The League of Lonely Geologists.

No, it’s not a hyper-specialised dating service, but a game. It’s only downloadable for Windows, but you can browse the archive no matter the choice of your os.

After digging in the dirt on a solo quest for digital rocks in the “The League of Lonely Geologists,” you may decide to toss one of your finds into the mysterious space portal situated in the otherwise mundane landscape. Immediately, another rock will be hurled back out of this strange gateway, but it won’t be yours. Instead, it’s one found by a previous wanderer of the game, their annotations and specimen name left behind in an ongoing catalogue of the terrain.

Created by Takorii and recently shared by Rock Paper Shotgun, “The League of Lonely Geologists” is available as a pay-what-you wish download for PC. It’s billed as a game of “awkward & uncomfortable rock collection,” yet rock collecting is only part of its mechanics, which are revealed through experimentation. Toss a plant into the portal, and get a phonograph cylinder back, which may play some jaunty tune, or just an eerie hum. Throw in the phonograph, and the moon-like vista may spit out a shiny badge.

While the game can only be played in Windows, anyone can flip through the online catalogue of finds. As of this writing, 669 “geologists” have discovered over 2,000 rocks, such as the “dented lid” that’s “just a trash can lid someone spray painted gold,” and the “unstoppable rock” that’s constantly in motion, and “no obstacle can stop this movement.” Some players take their naming and description more seriously than others, but it’s surprisingly enjoyable to have this kind of anonymous sharing. And like any scientific survey, albeit one steeped in absurdity, it keeps you curious about what else is out there.

Via Hyperallergic. The League of Lonely Geologists.

A Perfect Summer Fan.

I could use a good, beautiful summer fan, given that are temps are in the withering range.* These not only express a specific concept, they are also part a very old papermaking process, and with my deep and abiding love for paper, makes this an even more enticing item.

Komorebi (木漏れ日) is one of those uniquely untranslatable Japanese words. It means “sunlight filtering through the tree leaves” and embodies a poetic appreciation for nature and its changing seasons. Capturing that aesthetic, and embedding it into a beautiful handheld fan (uchiwa), is designer Kotoko Hirata, who created the Komorebi Uchiwa.

Escape the summer heat with this beautiful handheld fan made from Echizen Washi paper, a traditional Japanese craft with a 1500-year history. Artisans steeped in the tradition create leaf patterns by hand so when sunlight hits the fan a silhouette of tree leaves appear. It’s a lovely reminder that there are ways of appreciating the summer, rather than escape into air conditioning.

Once the paper is completed it’s transported to Kyoto where fan makers, known for their kyo-uchiwa, create the radial wooden skeleton of the fan and merge it with the paper.

More at Spoon & Tamago, where you can buy this beautiful fan.

*On the bright side, this is the quietest 4th ever, with none of the months of assholes setting off fireworks preceding it. The silence is lovely.

Different Takes.

You may have seen Japanese illustrator Mizumaru Kawahara and his comical-style illustrations on Japanese magazine covers, or illustrated film reviews. He also illustrated the book Young Adult U.S.A. and is a self-proclaimed Star Wars fan. So it was only appropriate that he created this adorable and playful tribute to the U.S.A on the 4th of July.

You can see more at Spoon & Tamago and Mizmaru’s Twitter Feed.

ETA: If you’re the type of person to get offended by these, please be good enough to fuck off. Thanks.

Wondrous Weiners.

I think many artists have a tendency to hit boredom quickly and often. I certainly do. Thus, there’s a need to play, to invent, and reinvent. The men behind Burpzine are still playing with their food, but have a recent focus on wieners, fabulous wieners. And sometimes, pickles.

WonderWiener.

If these wieners look familiar, it’s because Belgian food stylist Erik Vernieuwe is obsessed with turning them into the most famous faces on the planet. In the digital pages of his Burp Zine, classic artworks and movie scenes become delectable edibles under the trained pasty chef, food historian, and recipe tester’s careful gaze. A work is complete when Vernieuwe gives it a punny name like Wiener de Milo or Robodog. “It’s becoming a bit of an obsession,” he tells Creators. “I see something and think, ‘Can I turn this into a hot dog?'”

