Archive for the ‘art’ Category
Glass Flowers
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Typically in the plant/botany section of a nature museum, you’d find specimens of various plant species pressed flat and preserved in formaldehyde. These flat-pressed clippings lose much of their vibrancy in color, as well as the 3-dimensionality that one would naturally find in real, live plants.
In comes glass artists Leopold Blaschka and his son Rudolf. Using glass, they are able to sculpt and replicate the plant’s 3-dimensional properties and color, giving an almost indistinguishable form from the real plants, including every intricate detail:
Just how good they are? Apart from the samples in the photos above -
The astonishing accuracy of Harvard’s glass flowers has surprised many of the museum’s visitors, who, on seeing the display, ask to see the glass flowers.
Amazing!
[via Curious Expeditions]
Which Paris?
I thought this piece of installation art/concept/idea by Tim Schwartz was quite an interesting project or commentary towards how we use the Internet:
The piece is attached via a network cable to the internet where it monitors news and search results for “paris hilton” and “paris france” and displays an average result in real-time.
Tiny Art Director
Kids have the most imagination. Kids are honest. Kids aren’t afraid to say the darndest things. And that, seems to make a kid to be just about the perfect candidate as an art director.
Artist/illustrator Bill Zeman started a blog chronicling his attempts at fulfilling his daughter’s brief and art direction. For instance:
I’d say his illustrations are definitely up to the mark – but alas, it seems his daughter has a much more stringent/eccentric/random set of criteria. Perhaps not too far apart from real, grown-up art directors too. Check out more examples over at Tiny Art Director.
He’s collected enough of it to make it into a book -
If you’re interested, get it here.
“Seeder” Statue Sprinkles
I thought this statue “Seeder” in Kaunas, Lithuania quite nice – how as nightfall the shadow gives the statue a new life and new angle – much more interesting than the daytime version I’d say!
Here are some other ideas (that didn’t make it) – many are as interesting too:
Light Graffiti
The concept itself isn’t anything new – in fact many of us has probably tried our hands on this, drawing faces or names with sparklers. But I thought Michael Bosanko’s execution was quite above the average:
The pictures are not photoshopped – just long-exposure photography (anything from 10 seconds to an hour) with light torches and carefully chosen backdrops – typically empty urban spaces at night. I particularly like the sense of depth that conforms into the space; in amateur shots the light source are often formed into 2D, flat words or maybe smiley faces, but in this case the light path transverse and flows along with the scene – e.g. the spider on top.
Good stuff!
[via Daily Mail]
Mega (100m) Panorama
The photographer Simon Hoegsberg spent 17 months taking photos from the same spot on a railroad bridge in Berlin in 2007, and put them all together in this megawide panorama (it is 78cm x 100m long), titled “We’re All Gonna Die” showcasing unique – and mostly unaware – people walking about in their daily lives (I wonder what’s up with that title though).
Check out the full photo here.
The Inside Light
Cinco Design had done a rather intriguing project. The premise is this – inside every designer/creative is a guiding light that shapes our vision and fuel our creativity. So they asked a bunch of people to boil it down to one word, make a light box of it, and take a photo showing the reflection of the word on the person – they even have a making-of:
And here’s the interactive e-Magazine from the result of the shoot – TheInsideLight.
Obama Headlines
Here’s a whole bunch of newspaper front pages from all over the world – all covering the recent Obama victory in the US presidential elections. It does seem like the world is swept over by this significant victory – it is surely a momentous chapter – though at the back of my mind, I’m also asking “would there also be similar avalanche of front page all devoted to the election results, if it was not Obama?”
The elections for US president is certainly a major news item in most parts of the world and worthy of headlines by itself – did the Obama phenomenon actually convince more to feature this result more prominently? Or is this simply a natural picture of the day after elections?
Celebrity Font Arts
Some interesting portraits of celebrities (Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, James Dean) constructed entirely from fonts and glyphs (well, except the facial features).
Lehman Art
This, I guess is what happens when a mega-billion dollar company folds and files for bankcruptcy. Artist GV Raymond has a habit of painting a portrait picture of a popular figure and letting others comment on it with markers:
The idea behind the series is to paint the subject during a particularly interesting or controversial moment in time and then offer passersby a chance to comment on the surface of the canvas.
And what better time than now for President of Lehman Brothers Richard Fuld, the person who led Lehman Brothers into bankruptcy after 158 years of operation. A venue to vent – though the frustration and exasperation experienced by Lehman employees could probably not be worth the ‘I-told-you-so’s scribbled on the canvas. Honestly though, I thought it’d be a lot more vulgar or explosive, but all in all the annotations still look comparatively tame, I think.
This could just be the only Lehman derivatives that is worth something.
