson – and I don’t know how he does it. The more adventurous you are, and the less conventional route you take, the harder it is.”

After a career that has been defined by a willingness to challenge, and commitment to his vision, Vincent Ward will no doubt be working hard for a good while yet. www.vincentwardfilms.com

Successful sequel: Exchanging Hollywood studios for an artist’s studio has given Vincent Ward a new lease of life

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THE BLADE RUNNER

The fastest sailboat in the world is two-thirds airplane and functions like a submarine Words : Frédéric Pelatan Photography: Christophe Launay

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Top speed: 104kph.

The Hydroptère has broken one world record a er another

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For 20 years, Alain Thébault has been working on his dream of making the fastest sailboat ever, and he’s revolutionised wind-driven seafaring along the way.

His boat, the Hydroptère DCNS, spearheads these developments

Around 30 tonnes of water pressure per square metre hit the trimaran’s hydrofoil

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Submarine-tested technology prevents the sailboat from somersaulting

Command centre. At high speeds the boat could somersault and overturn.

Project partners DCNS have built in technical regulators derived from submarine construction which measure the slightest movement of the boat and send the data to the rudder, which in the Hydroptère’s case looks like a plane’s pitch elevator

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www.hydroptere.com

28 m

Front view

4,5 m

2000. The present boat, the Hydroptère DCNS, compensates for these blows with hydraulic cylinders on the hydrofoils, which are automatically controlled using data from numerous on-board sensors.

The impact of the waves on the boat at full speed equates to the pressure on a plane during an emergency water landing. Consequently, the airplane maker Airbus followed the Hydroptère crew’s developments with great interest.

The two companies even went as far as jointly registering a patent, which concerns the components of the boat being put together with rivets made from carbon rather than titanium. Airbus is looking to apply this innovation to its planes in order to reduce fuel costs.

As The Red Bulletin went to press, Thébault and his team were waiting for optimal weather conditions for a new record attempt. They hope to sail from Los Angeles to Honolulu faster than another French sailor, Olivier de Kersauson, who in 2005 crossed the same stretch of Pacific Ocean in his trimaran in four days and 19.5 hours.

It’s an adventure, but at the same time it’s much more than that: a high-seas reality check for the revolution in wind-driven seafaring.

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Child of the digital drawing board In order to build the Hydroptère, the team developed simulation software called Hydrop 6, which predicts data for future sailing conditions (up to five years ahead) to optimise the boat for any situation.

America’s Cup racing teams have already expressed interest in the software.

ILLUSTRATION : ALBERT EXERGIAN

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his version of the classic flying dream plays out on the water, powered only by wind.

When the Hydroptère hits 18kph, the boat’s three hulls rise up out of the water along the hydrofoil, reaching a height of 5m as speeds increase to record-breaking levels. In 2005 came the fastest crossing of the English Channel (average speed, 61kph).

In 2007, the official world record speed over 500m (82.9kph). In 2008, that record was broken (86.8kph). That was the same year that the Hydroptère reached a top speed of 104kph, making it the fastest sailboat in the world.

Since then, the team headed by French skipper Alain Thébault has been battling to transfer this achievement from calm, shallow waters to the high seas. Once the boat reaches 93kph, it meets a force of 30 tonnes of water per square metre. In waves, these forces slam into the boat and can cause explosions, a fate that put paid to a forerunner of the Hydroptère in

The 12m arm connecting the three hulls was produced

by Airbus. For Airbus, the Hydroptère project serves as a test case for larger constructions.

In the learning phase before construction of the A380, for example, a framework was used similar to that of the boat

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Yugo racers Matjaž Hudicˇ (left) and Karel Prasicˇ

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Text: Werner Jessner Fotos: J端rgen Skarwan

Go go Yugo!

Forget telemetry, carbon, tyre warmers and the Formula One Paddock Club. Think instead: sledge hammers, improvisation, friendship, madness. This is motorsport at the bottom of the food chain. This is the Yugo Allstars!

Words: Werner Jessner Photography: J端rgen Skarwan 59

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uddenly all that mattered was a happy ending. The green Opel Corsa whose rollover seemed inevitable, the black VW Polo which flipped on lap three and was now racing windowless, the three Golfs from Auto Metzker liveried up in ’80s Rothmans Racing colours.

The funny guys from Disastercars, whose Mazda had drawn bad karma despite having only 80,000km on the clock.

The onlookers, the kids, the well-fed, the well-imbibed, the entertained, the musically inspired, the recipients, the indifferent… Minutes before the end of the race, they filled the grandstands in anticipation of the winners’ parade of the maiden Nordring 24 Hour race, almost like the final leg of the Tour de France on the Champs Elysées. Almost.

The regulations dictated that any of the 35 standard, 1,500cc-maximum cars to cross the finish line under their own power after 24 hours on the 1.1km gravel and tarmac Nordring circuit in the most forgotten corner of Lower Austria would be included in the final standings.

Sadly, right at that moment this seemed impossible for the blue, white and red number 11, whose destiny had so captured the attention of the spectators. How should, how could fate be so cruel, so cursed, so damn unfair? Dying a miserable 60

Above: What these Yugo racers lack in decent wheels they make up for in style.

Right: A Yugo Koral 55 is given some mechanical love Below: Head honcho and race organiser David Rowland lays down some rules: “No overtaking under yellow, no pushing, no deliberate crashing.

Now go out and have some fun”

death in the Ostkurve exit, cause unknown, so close to the finish line, after a series of record laps?

It couldn’t be the classic exhaust defect this time: these brave men had laboured long and hard for the past 23 hours with this one.

They welded while the drivers switched places and patched up the holes, constantly coming up with clever new ways to fix the rusty iron pipe, while trying not to deviate too far from the rules which stated ‘no louder than straight off the assembly line’.

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Clockwise from top: With it’s mix of tarmac and gravel, the 1.1 km short course is perfect for overtaking; most of the Yugos used for racing are children of the ’80s and ’90s; Hudicˇ sets about polishing the Allstars’ logo, ignoring the dust surrounding it

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ut the assembly line in Serbia’s fourth-largest city Kragujevac – from which the blue, white and red Yugo Koral 55, which now sports the number 11 in the style of Mark Donohue’s AMC Javelin, rolled off three decades ago – has long been mothballed. Even the onlookers standing out on the back straight in the still of the night say they can’t remember Yugos being so loud – at least not the ones they had overtaken back then on the

way to Dalmatia, climbing to the Plitvice Lakes. And further on, on the limestone formations where the Wild West movies charting the fortunes of Winetou, the Native American hero dreamed up by German writer Karl May, were made.

Until this weekend, the Yugo had been a ridiculed sub-species of automobile, something like the Citroën 2CV for people from the Balkans, or the Trabant of Yugoslavia, the automobile leftovers of an ailing Fiat concern. You didn’t drive a Yugo because you loved it, you drove it because there were precious

few alternatives. And where there were alternatives, the Yugo had the dubious reputation as the worst car in history.

In America it was flogged off for US $3,990 (or if you bought a Cadillac they would throw one in for free).

A spectacular accident put a stop to the import of the runt from Kragujevac.

In September 1989, in the US state of Michigan, a gust of wind blew the 790kg Yugo America carrying 31-year-old Leslie Ann Pluhar off the Mackinac Bridge on the road that links Lakes Michigan and Huron. She died, and so did the 61

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apparently brilliant idea of a small, cheap car for America. What remained was the pitiful role of the loser junk pile in film and TV, from Die Hard to The Simpsons. But now, five young men have resuscitated the unloved rust bucket that was “badly designed, badly made and badly constructed”, as test reports stated back then. Times change: much of what was thought to be backward proved to be predestined for merciless use without sentimentality, whether on the infamously bad roads of the Balkan region or on a badly rutted, partly gravel race track. Leaf springs that still work even though the shock absorbers have died long ago. Electrics about as complicated as a torch. Driveshafts that could have come from a tractor, and have a good laugh at the measly 55hp.

When the Yugo was conceived and designed, state-directed engineers had their say. Mechanics then threw parts together depending on how they felt on the day into a sort of greater whole. The hope was that one would always manage to patch up this makeshift solution just as the producers had predetermined.

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t took some extraordinary men to teach this workhorse to fly.

Matjaž Hudič for example (whose name, incidentally, means ‘devil’ but of course this was intended to mean the opposite); Karel Prasič, who was able to convince the big, local energy provider to invest big-time into the Race Yugo Project (outcome uncertain); Jozip Broz Tito himself, to give the outfit leadership; Rado Sabosliš, the dreaded automobile sadist who immediately punished any of the Yugo’s bad habits with a flat tyre or even a failed strut; and then Lego Cevapčic, initially the head chef in the Yugo hospitality, but promoted to race technician after the chief engineer pulled out at the last minute.

So Cevapčic is responsible for the welding torch as well as cooking on the barbecue. They made a good elite unit that would achieve the miraculous revival of the Yugo, and with all justification they were dubbed the Yugo Allstars. The actual race favourites came out of Japan: Honda Civic, Mazda 323 and the Subaru Justy. A bunch of Opels and VWs, including two suspiciously new Lupos. A handful of oddities enhanced the grid: a Beetle, a rearwheel-drive Escort, two Ladas, one disguised as a Seat. Prejudices were

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confirmed beautifully. A Fiat Tipo died from multiple organ failure, a Fiat Brava went up in flames after the first hour.

Team Ventilspiel (Valveplay) pushed their Mazda so hard that after eight hours there wasn’t one suitable spare shock absorber to be found for it in the entire region. When the exhaust of the Graf Racing’s Ford Escort perforated the radiator of Disastercars’ Mazda in a crash, the head improviser transplanted the radiator from the retired Fiat Tipo into the Mazda – even though it meant cutting open the bonnet. Later a spring strut poked through the boot lid of the Disastercar. Retirement? No chance. Where’s that welding torch?

Instead of avoiding defects, the bulk of the field concentrated on finding solutions. Repairs were made exactly as you wouldn’t do it in real life. When working on the underbody you just roll the car to the side and secure it by shoving a tyre underneath. Cracks in

This is the end: A ‘relaxed’ Roland David is relieved to wave the chequered flag after a whole day’s racing. The large stain down his T-shirt was caused by champagne, of course

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(played loud) and the company of the Yugos with their ’70s Adidas glasses who enthusiastically wipe their hands on their white overalls after doing repairs, drum on the roof of the racing Yugo shouting, “Car’s ready boss, let ’er roll!” And while one headed out under the watchful eye of a nodding Pope stuck to the wing mirror to overtake the ‘modern’ cars, the others slapped another piece of meat on the grill and turned the music up louder.