Vernieuwe works with his husband, photographer Kris De Smedt, both professionally and when they play with their food. A fashion photographer in their hometown of Antwerp, De Smedt turns Vernieuwe’s pun-filled creations into sleek, Instagram-worthy images. “His way of looking at things and how he sees light and color really works for the kind of food pictures we do together,” Vernieuwe says. They often collaborate on “stupid things” between gigs because, as Vernieuwe puts it, he gets bored really easily.

Burp Zine is their longest-running “stupid thing” so far, perhaps because it’s unabashedly dumb and playful. “It’s just for fun. No depth to it whatsoever,” Vernieuwe says proudly.

I’d argue that it isn’t dumb at all. People need play, and they need playful. We need to be delighted in creativity for its own sake, not always concerned over messaging or significance. Play greatly reduces stress, anxiety, and hostility, and engages imagination, boosts curiosity, brings laughter and joy.

Alien.

Wiener Spock.

The Persistence of Wienery.

You can lose yourself in the delights of Wienerdom here, or get lost in other play here.

Via The Creators Project.

It’s More About…

Installation view, Brian Belott’s Dr. Kid President Jr. at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise. (Images courtesy the artist and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise.)

…She went around the globe collecting kids’ art, so a lot of the art in this show is international. We have art here from Switzerland, from India, from Egypt, from Tibet. What she found was that no matter where finger painting went on across the globe, kids were essentially drawing the same stuff. In Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell compared creation myths, showing the common thread through seemingly disparate cultures. Rhoda was finding the same thing, but in children’s scribbles. She was going into this nexus of gobbledygook and nonsense, with very little support, and she winds up finding that within scribbles are repeating shapes, like the mandala or the Greek cross. What she’s also seeing bubbling up from this is the beginning of all language – the alphabet.

NR:But it’s a graphic language, as opposed to an alphabetic one, so it exists apart from a specific language or nation?

BB: Absolutely. There are certain things the body loves to do, like making a cross, or an X, or a loop-de-loop. These actions are born in the time of early childhood. What’s wild, too, about this practice is that, for the kids, it’s akin to running around on the playground, because kids are only half of the time thinking deeply about what they’re doing. It’s more about motor action and covering a surface.

That’s part of an interview with artist Brian Belott about his latest exhibition, which focuses on the art of children. I was quite struck by the last sentence in the quote above: “It’s more about motor action and covering a surface.” That’s exactly what I’m doing with the Tree Quilt. My fingers go to work, while my mind wanders afar. I surface now and then, to see what my fingers have been doing, then wander off again. I’ve noticed during the time I’ve worked on the tree quilt, that anytime I’m actually focused on it, and thinking about it, I just can’t get anything to work, at all. I end up having to tuck it away. When I’m not paying attention, but my body is singing with energy, and there are a million other things to occupy my mind, the shapes and colours which form are strange, happily organic, and very pleasing to me. Maybe that’s why I’m stretching out the work time on it so much – not just that I have to walk away when I’m in ‘adult’ mode, but at its core, it’s a childish scribble, one which makes me quite happy.

The full interview is at Hyperallergic.

Cool Stuff Friday.

The Postal Museum Opening July 2017 from The Postal Museum on Vimeo.

During the First World War, in order protect art treasures from German attack, English museum administrators worked with the country’s national postal service to store precious artworks in a network of subway tunnels 70′ below street level. Now, you can take a ride through the historic Mail Rail when you buy tickets to London’s Postal Museum opening July 28th.

Roughly 100 years ago, the Post Office in London started utilizing a secret labyrinth of narrow tunnels, 6.5 miles long, to safely transport letters, parcels, and postcards through the city. At its peak, the Mail Rail system operated 22 hours a day and employed 220 staff that moved more than four million letters daily. The network of tunnels criss-crossed tube lines and linked six sorting offices with mainline stations at Liverpool Street and Paddington. The underground Mail Rail operation was so covert that museums like the Tate, British Museum and National Portrait Gallery deemed it safe enough to store their most precious artworks. According to representatives for the Postal Museum, the British Museum once even used the tunnels to store the Rosetta Stone.

There’s more at The Creators Project and The Postal Museum.

The Virgin Artiste.

