May 6, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

More Topotek 1: Temporary Playground

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Yes, it seems that I’m smitten with Topotek 1’s work (see previous post.) This cotton-candy pink temporary playground was created for the State Garden Show in Wolfsburg, Germany. It’s clear that color and fun are both things that these guys know how to work with well. Twenty-four inflatable objects and fifteen cubes made of foam rubber were strewn across a lawn along with bouncy mats that beckoned to any passer-by. Inspired by grazing horses, young-girls’ romanticism and a Barbie-doll world, this temporary structure is part sculpture part interactive play object.

A more recent garden show installation, in fact going on right now, is in Hamburg and includes wacky Aqua Soccer and Dymaxion Golf. Check it out here.

All photos courtesy the architects and fandisk256’s flickr.

May 6, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Topotek 1: Cold War

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The first thing I thought of when I landed on German landscape architecture studio Topotek 1’s (previously here) projects page and was greeted with all the brightness was “Why don’t real refrigerators come with bright-colored interiors??” So great! Maybe one color for the freezer and another for the fridge? But, they’re not selling refrigerators at Topotek 1. Instead, these are images from their very fun interactive installation titled Cold War at the Venice Architectural Biennale 08. Roughly twenty fridges were lined up and stacked against a wall in the Italian Pavilion each containing funhouse-like effects from sounds, kaleidoscopic viewing machines, to fans, mirrors, peep holes and more. According to principals Martin Rein-Cano and Lorenz Dexler, the installations are a demonstration of the company’s work tactics, offering a glimpse into enchanting worlds.

Photos courtesy of Topotek 1 except image of fan courtesy designboom.

May 3, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

NYC Culture on the Cheap: Weekend 5/3

Free & Cheap things to do this weekend in NYC (5/3/13 to 5/5/13)
It’s going to be a perfect Spring weekend so here are plenty of suggestions to keep you out and about with culture and fun. Free & Cheap things to do this weekend in NYC (5/3/13 to 5/5/13) Walks, talks, music, art, Ideas Festival, Pen World Voices Fest, Red Bull Music Fest, Nuit Blanche events, Kentucky Derby, Cinco de Mayo and so much more!

1. THEATER: Fri 5/3 and all weekend – Blondie of Arabia. Monica Hunken’s one-woman show on her odyssey biking through 3 countries in the Middle East weeks before the Arab Spring. A quirky comedy. Monica talks after the Fri 5/3 and 5/10 performances. 8pm. $25.

2. LITERATURE/READINGS: Fri 5/3 – PEN World Voices of International Literature’s Literary Mews. Nestled among the cobblestone streets of NYU’s storied Washington Mews, this day-long “festival within the Festival” will feature writers’ workshops in the morning and readings in the afternoon. FREE

3. ART: Fri 5/3 & all weekend through 6/20 – Holton Rower Focus paintings, Pour Paintings two bodies of work side by side. Diverse results achieved by the artist through his innovative and deceptively simple process of pouring hand-made acrylic paints over wood. Rower will also introduce a new body of work titled “Focus paintings” which are amazingly out of focus! Opening Fri 6 to 9pm. FREE

4. FILM: Fri 5/3 & Sat 5/4 – New York Indian Film Festival $15 See schedule.

5. ART/ARCHITECTURE/URBAN STUDIES/DESIGN/FOOD: Fri 5/3 & Sat 5/4 –Ideas City is a biennial Festival in New York City of conferences, workshops, an innovative StreetFest around the Bowery, and more than one hundred independent projects and public events that are forums for exchanging ideas, proposing solutions, and accelerating creativity. So much to do so check schedule to pick. A few events that caught my eye: Creation 3D; Human Hotel; and Murals on the Bowery. 9am to Midnight. FREE

6. MUSIC: All weekend & through 5/31– Red Bull Music Academy. An amazing amount of music events all around town ranging mostly from FREE to $20. Check events on their site.