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Scenes from the paddock (clockwise from far left): Some of the richer teams brought mobile homes; one Yugo makes a night-time getaway; waiting around for a fix; one driver kicks back in an original Yugo seat (Opel Manta seats are used for racing); a lengthy queue forms for the welder’s services

the body are fixed by welding on any old leftover sheets of metal. Oil, water?

Fill ’em up, main thing is that it runs.

Damage to the bodywork? Hammered out if you like. Tyres? Preferably four, approximately the same size, black and fitted underneath. Brake pads? Overrated.

Our friends from the Yugo Allstars also had hiccups. When the front right shock absorber imploded, repairs took over an hour, despite having a spare Yugo available. Every couple of hours the ulcerated exhaust broke open – no wonder the pljeskavica (a type of Serbian hamburger) team chef Lego Cevapčic was grilling ended up burnt. But the welcome that guests received in the team hospitality of the Yugo Allstars was heartfelt. They learned from not-so-successful Formula One teams: what you lack in performance you make up for with great food.

Large amounts of meat on the barbecue, ajvar relish, onions, tomatoes, plenty of Red Bull and Laško Pivo beer, great tunes

hey could have carried on like this forever.

Fundamentally the Yugo was, well, fighting fit. Shortly before 4pm, preparations begin in the paddock to welcome the finishers. But where is the Yugo? Ten minutes before the flag, the shift linkage broke, and there it now stands at the Ostkurve exit, the driver next to it with arms flailing. The tow truck had received instructions to retrieve it, but it had broken down too, so brave Matjaž Hudič seized the race director’s Land Rover, bumped his way over to the stranded Yugo, dragged it off the track, threw himself under the car with a stone in hand and, cheered on by the crowd, bashed the gearbox until he got it into fourth gear. Slowly, the driver let the clutch out – and miraculously, it started to move. The other competitors on the track hooted and waved as the tiny Yugo rejoined the race. It was the darling of the public, the underdog. If they had to, they would have pushed it over the finish line.

Position 27 after 736km for the Yugo Allstars, clear winners of the hearts and number one for tunes and food. Official winner on the track? A nondescript Toyota Starlet in grey or black or something like that, no one really remembers.

Follow the Yugo Allstars’ progress on Facebook

Drive of their lives: there’s more than one back-seat driver in the Yugo Allstars

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INSIDE THE

MOST MARVELLOUS MINDS ON THE PLANET PLUS: HOW YOU CAN TURN YOUR BRAIN UP TO 11 AND START THINKING BIG TODAY. GENIUS! Words: David Morton Illustration: Roland Vorlaufer

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JAMES LOVELOCK

Environmental Maverick How Clever?

A British independent scientist and futurologist, whose advances in the detection of CFCs led to the first identification of global warming.

Now, the unorthodox 93-year-old environmentalist has worked out that the best way to stop the big melt is the only viable alternative to fossil fuels – nuclear power.

It Is Said...

“Lovelock is a small man, unfailingly polite, with white hair and round, owlish glasses. His step is jaunty, his mind lively, his manner anything but gloomy. In fact, the coming of the Four Horsemen – war, famine, pestilence and death – seems to perk him up.” Jeff Goodell, Rolling Stone

Personally Speaking

“I find it sad, but all too human, that there are vast bureaucracies concerned about nuclear waste, huge organisations devoted to decommissioning power stations, but nothing comparable to deal with that truly malign waste, carbon dioxide.”

Smartest Thing Ever

Seeing the bigger picture. The Gaia hypothesis, which states that the biosphere is self-regulating, suggests that by tinkering with the chemical and physical conditions of our planet we have perhaps our best chance of keeping it nice and healthy.

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STEPHEN HAWKING

Space Man

How Clever?

The theoretical physicist and cosmologist has done as much for the advanced academic exploration of black holes and quantum gravity (like gravity, but harder to comprehend) as he has to ignite popular interest in science. He is, quite literally, the don.

It Is Said...

“From his wheelchair, he has led us on a journey to the farthest and strangest reaches of the cosmos.

In so doing, he has stirred our imagination and showed us the power of the human spirit.”

US President Barack Obama, making Hawking’s Medal of Freedom award ceremony speech

Personally Speaking

SIR TIM BERNERS-LEE

Web Guru

How Clever?

‘TimBL’, or Sir Tim, as he’s more formally known, invented the World Wide Web in 1989. Which, in terms of everything that takes place in the modern world, from finance to education and YouTube videos of laughing babies, is a Very Big Deal.

Smartest Thing Ever Making it free. Berners-Lee made his idea unreservedly available with no royalties for its use. Instead of charging for it, he founded the World Wide Web Consortium in 1994, a group of companies volunteering to create standards and maintain the quality of the web, handing the keys of content over to anyone with a computer.

Which includes you.

“I believe that life on Earth is at an ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, or other dangers. I think the human race has no future if it doesn’t go into space.”

Smartest Thing Ever

Gambling on the universe. Not satisfied with merely exploring the most distant corners of our existence with the power of his mind, Hawking also likes a flutter on what he finds. A public bet on the outcome of the ‘black hole information paradox’ with American contemporary John Preskill actually saw Hawking concede defeat. He presented Preskill with a baseball encyclopaedia as prize.

It Is Said...

“If computer networking were a traditional science, BernersLee would win a Nobel Prize.”

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, speaking to Time magazine

Personally Speaking

“I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the Transmission Control Protocol and domain name system ideas and – ta-da! – the World Wide Web.”

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“I THINK THE HUMAN RACE HAS NO FUTURE IF IT DOESN’T GO INTO SPACE”

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KIM UNG-YONG

World’s Highest IQ How Clever?

The bona-fide cleverest man on the planet, according to his intelligence quotient – given by the Guinness Book of World Records as around the 210 mark. Able to speak four languages by the time he was two, the Korean had a Phd in physics and a NASA research post aged 12. The 50-year-old has rivals for the high IQ spot, notably Terrence Tao, former child prodigy and current UCLA maths professor, whose points score is unofficially estimated to be between 220 and 230.

It Is Said...

“Kim Ung-Yong started university courses at age three, around the time you were playing with a magnetic alphabet on your parents’ refrigerator.”

Science Channel

Personally Speaking

DINA KATABI

Data Accelerator How Clever?

As leader of the Network group at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab at brain hive MIT, Prof Katabi spearheads the search for ways to improve data streaming, which one day very soon will be the world’s most important form of information exchange.

In January, she and three colleagues unveiled a new algorithm that will make it faster and cheaper.

It Is Said...

“With the new algorithm, streams of data can be processed 10 to 100 times faster than was possible [before]… less computer power is required to process a given amount of information – a boon to energy-conscious mobile multimedia devices such as smartphones.”

Technology Review

“WE ALL KNOW MOBILE VIDEO IS THE NEXT ‘KILLER APP’”

“Society should not judge anyone with unilateral standards. Everyone has different learning levels, hopes, talents and dreams, and we should respect that.”

Smartest Thing Ever

Being normal. In 1978, after 10 years in the US under NASA’s wing, the 16-year-old Kim returned home, switched to civil engineering, and took a position in the business-planning department of a South Korean development corporation. As of 2007 he has held a part-time post at the local university.

Personally Speaking “We all know mobile video is the next ‘killer app’. We also know that mobile video suffers from glitches and stalls… Ideally you want a video that always achieves the best possible performance…

Our system is as efficient as digital video, but with no [loss of signal].”

Smartest Thing Ever Saving future lives. Yes, faster video means no more glitches in all the movie trailers and clips of kittens watched on smartphones. But more vitally, Katabi’s work will lead to greater strides in medical technology, such as when video streams are used in conjunction with robotics to perform remote surgeries.

“EVERYONE HAS DIFFERENT LEARNING LEVELS, HOPES, TALENTS AND DREAMS” 67

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DR MARTIN COOPER

Mobile Intelligence How Clever?

From the brick-sized mobiles paraded by 1980s businessmen all the way to iPhoneBerrys, every piece of cell-phone tech arose from his vision. His idea of a portable handset distinct from car phones is the most vital step in the giant leap from wired to wireless. Working at Motorola, his prototype mobi, weighing 1kg, took less than three months to produce.

It Is Said...

MICHAEL McALPINE

“Marty said, ‘We’ll get this thing down to the size of the palm of your hand.’”

Travis Marshall, former Motorola executive, speaking to The Economist

How Clever?

Personally Speaking

Battery Recharger As an assistant professor at Princeton University, McAlpine realised that PZT, a piezoelectric material that converts mechanical energy into electricity, can provide humankind with a new, natural and neverending power source – the movement of the body.

As you walk, jog or run, power is generated. One day, you will never have to plug in your iPod again; thanks to McAlpine, you are plug enough.

It Is Said...

“McAlpine and his colleagues have suggested applications such as shoes that help power MP3 players or smartphones. There’s even the thought of placing silicone sheets against the lungs to harness natural breathing motions to power pacemakers, as opposed to using batteries that require surgical replacement when they run down.” Jeremy Hsu, Popular Science

Personally Speaking

“PZT is 100 times more efficient than quartz, another piezoelectric material. You don’t generate that much power from walking or breathing, so you want to harness it as efficiently as possible.”

Smartest Thing Ever

Finding a new use for implants. McAlpine’s team are working on scaling up the silicone-based technology, meaning silicone implants could produce a significant amount of renewable, personal power.

Also, the researchers note, by feeding external power back into the device you can make the implants oscillate, flex or, indeed, jiggle...

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“Our culture was based upon a conviction, almost a religion, that people were naturally and inherently mobile and that any communications

device that inhibited this was wrong... It was [AT&T], the largest company in the world, against us, a little company in Chicago. We demonstrated our dream – and won. Today, the exciting industries are wirelessly enhanced medicine and social networking in the enterprise, both of which are revolutionary to the same extent that cellular technology was.”

Smartest Thing Ever

Making the first call. In 1973, Cooper, stood on Sixth Avenue in New York and placed the first mobile call to an industry competitor. It marked the moment we began calling people, not places. The man on the other end of the line?

Joel S Engels, research director at Bell Laboratories.

As in, ‘Alexander Graham’ Bell Laboratories.

“WE DEMONSTRATED OUR DREAM – AND WON”

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DICKSON D DESPOMMIER

Blue-Sky Farmer How Clever?

According to current estimates, by the year 2050 around 80 per cent of the world’s inhabitants (there will be about 8bn of us then) will live in urban centres.

In order to produce enough food, we will need to expand into new agricultural space equivalent to the size of Brazil. Eco-microbiologist Despommier has another way. That way is Up.

