An artist named Klari Reis has an ongoing project creating one petri dish art piece per day for the whole year. An interesting canvas which lends a medical bent to the colorful gallery, with names like Beam Me Up Scotty and Raspberry Punch. Via their Facebook page: “the paintings are created using reflective epoxy polymer and are an attempt to “explore our complex relationship with today’s biotechnological industry.” Via LaughingSquid
A great series called Behind Photographs. Lots more here.
Pop Chart Lab has a beautifully crafted infographic all about vegetables. It’s called The Various Varieties of Vegetables, and it’s informative, and would look fabulous on a kitchen wall. Did you know about Borage Greens or Sculpit or Melokhia? I sure didn’t. Buy it here. 
No boring meetings with the Swing Table by Duffy London. Via Dezeen and Dina M.
I wish I could see Yang Yongliang’s work in person, because it’s otherworldly and stunning. A vision of a future that is calming yet exhilarating. Click on this top image for a more detailed look.
Yongliang is known for his sprawling photographic collages that depict the devastating effects of uncontrolled urbanisation and industrialisation. At a distance the works look like traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy but when viewed up close, the peaceful mountains and seascapes are found to be choked with buildings, factories, and machinery.
Sleepless Wonderland, Lightbox, 2012
Sleepless Wonderland, Lightbox, 2012 (detail)
Sleepless Wonderland, Lightbox, 2012 (detail)
Sleepless Wonderland, Lightbox, 2012 (detail)
Snake and Grenade, Lightbox, 2012
Snake and Grenade, Lightbox, 2012 (detail)
Wolf and Landmines, Lightbox, 2012
Full Moon, Lightbox, 2012
Bowl of Tapei No. 03, 2012
Bowl of Tapei No. 04, 2012
Artists Andrew Neyer and Andy J. Miller have a cute and fun art installation at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art.
The giant markers are a fantastic touch, and lend a playful awkwardness to the interactivity.
I’m a space enthusiast, but I didn’t know it was even possible to take photographs of the sun like this in your own backyard. Yet, that is exactly what Alan Friedman has done, using special filters on his camera. It’s an amazing peek at the bright star in our own sky. Thanks to Colossal for the tip.
My photographs comprise a solar diary, portraits of a moment in the life of our local star. Most are captured from my backyard in Buffalo, NY. Using a small telescope and narrow band filters I can capture details in high resolution and record movements in the solar atmosphere that change over hours and sometimes minutes. The raw material for my work is black and white and often blurry. As I prepare the pictures, color is applied and tonality is adjusted to better render the features. It is photojournalism of a sort. The portraits are real, not painted. Aesthetic decisions are made with respect for accuracy as well as for the power of the image.
U.S.A. (burnt/unburnt) is a 2011 installation by Paris-based artist Claire Fontaine constructed from thousands of green matches that were inserted into a wall at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art as part art of “Evidence of Bricks” at the 2011 Time-Based Art Festival. Fontaine has made somewhat of a name for herself with her match installations and flaming geography, most recently completing a similar U.S.A. map at Queens Nails Gallery in San Francisco. Unlike the installation in Portland above, the Queens Nails artwork was actually set on fire, and while it may not have gone exactly as intended, the final post-flame artwork is impressive nonetheless. Photographs above for PICA by Dan Kvitka.
The Bunkie – small space architecture by Evan Bare + Nathan Buhler Via DesignBoom:
Evan bare of 608 design and Nathan Buhler of BLDG workshop have conceived ‘the bunkie‘ as a medium to experiment in ideas that cross boundaries between architecture and furniture design. The concept uses identical techniques used in the manufacturing process of high production plywood furniture. The frame is built using a CNC router to cut highly accurate parts which fit together like a puzzle. Clad in plywood and barn board (or other materials) – everything can be built in a factory and shipped flat-packed on-site for final assembly. The interior was designed to maximize the potential for small spaces – living quarters that could be commonly used as a family cottage add-on for sleeping extra guests without building permit requirements.
A multi-functional room has been developed that consists of three modes: sleep, play and open. ‘Sleep mode’ employs two queen sized murphy beds built into one main wall – a small dining table and set of four chairs are visually integrated into the main feature wall, and can be detached for use in play mode. Open mode would provide the most square footage to be used for meditation, yoga, reading, or even ice fishing.