7. WALK/ARCHITECTURE: Sat 5/4 – The Great Saunter. A 32 mile walk around Manhattan’s Shoreline.7am to 7pm $20

8. ART/VIDEO/LIGHT: Sat 5/4 – Nuit Blanche presents Change of State. Site-specific projection on the facade of the New Museum. And Mulberry Street Night Fest where the street is converted into a series of cool light, projection-mapping, and video installations. 8pm to midnight. FREE

9. ART/PARTICIPATORY/FUN: Sat 5/4 & Sun 5/5 – The Institute for Psychogeographic Adventure: Experiment 17 – DUMBO Individuals (or pairs) sign up for a personalized journey that remixes history, memory, the everyday and the spectacular. A multitude of performers will be scattered through the neighborhood to lead you through a series of unexpected and fabulous DUMBO encounters. Noon to 5pm $10.

10. ARCHITECTURE/WALK/TOUR: Sat 5/4 – Made in LIC: A Jane Jacobs Walking Tour of Long Island City 12pm at The Clock Tower. FREE

11. MUSIC: Sat 5/4 – Brooklyn Flea Record Fair at Smorgasburg 11am to 6pm. FREE

12. ARCHITECTURE/WALKING TOUR: Sat 5/4 – Hudson Yards: Design(in) The New Heart of NY. OHNY. Exhibit and architect-led tours. 10am to 3pm. Register. FREE.

13. MUSIC/ART/FUN: Sat 5/4 – Earth Day Rockaway: Free activities, live music by Il Collectivo, art-related booths, kite-making, recycling olympics and much more. 12 to 4pm. FREE

14. FUN/SPECTATOR: Sat 5/4 – Kentucky Derby watch sites

15. THEATER: All weekend & through 3/19 – The Pulitzer Prize winning play ‘Night, Mother by Marsha Norman. General Admission $18

16. MUSIC/DANCE/PARTY: Sun 5/5 – Cinco de Mayo with Body Language. Dance Party at Glasslands Gallery. 8:30pm. $10 to $12

17. MUSIC/ART/INSANITY: Sun 5/5 – The National perform their song “Sorrow” for 6 hours straight as part of Ragnar Kjartansson’ A Lot of Sorrow at PS1 in the VW Dome $15 Tkts

18. FOOD/DRINK/FIESTA: Sun 5/5 – Roberta’s Cinco de Mayo Celebration. Tacos, Cervezas. Tequila, music, pinatas! 2pm to 10pm

Get outside and enjoy!

May 2, 2013 by collabcubed - 2 Comments

Danielle Tay: Pods

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Currently studying at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, Singaporean artist Danielle Tay works in a variety of mediums though up until recently they seem to mostly be limited to walls. Her most recent work appears to be a bit of a departure, stepping into immersive installation art with her work PODS showcased at the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow this past January in their very appropriate Art Experiment 2013 show. Each pod had a different interior, some were crawled into, others acted more like canopies, but all of them seem to have offered a very cool environment to its visitor.

April 25, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

The Museum of Broken Relationships

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From wedding chapel to The Museum of Broken Relationships all in the same day! Yes, it’s true, there is a museum of said name and theme. Originally a traveling exhibition revolving around the concept of failed relationships and their ruins, the success of the exhibit encouraged its founders Olinka Vistica and Drazen Grubisic to establish the Museum’s permanent collection within the baroque Kulmer Palace in Zagreb, Croatia. The concept is simple: the Museum offers a chance “to overcome an emotional collapse through creation” by contributing to its collection. Donors part with objects left behind at the end of love affairs such as shared belongings, mementos, and gifts. It’s not clear what actually compels them to donate—some may do it out of grief while others exhibitionism—but whatever their reasons, people seem to embrace the notion.

Though different in theme, the collection of odd and random objects in a museum setting reminds me of the Cortlandt Alley Museum as well as Claes Oldenberg’s Mouse Museum currently on exhibit at MoMA.

As previously mentioned, the museum also has a touring component and currently that collection can be seen at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art in Colorado through May 26th.