It Is Said...

“The goal is to provide safe, fresh food around the globe in a way Despommier says is impossible with modern farming. He acknowledges that getting to that future might be expensive, but he considers it a challenge akin to the space race...” David Runk, Associated Press

Personally Speaking “Creation of prototypes so all of the integration issues can be worked out is the most vital step to vertical farming becoming a reality. Getting funding for prototypes, so all of the integration issues can be worked out, is difficult.

It will require partnerships between private and public funding, but I am confident that this will happen over the next six months to a year from now.”

Smartest Thing Ever

Thinking of everything.

Despommier’s is a 360-degree premise. It uses far less water than traditional methods; it can be implemented anywhere as no soil is needed; it brings fresh produce to the city all year round; and it will create many new job opportunities.

Dwellers of all cities will have accessible, healthy food for the first time in human history.

NATHAN WOLFE

Virus Hunter How Clever?

Ebola, avian flu, swine flu – these new viruses in the modern world have jumped from animals to humans. As the founder and director of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative, virologist Wolfe is the man trying to ensure the next such disease does not make that leap.

It Is Said...

“Most virologists spend their working lives in laboratories, looking at slides, focusing on specific proteins and, often, on a single disease. Nathan Wolfe’s life conforms more to the pattern of a 19th-century explorer than to that of a 21st-century biologist.”

Michael Specter, The New Yorker

Personally Speaking

“THE GOAL IS TO PROVIDE SAFE, FRESH FOOD AROUND THE GLOBE”

“What is more likely to kill millions of people?

Nuclear war, or a virus that makes the leap from animal to man? If, tomorrow, I had to go to Las Vegas and place a bet on the next great killer, I would put all my money on a virus.”

Smartest Thing Ever

Going mobile. By calling in a mobile technology expert from Stanford, Wolfe intends to create a database that will allow him to observe viral trends in the same way Twitter and Google can recognise and categorise popular topics or searches.

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MARISSA MAYER

Online Gatekeeper

How Clever?

Anyone who uses Gmail, Google Earth, Google Maps or even just good old Google, has used Mayer’s simple user interfaces that have become the online giant’s trademark. One of Google’s first 20 employees, and its first female engineer, she became the company’s vice-president of consumer products. In 2010, aged 35, she became the youngest ever lady on Fortune magazine’s list of 50 Most Powerful Women. Yahoo just poached her to be its new CEO.

It Is Said...

“Marissa Mayer is both the innovator and gatekeeper for Google’s core product – its search engine. She scrutinises every slight tweak or change to the experience that has become an essential part of most people’s lives.”

Emma Barnett, Digital Media Editor, The Telegraph

“IMAGINE A TOOL THAT TRANSLATED A SEARCH QUERY INTO EVERY LANGUAGE THEN SEARCHED THE ENTIRE WORLD’S WEBSITES” 70

Personally Speaking

“Imagine what it would be like if there was a tool built into the search engine which translated my search query into every language and then searched the entire world’s websites. And then invoked the translation software a second and third time – to not only then present the results in your native language, but then translated those sites in full when you clicked through.”

Smartest Thing Ever

Reading the world’s minds.

Before leaving Google, Mayer began work on ‘contextual discovery’ or, if you like, search without search. Your browser or smartphone will look at where you’ve been and where you are in the world, then show you where to go for dinner before you even realise that you’re hungry.

BE SMARTER NOW: RELEASE YOUR INNER GENIUS James Bannerman, author of Genius!

Deceptively Simple Ways to Become Instantly Smarter (Pearson), gives his tips for cleverer thinking Swirl It Around

None of us likes making mistakes, but ‘swirling’ around something that’s gone pear-shaped can turn an error into an advantage.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa, an architectural disaster, was reborn as a major tourist attraction.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, when devising the Hulk, wanted their incredible creation to be grey, but problems at the printers were later ‘swirled’ to maximum effect.

Challenge The Obvious

Genius minds have long challenged the obvious. At one time, children’s dolls mainly looked like babies; in 1959, US businesswoman Ruth Handler introduced one that didn’t. Her Barbie was a billion-dollar idea. In 1972, Lonely Planet rewrote the rulebook for travel guides. In 1986, Pret A Manger sandwiched Paris and New York food principles together to eventually recalibrate what the UK eats for lunch.

Go For Simple

Solving obvious problems in the most basic way is a hallmark of genius. In 1930, Canadian engineer JD Millar suggested painting a broken white line down the middle of roads to stop cars crashing so much. Last year, 13-year-old UK schoolboy Laurence Rook revealed his Smart Bell, a doorbell that rings a person’s phone if they’re out of the house, after his mother missed parcel deliveries.

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BEN RATTRAY

Cyber Organiser How Clever?

The founder and CEO of website change.org, the world’s fastest growing website for social activism.

With over 14 million users, the platform for online petitions changes the balance of power between the little people and the biggest corporations in the world. More than 1,500 new campaigns are launched around the world every month.

It Is Said...

“[change.org] reflects a zeitgeist in which desire for change, disenchantment with traditional power structures and new technology is connecting people online like never before.”

Alexandra Topping, The Guardian

Personally Speaking

“This is not direct democracy; it doesn’t mean that the people making the decisions have to agree or comply. But it does mean that instead of ignoring the people their decisions affect, those in power have to respond, and that is very healthy for democracy.”

Smartest Thing Ever

MATT BERG

Disease Texter How Clever?

Berg has developed a mobile phone platform called ChildCount+, which uses SMS to monitor illness and improve healthcare for children and pregnant mothers in Africa. So far, over 100,000 women and babies have benefited from the system, which helps to make quicker interventions and drives more effective health campaigns.

It Is Said...

“Using basic mobile phones and text messages, ‘invisible’ poor or homeless people in India and Africa can be counted as individuals with needs and rights – and receive their share of social resources.” Daniel Braun, National Geographic

Personally Speaking “From the abacus to early computers, technology has long provided mechanisms that help to better account for things – finances, transactions, diseases, people.

Today, the mobile phone promises to fundamentally increase accountability by connecting people, even the world’s poor, to modern communication networks that facilitate the collection and sharing of information.”

Going local. Recent upgrades to change.org now give people around the world the tools they need to tell their stories and launch campaigns that target the issues they really care about, from the reinstatement of a teacher to rubbish disposal, and connect with other local citizens to instigate that change, no matter how small.

Smartest Thing Ever Nurturing homegrown talent.

Berg has also established the Rural Technology Lab in Western Africa to train local students to manage the health of their own communities.

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SEBASTIAN SEUNG

Mind Mapper How Clever?

Seung has developed computer-vision algorithms to explore the field of connectomics, the mapping and study of the neural networks in your brain.

Unravelling the ‘connectome’ is the Human Genome Project of the mind, but while DNA explains what it is to be human, Seung believes that cracking the code of the 100 billion neurons in the brain will unlock the basis of what it is to be You. It is the Mount Everest of human science.

It Is Said...

“His work could someday lead to a better understanding of memory, personality, and pathologies. For now, Seung is just following his curiosity – and one nagging question: are we all simply the sum of our connectome?” Matthew Hutson, Wired

Personally Speaking

“Ask not what the brain can do for the computer – ask what the computer can do for the brain.”

Smartest Thing Ever

Getting everyone to help. By inviting the public to visit eyewire.org and ‘colour in’ neurons themselves, Seung is making shorter work of mapping the neural tissue at the back of the eye. No specialist training is required to trace the ‘wiring’ and users tend to display better decisions over time. In other words, you actually become smarter.

DONALD SADOWAY

Renewable Energy Lynchpin How Clever?

MIT engineering professor whose class is one of the most highly attended in the school’s history. His work with liquid metal and molten salt batteries could be the solution to the intermittent nature of renewable energy sources. Put simply, when the sun goes down and the wind dies out you need huge, cheap batteries like Sadoway’s that can step in and pick up the slack.

It Is Said...

“His online TED talk has logged more than 380,000 views. The talk is on the unsexy topic of liquid-metal batteries, but you’ll enjoy it so much you’ll feel guilty. That’s because Sadoway does more than entertain; he gives you a glimpse into the future of energy.” Jeffrey Kluger, Time

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Personally Speaking “Imagine batteries about the size of a small refrigerator in the basement of every home, where people can take energy off the grid in the wee hours of the morning, then draw upon that stored energy throughout the day. Maybe even sell it back to the grid during peak demand times.”

Smartest Thing Ever Being the only expert on his team: the rest of his group are his students. Sadoway sees this as maximising the human potential of his juniors in the same way they strive to optimise the electrical potential of the batteries they are close to perfecting.

ACTION

EYTHOR BENDER

Man-Machine Man How Clever?

As CEO of Ekso Bionics, the Icelander is expanding the physical limitations of the human body one exoskeleton at a time. The latest ‘wearable robots’ off the line include the Human Universal Load Carrier, which allows a human to carry up to 90kg for hours on end, and the Ekso suit, a powered exoskeleton that is already allowing paraplegics to stand up out of their wheelchairs and walk.

It Is Said...

“For paraplegic patients, being able to stand – not to mention take a few steps – under their own power is a cruelly unattainable goal.

Or at least it has been…”

Alice Park, Time

Personally Speaking “Our company is at a crossroads in the history of mobility. Up until now, bionic exoskeletons were contraptions portrayed in the form of sci-fi avatars or robots. We are at the tipping point of scientific advancement where we have the ability to turn dreams and hope into reality.”

Smartest Thing Ever Making man and machine understand each other. The robotic prosthetic legs use artificial intelligence to ‘read’ the wearers’ movements, learning gestures to simulate a natural human gait. Ekso Bionics is looking to release the Ekso suit to the home market as soon as 2013, spelling a new era of mobility and independence for those who think of nothing else.

ELAINE MARDIS

Cancer Cracker How Clever?

Co-director of The Genome Institute at Washington University, Mardis led the team that published the first full sequence of a cancer genome in 2008 – a huge step towards understanding the mutations that cause the disease and the most effective methods of treatment. Mardis is now developing a genetic profile of the cancers most likely to respond to available drugs.

It Is Said...

“By sequencing the genomes of [patients] with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), Mardis and her colleagues hope they can help doctors choose the best possible avenues of treatment… sequencing could save patients from unnecessary treatments and direct them toward more effective, targeted therapies.” Karen Hopkin, The Scientist

Personally Speaking

“Right now, if you look at the major genomics companies – the number of people they employ and the instruments and reagents they produce – we’re probably one of the few US enterprises that’s still making something of value. And doing new science.”

