A SHOW CALLED KICKS.

ACTIVISTS BREAK INTO RAYFISH FOOTWEAR AND STEAL 200 LIVING STINGRAYS - CEO RAYMOND ONG RESPONDS

In an unprecedented event in sneaker history, wildlife activists broke into the Rayfish Footwear facility on Sunday and destroyed an undisclosed amount of lab equipment and product, while also stealing over 200 living stingrays. A video of the event shows a group of individuals who seem at first glance to be more interested in the glorification of themselves and their counterculture ideals than in an actual protection of our ecosystem.

The heavy metal soundtrack to this heist, video clips of perpetrators tagging the facility with spraypaint, and shots of lighthouses that give an uncanny representation of search lights seem to indicate a yearning for glory more than a considerate liberation of a wild species in captivity. The shortsighted actions of a group of vandals will have unimaginable consequences, but their reasoning is arguably just. Time will tell if they have actually hurt the animals and potentially an entire species and ecosystem even more, or helped save a few of the doomed fish. Time will also tell if this PR playground will serve as the biggest marketing help in the company’s history.

CEO of the company Raymond Ong takes the argument a step further in his video response, claiming hypocrisy as these animal-product-clad vigilantes break into a lab to save a version of animal about which they know little. As the company creates animals with personalized patterns from commissions by sneaker enthusiasts, the debate will continue as to whether it is more wrong to buy shoes you know were “raised” for your own personal satisfaction, or to buy shoes “raised” for an unknown wearer, potentially arranged by workers in inhumane conditions.

The full press release is below:

CEO RAYMOND ONG PROMISES THAT COMPANY WILL RETURN “STRONGER THAN EVER” AFTER SETBACK Chon Buri (August 15, 2012) This Sunday, August 12, activists broke into the headquarters of Rayfish Footwear, destroying lab equipment and sneakers, and stealing numerous living stingrays. A video on YouTube depicts masked activists removing stingrays from the Rayfish aquaculture facility and releasing the animals into the nearby ocean.

In a video statement, CEO Raymond Ong expressed deep regret over the loss: “Not only is this crime a terrible setback for my company and employees, it is also a personal tragedy.” Ong acknowledged the conflicted public response to Rayfish’s bio-customization technique, but emphasized the company’s commitment to excellent working conditions for its staff and to the humane treatment of its stingrays. “Rest assured that I fully understand that radical technological advances often make us uneasy,” Ong said, adding, “We need to get over our unwillingness to change. We need to learn love the future again.” Ong also noted his concern that the genetically modified stingrays may interbreed with wild populations.

Rayfish Footwear is currently working with local authorities to identify the culprits. A reward of 40,000 THB has been offered to area fishermen for the return of any of the released rays. Despite the damage, Rayfish officials anticipate that the October date for commercial production should be pushed back by no more than two months. The company is suspending its Grow Your Sneaker design contest until further notice, although the online contest page will remain open for entries.

Any information about the identities of the thieves can be sent to tips@rayfish.com.

So, what do you think? Who is wrong here? It all seems too crazy to be true, could it all be a hoax?

Tags: Rayfish Footwear sneaker sneakerhead swag hype fashion style steez Streetwear ASCK A Show Called Kicks. activist activism animal debate high

GROW YOUR OWN STINGRAY SNEAKER FOR $1,800

The collision of science and public entertainment led to a very interesting moral dilemma in the film Jurassic Park, where animals were injected with DNA to turn them into other animals. We all know how that went. In one of the closest real-life stories we have to the themes of such a tale, Thai manufacturers RayFish Footwear are taking science and public fashion and colliding them into one mashed up superfishoe.

Starting at $1,400, sneaker fans can select from a number of nature’s finest patterns - from zebra to rattlesnake to “Nemo” - and inject the pattern into the DNA of a stingray that will be grown for the specific purpose of being turned into a pair of shoes for your feet. As a declaration of superiority, our species can grow a nearly endless palette of designs on a lesser life form, while corporate marketing and many avenues of artistic expression may be further down the line as logos and sharp lines are out of the question at the moment, as co.Design reports:

“It would not be feasible for ordinary people to code their desired pattern in the DNA, so we made a design tool that allows them to create a pattern that we can actually grow on the stingrays,” says Dr. Raymond Ong, head of Rayfish Footwear. That tool eschews esoteric DNA snippets for a graphic-laden UI, allowing you to drag and drop up to nine patterns into your shoe, selected from a library of 29 styles of leather. With so many choices combining into such an array of designs, the possibilities seem endless, though obviously there are some natural limitations to just how specific users can be about a shoe that is ostensibly grown.

“We cannot breed any desirable shape or logo on the fishes, as our patterning process works by recording and recombining DNA of existing animals…. Squares are for instance not possible, as the expression of the DNA on the skin doesn’t allow it,” Dr. Ong explains. “Also, the patterns that grow on the actual fish sometimes slightly differ from what you see in the design tool. Although it is almost perfect, we are still developing the mapping between the design tool and the DNA encoding further.”

This obviously brings up a great many questions in regards to ethics, and while our society certainly does much, much worse things to the animals we already raise for things like food, clothing, and household product testing, it’s a bit more jarring to think that some of “nature’s” most glorious creations will be predestined to become merely another layer of separation between our holy feet and the ground beneath them.

Co.Design’s Mark Wilson puts it well:

While I can conveniently forget that the leather in my shoes was once the skin of a cow, is there something different in knowing that the cow had been bred and slaughtered just for me? Is this a farm-to-table situation, where it’s more ethical to name the pig that you’ll eventually eat? Or am I creating the most majestic animal I could imagine just to thieve its gorgeous skin?

Check out their video to get an idea for the creation process, where there is now a design contest to win your own pair of mangod-created sneakers instead of paying the $14,000-16,000 asking price they are currently seeking.

Another moral dilemma comes with the claim that the skin pattern of another animal like a caterpillar can simply be transferred to the skin of a member of an alternate species. It’s simply not possible. What is possible is a genetic modification to match such patterns, but the line is fuzzy as to how “natural” this transferral really is. It seems that the company is just as capable of making up completely different designs as it is transferring over some of nature’s more beautiful works. Where the ethics lie in this claim is another question altogether.

So, what do you think?

(Source: solejunkie.com)

Tags: sneaker custom customizing sneakerhead swag hype fashion style steez ASCK A Show Called Kicks. Streetwear RayFish Footwear high art design