April 25, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Wedding Chapel: DUS Architects

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The wedding chapel is part of Villa Escamp, a temporary city hall for the Escamp district in The Hague. The 6-meter long and 3-meter high dome, designed by DUS Architects in Amsterdam, was crocheted using two kilometers of flexible white ventilation tubes creating a peaceful atmosphere with soft acoustics and lighting. It can accommodate up to 50 people and, yes, people can actually marry there.

via thetreemag

April 16, 2013 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

JR’s Inside Out Project in Times Square

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Well this should be fun. French street artist JR (previously here and here) is bringing his large-scale participatory Inside Out Project to NYC starting next week. People are invited to take their self-portraits in a specially designed photo booth stationed in Times Square. Some of the black and white instantly-printed 3′ x 4′ posters will be displayed in Times Square but each portrait-taker is encouraged to take their poster back to display publicly in their home community. The photo booth truck will be making early visits to the four other boroughs as well, with the initial portraits featuring community members from NYC Hurricane Sandy-affected areas.

Inside Out New York City coincides with the world premiere of the documentary film Inside Out: The People’s Art Project on April 20th as part of the Tribeca Film Festival, and will later have its television debut on HBO on May 20th.

I would imagine there will be lines, so you might want to pick a weekday to head over to the photo booth truck, but based on our own personal experience with the Inside Out Project, I highly recommend participating one way or another.

Inside Out New York City will run from April 22 to May 10, 2013 in Times Square.

Photos courtesy Times Square Alliance; Inside Out Project; Inside Out NYC’s facebook page; and collabcubed.

April 1, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Filament Mind: Teton County Library

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Filament Mind is an information-driven installation at the Teton County Library in Wyoming, designed to visualize the collective questions of library visitors through an interactive and dynamic spacial sculpture. Designed by Brian W. Brush and Yong Ju Lee of E/B office, Filament Mind illuminates searches in a flash of color and light through glowing bundles of fiber optic cables. Whenever any Wyoming public library visitor anywhere in the state performs a search of the library catalog from a computer, each of the 1000 fiber optic cables hanging above (totaling over 5 miles of cable) corresponds to a call number in the Dewey Decimal System, which organizes the library’s collection into approximately 1000 categories of knowledge. These category titles are displayed in text on the lobby’s south and north walls at the termination points of the fiber optic cables. For further clarification how the installation works watch the video below:

via onesmallseed

March 28, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Infinity Bridge: Stockton-on-Tees

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The Infinity Bridge, a pedestrian bridge in Stockton-on-Tees in the UK, is suspended from a pair of beautiful asymmetrical bowstring arches that, when reflected in the water, look like the flowing double loop of the infinity symbol, hence the name. Designed by Expedition Engineering and Spence Associates, not only are the shape and reflection striking and interesting, but the lighting design by Speirs & Major makes the bridge an interactive kinetic experience. The deck of the footbridge is cloaked in a blue glow that shifts to a white light that moves along with you as you cross, much like a protective spotlight. You can see it in action in the video below.

Photos: Brian Swales and Morley von Sternburg.

via e-archtitect

March 22, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

NYC Culture on the Cheap: Weekend 3/22

Cheap things to do this we

Free & Cheap things to do this weekend in NYC (3/22/13 to 3/24/13) in art, music, theater, performance, dance, architecture, film, design and general fun. Click through to event pages for more info, either on images above or in the descriptions below.

1. ART: Fri 3/22 & Sat 3/23 through 4/20 – Sergie Tcherepnin: Ear Tone Box. Works at the intersections of sound, sculpture, and theater with objects taking on hybridized personalities, inviting play between things and bodies. At Murray Guy in Chelsea FREE

2. THEATER/DANCE: Fri 3/22 and Sat 3/23 – Breaking Surface: merges dance, acrobatics, flight, water, & poetic imagery in a watery adventure that defies expectation. 8pm. $25

3. BOOK/MUSIC/PARTY: Fri 3/22 Celebrate Touré’s new book I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon with a dance party featuring a night of Prince music spun by Ali Shaheed Muhammad from A Tribe Called Quest. 7pm. $5.

