This is quite insane, Scott Weaver worked on this piece of art for over 35 years! And he used about 100,000 toothpick building it. I am really impressed, and as you can see in the movie the artist has some trouble taking his eyes away from it, he's proud and not afraid to show it ;-)
Ro&Ad Architects were asked to design a bridge over the former moat of an old fortress. However, they thought it to be historically inappropriate to make an easy access way where once the enemy was stopped at the gates, so instead they made an invisible bridge that sinks beneath the water level. Nice concept, and it looks awesome too!
via visuall.net
During the mid-18th century, the Sultanate of Yogyakarta began work on Taman Sari Water Castle. Comprised of lavish gardens and pools, Taman Sari also featured a bizarre man-made sea, connected beneath the ground with underwater tunnels and small island buildings. One of these island structures was used as a mosque, and was only accessible by underwater passage.
The tiny mosque was only one story, and although basic, had all the necessary parts of a mosque including a mihrab, or small niche guiding worshippers toward Mecca. It also featured a series of staircases leading from the underwater entrances resembling MC Escher's relativity. Staircases lead up from five different doorways to a central platform and another staircase connects the five lower staircases to a higher doorway.
Brimming with mystery, the plain mosque is only one of the wonders of the entire Taman Sari Water Castle complex. Today, many of the remains of the great 17th century compound have been lost. Pools have been filled in, which allowed for the discovery of many of the underground structures, but have destroyed the pristine castle quality. Human settlements have taken the place of the man-made lake, and much of the other buildings left standing are worse for wear. In 1995, the entire complex was listed as a tentative World Heritage Site.
Jenny Odell makes collections of specific subjects found on Google Maps.
She says: In all of my prints, I collect things that I've cut out from Google Satellite View-- parking lots, silos, landflls, waste ponds. The view from a satellite is not a human one, nor is it one we were ever really meant to see. But it is precisely from this inhuman point of view that we are able to read our own humanity, in all of its tiny, reliably repetitive marks upon the face of the earth. From this view, the lines that make up basketball courts and the scattered blue rectangles of swimming pools become like hieroglyphs that read: people were here.
At the same time, like any photograph, satellite imagery is also immediately an image of the past. That is, to look at satellite imagery is to look not only down upon ourselves but back in time, even if only by a matter of hours or days. In recording the moment at which things as bizarre as water parks and racetracks covered the earth, the photograph also implies that moment's own passing, encoding each tiny structure with vulnerability and pre-emptive nostalgia. My desire to collect these pieces stems not only from the fascination of any collector but from a wish to save these low-resolution, sporadically-updated pixels--these strange pictures of ourselves--from time and the ephemerality of the internet.
The idea of exploring the mirror for the installation has grown from the desire to capture, explore and experiment with the landscape, rather than the built form. The project itself is not important on it's not, as much as is its relationship with the site. the mirrorlab is merely a tool to explore and capture the views of the existing and by doing so it becomes invisible, completely dissolving into the landscape. A simple insertion into the bridge, solely supported by the two points, mirrorlab adds a new dimension to the site, both inside the arc by doubling and inverting the space, and outside by capturing and framing the views. Pivoting through the centre, the door allows the visitors to interact with and become part of the installation, immersing themselves into and exploring both the real and the reflected landscapes.
http://vavarchitects.blogspot.com/
The work of John von Bergen is kind of cryptic. Hs website shows no explanation except the titles of the works. And even those are not telling us anything about the work itself. However, if you take a moment the drawings, sculptures and installation he makes are rather fascinating. It takes a moment but they will get you, intrigue you. Have a look at his website here. Give it a try!
I stumbled upon the work of Pim Palsgraaf. He makes sculptures, paintings and drawings which are sometimes surreal, but very fascinating. Especially the taxidermy animals with found objects are very strange and intriguing.
The artists statement:
The studio of Pim Palsgraaf (1979) is located in the industrial section of Rotterdam.
His love-hate relationship to this environment is fundamental for his art work.
In the “Multiscape” sculptures he shows the outgrowths of urban architecture.
Comparable to tumours of urban growing he drapes found objects on taxidermy animals to symbolize the contrary of culture and nature.
The city seems to overcome the animal and to bring it to its knees. His paintings reveals us the clandestine interior of cities. Deserted rooms, damp corridors and ceilings in danger to collapse at any time show his weakness for urban decline, for the natural environment of men slowly sinking into oblivion.
Tadao Ando is one of the most inspiring architects. He has a way of playing with light, reflecting the surroundings in his buildings you can imagine. Unfortunately no website worth mentioning, but a quick search wil show you around his world.
We had a super releaseparty of O.K. Periodicals #6 / BORING Issue. Jaap Blonk started the night with a soundpoetry performance. After that Joost and I went up the stage to give a very boring presentation. We explained how to fill in the form to become a subscriber (hello and thanks to al new subscribers!). And we made a slide for each and every single contributor in the magazine and thanking them. Well, you had to be there in the crowded venue.
But we finished with the flipthrough video you can see here as well.
