The Empire State Building starred in first-ever music video over the weekend as the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s released their latest single, “Despair.” High atop the observation deck from 2 a.m. to sunrise (the only hours that the tourists are at bay), the quintessential New York band rocked the quintessential New York building — blogs.artinfo.com

Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X – 197X takes stock of seventy little magazines from this period, which were published in over a dozen cities. Coined in the early twentieth century to designate progressive literary journals, the term “little magazine” was remobilized during the 1960s to grapple with the contemporary proliferation of independent architectural periodicals. —

As his career grew, David Byrne went from playing CBGB to Carnegie Hall. He asks: Does the venue make the music? From outdoor drumming to Wagnerian operas to arena rock, he explores how context has pushed musical innovation.

The biggest public transit infrastructure effort in the US is almost completely invisible — unless you’re 160 feet underground. The East Side Access project will connect the Long Island Railroad to New York’s Grand Central Terminal via a massive tunnel under the East River. Actually, that tunnel was the easy part; it was started in 1969. The hard part? “We are building a brand-new railroad here,” says Michael Horodniceanu, president of Metropolitan Transit Authority Capital Construction. — wired.com

This summer at the almost defiantly unhip South Street Seaport, there shall be pop-up boutiques housed in shipping containers. There shall be outdoor film screenings with lounge-chair seating. There shall be SmorgasBar. And, the lords of artificial weather willing, there may be glitter rain. — cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com

Though indebted to conventional artistic methodologies, the vibrant, playful works of Jorge Prado lack traditional notions of artistic autonomy, with multiple uses straddling sculpture, furniture and architecture. Over espresso and a cigarette in the kitchen of his Los Angeles home, Pardo shares with Oscar Tuazon his processes of transforming built environments into functionally fluid sites designed to facilitate a diversity of experience. — youtube.com

Chicago has many truly great buildings. It sits firmly on the map of global architecture and is the birthplace of the skyscraper. Creating a short video about just five great buildings is doing this city a massive disservice, as there are many and this is simply my thoughts. — vimeo.com

Not every director studied the greats at film school. Joseph Kosinski spent more time with Wren than Welles. "I went to graduate school in New York to get a degree in architecture… but never got my licence." Instead Kosinski, 38, has applied his skills to virtual worlds such as "the Grid" -- the digital setting of Tron: Legacy. Now, in Oblivion, he gets to imagine Earth 60 years after an apocalyptic war. — wired.co.uk

Now Mr. Ai is answering the guards’ request in a different key. He is presenting them, and the world, with his first heavy-metal music video, one with detailed re-creations of scenes from his 81 days of detention. He also portrays fantasies he imagines flitting through the guards’ minds. Mr. Ai posted the video on a Web site, aiweiwei.com, on Wednesday morning, Beijing time. — nytimes.com