4. FILM: All Weekend – New Directors New Films: $12 to $15. See schedule

5. ART: Fri 3/22 – Anne Lilly: Temporal Tincture. Beautiful and elegant interactive kinetic sculpture (one of my favorites at Scope). Noon to 5pm. Reception 5 to 8pm Galerie Swanström, 136 Sullivan St. FREE

6. MUSIC: All Weekend – Planetarium by Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, and Nico Muhly at BAM. A few $25 seats left.

7. DANCE: All Weekend – DanceBrazil at the Joyce Theater. Tkts $10 and up.

8. FILM: All Weekend – The Films of Stanley Kubrick at IFC: $13.50

9. FOOD/DRINK/MUSIC/FUN: Sat 3/23 & Sun 3/24 – The Big British Invite will take place from 12pm-6pm. Drinks, dance, express manicures. FREE

10. MUSIC/FOOD/FUN: All Weekend – Freetown Produce Festival with Cajun Music and Cooking. Day Passes $30 to $37. See schedule

11. ART/TALK: Sat 3/23 –Artist Hans Haacke and Irving Sandler in Conversation on Haacke’s practice, including his contribution to the German Pavilion at the 1993 Venice Biennale. 3pm $8

12. MUSIC: Sat 3/23 – Fredericks Brown & Jean Grae: a double bill of Soul and ground-breaking hip hop. 7:30pm $20

13. COMEDY/PERFORMANCE: Fri 3/22 & Sat 3/23 – NYC Improv Fest. See schedule for shows. $8ea/$40 for Fest Pass

14. FOOD: Sat 3/23 & Sun 3/24 – Big Cheesy Competition: Seven Grilled Cheese sandwiches from 7 chefs compete: $25 (This is apparently sold out.)

15. MUSIC: Sun 3/24 – Lucy Michelle & The Velvet Lapelles at Mercury Lounge 7:30pm $10

16. ARCHITECTURE/WALK: All Weekend – Go for a stroll on the brand-spanking new bouncy Squibb Park Pedestrian Bridge with yet more spectacular views of the NYC skyline. FREE

17. FOOD/WALKING TOUR: Sun 3/24 – Big Onion Multi-Ethnic Eating Tour. Combines the history of the diverse LES with a series of small food sampling, or “noshing” stops from local shops. 1pm $25 with RSVP

18. TALK/ARCHITECTURE: Sun 3/24 – Surfrider Foundation: Mobilizing Grassroots Activists in Coastal Conservation at Beach 94 in the Rockaways. 1 to 3pm. FREE RSVP

Check last week’s COTC, or the week before, for some ongoing events. Enjoy!

March 11, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Windchimes: Reinventing NYC Payphones

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A few months back NYC launched a Reinvent Payphones Challenge for ideas on how to upgrade and/or replace the existing 11,000+ payphones around the city. Among the six finalists is Windchimes a distributed sensor network providing real-time and hyper-local records of the city’s rain levels, pollution and other environmental conditions. Created by a group of students and recent grads from Parsons, NYU-ITP and Cooper Union, the goal behind Windchimes is to empower the city with data which has never been readily available before. Scientists, city officials, urban farmers, techies, educators and the general public would have open access to the information enabling and impacting future environmental legislation, helping us work towards building a more sustainable city.

Why are we voting for Windchimes, besides the fact that we know one of the students on the team? Well, Windchimes is the only project with an actual functioning prototype, proving that it works and that the engineering has been tested and worked out. Windchimes could be deployed today; simply plug it into a telephone jack and watch as it instantly collects data and sends it to a database on the Internet. Windchimes is cost-effective with an estimated cost of $100 to $200 per unit and uses the existing payphone structures throughout the city, plus being energy-efficient as well.

Take a look at all the projects here (you may have to ‘like’ the group to view and vote) and vote for your favorite, though we hope you’ll consider Windchimes!

Oh, and here’s a video:

March 7, 2013 by collabcubed - 4 Comments

Pendulum Choir: Cod.Act

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Swiss artists André and Michel Décosterd who make up Cod.Act combine their talents of music composition and architecture in their artistic performance and interactive installations. Their devices translate physical movement into sound.

Their Pendulum Choir is probably the most surprising. A choir of nine men is harnessed onto hydraulic jacks that react to their voices. The swinging and rotating singers seem to hang by their toes while leaning at what look to be close to 45-degree angles, coming very close to each other yet designed to never collide. Kind of zany, funny, and at the same time a little creepy.