Smartest Thing Ever

Knowing her limits. Mardis leaves the second part of the cancer puzzle – determining how the mutations trigger the disease – to doctors, scientists and specialists, so that she and her team can concentrate on providing the pieces that will build the next generation of treatments.

“WE HAVE REACHED THE POINT WITH OUR ROBOTS WHERE WE HAVE THE ABILITY TO TURN DREAMS AND HOPE INTO REALITY” 73

ACTION

It Is Said...

“In 2004, Carlsen played a brilliant game in Holland. His victory made a great impression and I called him the Mozart of chess. He was 13 at that time...” Lubimir Kavalek, grandmaster, Washington Post columnist

Personally Speaking

MAGNUS CARLSEN

Chess Prodigy How Clever?

A 21-year-old Norwegian chess grandmaster; in 2010 he became the youngest person ever to be ranked number one chess player in the world (the place he occupies in the rankings at time of writing). His peak rating of 2010 is the second-best of all time, behind the legendary Gary Kasparov, who Carlsen employed as his personal coach for a while.

“I got enthusiastic about the game when I was eight, and became a grandmaster at 13. The rapid improvement inspired me to think I could be really good. I think I’m able to keep my concentration for long periods because I enjoy the game of chess a lot.

However, to be able to focus during a long game or a long tournament, I have to be physically fit and very aware of what I eat.”

Smartest Thing Ever

Beating the world. On September 10, 2010, Carlsen took the G-Star RAW World Chess Challenge (Carlsen has modelled the brand’s clothing). Any online player was able to vote on their preferred move of those suggested by three grandmaster advisers. Forty-four moves and 2.5 hours later, the world resigned.

Altruistic Innovator

Play Video Games

Coffee And Donuts

It Is Said...

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Japanese neuroscientists found that regular motorcyclists showed improved cognitive function and made fewer mistakes at work. Which, if you’re Travis Pastrana, is a happy coincidence.

According to the journal Neurology, a ‘moderate amount’ of alcohol – one glass of wine – a day boosts blood flow to the brain, actually enhancing daily performance.

The engineer and lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) develops low-tech devices for use in developing countries. Her hammer-mill design sifts grain to flour using aerodynamics, and is so simple that village blacksmiths can manufacture it from indigenous materials. She has also patented an incubator that does not require electricity.

“I believe very strongly that solutions to problems in the developing world are best created in collaboration with the people who will be using them.”

Ride A Motorbike

Have A Drink

How Clever?

Personally Speaking

Changing what you do can alter how you think – and it doesn’t have to be hard work. Here are four actions that increase brain activity

A study of keyhole surgeons by Iowa State University showed that game-players were 27 per cent faster at surgery and made 37 per cent fewer errors. Not bad for a bit of Black Ops.

AMY B SMITH

“Her design philosophy is elegant: create simple machines that meet particular needs and then build them locally.”

Computer scientist Professor Sandy Pentland, speaking to Time magazine

BE SMARTER NOW: LIVE A CLEVERER LIFE

Smartest Thing Ever

Organising the International Developments Design Summit. The results of this meeting of minds have included an off-grid refrigerator for rural use, a recycledmaterial greenhouse and an advanced evaporative-cooling method to prolong the life of perishable food. All of which you would want if the main focus of your day is where the next safe meal is coming from.

University of Barcelona scientists discovered that the combination of caffeine and glucose in this technically unhealthy breakfast boosted attention and memory.

Your favourite artists share their personal playlists: Headphone Highlights on rbmaradio.com

ACTION

ANDRÉ BRIEND

Hunger Buster How Clever?

The French paediatric nutritionist developed Plumpy’nut, a high-protein, energy-dense food paste that is used by UNICEF and the World Health Organisation for the treatment of severe acute malnourishment in third world areas. With a shelf life of two years, Briend’s durable food will continue to feed the most in need for quite some time.

It Is Said...

“Plumpy’nut... is a beige paste about as thick as mashed potatoes and stuffed with milk, vitamins and minerals. But that is akin to calling a 1945 Mouton Rothschild fortified grape juice.”

Michael Wines, New York Times

Personally Speaking

JOSEPH STIGLITZ

Economic Controversialist How Clever?

The Nobel Prize-winning economist was an adviser to Bill Clinton, and was the Senior Vice-President of the World Bank. In the past, his controversial theories have pointed the finger at globalisation, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank themselves. Now he is a lone voice against the use of austerity measures as a system for financial recovery.

It Is Said...

“He got the Asian crisis right, foresaw the bubble that caused such havoc in 2008 and is advocating global answers to a host of problems that can no longer be solved at the local or national level.

This worldview is the essential dimension missing in economic-policy making, but which has to be at the core of the next ways forward.” Former UK PM Gordon Brown, Time 76

Personally Speaking “It [austerity] reminds me of medieval medicine. It is like blood-letting, where you took blood out of a patient because the theory was that there were bad humours. And very often, when you took the blood out, the patient got sicker. The response then was more blood-letting until the patient very nearly died.

What is happening in Europe is a mutual suicide pact.”

“I had the idea by looking at a jar of chocolate spread when I noticed that the balance between proteins, energy and lipids were more or less the same in this chocolate spread as in the diet recommended by WHO. So, then it came to change a little bit the recipe by replacing part of the dry skim milk with peanut butter and getting something that the child could eat directly without the addition of water.”

Smartest Thing Ever

Using the lowly peanut. Very high in calories, thus providing energy from relatively small amounts of product; rich in zinc to boost immunity and strengthen bones; protein to build muscle lost due to serious malnutrition.

Smartest Thing Ever Pointing the finger at himself, and his peers. Stiglitz is vocal about the role of the economists who “gave comfort to regulators that markets could be regulated” in bringing about the current economic situation we find ourselves in.

“AUSTERITY REMINDS ME OF MEDIEVAL MEDICINE”

Think you’re pretty smart?

Test your IQ at www.lumosity.com

a e n i ““imag l l a b n i p t gian t l i u b e n i h c ma t f i r d for ” s r a c

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THE RED BULLETIN Beyond the ordinary – everywhere on our planet

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BEYOND THE ORDINARY THE RED BULLETIN

Contents 80 TRAVEL Mountain climbing thrills in China 82 MUSIC SPECIAL Moneybrother on his worldly new LP 84 GET THE GEAR Canoe dig it: some extreme kayaking kit 86 TRAINING Get fit like a beach volleyball pro 88 BAND WATCH West Auckland’s Dear Time’s Waste 90 NIGHTLIFE Everything you need to get you through ’til dawn 94 WORLD IN ACTION 96 SAVE THE DATE 97 KAINRATH

photography: Graeme Murray/Red Bull Content Pool

98 MIND’S EYE

Mexican kayaker Rafa Ortiz about to free fall from a waterfall. Read about the kit he needs to do this on page 84

MORE BODY & MIND

AWAY DAYS SPECTACULAR TRAVEL ADVENTURES

Once upon a line in China

High on a sacred five-peaked mountain, Robin Esrock faces up to a truly thrilling and beautiful hike MOUNT HUA, SHAANXI

1 The Place Mount Hua, ‘The Number

One Precipitous Mountain under Heaven’, is one of five sacred Taoist mountains in China. For 2,000 years, pilgrims, tourists and emperors have hiked along its narrow paths and steep, jagged cliffs to enjoy its ancient temples and spectacular views.

2 The Location Hua Shan (as it is

pronounced in Chinese) is 120km east of Xi’an in China’s Shaanxi province. Xi’an, one of China’s four ancient capitals, sees heavy tourist traffic from those wishing to visit the Terracotta Warriors, or explore the eastern Silk Road. Most foreigners visit via a one- or two-day trip from Xi’an.

Beijing

Xian

Mount Hua Shanghai

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Climbers inch along the Cliffside Plank Path on Mount Hua

3 The Season Best time to go is spring

(March to May) or autumn (September to October). It’s always busy, but you’ll want to avoid intense crowds on Chinese national holidays (May 1-3, October 1-7).

4 The Journey Take the Xi’anZhengzhou bullet train from Xi’an’s North Railway Station to Huashan Bei (30 mins), where green minibuses will take you directly to the mountain’s car park.

Alternatively, take Tourism Bus Line 1 at Xi’an Railway Station, which leaves each day at 8am, and takes about three hours.

5 The Gear Although temperatures

may be pleasant at the mountain’s base, you’ll likely find snow, ice and high winds atop its 2,000m-plus cliffs. The average temperature on the trails is about 7°C, so bring layers. Gloves are essential for dealing with the iron pathway chains, and a raincoat and torch are useful. You can check baggage at the mountain’s base and just carry a light overnight bag if you plan to spend the night.

Comfortable walking shoes will suffice.

Bring plenty of snacks and water, as there’s never a teahouse around when you need one.

6 The Start Buy a two-day entrance pass

and cable car return ticket – it takes about eight minutes to reach the top – unless you’d rather hike 6-8 hours to the starting point at the North Peak. Insurance is also for sale, a sign of what you can expect ahead.

7 The View An inspiration for the spectacular worlds in the film Avatar, Mount Hua is peppered with green pine forest. Its striking beauty, and view over the Qin Mountains, attracted Taoists as early as 200BC. Stone-cut and cement paths take you to scenic temples, ponds, viewpoints and teahouses. English signs and maps help with navigation, but beware, some sections are perilous: steep, slippery, and cut along narrow cliff edges.

Don’t look down: drops of 1,000m are commonplace

East Peak is best climbed before dawn, to see the magical, egg-yolk sunrise 8 The Five Peaks Most visitors will

want to hike to several, if not all, of the five peaks. This can be done in a loop, completed in about eight hours. North Peak is known as Cloud Terrace Peak (most sites here have more than one name), and can only be reached via the Ear Rubbing Cliff, where you’ll literally be hugging rock on your ascent. Middle Peak, as its name suggests, found in the

On bamboo poles, mountain porters carry supplies for the temples’ teahouses

10 The Cliffside Plank Path

Changkong zhandao, the ‘vast sky plankwalk’, is only for bona-fide thrillseekers. Here you’ll find two thin wooden planks, nailed into solid vertical rock with a 1,000m drop below.

On a mountain full of risky trails, this is easily the most dangerous. Accessed via the South Peak, you’ll pay a small fee to receive a safety harness. Clipped in, you descend down a chasm in the rock, holding onto cold, iron rods, before arriving on the foot-wide planks.

Hugging the cliff, and exposed to the elements, expect some knee-shaking as you make your way to the end, where you can pray for a safe return at a simple Taoist temple. Although you’re wearing a harness here, the biggest danger is overcrowding, as everyone must walk and climb the same way, sometimes unclipping from the safety line in order to pass each other.

