The DirecTV tech manual, Bookicide 3. All photos are 1500 x 996, click for full size.
© C. Ford. All rights reserved.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
The DirecTV tech manual, Bookicide 3. All photos are 1500 x 996, click for full size.
© C. Ford. All rights reserved.
© C. Ford. All rights reserved.
This time, a 1982 writing manual is condemned. I barely had to soak this one. A DirecTV manual is still soaking, it’s remarkably water resistant. You’d think they’d know they would come in for abuse or something. As soon as I recover from Fixatif fumes (kidding!), I’ll have fun with paint, always the best part.
© C. Ford. All rights reserved.
Zirconia Sharpener. For drawings and note taking, we always sharpen our pencils. We believe a pencil sharpener made with beautiful and durable material is functional hence leads to desirability. We love the beauty of simplicity, and the magic of analog. It’s honest and thoughtful. We want to reinterpret the analog pencil sharpener that we’re already familiar with, a product that we trust and use everyday. The blade and body are made from zirconia and fused into a single unibody block. By utilizing zirconia’s material property, the blade doesn’t need to be changed and offers a smooth sharpening experience.
Sign up here if you’re interested in Zirconia Sharpener and we’ll let you know when it’s available. (I’m signed up!)
Cosmos Clock by Jay Hyun Kim.
Jay Hyun Kim is a second year graduate student pursuing a MDes in Designed Objects at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. Jay acquired his BFA in Industrial Design at Rochester Institute of Technology in 2011. Jay has a deep interest in manufacturing and materials, and his work in Venture Studio has focused on developing the Cosmos clock for manufacture in China.
That was fun.
© C. Ford. All rights reserved.
Oh man, I want a houseful of these.
Cloud, by Richard Clarkson.
The Cloud is an Arduino-controlled, motion-triggered lightning & thunder performance, as well as a music-activated visualizing speaker. As an interactive lamp and speaker system designed to mimic a thundercloud in appearance, The Cloud employs embedded motion sensors to create unique lightning and thunder shows while providing entertainment value and inspiring awe. This is a kind of magic, not based on illusions and trickery, but on sensors and code. Featuring a powerful speaker system, The Cloud allows its beholder to stream music via any Bluetooth compatible device and can adapt to any desired lighting, color and brightness.
Acting as both an immersive lightning experience and visual feedback integrated speaker, The Cloud introduces innovative physical computing and interaction design hardware by bringing this technology into the home. The Cloud celebrates collaborative code, free-sharing and accessing prototyping information. The code is available to the public to use and improve, to provide blueprints for the next generation of smart objects.
[…]
The Cloud is made by felting hypoallergenic fiberfill to a sponge casing which holds the speakers and componentry within. Users control the functions of The Cloud through a small, wireless remote.
There’s much more at the site. Via The Creators Project.
Yosman Botero has an amazing, wonder-filled body of work. There is a distinct air of joy and fun in much of his work, a sense of child-like awe.
Courtesy of the artist.
Courtesy of the artist.
There’s much more at the artist’s website, and Behance.
Motoi Yamamoto’s Floating Garden. Photos courtesy of the artist.
Inside the medieval castle tower at aigues-mortes, a 13th century walled city in southern france, japanese artist motoi yamamoto has completed two monumental installations made of salt. ‘Floating garden’ and ‘labyrinth’ form part of the exhibition ‘univers’ sel‘ on from now until november 30, 2016, which celebrates creative interpretations of the natural element.
‘Floating garden’ comprises a circular form filled with a lacework of carefully-placed grains of salt. The installation is housed within the castle tower at Aigues-Mortes. In its realization, the artist sits down in a small space where no particles are laid, simultaneously moving a container of salt in a particular rhythm, a subtle movement which creates tiny cells that mimic bubble-like patterns. Each of these thin salt ribbons symbolizes pieces of memories and fragments of time. The swirling, hurricane-like pattern is used as a motif used throughout East Asia to represent life and death, resurrection, rebirth and vitality. The ephemeral artwork was realized in 45 hours over the course of five days.
The installation ‘labyrinth’ is housed within the castle’s ramparts.
Via Designboom, where there are many more photos.
Not long ago, I posted about the incredible works of Edouard Martinet. Here’s a short visit with him, and how he goes about making his amazing creations.