Cod.Act have many other creations including the Cycloid-E—a pendulum of metallic tubes equipped with sound sources and with measuring instruments capable of making them resonate according to their rotations—and the Ex-Pharao, a mechanical apparatus composed of cables and hydraulic levers that allows the visitor to modify an opera by Schoenberg in real time. Much more to see on their site.

via spoon & tamago

March 4, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

PearlDamour: How to Build a Forest

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Though at first glance it may look like a theater set for a children’s fairytale, PearlDamour’s (Katie Pearl and Lisa D’Amour) How to Build a Forest has more to it than that. Em stopped by the team’s latest installation, of their previously-staged performance art piece, last week at Brown University’s Granoff Center. Part visual art installation and part theater performance How to Build a Forest unfolds over an 8-hour period, beginning on an empty stage which is slowly transformed by the artists and their volunteers into a coloful, dense and willowy slip-covered forest. Viewers are urged to walk through and interact with the installation as well as ask (or answer) questions of the forest rangers on hand. Field guides were distributed that include a manifesto on the beauty and fragility of our environment. Visitors are given an opportunity to witness an ecosystem in progress as well as question where things go when we are done with them. Despite the loud sounds by the builders and metal wires, the installation has a meditative quality.

Brown’s Granoff center was the smallest of the venues where How to Build a Forest was shown, but others include The Kitchen in NYC and Duke University. At the end of the 8 hours on each day of the exhibit/performance the forest was torn down while the builders spoke poetic words of warning, then walked off leaving an empty, stark performance space.

Here’s a time lapse video of the entire 8 hours on the left.

Photos courtesy of PearlDamour; Brown Daily Herald; Timothy Atticsu/bomblog

March 1, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

NYC Culture on the Cheap: Weekend 3/1

Free & Cheap things to do this we

Free & Cheap things to do this weekend in NYC (3/1/13 to 3/3/13) in art, music, theater, performance, dance, architecture, film, design and general fun. Click through to event pages for more info, either on above images or below descriptions.

1. ARCHITECTURE: Fri 3/1 – Great American City & the Future of Urban Studies Conference. 1 to 7pm. FREE

2. ARCHITECTURE: Fri 3/1 – Join TsAO & McKOWN at its office for drinks, informal conversation, and a behind the scenes look at recent and upcoming architecture projects. 6:30 to 8pm. FREE

3. DANCE: All weekend & through 3/24 – Harkness Dance Festival at 92Y. Check schedule. $20

4. THEATER: All weekend – Guillermo Calderon’s Neva. The story of Anton Chekov’s widow and two actors waiting to rehearse The Cherry Orchard on Bloody Sunday. “Political and human” Use code WINTER2 for $36.50 tkts.

5. ART/TALK: Fri 3/1 – Stephan Pastis creator of the comic strip, “Pearls Before Swine,”discusses his book, “Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made.”: 6pm FREE

6. ART: All Weekend & through 6/9 –No Limits: Alexandre Arrechea playfully reinterprets 10 iconic buildings such as Chrysler & Empire in large sculptures along Park Ave. from 54th to 67th Streets. Walking Tour with the artist Sat 3/2, 4pm to 5:30pm. Meet at 54th and Park. FREE. Update: As of 3/1 in the afternoon, only two sculptures were up. Seems like there’s a delay, and I’m not sure what the story is with the walking tour now…

7. ART/PERFORMANCE/FOOD/FILM: All Weekend and through 3/9 – Cold Castle at Family Business: small-scale life installation performance experience. Join them for tea on Sat 3/2 or brunch, a film screening or dinner on Sun 3/3. See schedule here. FREE

8. FOOD: Sat 3/2 & Sun 3/3 – NY Vegetarian Food Festival 10am to 5pm. $5 General Admission. $30 all day pass.

9. FILM/TALK: Sat 3/2 – Nick Offerman from ‘Parks & Recreation’ discusses his film ‘Somebody Up There Likes Me’. 3pm FREE

10. MUSIC: Sat 3/2 – Sasha Siem w/ Matt Siffert . Official Launch of her debut EP “So Polite. doors 6:30pm. Show 7:30pm $15 adv. $20 door.