Take your time, enjoy the staggering view and communicate with Chinese hikers in the universal language of fear.

The only way to the Cliffside Plank Path is down an iron ladder

WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY: ROBIN ESROCK

mountain’s centre, houses the stunning Jade Maiden temple. West Peak has a temple alongside huge, engraved rocks shaped like lotus flowers. At 2,160m, South Peak is known as the ‘monarch’, the highest peak of all China’s sacred mountains. East Peak is best climbed shortly before dawn, in order to experience a magical, egg-yolk sunrise.

9 The Gold Lock Pass To reach

the other peaks from the cable car exit at North Peak, walk 15 minutes and then cross the harrowing spine of Black Dragon Ridge. If you think negotiating the carved stairs here is tough, watch how workers navigate this terrain carrying heavy hotel supplies balanced on bamboo. From here, you’ll

11 The Fuel Small shops and teahouses located along the paths sell snacks, cakes, noodles, water and soft drinks.

Hotels are attached to basic restaurants serving simple Chinese fare.

From top: the locks that give the Gold Lock Pass its name; the North Peak; the Snow Temple

enter Gold Lock Pass, finding tens of thousands of locks engraved with the names and wishes of those who have passed before you. The locks are bolted to the iron link-chains that line the pass, and therefore sealed to the fate of the mountain. You can buy a cheap lock, and have it engraved with your own wishes, at vendors along the way.

12 And Relax... There are six small, rustic hotels, and several hostels, located at various points on the mountain, especially close to the peaks. Expect shared toilets, limited or no hot water, no heating, no showers, but suspiciously clean sheets. If you don’t feel like making the return trip from Xi’an in one day, the Lotus Flower Hotel is a large, modern, resort-style hotel 1km from Mount Hua’s car park, with deluxe suites and villas.

Watch our man’s experience of Mount Hua: bit.ly/mount-hua

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MORE BODY & MIND

MEXICAN ROCKABILLY AND CHANNELLING GRAM PARSONS

LAYING FOUNDATIONS IN THE MIDWEST

LOS ANGELES, USA

“We recorded the basic tracks for the album in the studio of Nirvana producer Steve Albini. The guy is a genius and it was an honour to work with him.”

CHICAGO, USA

“For a Swede, driving a car in California is a spiritual experience. The houses are low and so the sky is always wide.

After recording we drove out to the desert, to Joshua Tree. The silence out there is incredible. We stayed in the hotel where Gram Parsons died.

He’s a musical hero of mine, so I rented the actual room where he died. In the studio I recorded a song with the rockabilly band The Rhythm Shakers. Their singer, Marlene, is a hot-blooded Mexican – and the coolest chick under the sun.”

Recorded in Los Angeles: Unbelievably Good

IN BOB MARLEY’S FOOTSTEPS: “DAMN, IT’S GOOD!” KINGSTON, JAMAICA

ALBUM OF THE MONTH THE WORD ON THE BEATS

A real world record Musical numbers: one man, fourth album, seven countries, four continents, two months MONEYBROTHER

Swedish punk-turned-pop star Moneybrother began a unique world tour in May 2010. Instead of hopping off planes and playing gigs, he put together his fourth album, This Is Where Life Is. Red Bull put its recording studios at his disposal. “My This Is Where Life Is hope was that when the album came out, people would listen to it and feel like they were travelling too,” says the 37-year-old, real name Anders Wendin. He has made a dazzling patchwork album that incorporates mangy rock ’n’ roll, soul and music indigenous to some of the countries he visited.

This Is Where Life Is is out now: www.moneybrother.net

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“Normally you can’t record in Tuff Gong because it’s family only, but through a contact we managed to get a few hours there in the middle of the night. It was still really hot in there because the air conditioning was off. By this point, we’d gathered a bit of a following wherever we went in Jamaica and the studio was full of people smoking and singing! I had to tell them to be quiet when I was doing the vocals, but no chance.

The atmosphere was great, though.

On the album you can hear people singing in the background, and one of them says, ‘Damn, it’s good!’”

Jamaica jam: Start A Fire

“DON’T TAKE NO PICTURES!” RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL “The Red Bull studio is in the middle of a favela, part of a cultural centre called Afro Reggae. A rough area: I wanted to take a photo, but when I went to take my camera out, three guys ran up and said, ‘Don’t take no fucking pictures!’

The thing that fascinated me about the favelas is that the people have no self-pity. Not a trace. These guys are so proud! In the Afro Reggae centre there are former gang members organising bossa nova classes for kids. One of the people I worked with was Marcos Suzano, one of the best percussionists in the world. He played on almost all the tracks on the album.”

Album track from Rio: In The Nighttime

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CHICAGO

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LOS ANGELES 4

KINGSTON

RIO DE JANEIRO

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MORE BODY & MIND

LONDON: THIRDLARGEST SWEDISH CITY

FINISHING TOUCHES ON HOME SOIL

LONDON, ENGLAND

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN

“After Stockholm and Gothenburg there are more Swedes in the English capital than anywhere else – including a lot of my friends. I went drinking in Soho with some of them; with others I went shopping in Rough Trade, one of the best record shops in the world.

I still had Jamaica fever, so I stocked up on old reggae records. Later in the studio I met up with the Swedish singer Cornelia. Her voice is unusual, almost babyish, like Lykke Li. I love her style.”

“After eight weeks we finally got home.

With a lot of memories and even more recordings, my producer and I worked hard to shape them into an album.”

Laid down in London: I Can Shake It 8

STOCKHOLM

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LONDON

AUCKLAND 6

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INTERVIEW: FLORIAN OBKIRCHER. PHOTOGRAPHY: BENIAMINO BARRESE/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

CAPE TOWN

“HARMONIES I’D NEVER HEARD BEFORE” CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA “On the first day I jammed with a young guitarist. When you tell a guitarist in Sweden that you want a solo, it usually sounds like Keith Richards, but this guy pulled harmonies out of his instrument that I’d never heard before. It was the same with three gospel singers we had: they recorded their first-ever rock song with me! At the end of the session I asked about their families.

‘As singers we can’t afford to have children, so we chose music,’ they said.

Some people complain about having to give too many interviews. It’s a joke compared with that kind of sacrifice.”

From the Cape: Bombarded In Rio

“AN ORGY? MAYBE LATER” AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND “We recorded all the brass for the album here with a talented sax player.

One night my car was stuck in a ditch.

Luckily it wasn’t far to the nearest house. The old couple there invited me to stay for a night. We were there drinking and singing, it was great until they asked me if I felt like having an orgy. I was perplexed, and I hummed and hawed: ‘Maybe later.’ Luckily the wife fell asleep after the next drink.

At breakfast everything was normal again, not a word about their indecent proposal. What a great last night!”

Ode to the orgy: Jealousy

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Falls guy: Rafa Ortiz and the kit he needs to find and paddle over waterfalls up to 57m high

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MORE BODY & MIND

Up creek, with paddle

GET THE GEAR A PRO’S ESSENTIALS

From India to Peru, 25-year-old Mexican kayaker Rafa Ortiz takes to remote rivers to access the huge waterfalls he’s famous for nose-diving off, boat and all. With only his boat as his suitcase, he’s a master of efficient packing 21 1. Straight-shaft Werner Paddle The one I use for the big waterfalls – the only one that won’t break.

2. NRS Dry Suit Its latex gaskets keep all water out. You could wear a suit and tie underneath and come out ready to go to the office.

3. Astral Life Vest You can’t paddle in a huge life vest, so here the flotation is down as low as possible, leaving your shoulders free.

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4. Immersion Research ‘Lucky Charm’ Skirt It goes around the mouth of the kayak to keep water out. When you run a big waterfall there’s a lot of pressure, so it tends to come off, but this one never has. It’s such a little piece of gear, but probably the most important one.

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5. Red Bull Helmet and Go Pro HD Hero2 camera I always have my helmet with me, and these days my Go Pro, too. It’s half the size of your fist but takes magazinequality pictures. This one has an orange flotation device on the back.

WORDS: RUTH MORGAN. PHOTOGRAPHY: GREGORY ALLEN

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6. Astral Brewer trainers These are a new prototype, designed to be used on the river. They have hundreds of holes to let water out.

7. NRS Elbow pads They give awesome protection from bashing your arms on the rocks.

8. NRS Throw Bag It’s a very strong 23m rope, which floats on the water’s surface. If you can’t get to

someone, you throw the bag and tow them in. It’s a safety essential and an amazing clothes line.

9. NRS Pin Kit Fast-moving currents can jam your boat against a tree or rock in the river so hard that you can’t free it with your hands. With the blue webbing anchored to something, you throw a line to the kayak and create a pulley system to get it out.

10. Tarp I bought this in India. You can get some hi-tech tarp, but

“This kayak isn’t for playing – it means business” I like this because it cost a dollar and has protected me through many a rainy night.

It’s pretty much my tent.

11. Mountain Hardwear Down sleeping bag This bag is for colder weather and thanks to its duck-down lining it packs down to almost nothing.

12. Cooking pots I bought these in India for a few dollars, and they all pack into each other. They’re a good shape for the fire, which is always our first choice when we’re camping as it keeps you warm at night.

13. Stove I love this thing. It’s a little

piece that just fits on top of a gas canister.

14. Inflatable sleeping pad It’s a tiny air mattress. I also carry a bivvy sack, which is a rainproof sleeping-bag liner.

15. Water filter Often river water isn’t clean enough to drink.

16. Dry bags These two hold all the gear.

The tube is there to blow air in to make it more buoyant, in case your skirt implodes.

17. First aid kit All the essentials kept in a watertight bottle.

18. Food Before expeditions we’ll go to local markets and stock up. Pasta is great as it’s dry, compact, light and easy to cook. And cans of tuna are a good source of protein.

19. Nike T-shirt and fleece trousers These are my sleeping clothes. That’s all I take: no underwear, no toiletries.

20. Volkswagen Eurovan 2006 I use the van for trips in the Americas, from Patagonia and all the way up to Canada.

It has a massive stereo so you can blow you ears off when you’re done paddling.

21. Jackson Villain S kayak This boat is fast and keeps you high above the surface of the water, which helps to clear any obstacles that might be around. I’ve been using this for two years now.

This kayak isn’t for playing around – it means business. www.rafaortiz.com

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MORE BODY & MIND

Repeat after me: Tsiartsiani spends hours practising the same moves until they’re second nature

On the ball

Net gains

TRAINING WITH THE PROS

MARIA TSIARTSIANI The Greek professional beach volleyball player is a double Olympian and European silver medallist, thanks to her dedication to the court come rain or shine

A mention of beach volleyball conjures mental images of bikinis and sun-drenched scenes, but the reality isn’t all tans and sand.