We hope you will become a subscriber too, so we can make future issues of this wonderfull magazine. It has a limited run of copies (500) and we already sent 250 to pre-orders and so.
Issue 6 is, again, the best issue so far!
This is pure awesomeness! A giant hot wheels sculpture made by Chris Burden. The title of the piece is 'Metropolis 2'. He made version 1 before, which was smaller than this huge installation. Great question in this video interview: 'Why is this art?' Chris: 'When people say it is art, it's art'.
Just have a look and feel young again!
Some really crazy, quite ugly websites, with a very interesting view on architecture. Home designed buildings. But proper architects are picking up on it, so the hotel in Zaandam shows (second image). Time to start designing and build it in our backyard?
http://www.aroundtheinterwebs.com/tag/buildings/
http://www.roadsidepeek.com/archit/vernac/
http://www.amazon.com/California-Crazy-Beyond-Vernacular-Architecture/dp/0811830187
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernacular_architecture
http://www.inntelhotelsamsterdamzaandam.nl/
These
playful floor stickersmade me chuckle. It’s an initiative by the city of Lucerne (Switzerland) to get people to notice and use garbage cans. What a fun idea! ~ via swissmiss
Heyheyhey one of my favourite design studios, great people with crazy ideas. Melvin the Machine is one of them, a wonderfull project.
Melvin the Magical Mixed Media Machine (or just Melvin the Machine) is best described as a Rube Goldberg machine with a twist. Besides doing what Rube Goldbergs do best - performing a simple task as inefficiently as possible, often in the form of a chain reaction - Melvin has an identity. Actually, the only purpose of this machine is promoting its own identity.
The website of some very cool exhibition designers, website looks a little odd, but there work is great, for example these images of the Loki Schmidt Haus. Also check out their design for the State Museum of Textile and Industry, Augsburg, quite nice.
www.atelier-brueckner.com
A virtual tour through the new Noord-Brabants museum (regional museum) and the new Stedelijk Museum (contemporary art / city museum), completely build in sketch-up, making it possible to do a complete walk through the museum in Google! I think that's quite amazing.
http://www.noordbrabantsmuseum.nl/arachna/nl/131/het_museum/gebouwen/virtuele_tour
Beautiful documentary about architectural photographer
Julius Shulman.
Populating his photos with human models and striking landscapes, Shulman combined the organic with the synthetic, melding nature with revolutionary urban design. Amongst others, he documented the work of Richard Neutra, John Lautner and Rudolph Schindler.
The critical acclaims below are pretty much explaining why you should take a look at the amazing sound sculpture works by ZIMOUN.
With hundreds of dc-motors, wires and cardboard boxes he creates wonderful artworks.
«The sound sculptures and installations of Zimoun are graceful, mechanized works of playful poetry, their structural simplicity opens like an industrial bloom to reveal a complex and intricate series of relationships, an ongoing interplay between the «artificial» and the «organic». It‘s an artistic research of simple and elegant systems to generate and study complex behaviors in sound and motion. Zimoun creates sound pieces from basic components, often using multiples of the same prepared mechanical elements to examine the creation and degeneration of patterns.» Tim Beck
«It is a poetic and humorous absurdity we find in Zimoun’s work, which opens up a wide, refreshing and enriching space for discoveries, associations and a multitude of approaches.» Nina Terry
«Zimoun creates more than moving structures; he develops a space where the oeuvre, once it’s set in motion, can create itself.» Oscar Gomez Poviña
«Zimoun is best compared to a watchmaker of a self-reproducing time constructing his own gauging station.» Radjo Monk
On my I-wish-I'll-see-this-list for the summer: Leviathan by Anish Kap oor in Grand Palais, Paris. This enormous space made from inflated PVC is dedicated to missing artist Ai Wei Wei. Kapoor calls for a worldwide day of action where museums and galleries close for one day in sympathy with Wei Wei.
Located in Barcelona’s hip Born district, the tiny apartment is a remodeled pigeon loft. Christian (a Barcelona-based photographer) says its design was inspired by the space-saving furniture aboard boats, as well as the clean lines of a small Japanese home. ~ via monkeedesign
Maybe you've seen it already, but this is one of the really nice projects by Clement Valla. He searched on Google Maps for bridges and found these beautiful glitches. Landscapes with bridges that disappear half the way or transform in impossible shapes. Have a look at the Bridges project or his website for other projects such as the Seed drawings.
Artist's statement:
My work focuses on socio-technical systems that raise a number of interesting questions about authorship and human/computer relationships. I explore digital technologies that are not simply new tools to create and distribute copies of things but that also enable new social relationships through which people produce multiples. I treat existing artifacts, existing site conditions, market relationships, or networked and collaborative systems as programmable systems, using simple algorithmic methods: copying, repetition, iteration. When my programs run their course, inherent contradictions and absurd situations result from the very structure of the system itself, producing unfamiliar artifacts and juxtapositions.
Like an anamorphic projection, my programs produce distortions that reveal their own underlying logic, but also point to the system as it functions when we fail to notice it- when it works conventionally.
Posted by Test
12-11-2011
