Strike a Pose

Be your own souvenir was born out of the Barcelona-based company, blablaLab. For a handful of quarters the machine pumps out neon green plasticine, rastering back and forth until your army man sized portrait is complete...although I hear the smell of plasticine is noxious.

At least ten times better than pressed penny collectibles.


Be Your Own Souvenir! from blablabLAB on Vimeo.

Competitive Swinging

"Ten swings, 5 facing 5, installed at the Headlands Center for the Arts by artist Paolo Salvagione. A delicate dance where the line between audience and athlete is blissfully blurred. Sweating optional, grins inevitable."

New motivation for vaulted ceilings has been born...

Competitive Swinging from Paolo Salvagione on Vimeo.

Breakfast Interrupted

Dreamy Breakfast Sequence shot at 1000 fps by the making of Bruton Stroube.


BSS | Breakfast Interrupted from Bruton Stroube Studios on Vimeo.


BSS | Breakfast Interrupted - Behind The Scenes from Bruton Stroube Studios on Vimeo.

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Mark Jenkins' street installation Embed


"There is opposition and risk but I think that just shows that street art is the sort of frontier where the leading edge really does have to chew through the ice. And it's good for people to remember public space is a battleground, with the government, advertisers, and artists all mixing and mashing, and even now the strange cross-pollination taking place as street artists sometimes become brands, and brands camouflaging as street art creating complex hybrids or impersonators. I think it's understanding the strangeness of the playing field where you'll realize that painting street artists as the bad guys is a shallow view." -M.Jenkins

Next Stop Atlantic

Through a body of work entitled Next Stop Atlantic Stephen Mallon attests to the alluring quality of documentary photography and its capacity to achieve artistic distinction. Stripped down to their outer shells retired NYC subway cars are flung into the Atlantic Ocean by the hundreds off the coast of Delaware. After sinking to depths of 80 feet the cars provide luxurious lodgings for sea life as part of an artificial reef program.

Wasteland

Ahh it's good to be back. My backlog of incredible stories has been begging for a show and tell over the week I've been away. I'll let the stories trickle out over the next few days to ensure an awesome week of posting. Without further ado..."From the world's largest trash dump comes an astonishingly true story of a renowned New York artist and a group of scavengers."

Wasteland documents Vik Muniz's two year journey into the steamy sticky heart of the world's largest trash dump, Rio de Janeiro's Jardim Gramacho landfill. In an effort to increase awareness of the landfill community's deplorable living conditions Vik Muniz began photographing individuals that live off recyclable trash found in the landfill. "For the half dozen featured in Wasteland, Muniz transforms their lives by pulling them into the artistic process, hiring them to help create swimming pool-sized portraits out of actual pieces of garbage."

The resulting artwork was auctioned off and the proceeds were reinvested into the community.

I spy with my little eye...

Vacation

I'm off to some place fantastic. Be back in a week!

Before I Die

Public installation artist Candy Chang transformed her New Orleans neighborhood by repurposing an abandoned home into an inspirational chalkboard. Local residents chalk up their hopes and dreams onto the giant wall.

"It's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day and forget what really matters to you. Before I Die transforms neglected spaces into constructive ones where we can learn the hopes and aspirations of the people around us. It's about improving both our physical spaces and our individual well-being." -Chang

Work of Obsession: Tony Orrico

Equipped with graphite sticks and an expertly choreographed dance of arm movements Tony Orrico creates eerily obsessive works of geometric pattern. The process is a performance executed on a giant empty canvas. With unrelenting repetition Orrico explores the dimensions of his body, creating patterns corresponding to his arm span, the width of his torso, and the range of motion of his wrist.

I think this one is amazing. Symmetric scribblings.

Penwald: 2: 8 circles from The National Academies on Vimeo.

Play Me I'm Yours

Artist Luke Jerram has been planting pianos in public spaces around the world since 2008. Beginning in London the installation has travelled to NYC, Austin, Cincinnati, Sao Paolo, and beyond. Play Me, I'm Yours thrives on the universal nature of music, catalyzing beautiful chance encounters between strangers.

Let the air be so heavy with music it's hard to breathe!

Austin

NYC

Barcelona

See if your city is up next. http://www.streetpianos.com/

Cityscope Urban Kaleidoscope

Cityscope, Urban Kaleidoscope, is a light installation displayed in Cologne, Germany. The faceted structure designed by Marco Hemmerling reflects fragmented views of the German city center. The concept as Hemmerling describes it is "the idea of it as an object that brings people together. It makes you think about what you see. The city becomes one object. It's a complex system that moves and changes. It stimulates interaction and distorts people's perception." The radiant foils reflect subtle hues during the day and are illuminated at night for a more dramatic effect.

Looks like the world's largest gemstone of iceberg proportions is bursting through the sidewalk.

Free Ai Weiwei

The battle wages on...

September 5, 2009

"Choices after waking up:
1. To live or to die?
2. To be true or to lie?
3. To be lively or to decay?
4. To love or to be forsaken?
5. To be wise or to be idiotic?
6. To smile or to be humiliated?
7. To denounce or to celebrate?
8. To be more courageous or to be more fearful?
9. To take action or to be brainwashed?
10. To be free or to be jailed?"

June 11, 20009

"I solemnly declare that here comes a name-calling era, and we would curse the enemy softly to death."

Evan Penny's Alice in Wonderland

Here's installment number two of creepy "skin crawlingly" hyperreal human busts...with a literal twist. Sculptor Evan Penny creates stretched, skewed, and slightly off versions of the human form. While maintaining a hyperreal quality, Penny's 3D forms are manipulated in the same way a 2D photo can be blurred or twisted. The effect induces an Alice in Wonderland level of perception of elongated heads, color shifts, and visual ripples. All the photos are of sculptures and have not been altered. "We accept the monstrous in photographs, but to pull it into three-dimensional space problemizes the 'easy read' of the blurred image." -E.Penny. 

Penny created this optical illusion using the four color process of specifically placed hairs on the sculpture's face. "Every part of [it] appears as if it is vibrating with an internal motion so powerful that the features are being shaken into dissolution even as you try, unsuccessfully, to look at them."

Wet Sounds

"Wet sounds is an underwater sound art gallery." The exhibition started by Joel Cahen began in the UK in the summer of 2008 and has since echoed in swimming pools throughout the world. Participants liken the experience to "being in a womb" and describe it as "astonishingly immediate, inescapable." Bobbing about the water's surface listeners experience three separate sound environments created in the ambient space around the pool, underwater, and just at the water's surface. The nature of underwater sound perception bypasses the outer and middle ear mechanisms allowing even the hard of hearing to enjoy the installation.

 When Raining final by frogspawn

Silk Tornado

Japanese artist Akiko Ikeuchi expertly constructs these levitating webs from thin silk thread following extremely detailed blueprints to provide structural support. His work is currently on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo through May 8th. The weightless feeling of the sculpture reminds me of my childhood fantasy of walking on clouds. If only I were weightless this could be my ground.