“People don’t really realise that we play in very difficult conditions,” says Maria Tsiartsiani.

“Many of our tournaments are in northern European countries, so even in the summer it can be cold and rainy. If it’s under 15°C, we’re Maria Tsiartsiani allowed to play in tights and long-sleeved tops, but a game will only be stopped if it’s dangerous – torrential rain with lightning – otherwise we play on. During training my teammate, Vicky Arvaniti, and I still practise in pretty extreme windy and wet conditions, so we’re ready for whatever the heavens throw at us in competition.”

With weather not an issue, there are few days during the pre-season training period, which runs from December to March, that the 31-year-old isn’t putting in the hours of practice needed to make perfect. “You need a lot of patience and concentration | to improve each one of your moves,” she says. “My method is to watch some footage of the players with my body type who I think have a close-to-perfect technique, then practise it again and again with feedback from my coach on every repetition. Then when we feel it’s good, I repeat it so often that it becomes my own. It takes thousands of perfect repetitions to make each move automatic.”

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Four months of perfecting tactics and techniques, and building physical strength are required to get Tsiartsiani through the eight-month long competition season MONDAY 11am-1pm Individual video session with coach, analysing footage of other players’ techniques and reviewing footage from last practice session, followed by a court session working on technique.

1.30-2.30pm Lunch: “We always eat as soon as possible after a long session, quality food like pure protein and good carbohydrates to feed our muscles.”

4-6pm Gym session: upper body. Working shoulders with light weights to build strength but maintain flexibility and speed.

Work with Swiss ball, Bosu ball (equivalent to half a Swiss ball) and TRX suspension system to improve balance and co-ordination.

TUESDAY 10am-12pm Team session on court. Working on

problems, tactics and trying new plays.

1-2pm Physiotherapist, for general wellbeing or any specific physical issues.

5-6.30pm Gym session: lower body. Working all leg muscles with weights for strength and stability. Work with Swiss ball, Bosu ball and TRX system to improve balance and co-ordination.

WEDNESDAY 11am-1pm Individual session on court, working on specific problems or new techniques.

5-7pm Team session on court with coach.

THURSDAY 10am-12pm Team video session: reviewing footage of last practice, discussing any problem areas.

2-4pm Gym session: focus on upper body.

FRIDAY 11am-1pm Individual session on court.

2-3pm Physiotherapist.

5-7pm Gym session: lower body plus cardio work – running or biking.

SATURDAY 10am-12pm Team practice session on court. “We play against a team of men roughly our size because there isn’t a second women’s team in Greece.”

SUNDAY “We take some time to relax before the week begins again.”

Tactics are vital

www.fivb.org

WORDS: RUTH MORGAN. PHOTOGRAPHY: SAMO VIDIC/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, FLO HAGENA/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, DPPI

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BOARDWALK EMPIRE SEASON 2 DVD AND BLU-RAY The place: Atlantic City; the year: 1921. In a city whose fortunes have soared in the wake of Prohibition, Nucky Thompson is paying a steep price for wielding ultimate power in “the world’s playground”. Though the 1920 election is over, Nucky finds himself the target of a federal investigation.

You can buy Boardwalk Empire from all leading DVD retailers.

DVD set $59.95. Blu-ray set $69.95 4

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TRAVIS PASTRANA DC UNILITE TRAINER The DC Unilite Trainer is the first training shoe created with input from action sports athletes. Designed and developed to enhance each athlete’s training experience, this trainer provides support, comfort and breathability. With colourway and graphics inspired by Pastrana, this lightweight, flexible model provides long-lasting cushioning and impact protection . It also has a progressive no-sew technology upper, breathable mesh with reinforced moulded synthetic overlays, and there’s a moulded OrthoLite sockliner for comfort and support, with rubber on the outsole to increase durability.

Available at DC Stockists for RRP $169.99 5

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Home girl: Duncan has no intention of chasing fame and fortune overseas

THE SOUNDS OF 2012 #10

Lyrical stylings

DEAR TIME’S WASTE Claire Duncan’s one-woman band is partly Shakespearean, partly Lynchian and the wholly haunting soundtrack for thoughtful, slowed-down escape

Dear Time’s Waste’s new album, Some Kind of Eden, was released last month

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Befitting someone who studied English literature at university, and who cites writers like Milan Kundera and Italo Calvino as a big influence, Claire Duncan has an exacting and intriguing way with words. She describes her new album, Some Kind of Eden, as “monotonous, droning, careful and plodding”. This is not ideal material for quotes on posters, but listening to her music, you come to understand the positives in that description. Duncan, under the moniker Dear Time’s Waste, has

crafted an album that is patient, meditative and soulful; a record that demands you to push the pause button on your hectic, logged-on life in order to appreciate it.

“I’ve never really wanted to ascribe any didactic purpose to my music,” says Duncan. “For me, music is a tremendous escape and always has been. If I’ve had a bad day or I can’t be bothered with the world, I’ll put my headphones on and listen to something.”

While writing and recording Some Kind of Eden, early ’80s

English indie music was on heavy rotation on her stereo, including a band dear to her heart.

“When I first heard the Cocteau Twins it was one of those ‘holy shit’ moments,” says Duncan.

“This band exists for me.”

There are echoes of the Cocteau Twins, and of The Cure, on Duncan’s album, while the droning and monotony she refers to is a reflection of the quiet intensity of trip-hop artists like Massive Attack and Tricky. The overall result is a restrained,

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WORDS: ROBERT TIGHE. PHOTOGRAPHY: KRISTIAN FRIRES

“I don’t expect or anticipate to have songs that are huge hits. That’s not important to me” melancholic record that seems a long way from Duncan’s beginnings as the guitarist and singer in a high-school heavy metal band.

“I don’t think it’s completely removed,” argues Duncan. “When I was at the height of that phase, I listened to more melodic alternative music. Vespertine [Björk album] came out around that time and I was obsessed with that record.

What links heavy metal and artists like Björk is that emotional intensity. I’ve always found music like that particularly captivating.”

Movies, in particular the movies of American director David Lynch, are another important part of Duncan’s creative make-up. Last year, she wrote the score for a short film, On The Run, part of which was a reimagining of a scene from Lynch’s Wild At Heart.

She then reworked part of it to make Hands, the opening song on the new album. “It’s got a bit of a cowboy swagger to it; it’s a very quiet cowboy song,” she says.

In her songwriting, Duncan tends toward issues with a deeper meaning, such as the joy and pain of relationships, and her generation’s attempt to make sense of its place in the world.

“The Drink is a song that’s essentially a big moan about the fact that me and my friends are struggling to figure out what we’re doing. It’s about disillusionment with social expectations and what’s expected of you and why people get drunk to escape. It’s like Rhianna’s Cheers. It’s despondent, I guess it’s like, ‘Who cares?’”

It’s a question Duncan often asks herself about her music. She’s well aware that the alternative umbrella it falls under doesn’t have a large following in New Zealand, but she has no intention of chasing fame and fortune, at home or internationally. The

24-year-old has seen too many of her peers get burned by their overseas experience.

“It’s impossible to build a career from this side of the world unless you relocate [overseas], and I’m not prepared to do that at this point. I love touring and if the opportunity arose, I wouldn’t shut it down at the first hello, but there would be a lot of things to consider.

I’ve seen friends of mine who’ve become buzz bands internationally, get signed to a big label, go overseas and go through this rigorous, demanding touring schedule only to come home five years later feeling really dejected and confused and despondent at the fact they don’t have a life in New Zealand anymore.”

Duncan is content with her life at the moment, making music around her day job in an independent bookshop. She hasn’t gigged overseas yet, but she has played some high-profile support slots in New Zealand for St Vincent, Deerhunter and Low. The critical acclaim in 2010 for her debut album, Spells, surprised her because she wasn’t that happy with how it sounded. Some Kind of Eden is closer to the music in her head.

“I feel the songwriting and the production is a lot stronger and it’s much more concise and considered.

I think its better than Spells, but of course I’m going to say that.”

What she won’t say, however – and, again, using language to make music industry money-men cry – is that she doesn’t mind one bit if the world at large doesn’t take to her new record.

“If it resonates with other people, that’s amazing. If it doesn’t, I’m not too concerned.

I get excited when a single person comes up to me and says, ‘I really love this song.’ I spend so much time grappling with my own anxieties about being a musician and what that means. For a long time I’ve considered it to be a largely selfish pursuit. So when someone is affected by a song at a personal level, or it has some kind of meaning for them, that’s great. I don’t expect or anticipate or desire to have songs that are going to be huge hits. That’s not important to me.”

Claire Duncan: from classical to indie music, via heavy metal and folk

Need to know THE LINE-UP Claire Duncan – guitar, synths, programming, beats, vocals DISCOGRAPHY Some Kind of Eden (2012) Spells (2010) Room for Rent (EP, 2009)

The story so far One of Claire Duncan’s earliest music memories is dancing around the house to In The Hall Of The Mountain King by Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, a classical piece most recently notable for powering the rowing sequence in Facebook movie The Social Network.

“Me and my sister used to stand on opposite sides of the lounge,” she says. “The music starts slowly and builds and builds. By the end we’d be sprinting around the room like maniacs.”

Her parents are music lovers; her father plays the piano and, Duncan says, “every wind instrument under the sun”, performing in a band, Celtic Grooves.

Duncan started writing her own songs on the guitar

when she was 13. Coming from West Auckland, she went through the almost compulsory heavy metal phase in high school and played in a band called Orifist. At university she fell in love with folk music and country and western.

She did the singer-songwriter thing for a few years until “it got to a point where the songs I wanted to make, I couldn’t communicate with just me and a guitar”.

In 2009, she spent eight months making her first EP as Dear Time’s Waste (name taken from the fourth line of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30), and followed it the next year with debut album Spells. Some Kind Of Eden was released last month. www.deartimeswaste.com

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Nightlife Whatever gets you through the night

ACTION Skateboarding at night HOT SPOTS Anywhere where it’s too hot by

day. Skaters from Barcelona to Los Angeles hide from the heat and head out in the milder night.

DARK ARTS Floodlights are no substitute for

sunlight, so you generally take it a bit easier with the obstacles and elaborate tricks.

DON’T GET CAUGHT When you’re ‘generator skating’ up on the roofs of US high schools, or ‘skitching’ – hanging off the back of cars, like Marty McFly – in New York City.

