As part of the “Art in the Streets” Exhibition at MOCA in LA, Nike SB has created 24 unique pairs of Paper Dunks, each made from an original piece of Geoff McFetridge artwork. The shoes are on display at MOCA’s shop and will be auctioned on May 26, 2011 at 1pm. In addition, Nike SB has produced a series of specially packaged t-shirts by artists and skateboarders Neckface, Futura, Lance Mountain and CR Stecyk III.
via ColorbyNumbers
When you adopt one of artist/graphic designer Roy Barazani’s Offbits, you are not only saving an exiled, independent-thinking, malfunctioning Bitbot from the Babylonian Kingdom, but you are joining a community of Offbit adopters! The whole concept is done very well and, honestly, it’s hard to resist these little bots. The community photos made me laugh. Check it out here.
via redesign
Inspired by photos of clouds that he took with his iPhone and blew up until pixelated, Brooklyn based artist Daniel Arsham used a total of 21,000 ping pong balls (hand-dipped in paint) to recreate the different shades of pixelated color and constructed these 10 to 15 ft cloud sculptures. Daniel Arsham is co-founder of Snarkitecture and is presently finishing up his Dig installation in New York City.
via fubiz
Origami expert Won Park constructed these figures from new currency as part of YIU Studio’s rebranding of Payment Systems Group.
via colossal
This humorous in-house promotional calendar postcard for Paper Stone Scissors in Melbourne, was designed by Ammanda Choo, currently a freelance designer in Singapore.
via bitique
Spanish street artist Dosjotas has cleverly placed his Escenas con Tiza (Scenes with Chalk) in corners of Madrid. From top to bottom:
Lucha de espadas láser (Laser Sword Fight)
Skater matemático (Mathematician Skateboarder)
Trampolín mortal (Deadly Diving Board)
Part of Stefan Brüggemann’s Text Pieces, which are worth checking out, especially if you enjoy conceptual art. Other works that made me smile on his site include Show Titles and the Obliterated Paintings.
Argentinean artist Pablo Lehmann lives and works in Buenos Aires. His paper cutouts, of type and shapes cut out from large sheets of paper or cloth, are extremely intricate and impressive. In many cases he uses multiple sheets/layers to create 3D installations that seem to also play with their shadows. Lovely.
via Colossal
Czech book covers and bindings from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. On 50 Watts.
via Coudal
“Haroshi makes his [three-dimensional] art pieces recycling old used skateboards. His creations are born through styles such as wooden mosaic, dots, and pixels; where each element, either cut out in different shapes or kept in their original form, are connected in different styles, and shaven into the form of the final art piece.”
His upcoming solo exhibition at Jonathan LeVine Gallery in NYC opens April 16th and runs through May 14, 2011.
via MyModernMet
The winner of this year’s two-round City of Dreams Pavilion competition, hosted by Figment, ENYA, and SEAoNY, is Bitterang and their Burble Bup entry. Entrants were asked to imagine a socially and ecologically-sustainable public meeting space.
Burble Bup will be constructed on Governor’s Island for an early-June opening date. Bitterang “strives to bring happiness and pleasure into the built world by referencing that pleasurable world which surrounds us. Our work explores multiple themes including pleasure, frothiness, biological matter, animal posturing, babies, sculpture and coloration all unified through bel composto.” Burble Bup certainly fits the bill with its biological quality.
According to Figment: “…The recyclability of the project occurs at various levels, some materials are recycled into other projects or reused, while others are toys to be enjoyed by children. None the less, all materials chosen will enhance our surroundings after their deployment in our pavilion.”
The other four finalists can be seen on Figment’s site, as well.
via architizer
“One Hundred and Eight is an interactive wall-mounted installation mainly made out of ordinary garbage bags. Controlled by a microcontroller each of them is selectively inflated and deflated in turn by two cooling fans.
Although each plastic bag is mounted stationary the sequences of inflation and deflation create the impression of lively and moving creatures which waft slowly around like a shoal. But as soon a viewer comes close it instantly reacts by drawing back and tentatively following the movements of the observer. As long as he remains in a certain area in front of the installation it dynamically reacts to the viewers motion.”
Created by Nils Völker. Surprisingly soothing to watch. You can view the piece in action here. via trendbeheer
Another one of the amazing speakers at the Geeky by Nature conference last week was Jer Thorp, a software artist, writer, and educator. He is a contributing editor for Wired UK and is currently Data Artist in Residence at the New York Times. His digital art practice explores the many-folded boundaries between science and art.
The top image is a print Thorp made based on his word frequency visualizations that he created using Processing and the NYTimes Article Search API. It is titled ‘RGB – NYT Word Frequency’ and shows usage of the words ‘red’, ‘green’, ‘blue’ in the Times between 1981 and 2011. The second image is a detail of the print. The bottom image is a screenshot of a visualization he produced based on the Guardian’s data on the Haiti Earthquake Aid by Nation. He asked how much money was being spent per citizen of these countries and converted the figures to Avatar minutes, showing how many minutes of Avatar would the aid pay for.
All of Thorp’s visualizations are beautiful as art forms as well as being incredibly useful in facilitating data interpretation. You should take a look at some of his animated visualizations here.
“The Festival of Ideas for the New City, May 4-8, 2011, is a major new collaborative initiative in New York involving scores of Downtown organizations, from universities to arts institutions and community groups, working together to affect change. A first for New York, the Festival will harness the power of the creative community to imagine the future city and explore the ideas destined to shape it. It will take place in multiple venues Downtown and is organized around three central programs: a three-day slate of symposia; an innovative StreetFest along the Bowery; and over eighty independent projects and public events. The Festival will serve as a platform for artists, writers, architects, engineers, designers, urban farmers, planners, and thought leaders to exchange ideas, propose solutions, and invite the public to participate.”
Worth checking out, I think. More information here.
Aakash Nihalani is an artist whose work consists mostly of isometric rectangles and squares made from fluorescent tape. He places these graphics around New York to “highlight the unexpected contours and elegant geometry of the city itself…For however briefly, I am trying to offer people a chance to step into a different New York than they are used to seeing…” via happymundane
I really like this series of collages by Cecil Touchon titled “Visual Poetry”. Cutting up the type into abstract shapes creates a lovely effect, but then I’m a fan of collage and type in general, so the mixing of the two is win win.
“Here, pieces of letters—once recognizable symbols—cease to exist as words and begin to communicate only as formal elements of design. They become part of the visual medium, which celebrates the true essence of the artwork”. via trendland
Masahiro Mori, designer of my favorite (finger-burning) tea cups, apparently designed these fun, bold-patterned cups, too. They were designed for sake, but I bet they would work with tea as well. Available here.
On my to-do list for a while now, is a trip up to MASS MoCA (in North Adams, Massachusetts) to see the Sol LeWitt wall drawing retrospective. Granted there’s time, it will be up until 2033, but the thought of being enveloped by so many LeWitt-patterned walls is worth rushing for.
“Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective comprises 105 of LeWitt’s large-scale wall drawings, spanning the artist’s career from 1969 to 2007. These occupy nearly an acre of specially built interior walls that have been installed—per LeWitt’s own specifications—over three stories of a historic mill building situated at the heart of MASS MoCA’s campus…”
CollabCubed 