11. ART/DESIGN/TECH: Sat 3/2 – Art Hack Day: God Mode: 60 artists and hackers explore the idea of God Mode and produce new, collaborative projects. Join the teams on Saturday starting at 7:00pm for an exhibition, live performances, and party. FREE

12. MUSIC: Sat 3/2 – Deer Tracks at Pianos 10pm $10.

13. FILM: All weekend – First Time Film Fest: A series of directorial debuts by big-names and newbies as well as panels and Q&As. $15

14. FILM: All weekend – CineKink 10th Anniversary of the Kinky Film Festival. most screenings $9 to $10. Check schedule.

15. FILM: All weekend & through 3/10: Globus Film Series: a retrospective of rarely shown films produced in the 50s and 60s from Japanese Film Studio Shintoho: $9 to $12

16. INTERACTIVE ART/TECH: All weekend & ongoing: DVD DeadDrop (see post) https://collabcubed.com/2013/02/27/aram-bartholl-dvd-dead-drop-more/ interactive art installation. Bring a blank dvd and take home some art. 24/7 FREE

17. FILM: Sun 3/3 – NYC Premiere of The Sapphires, distributed by The Weinstein Company, big hit in Australia: 7pm. $15

18. ART/SCIENCE/TALK: Sun 3/3 – The New Yorker Cartoonists, 3 cartoonists explore creative illusion with neuroscientist Richard Restak. With audience interactivity and a pre-ptrogarm allery tour. Tour 5:15. Talk 6pm $25

More…
>>Music –Fri 3/1 – Battle of the Boroughs Queens! Bands duke it out for the best in their borough and city. 7pm. $15 includes 1 glass beer/wine.
>>Architecture/Fun/Art – Sat 3/2 – Urban Factory Scavenger Hunt and Tour leads you through the industrial past & modern manufacturing present of LIC. Hunt 11am; Closing reception 5pm.
>>Art – Sat 3/2 – Headscapes, a group of Brooklyn artists create installations showing what goes on in their heads, in an empty warehouse in Long Island City. Opening 2 to 9pm. FREE
>>Art – All weekend & through 4/5 – Sandra Gibson & Luis Recoder’s Topsy-Turvy: A Camera Obscura Installation in Mad Sq. Pk.
>>Performance Art – Sun 3/3 & through 3/15 – The Introducing Series, Season 2, a 2-week occupation of The Window at 125, introducing 13 artists working in the field of performance. Different artist each day. See schedule. FREE
>>Music – Sun 3/3 – Thurston Moore performs with Chelsea Light Moving. 7:30pm. FREE

January 17, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

lagaleriademagdalena: #EnCinta & more

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I’ve been so impressed by lagaleriademagdalena’s events and projects ever since anA posted her exhibit last year on facebook. The two young Madrileñas behind this urban street gallery are architects Reichel Congosto and Isa Arenas who came up with this wonderfully innovative concept two years ago while wandering through la Calle de Magdalena in Madrid and coming across a building construction site with large rectangular test color swatches painted on a wall that reminded them of art displayed in a gallery. They quickly seized the opportunity to place artworks within the rectangles and thus began lagaleriademagdalena. The gallery’s (who says a gallery has to have four walls?) pop-up exhibits foment community and interactivity. Everything that is exhibited is there for the taking; they call them “regalos urbanos” (urban gifts) and one of the main motivations behind las magdalenas’ efforts is to give the public the gift of happiness. Plus, the exhibits are smart, creative, and fun. Some created by Reichel and Isa themselves, while others are collaborations. All involve recycling of objects, some involve social activism, and all bring a smile to those who pass as well as pique their curiosity. The ephemeral exhibits usually occur on metal shutters or walls in construction sites, attaching the works magnetically, avoiding harm to the walls and allowing for easy removal and replacement by passers-by which also makes the interventions vandalism-free, allowing them to occur in the light of day, unlike most street artists. One of their exhibits made up of cut-out words from various old periodicals was titled Nevera Urbana (Urban Fridge – top photo) urging the public to play with the words like magnetic poetry on your fridge. The exhibit Tangrams (bottom three photos) offered similar play. An example of a more seriously themed exhibit would be Contra la violencia de género (Against Gender Violence) where egg cartons were used to house images of the many layers of a woman: their beauty, emotional strength, intelligence, death as well as a mirror to remind the viewer that they are the ones reflected in the box.