Jiaolong

by Daphni is out on October 16

OUT NOW

“Dance music surprises me” Dan Snaith The missing link between shapeshifting Chinese water dragons and the future of hook grooves Dan Snaith can’t come to the phone right now. Since last summer he’s been busy touring the world with his psychedelic pop band Caribou, as support to Radiohead. (Caribou’s Swim still sounds as fresh as it did when it made many album-of-theyear lists in 2010.)The 34-year-old Canadian also DJs with his friend Four Tet and now has a brand new album ready to go. Recently, Snaith has been producing playful house tracks with Afro percussion and curious synth sounds under the name Daphni: electronic dance music for people who find EDM too lacklustre.

What really marks Snaith out as a musician is that he experiments, hoping to surprise his audiences at concerts and in clubs.

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OUT NOW A green phosphorescent glow-

in-the-dark skate park, designed by Korean artist Koo Jeong-A opens in Brussels this month.

How did you become Daphni?

For years I’ve been making bits and pieces to play in my DJ sets. At some point, I ended up with a whole lot of them, and because they sounded different than the songs I write as Caribou, I took on another moniker.

What draws you to pure dance music?

It surprises me, as a producer and as a clubgoer. In a few minutes I can come up with a groove that hooks me. It’s the same when I’m in a club: suddenly the DJ puts a track on and it goes right through me and the people around me.

What’s the difference between playing with your band or performing as a DJ? The exciting thing about playing live is that there’s four of us and we’re all equally involved in creating what’s going on on stage – but we’re always playing Caribou songs. Whereas the DJ thing is more about being in everybody’s head. In the case of a DJ set, it’s primarily about the audience.

What does the album title mean?

It’s the name of a Chinese submarine, but a jiaolong is also a creature from Chinese mythology that can change its shape.

I found that fitting for my side project.

“Who said nights were for sleep?”

www.caribou.fm

Marilyn Monroe

WISE WORDS

COCKTAIL

Touch Down An exotic vodka-based cocktail, not just delicious but eye-catching as well. The addition of grenadine at the end makes for a captivating colour gradient. Flavour-wise, the Touch Down tends towards sweet and fruity, but the dash of lemon juice is a pleasantly crisp touch. Too good to save for summer (especially in countries that don't have one...) this easy-to-make drink can, and should, be enjoyed all year round.

CLUB

WORDS: FLORIAN OBKIRCHER. PHOTOGRAPHY: NITASHA KAPOOR, PHILIPP SCHUSTER, EVA NAPP (4), FOTOSTUDIO EISENHUT & MAYER

OF THE MONTH

MOONDOO Reeperbahn 136, 20359 Hamburg, Germany

CLUB

“Where all tribes party together” Moondoo, Hamburg What do naked girls on horseback, The Beatles and hip-hop legend Afrika Bambaataa have in common?

They’ve all been on the bill at this Hamburger hot spot The aim of the club is…

To unite people. Our founding father witnessed the New York nightlife era in the late ’70s when punks, hip-hoppers and other tribes forgot about their differences and partied together.

INGREDIENTS 40ml Zubrówka (or equivalent herbflavoured grass vodka) 20ml apricot brandy 80ml passion fruit juice 30ml fresh orange juice 10ml fresh lemon juice 10ml grenadine To garnish: cherries, pineapple

METHOD Put the vodka, brandy and three fruit juices into a cocktail shaker and give it a good shake. Strain the liquid into a cocktail glass over ice cubes.

Carefully pour the grenadine into the drink, then garnish.

This is the ideal location…

Because the Reeperbahn is a melting pot of cultures. It’s a very honest and lively street with a unique flair, equal parts dirt and glamour.

From outside the club looks like…

The set of a Harry Potter film. It’s actually one of the very few houses that survived World War II. This was home of the Hippodrome, where you could see naked girls riding on horses. After that it was called The Top 10 Club. The Beatles played one of their first concerts here, and for a while they even lived in the building’s attic. After that, several promoters opened clubs here, but nothing worked. We converted the whole place to create something new.

DJs are chosen…

Based on quality, not on genre. You’ll experience turntable legends such as Afrika Bambaataa, you’ll see great bands like Parov Stelar, vocalists such as Alice Russell. As long as the music has that groove, which bridges genres and decades, it gets played.

Interview: Alex Kulick, booker and PR www.moondoo.de

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NIGHT SNACK

CENTRE POMPIDOU (PARIS) Neil Tennant: In 1977 I travelled to Paris shortly after the Centre Pompidou opened.

It was the first building that had a massive impact on me.

At first, people complained about the modernist building in a square with the cobbled streets around it, but as soon it was finished, everyone loved it. Ironically the building was designed by Renzo Piano, who I regard as an architectural criminal since he built The Shard in London.

Neon and on: Chris Lowe (left) and Neil Tennant

TAKE 3

“Nearly built one myself” Pet Shop Boys You can hear the influence of the British pop titans in the current wave of electronica bands. As they release their 11th studio album, they reveal one of their great inspirations: architecture They’ve been in the business for almost 30 years, yet still the Pet Shop Boys sound fresh. Ever since hits like West End Girls and It’s A Sin, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have tapped into the zeitgeist, with immaculate sound design and big melodies, a striking image and subtle humour.

These attributes come to the fore once again in their new album. Elysium is a synth-heavy masterwork with touches of soul and fat bass. It’s a sly, cynical record about ageing pop stars, about the end of the party, about moving to the country. So is the end of their career nigh? “I wouldn’t worry,” says Tennant, “but honestly, even without pop music we’d never get bored.” Fair point. They’ve written musicals and ballets, dabbled in fashion. Architecture is a great passion: Lowe studied the subject before plumping for a career in pop; the architect Zaha Hadid designed a set for the band's 1999-2000 world tour. Here, the two men talk constructively about Japanese minimalism and Frank Gehry’s titanium dreams. www.petshopboys.co.uk

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FERRO CONCRETE HOUSES (TOKYO) Chris Lowe: Some people might see them as concrete bunkers, but to me Tadao Ando’s buildings are amazingly beautiful objects. His style is minimal, but beautifully detailed. Just like a good Pet Shop Boys song, actually. He is a genius, all I've ever wanted is to live in one of these houses.

Once I nearly built one, I even bought a plot of land, but then I didn’t get round to building it, I’ve been too tied up in music.

WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL (LOS ANGELES) NT: The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the Walt Disney Concert Hall: Gehry's buildings remind me of Russian Orthodox cathedrals. It's because they glitter against the blue sky, just like the domes of the Kremlin in Moscow. That’s down to the material: titanium.

It gives his buildings their lavishness and magic. I've seen millions of photos of his Concert Hall, but when you see it, it takes you by surprise.

Mumbai: Pav Bhaji From slum to top dog: the veg curry and bread combo that India adores

ALL IN A NAME Bhaji is a vegetable dish: the word pav for bread came to India from Europe in the era of Vasco da Gama. It derives from the Portuguese word for bread: pão.

NEEDS MUSH Like many staple dishes, pav bhaji emerged from dire need. In the mid-19th century, textile workers in the slums of Bombay collected rotting vegetables, cooked them thoroughly and generously spiced the resulting mush to make it halfway palatable. At least the bread served with it was fine, and, only just more expensive than the rank veg, affordable to all.

Words: Florian Obkircher, klaus kamolz Photography: Perou, Hiromitsu Morimoto, Picturedesk.com (2), fotostudio Eisenhut & Mayer

the basics The base for pav bhaji is mashed potato, which is mixed with chopped tomatoes. Then come onions, carrots, peas, green chillies, cauliflower and a masala spice mix. On street stalls, the vegetables are cooked in huge flat pans, then served, topped with chopped fresh coriander, diced onions and a knob of butter, alongside a piece of the simple bread, which is often buttered on both sides.

Rich and Poor It wasn’t just the proletariat who took to pav bhaji, as it soon found favour beyond the slums, and reached across all of India. A vast range of different pav bhaji masala spice mixes was established, while some dishes include banana, dried fruit, mushroom and cheese.

Many regional variations are served topped with nuts.

Gourmet varieties are served on planes and in restaurants.

ON TRACK FOR TASTE You can find pav bhaji in Mumbai 24 hours a day. The largest pans of steaming veg – and they can be enormous – are found near railway stations.

The roll-like portions of bread are baked in large pitted trays, and torn off individually before serving. A portion of curry is served with a piece of bread on a paper plate; otherwise the bread is the utensil.

PAV & BOLLYWOOD As a staple dish of India, the snack features in many Bollywood films, with characters often running a pav stand or restaurant. Sanjay Dutt played a stall owner in the cult crime film Vaastav. Revered Bollywood stars appear on cookery shows with their own recipes, and The Times of India hands out an annual citation for the most successful recipe. The jury: Bollywood favourites, who else?

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World in action

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Oct & Nov 2012

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Levi Sherwood: hanging on for a world title victory

06.10.2012, COCKATOO ISLAND, SYDNEY HARBOUR, AUSTRALIA

Red Bull X-Fighters World Tour The sixth and final stop of the spectacular freestyle motocross series will be a showdown for the title between two young stars of the sport.

Levi Sherwood, 20, from New Zealand, and 24-year-old Frenchman Thomas Pagès are tied at the top of the overall standings with 235 points apiece. With each competitor adopting different tactics to secure victory, it’s difficult to predict who is going to come out on top. Sherwood, who won the Madrid leg of the Red Bull X-Fighters World Tour, goes for backflips, while Munich champion Pagès prefers to wow the judges with tricks like ‘the Flair’ or ‘the Volt’. A tense evening awaits in Australia.

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01-04.11.2012, MISSION HILLS GOLF CLUB, CHINA

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WGC-HSBC Champions With 12 18-hole courses, this golf resort north of Hong Kong is the largest in the world. And it is set to host the last tournament of the four-part World Golf Championships. (A fifth, the Tournament of Hope, in South Africa, will be added in 2013.)

A maximum of 78 players, including the winners of the Majors and the Players championship, as well as the victors of the 23 most important tournaments on the PGA and European Tours, will take to the Olazabal course (7,320 yards long; 151 bunkers) to fight it out for the US$7m grand prize.

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4 Roger Federer hopes to add to his ATP win tally 04.11.2012, NEW YORK, USA

28.10.2012, BUDDH INTERNATIONAL CIRCUIT, INDIA

The New York City Marathon

Four million cubic metres of soil were shifted to build the Buddh International Circuit. Stretches with 8 per cent drops and 10 per cent climbs make the hilly, 5.125km-long course a real “rollercoaster”, as Sebastian Vettel describes it. Last year the reigning world champion mastered the inaugural race on the Indian circuit, leading from start to finish to win by 8.4 seconds.