Open mode
Party mode
Party mode
Sleep mode
I’ve posted quite a bit about 3D printing lately, from small ornamentation to printing livable structures on the moon. Here’s an example of 3D printing resembling dramatic sea organisms.
Via Data is Nature:
Jessica Rosenkrantz of Nervous System has recently posted a Flickr set documenting a test run of 3D printed forms that resemble oceanic organisms such sea anemone, coral and barnacles. The prints make use of bold colour palettes to accentuate the topologies of the shapes. The diffused hues combined with subdivided geometries, and sometimes employing strict symmetry, create some exuberant aquatic hyper-realities that wouldn’t seem out of place on a plate from Ernst Haeckle’s Art Forms in Nature.
Maximo Riera’s hand-made furniture series is definitely something to behold. The growing collection of all-black furniture is striking, hilarious, serious and one-of-a-kind.
The Animal Chair collection constitutes a diverse range of species, from mammals to reptiles, and even including insects. Each creation retains the animal’s natural vitality whilst being totally biological accurate in their appearance. This collection is homage to these animals and the whole animal kingdom which inhabits our planet, as an attempt to reflect and capture the beauty of nature in each living thing.
Each of the Spanish creative’s work is manufactured to order, taking an average of 11 weeks to produce.
Each chair requires 170 hours of machine operation and 160 hours of workman as it is assembled, sanded and painted by hand,
making them all unique.
M83 has been one of my favorite groups for some time, and in recent years their music has found its way into commercials, movie trailers and more. The moods that are built in the music are undeniably excellent, and so it was with great pleasure that I came upon their latest official video, for the single “Wait”. The epic video is a collaboration between Intel and Vice Magazine, and it really is cinema quality stuff. A friend posted this week that he thought it was some of the best sic-fi of the year, and its a five minute video! Make sure to watch it full screen, with the volume turned up.
M83 ‘Wait’ Official video from The Creators Project on Vimeo.
Sand castle artist Calvin Seibert manages to construct nearly impossible shapes from one of the world’s most delicate mediums. While Colossal has seen its fair share of art made with sand I’ve never seen anything so perfectly angular and geometric. See much more of his work over on Flickr. (via fasels suppe)
At first glance, this quirky music video by Eran Amir doesn’t really seem all that impressive, until you realize that it’s completely captured in camera, with no post-production colorizing. And then it’s like, “whoa. How’d they do that?”
Thanks to Colossal for the tip. And here’s the making-of video!
Great sculpture in Australia, Via Colossal:
Spinifex is a recent sculpture by Australian artist Corey Thomas. The piece was constructed from local tree branches and other plant material before being air-lifted with a helicopter into Croajingolong National Park in Victoria. You can see a short video about Corey’s processhere. (via my darkened eyes)
As a beard-wearer myself, I’m perhaps partial to men’s facial hair, and the wide diversity of styles and moods a beard can convey.
Photographer Jonathan Pryce has a Tumblr series of great photos called 100 Beards, 100 Days. Here’s a short interview with the photographer, via the Creative Book:
Could you tell us where the inspiration for 100 beards came from?
I’ve been photographing street style for a range of fashion clients and my men’s style for about 5 years now. Since winning Photographer of the Year at the Scottish Fashion Awards in June and moving to London a few months before, I wanted to do a new personal project which would re-ignite my passion for street photography. There’s a number of reasons for selecting beards, but it mainly boils down to my interest in the emergence of trends. The beard has reached a new peak in popularity and I wanted to be part of the documentation of that. Also, I’m useless at growing one myself so thought I’d live vicariously through others.
How do you decide on who to shoot? do you carefully choose the people to capture, arrange a date, or meeting, or hope someone walks in front of your lens?
As I spend a lot of time doing street photography I’m in the privileged position of pacing myself when finding subjects. After a month of the blog starting, I received a few requests from subjects who wanted to be photographed – some of which were just too good to turn down. I love the organic nature of the 100 Beard project though. Parallels emerge – for example two consecutive days with men both with the same name, beard style or nationality. There have been a lot of funny coincidences since I started on July 1st.