This month lagaleriademagdalena celebrated their two-year anniversary with their 53rd (these ladies are busy!) exhibit: #EnCinta (2nd through 6th photos). A wall of cassette cases with inserts designed by the participating artists also included their playlist with a link to it on a special lagaleriadelamusica site set up by las magdalenas and audible via spotify or grooveshark. In addition, each case had a little spool of recycled cassette tape. The intervention was a huge hit with an impressive turnout, everyone inspecting the cases and lists, with all of the urban gift cassettes disappearing rather quickly. Seems that many in-the-know have started to collect these artworks.

There are many, many more exhibits to see and read about on their website and blog. The charming magdalenas (interview video in Spanish here) and their transient gallery are definitely ones to watch. They have grasped the true meaning of “public” art. Bravo!

Photos courtesy of lagaleriademagdalena.

January 14, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Harbin Ice Festival Castles & Slides

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This looks very fun and cool (in the literal sense as well.) These castles made using ice with multiple slides and lit with colorful LED lights are part of the 29th Harbin International Ice Festival in China. In addition to the ice architecture, the festival includes many a giant ice and snow sculpture. The Harbin Festival started 10 years ago and has grown to be one of the world’s biggest ice festivals with tens of thousands of people working on the displays. The castle and slides are especially spectacular at night with their pastel hues emanating from within the ice. The slides are not only fun, but they serve as a means of transportation to get around the grounds.

via inthralled/mymodernmet via notcot

January 7, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

How Much Do I Owe You?: No Longer Empty

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Friday, the three of us headed over to No Longer Empty’s (previously here) 14th exhibition titled How Much Do I Owe You? located in the former Bank of Manhattan in Long Island City’s Clock Tower. No Longer Empty aims to revitalize communities through art. They create site specific, socially-conscious public art exhibits usually in unoccupied yet interesting spaces.

Inspired by the Bank building, 26 artists from 15 countries take on the topic of money and its value during these tumultuous economic times of growing debt and job insecurity. The space is filled with large-scale murals, installations, and videos, in addition to interactive areas that are especially kid-friendly such as drawing your own “Fundred” dollar bill at one installation, and filling in forms on ‘Surplus’ and ‘Debt’, considering the concepts beyond the monetary significance, as well as offering up humorous buttons on the themes.

There’s way too much to go into here, but the three vaults downstairs should not go without mention…even empty they would be fun to experience, but each one, in very different approaches, makes great use of the space including the security boxes and balance sheets.

We had a lot of fun at this exhibit. Some of the highlights for us include Guerra de la Paz’s snake-like ties in his Sealing the Deal (top); Ghost of a Dream’s wall murals, both In Banks We Trust where the word TRUST drops out boldly from walls covered with handwritten questionably trustworthy bank slogans, and their other mural The Price of Happiness, a large-scale collage made up of losing lottery tickets and Buddhist afterworld money (second and third works from top); also, Theodoros Stamatogiannis’ Ping Pong table straddled tightly between two walls, symbolizing the lack of a level playing field in society.

How Much Do I Owe You? will be on exhibit through March 13th, 2013 and is only a block from the subway. We’re looking forward to seeing what No Longer Empty comes up with next.

Photos: collabcubed

December 24, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

From the C3 Archives

We’re taking a few days off to enjoy the holidays. In the meantime here are some of our favorites from the archives. Click on an image above to be taken to its post, or feel free to scroll through by category using the pull-down tab in the right margin, or randomly if you prefer. You can always like us on facebook, follow on twitter, or if email is your thing, you can subscribe at the bottom of the site.

Happy Holidays!