If your tastes run to the dark side, Stolen Innocence Photography is for you. I like most of the work, it’s interesting, evocative, and creative. I will admit to loving the blood dress, it’s grand. Hat tip to rq.
© Stolen Innocence Photography, all rights reserved.
You can read more about the Blood Dress here.
The tree that hides Jesus in better days.
The Jesus in question exposed.
SOUTH PORTLAND — The pine tree planted to hide what some call the googly-eyed Jesus may be dying.
The long, green needles of the Austrian pine, which obscures a controversial mural of Jesus Christ on the bell tower of Holy Cross Catholic Church on Cottage Road, have mysteriously turned brown in recent weeks.
[…]
“I think pollution is doing a number on it,” Roberts said Tuesday. “It’s got something going on.”
Roberts, who is a church member, said the tree also appeared to be dead a couple of years ago, but it rebounded after he applied a fertilizer and insecticide. Now, road salt and other pollution may be taking a toll once again.
“This time it may be gone,” Roberts said. “It may have to come out.”
[…]
On April 17, the Maine Sunday Telegram published a story about the tree and its strategic placement in front of the mural. At that time, the needles on the tree were green. In that story, Henchal said parishioners didn’t talk much about the mural, though the hidden Jesus is something of a legend among children who attend the parochial school next door.
At the high-traffic intersection of Broadway and Cottage Road, the enamel-on-steel mural was installed in 1980 to replace a deteriorating tile facade on the church, which was built in 1950. Titled “Spirit of the Matter: A Christian Triptych,” the mural was designed by Damariscotta artist John Janii Laberge at the direction of a church committee.
In the April story, Laberge admitted that he has often thought of cutting the tree down with a chainsaw to expose his artwork. On Monday, Laberge said he had noticed the tree’s failing condition last week when he was dog-sitting for a friend in South Portland, but he was quick to deflect any suspicion that he is responsible.
“I didn’t poison it,” Laberge volunteered. “It may not be dead. I’ve seen it that way before and it came back. It’s probably just going through its seasonal changes.”
The response to the mural has been mixed from the start, especially to the whites of the eyes, which stare woefully toward heaven in a pose suggesting medieval religious art. While some say it’s an apt representation of pain and suffering, others say it’s creepy or scary. Laberge says he delivered on the church committee’s request to depict a “powerful, working-class Christ.”
“I wanted a strong, drive-by presence,” Laberge said. “I made something bold and big that tells something about the crucifixion and what came after. I warned them that depictions of Christ are a touchy thing.”
When Laberge drives past the mural today, he questions the negative reaction.
“It’s not that bad,” Laberge said. “A person who died on the cross is not going to look pretty.”
[…]
The mural became the subject of community controversy in 2001, when church officials considered making changes to the artwork as part of building renovations. The renovations ran over budget, however, so the idea of altering the mural was dropped, church members said. Soon after, someone suggested planting a tree in front of the mural as a way to take care of the problem.
The plan seemed to be working until the tree started showing signs of stress in recent years. Whether it can be brought back from the brink a second time is unclear.
Full Story Here. So, no one suggested praying the tree back to life? I’m shocked, after all, it’s not a fig tree. After staring at that art work for what is probably too long, I think they need a much bigger tree. Much bigger.
I have been paying attention to art of all kinds for most of my life, and Ikehata’s work is right at the very top of the most evocative works I have ever seen. Incredibly evocative. Thought provoking. Poignant. Emotional. A reminder of our mortality, our fragility. Staggeringly beautiful. Terrifying. Astonishing. Look at everything. Click on it all, see it full size.
Yuichi Ikehata works. Fragmented beauty: Japan’s Yuichi Ikehata – artist profile.
We live from moment to moment in a mix of truth and fiction that we consider to be reality. The distinction between reality and fiction is a relationship such that we require one in order to recognize the other, and at times they are so closely connected that we are unable to distinguish the two.
Fragment of Long Term Memory (LTM), an ongoing photographic series, conveys an unrealistic world through fragments of reality. My understanding of reality comes from its moments of beauty, sadness, fun, perfection, and those days when nothing special happens. Many parts of our memories, however, are often forgotten, or difficult to recall. I retrieve those fragmented moments and reconstruct them as surreal images.
I always feel an uncertain anxiety. I find it important to have this anxiety stimulated by negative factors and feelings surrounding the uncertainty of existence, because by feeling my own existence as small and unstable, this in turn will lead to my recognizing a vast world and being in awe of it.