Spanning the five boroughs of New York City, and one of the World Marathon Majors (along with Chicago, Boston, London and Berlin), the New York City Marathon starts in Staten Island before heading through Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Manhattan, with energy-sapping hills and bridges throughout. The fastest man to make his way round 26.2 miles of the Big Apple is Kenya’s Geoffrey Kiprono Mutai, who last year set a race record with a time of 2:05:05.

Indian Grand Prix

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The busy pace of life in New York

PHOTOGRAPHY: GARTH MILAN/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, GETTY IMAGES (3), PAUL DE BERJEOIS, PICTUREDESK.COM

Sport

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Daredevils at the Phuket Vegetarian Festival 15-23.10.2012, PHUKET, THAILAND

11-14.10.2012, LONDON, UK

Frieze Art Fair Every October the publishers of prestigious art magazine Frieze invite the world’s most exciting galleries and exhibitors to London.

For four days, Regent’s Park becomes a mecca for contemporary art connoisseurs. The opening night is always an A-list affair, and in the ensuing days some 70,000 visitors will stream through the exhibition halls and sculpture garden.

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5-12.11.2012, THE O2, LONDON

ATP World Tour Finals The ATP Tour Finals are, along with Grand Slam tournaments, the most prestigious events of the men’s pro tennis circuit. Only the eight best players of the year can compete at this unofficial world championship. Favourites include 2008 winner Novak Djokovic, Olympic champion Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal, who is yet to win this title. The man to beat here is Roger Federer.

In last year’s final – the 100th of the Swiss player’s remarkable career – he beat Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 6:3, 6:7, 6:3. That record sixth victory took him ahead of five-time winners Pete Sampras and Ivan Lendl.

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Phuket Vegetarian Festival In 1825 a Chinese theatre troupe travelled to Phuket, where its players fell ill with malaria.

To appease the gods they adopted a purely vegetarian diet and soon recovered, and thus the foundations of the Phuket Vegetarian Festival were laid. Alcohol and nicotine aren’t on the menu here, but there are parades and rituals which see festivalgoers pierce their cheeks with huge metal objects. Not for the faint of heart.

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31.10-04.11.2012, REYKJAVIK, ICELAND

Iceland Airwaves

A few names you should take note of: Kindness, I Break Horses and Sin Fang.

Those three bands will be playing at October’s Iceland Airwaves festival, which has a knack for predicting the next big thing. The likes of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Bravery and The Rapture have appeared here prior to making it big worldwide.

This year marks the 14th edition of the festival, with more than 150 promising young bands taking over the bars and clubs of Reykjavik.

Local heroes Sigur Rós headline.

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Culture

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06-14.10.2012, ALBUQUERQUE, USA

The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta Neck stiffness is guaranteed at the world’s largest hot-air balloon festival: 750 gas-filled flying objects turn the desert sky over New Mexico into a sea of colour. In front of 100,000 spectators, the world’s best hobby pilots fly grinning animals, giant footballs, fairy-tale castles and much more. A series of short and long races are held before the grand finale at dusk: ‘Glowdeo’ sees the balloons illuminated with propane burners, bringing the festival to a colourful close.

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Full of hot air: balloons take over Albuquerque 13-14.10.2012, SAN FRANCISCO, USA

Treasure Island Music Festival Zero-emissions shuttle buses, bike lanes with valet parking and three-quarters of all waste recycled – this festival is as sustainable as it is musical. On an idyllic island just over the Bay Bridge near San Francisco, a top-quality line-up promises indie rock (The xx, Best Coast) hip-hop (Public Enemy, AraabMuzik), psych (Ty Seagall), folk (Joanna Newsom), and dance (Girl Talk).

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Known around town: Sigur Rós play Reykjavik

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Save the Date October & November OCTOBER 28

Road warriors You’re too late if you want to run the full Auckland Marathon: this year’s event sold out in less than 10 days. However, you can get a head start on your training for next year and join the 16,500 other runners pounding the streets of Auckland by entering the quarter-marathon or 5km Challenge. www.aucklandmarathon.co.nz

Hoping to bounce back: Andrea Hewitt OCTOBER 20, 21

Tri hard Bring it on Since 1998, Gomez have released seven albums spanning blues, psychedelia, folk and indie rock.

The British five-piece are playing two NZ dates on a world tour to mark the 15th anniversary of their first live show, with a twist they could only have dreamed of in a sweaty basement in Leeds, UK in 1996. Fans can visit their website and pick the five songs they most want to hear; tracks with the most votes will be played live. www.gomeztheband.com

OCTOBER 6

Laugh riot Tim and Eric are the kings of anti-comedy.

The Americans, most notable for their offbeat TV sketch show but with a movie on their CV too, are playing NZ for the first time. “Our fans laugh at things that make other people squirm,” said Tim Heidecker (far right) after a third of the audience walked out of a screening of their Billion Dollar Movie at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. You have been warned. www.timanderic.com

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The triathlon was hyped as one of the marquee events at London 2012, but it turned out to be a bit of a fizzer as far as the Kiwis were concerned. The UK’s Brownlee brothers destroyed the field to win gold and bronze in the men’s event, while New Zealand’s great hope (in the women’s race), Andrea Hewitt failed to fire when it mattered most. The Grand Final of the ITU World Series promises to be a much more exciting affair. Hewitt won in Auckland last year and she can wrap up the World Series title with a good result in the last race of yet another great season for her. Fellow Kiwi Kris Gemmell also has happy memories of the course after his win last year. The 35-year-old says he will retire after this race. Back-to-back wins on home soil would be a fitting way to end his career. www.auckland.triathlon.org

OCTOBER 26 – NOVEMBER 4

Urban art The goal of Artweek, according to director Deborah White, is to “create awareness of the artwork, events, galleries and artists in Auckland and to encourage people to interact with art in the city”. Now in its third year, the 10-day Artweek features 100 events in 70 venues. As well as a range of workshops, exhibitions and drop-in sessions at Auckland Art Gallery, there are less traditional happenings elsewhere, such as Art Speed Dating, five different cycle tours of event-rich neighbourhoods and a performance from Joystick Orchestra, who utilise computer controllers to make music and visuals. www.artweekauckland.co.nz

Getting ready: Auckland Art Gallery

WORDS: ROBERT TIGHE. PHOTOGRAPHY: DELLY CARR/ITU, ARTWEEK, TIM & ERIC

OCTOBER 23, 24

ILLUSTRATION: DIETMAR KAINRATH

K A I N R AT H

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W

e don’t sing the way we used to in New Zealand.

Neil Finn credits old-time family singalongs for his early musical education and I, too, remember nights at my grandfather’s when a dozen or more folks would gather and belt out what my mother still refers to as “the old songs”, usually accompanied by Grandpa’s piano accordion. I’ve never done it since.

Few New Zealanders under 50 will have recognised the significance of Hayley Westenra’s performance of Now Is The Hour after last year’s Rugby World Cup final. That hymn of farewell has a powerful association with great rugby Test matches.

It was sung after the first match between the Barbarians and the All Blacks, at Cardiff Arms Park in 1954. In 1973, when the whistle had blown on the Barbarians’ famous victory over the All Blacks at the same ground, the teams gathered in the middle of the pitch to sing it, along with Auld Lang Syne.

In 1954, of course, Now Is The Hour wasn’t a traditional song, it was New Zealand’s first global pop hit. Its roots lie in a piano piece called Swiss Cradle Song, published in 1913. Two years later, the 16 bars of its opening theme were modified – changed from 4/4 time to a 3/4 waltz time – to become the tune for Po Atarau, the song used to bid farewell to young men as they embarked for World War I. The New Zealand Folk Song website states the original words “seem to have been added to and modified by various people”, most notably at the hands of Maewa Kaihau, who wrote the words for Now Is The Hour.

In 1945, at the end of another war, the British singer Gracie Fields learned the song, as Haere Ra, during a New Zealand tour. Two years later, her recording of it became a worldwide hit, as did the version Bing Crosby released that same year. It became a song that resonated wherever it was sung, especially at public events.

Fast-forward to 2012, and Bonkers. Yes, the London Olympics opening ceremony

Mind’s Eye

National Anthems When sport and song unite us, says Russell Brown, we’re more in tune as a nation included a performance of the FA Cup Final hymn, Abide With Me, but it was Dizzee Rascal’s joyous declaration of mad difference that characterised the 2012 opening ceremony and the Games that followed.

There was really only one way a nation where it still matters what song is number one in the pop charts at Christmas could go. Rather than try and match the mass spectacle of Beijing’s ceremony, Danny Boyle’s brilliant, crazy show tapped Britain’s proud tradition of popular culture from James Bond to Harry Potter, but above all, the music – from the Sex Pistols to David Bowie, with a Hey Jude singalong to close.

What other country would stick a fart joke in its glittering showcase? Not the United States of America, that’s for sure. An American of my acquaintance, a legendary, liberal figure in the technology world, was horrified by the “trivial”

descent into popular culture. When he said so on Twitter, he was tartly informed by a Brit that an American couldn’t be expected to know the difference between dignity and self-importance.

The scale of Boyle’s achievement was ironically underlined by the flubbing of the closing ceremony two weeks later.

What was proposed as a triumphant stroll through British pop music history wound up coming off like the worst DJ ever.

Bowie, Kate Bush, the Rolling Stones and the Sex Pistols declined to play, but the real problem was a series of abysmal musical decisions. Make John Lennon’s Imagine a centrepiece: good call. But to then undermine it with a segued intro of Bohemian Rhapsody? Ghastly.

Not that I have a problem with Bohemian Rhapsody. But if you’re going to drop that tune, play the whole thing, adapt the original music video for the giant screens and go nuts with it, right?

So what would a New Zealand sporting pop fest sound like, and would we sing?

I was happily present for one of the great All Blacks performances, the 48-18 defeat of the British Lions in Wellington in 2005.

Apart from the rugby, my memories of that are musical. Shamed by the singing Lions fans, the local crowd burst into voice when The Exponents’ Why Does Love Do This To Me came over the PA – and the Lions fans joined in! Later, as the crowd trailed out of the stadium after the game, Dave Dobbyn’s Welcome Home rang out. It was moving and haunting, a Now Is The Hour for a new century.

Also on that 2005 tour, a song commissioned by Lions coach Clive Woodward, Power Of Four, was sung at every game. At the match against Auckland at Eden Park, I looked at the Irish bloke next to me, who wasn’t singing a note. He shrugged and smiled ruefully.

“No,” he said. “I’ve no idea what the words are either.”

Russell Brown is a media commentator and blogger living in Auckland

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