MEGA

By BLU

Mike Lemanski

http://www.mikelemanski.co.uk

Dear....

http://www.dearblankpleaseblank.com/

See it here first -

Pierre Vanni

City Swing

Paris's SwinGs from Jerome G. Demuth on Vimeo.

Digital Kaleidoscope?

Seeing in circles from Oscar Lhermitte on Vimeo.

By Oscar Lhermitte who I exhibited with in the KithKin Presents exhibition during design week last summer. I really love this video he made of looking at different ways to shoot videos created for a workshop while studying at the RCA.

Seed Bombing

Seed bombs are little balls of clay, compost, and seeds that you can toss into a vacant lot to try and get some new plants to grow. It's a guerrilla gardening technique and you can see how to make one here. If you just want to pick one up and live in San Francisco you can now buy them from a vending machine. These were designed by Common Studio from LA and repurpose old gumball machines with the benefits going to Project H Design.

- www.instructables.com

Seen on Brick Lane / Roof top view

"I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing – a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process – an integral function of the Universe."

Richard Buckminster Fuller

Opera Calling

 
 
         Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss
             Telephone Call - Sunday, 25th of March 2007, 16:28:52

«OPERA CALLING» is an artistic intervention into the cultural system of the Zurich Opera. By means of a audio-bug placed within the auditorium of the local opera house, the outside public is given access to the performances on stage. The performances are retransmitted to the public not through broadcasting, but by telephoning each person in Zurich individually.
«OPERA CALLING» is the first of three parts of a six-month-long exhibition at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich called «appropriate – manipulate – feed back!». It stands for the «appropriate»-part so to speak. It’s main aim is to explore the usefulness of  as an artistic strategy of redirection and criticism.
«Opera Calling» is a project by !MEDIENGRUPPE BITNIK and SVEN KÖNIG

I absolutely LOVE this. More information - http://www.opera-calling.com/about

Seen on a sunny Saturday afternoon in May

I was supposed to be making the bed...

nostalgia

Harnessing wind energy

Flash Anzan

I found out about this after seeing at talk at the RSA called Adventures in Numberland by author and journalist Alex Bellos.

Similar to the 'spelling bee' in America, in Japan kids learn to add numbers really quickly using the anzan method. They do this not by actually adding the numbers but by visualising an abacus in their head and then mentally adjusting it as the numbers are flashed in front of them. This method allows them to add up visually and to give the answer imediately without even really having to take in the actual digits.

Crazy!

EVOL urban interventions

EVOL is a berlin based street artist that transforms banal urban surfaces, into miniature architectural surfaces through pasting. using pasted paper, EVOL transforms electric boxes, small planters and other geometric city forms, into miniature apartment buildings and other structures. each piece of paper is printed with a repetitive pattern of flat gray walls dotted with plain window frames. once applied to a surface, the paper transforms the form into small building that EVOL often adorns with small characters. EVOL performs this process within different cities and has even been commissioned to do installations in galleries, where he was created entire blocks of miniature buildings.

http://www.evoltaste.com

from DesignBoom

Visited: Tim Lewis @ Flowers Gallery, Cork Street

My friend took me to see a retrospective of Tim Lewis' work at a small exhibition space called the Flowers Gallery in Piccadilly.

Tim Lewis makes really cool (mostly) kinetic art / sculptures. Made from a number of different mediums including metal, wood, found objects, paper. Some were controlled by hand others were activated by movement sensors. I really liked his pieces which, when moved, caused something to be drawn or written. They obviously took a long time and a lot of accuracy to work out the shape of the cam that would cause that particular gesture to be made.

I also really liked his sketches (see below).

No more carrots and sticks

The guy talking is a bit annoying at times but it's quite an interesting talk about motivation and how pay based incentives can actually have a negative affect on performance when used in the wrong situation, especially when people are required to think creatively. He talks about how self directed work, rather than have employees tied down to particular tasks can produce far more innovative and exciting outcomes.

Quote - The owner of Skype says 'Our job is to be disruptive but in the cause of making the world a better place'.

Seen on Commercial Road

Commercial road is generally quite grey, dull and run down so it was a nice surprise when I discovered these newly installed planters that double as somewhere to lock up your bicycle. And just around the corner from my house!

HA!

Seen at Wimbledon Station

Poster says "Don't be bored on your train journey again! NEW WIMBLEDON STATION BOOK-SWAP. Borrow a book for free from the waiting room on platform 5. Return it when you're done or leave your old books with us."

Excellent idea.

Felix's Machines

I'm considering getting rid of all the furniture in my bedroom so I can fit one of these in!

Tadao Ando

Listening to:

Virtual Choir

The video isn't that great but it's an interesting concept.

Self-Auctioning Artwork

Item:A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter (2009) - Caleb Larsen

A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter, 2009, is a black, acrylic box that places itself for sale on eBay every seven days thanks to an internet connection, which, according to the artist's conditions of sale, must be live at all times. Disconnections are only allowed during transportation, says the creator.

Title:	A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter
Year:	2009
Artist:	Caleb Larsen
Dimensions:	8"x8"x8"
Medium:	Acrylic, custom electronics, programming, internet connection, online auction.
Description:	This object perpetually attempts to sell itself on eBay.
NB: Before bidding you must agree to the below terms.
This purchase agreement was drafted with the aid of Marsha G. Ajhar of Hartman & Craven LLP, NYC.

Current Ebay listing here

Read more here.

Cloaca No. 5

Cloaca No. 5, designed by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye is a giant machine that replicates the human digestive system.

NEWS - Working with KIN (Massive Origami!)

During February and March I spent some time working at KIN Design. While I was there I helped out on a project, for London College of Fashion, to design, construct and install an exhibition for the fashion designer Helen Storey who was recently awarded an MBE.

We spent hours folding massive origami panels, from tracing paper, that then fitted together to form a 3D structure that grew out from the walls of the space where the exhibition was held at King's Place in King's Cross. We then put LED lighting behind the panels that filled the space between four plasma screen TV's that played videos about Helen's work. See video and photos below.

I really enjoyed my time at KIN, it was great to have the opportunity to work on an installation project and create it ourselves by hand.

Helen Storey MBE – from fashion to science from kin on Vimeo.

I should be writing emails

Game of Death

The Power of Television...?

Game of Death: Fake French TV Game Show has Contestant 'Tortured' by Participants

'A documentary called Le Jeu de la Mort (Game of Death) focuses on a game show called X-treme Zone, which features a contestant trying to answer trivia questions. However, for each question he got wrong, he'd get electrocuted by participants, who are urged to crank up the voltage by the studio audience and the show's hostess.

The show was fake- part of a psychological study on people's willingness to follow orders.

Out of 80 volunteers, 64 were willing to crank the voltage up to lethal levels. Of course, nobody was actually electrocuted during the experiment, but the exercise exposed a strange willingness of individuals to surrender responsibility for their actions to a third party.

The experiments showed a troubling willingness to obey requests, even if those requests had an obviously harmful effect on someone else. The general consensus of the participants was "the producers would never willingly let someone get hurt, right?"

The "contestants" were offered no financial incentives, only the opportunity to play the game.

Game of Death was based on a Yale University experiment from 1961, which examined the mindset behind the "just following orders" defense for Nazi war crimes, and why the Third Reich's victims went along with their persecutors during the early stages of genocide.'

Read More