Category Archives: Just Plain Cool

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The Weird Girls Project

The Weird Girls ProjectGranted, my exposure to Icelandic culture is limited to, well, Björk, but based on that and now The Weird Girls Project, it certainly seems like a creative, and zany, place to be. Artist Kitty Von-Sometime (a British expat) started the Weird Girls over four years ago noticing her female friends’ social self-consciousness and lack of creative outlets. It has grown to almost 60 Weird Girls and 12 episodes that include spandex, bunny masks, and glow-in-the-dark effects. There’s a Busby Berkely-meets-Björk element to some of them.

The Weird Girls Project is an ongoing art experiment created and produced by concept artist Kitty Von-Sometime. It evolves ‘Episode’ by ‘Episode’ and the participants mix between those involved from the beginning and new members increasing with every event. Each Episode is planned for approximately three months with the participants knowing as little as is possible about the event excluding the date, this includes the concept, location and costumes. The experience is one of empowerment, overcoming self-consciousness and body image, comradery, as well as (for lack of a better term) girl power.

Filmmaker Adrienne Grierson, after a two-year wait, became a Weird Girl and, along with Martina Moor, is documenting the whole experience and the 13th Episode in her upcoming documentary “I Want to Be Weird in Iceland.” Here’s her kickstarter trailer, well worth watching:


You can follow Adrienne’s progress here. And you can watch The Weird Girls Project Episodes here.

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Daniel Arsham: Pixel Clouds

Daniel Arsham Cloud SculpturesInspired 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

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Lekue Steam Roaster

Lekue Steam RoasterThe Lekue Steam Roaster designed by Compeixalaigua Design Studio of Barcelona “is a multifunctional bowl; it takes advantage of silicone’s flexibility to change its shape. In a closed position it combines the advantages of steam cooking with a crunchy finishing produced by the air circulation from its opened ends. When opened it is merely a bowl, but you can prepare, weigh and mix all the ingredients and even serve straight from the oven.” Available here.

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Yotel

Yotel Pods and HotelI’ve been intrigued by Yotel since my first sighting two years ago in the Amsterdam airport. Fast forward to last weekend when I noticed a new Yotel façade with its 70s-style signage near Times Square, here in NYC. Turns out Yotel has three cabin-style airport hotels with cabins ranging in size from 75 sq.ft to 108 sq.ft and each comes equipped with wireless internet, flatscreen tv, fold-out desk, en-suite bathroom with shower and 24-hour room service. Oh, and a bed! All for about $50 for the first 4 hours and $12/hr for each additional hour for a standard cabin. In addition to the one in Amsterdam, there is one at Gatwick and Heathrow airports, in London.

The NYC Yotel is the first non-airport site, with larger “cabins” at 170 sq.ft and $149 per night. There will be an airport-style self check-in and a robot (Yobot) to store left luggage. Here’s a video tour:

You can learn more at Yotel’s site.

via Spot Cool Stuff

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City of Dreams Pavilion: Burble Bup

Burble Bup_Bitterang Governor's IslandThe 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

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One Hundred and Eight

One Hundred and Eight_Nils Voelker“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

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Jer Thorp: Data Artist in Residence

Jer Thorp_Data VisualizationAnother 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.

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Bordbar

Bordbar recycled airplane trolleysBordbar, based in Cologne, processes used airplane trolleys and transforms them into high quality designer objects for private use. Bordbar trolleys are available in a variety of patterns and colors, with interior elements varying from office file cabinet, to shoe closet, to minibar, as well as the ability to implement personal requests.   via architonic

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Sol LeWitt: Mass MoCA Retrospective

Sol LeWitt Mass MoCAOn 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…”

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Sifteo

Sifteo Interactive CubesTwo years ago I watched a TED Talk given by MIT Media Lab grad student David Merrill about  a project he was working on called Siftables. These were tiny computer blocks that interacted with each other to make networks, play games, and music. It blew me away. Today I came across a lovely package design, by New Deal Design, for the product Sifteo which sounded remarkably similar and turns out is the company that Merrill has since founded with his partner, and co-creator, Jeevan Kalanithi. This demo explains it better than I can:


via Lovely Package