Dallas - Gigaset Communications , manufacturers of cordless
telephones under the Siemens Gigaset brand in Europe, entered the U.S.
telephony market this morning with a portfolio of DECT 6.0 phone products.
Topping the line is the company's new Gigaset One, which merges
home and mobile Bluetooth phone systems by allowing users to make and receive
mobile calls on any corded or cordless phone with or without a landline.
Gigaset One allows users to connect up to three Bluetooth
cellphones with one-time, one-touch setup. Each connected phone will then have
a unique ringtone. The device also helps eliminate poor audio quality and
cellular dead zones, the company said.
"We know that most consumers value the reliability, performance
and quality of a landline phone but want the option to merge their home and
cellular phones. We are introducing Gigaset One today to provide consumers with
the convergence solution they want from Siemens Gigaset, a brand they can
trust," said Rod Keller, CEO of Siemens Gigaset, North America.
Source:
The Work of Art in the Age of Outsourced Reproduction
On a recent trip to Montreal, the hotel room my wife and I booked was described as a “loft” and was likewise decorated with the requisite modern furniture and exposed brick walls. An offshoot of a very fine hotel located a few blocks away, our “loft” unit was comfortable and rather tastefully decorated. There were even original oil paintings on the walls, or so we initially thought.
After a few days in the room, something about the “artwork” didn’t sit quite right. It was all too homogeneous- the paintings in the bathroom (yes, above the toilet in a bathroom with no fan) and the ones above the bed and the desk all looked a bit too similar. We initially imagined that they had bought artwork from a local artist of limited creativity. My curiosity finally got the best of me, and I took one of the paintings off the wall and saw this:
Made in China hotel art, Model E-002
Upon taking both the paintings in the bathroom off the wall, we discovered that they both held the same model number and were both “Made in China.” There was no artist’s signature, and they were clearly painted on a larger piece of canvas that was cut up and stretched over various wooden supports to create a number of smaller “artworks.”
The "Artwork"
I should not have been shocked. It’s not that I expect hotel rooms to have great art- they usually have some sort of sailboat or flower themed art above the beds that blends into the wallpaper. I think the shock in this particular example comes from the very fact that the hotel went to such great lengths to brand itself as hip, modern, and urban. By putting abstract oil paintings on thick stretcher bars in each room, it conveys the idea that it is some sort of “artist’s loft” that we had the good fortune to stay at for the week.