At The Bushwick Collective block party early in June, Ashleigh Alexandria, who goes by The Virgin Artiste, body painted a model live against a brick wall covered with a graffiti painting of a skull, the work of eight-year-old street artist Ethan Armen. As Ashleigh was photographing her work on top of Armen’s work, a cop walked by. “I found the imagery of a nude, Black model covered in paint close to a police officer to be ironic,” Alexandria tells Creators, “due to the recent police killings of Black men and women.”

Sometimes Alexandria’s subjects are painted to blend into their backgrounds, but more often than not, her subjects stand out from their environment while still remaining a part of it. A lifelong New Yorker, Alexandria is a portrait artist and a body painter whose work plays with the practice of body paint blending made famous by artists like Liu Bolin, in which subjects are made to disappear into their surroundings. While Bolin is an important influence, Alexandria’s practice is a reinterpretation of this concept. “My use of women of color as subjects shows how these women can be blended into the background of American society,” she explains.

You can see and read much more at The Creators Project.

Ghastly, ghostly, and gory, Neill Blomkamp’s new sci-fi short Firebase is set in a Vietnam War haunted by more than just post-traumatic stress disorder and political unrest. While the latter are resolutely present, soldiers on the front lines face a supernatural force so powerful and destructive they refer to it as “The Devil.” Obviously the CIA is involved, which is why the details of this faux documentary aren’t in our modern day history books.

“Volume 1” of the District 9 and Chappy director’s latest introduces us to the second cinematic universe by Oats Studio, his new independent venture invoking the power of fandom with a “pay-if-you-can” business model. The first in the series is Rakka, an allegory for military occupation in which a human resistance led by Sigourney Weaver fights a brutal alien race equipped with powerful weapons and mind control. Firebase turns inward, examining the destructive force of trauma through the lens of American troops invading Vietnam. Warning, this film is bloody.

If you want to find out what happens next, you can support Oats Studio by purchasing the film on Steam.

You can read more about this at The Creators Project.

Is the City of Chicago trolling the 45th president of the United States? A gleaming, six-foot-tall sculpture that appeared this week near the downtown Trump International Hotel and Tower certainly suggests so, spelling out just two words in thick, golden letters: “REAL FAKE.”

The quip appeared on Monday evening, installed by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) as part of a new installation of public art along the Chicago Riverwalk. Simply titled “Real Fake,” the 350-pound fiberglass work, coated in metallic paint, appears as a direct dig at President Trump and his endless dismissal of the media’s criticisms as “fake news” while leading a life of fraudulence himself. But the piece, created by local artist Scott Reeder, was actually first installed in 2013 as part of Art Basel Miami Beach, where it loomed on the grassy knoll of Collins Park. It’s on loan to the city now by Reeder’s gallery, Kavi Gupta.

Hyperallergic has the full story on Real Fake!

John Pfahl, “Bethlehem #25) (1988), color print. (courtesy Cantor Arts Center).

A fascinating look at the landscape photographers of the 1960s and 1970s, the refusal to romanticize the landscape, and the intertwining of art and environmentalists. Full story here.

Sketch of an iris from The Florist (1760).

The Florist, printed in 1760, was a colouring book for adults, and one for serious colourists with watercolour experience.

The Florist was intended, as its title page relays, “for the use and amusement of Gentlemen and Ladies.” But, unlike most contemporary coloring books, it wasn’t meant to soothe the mind or encourage limitless creativity; rather, it served more as a manual for those seeking to sharpen their artistic skills. The Florist was for serious adult colorists only, filled with detailed instructions on how to paint each flower strictly according to its natural colors. (Yes, paint — this was the pre-crayon and -colored pencil era, so aspiring artists would have used watercolors.) See the directions, for instance, for a gladiolus:

This flower is crimson, inclining to purple; begun with a string layer of carmine, and neatly shading with a mixture of carmine and prussian blue. The bottom of the flower is white, shaded with a greenish tinge, by a mixture of Indian ink and sap-green; neatly blending the carmine by it, by fine strokes of each color. The leaves and stalk, from the beginning of the flowers of the top, are a brown, made with sap-green and carmine.

You can read all about The Florist, and see more, at Hyperallergic.