January 15, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Farshad Mehdizadeh: Dayereh Snack Bar

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Here’s an interesting design by Iranian architect Farshad Mehdizadeh. The Dayereh Snack Bar façade (Dayereh means “circle” in Farsi), though small in size, is large and bold in innovation. If I understand correctly (Google translate for Farsi is very limited and nonsensical) the only thing behind the snack bar’s façade is a kitchen, making the design all about the front and windows where the element of interaction between client and server takes place. The long strips of wood curve down from the building façade into the sidewalk with three pieces of travertine in between.

The Dayereh Snack Bar was located in Isfahan, Iran and won a third place Middle East Architect award in 2012. Unfortunately, the bar has since been torn down, but its fabulousness lives on in photos.

via Middle East Architect

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 14, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Thierry Fournier: A+ (See You)

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French artist Thierry Fournier works in digital media, video, performance and installation art. His work explores the physical vs. perception bringing together commonly dissociated space-times such as fiction and reality, living and non-living, interior and exterior.

In his installation A+ (also titled See You in English) which most recently was exhibited on a street in Lille as part of its Fantastic Festival — which ran from last October up until yesterday — Fournier placed a video screen displaying the street that continued on the other side of the framed screen, as if looking through a window except that the video being shown had a constant 24 hour delay. This confusing image had pedestrians stopping, trying to figure out what, in fact, they were watching, while at the same time being filmed themselves. As the artist describes it: “Two temporalities into the same perspective creates a ‘temporal depth’.” Those who pass in the image and those who observe them coexist without ever communicating. Very trippy…

You can see it in action here.

Photos courtesy of the artist.

via lille3000 Fantastic

January 11, 2013 by collabcubed - 2 Comments

NYC Culture on the Cheap: Weekend 1/11

This This weekend’s picks for Free & Cheap things to do in NYC (1/11 to 1/13) in art, music, theater, film, performance, comedy, architecture and general fun. Click through on the images above for the corresponding event page and details, or use the links below.

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT, TOP TO BOTTOM (numbers will be added to photos next week, promise. This week I was struggling with iffy internet..)
1. TALK: Deborah Eisenberg and George Saunders Short Story Writers. Purchase of book or $10 gift card. 7 to 8pm
2. MUSIC/HUMOR: No Place to Go; Ethan Lipton & Orchestra 9:30pm $15
3. COMEDY: Funny Sh#t Comedy Fest. 8pm $10
4. TOUR/CONFERENCE: Charting the Road to Resilience. Site visits and conference to share lessons learned from Hurricane Sandy. FREE
5. MUSIC: Dirty Projectors and Andrew Bird at 8pm. $30 and up.
6. THEATER: Kristen Kosmas – “There There” Critically acclaimed play. $20
7. MUSIC/THEATER: Prototype Opera-Theater Fest, through 1/18. $15 to $20.
8. THEATER: The Improvised Shakespeare. 7:30pm $27.50
9. MULTIMEDIA PERFORMANCE: Emily Johnson/Catalyst Niicugni. $20
10. THEATER: Under the Radar Festival
11. STREET ART/FILM: NYC Street Pop. Opening reception film, photos and more by Ken Brown. Sat. 1 to 3pm. FREE
12. ART: Haroshi Virtual Reality, opening Sat 7 to 9pm.
13. ART: Aakash Nihalani – Portal. Opening Sat 7 to 9pm.
14. PERFORMANCE: New York City Pod Fest – Improv $8 for one $45 festival pass
15. THEATER: Urinetown the Musical $18.
16. FILM: Chasing Ice – Photographer James Balog captures images to show the Earth’s climate change in this stunning documentary. 6pm. $14 adults.
17. TOUR: Yale University Gallery & George Nelson Exhibit Tour: 11:30 am to 5pm $5 students $35 adults
18. MUSIC: Gregg Kallor Hurricane Sandy Relief Concert. 7:30pm $20

MORE:
Fri 1/11 & Sat 1/12 15th Contemporary Dance Showcase including Anarchy Dance Theater’s Seventh Sense (see post). 7:30pm. $28
Sat 1/12 Family Day: BankInk! 75-minute demo Sumi-e class. 1 to 2:15 pm. FREE
Sat 1/12, Documentary – The Atomic States of America at 7 pm. $10.
Sun 1/13 Improv Everywhere No Pants Subway RideFREE
Sun 1/13 Comedy/Music – Reggie Watts performs at 8:30. $10
Starting Monday – NYC Restaurant Week 2013. $25 Lunch; $38 Dinner

Sat 1/12 The All-Day Sandy Benefit with readings by Nick Flynn, Jonathan Ames, Emma Straub and more.
Sat 1/12 & Sun 1/13 Film: Clandestine Childhood (Infancia Clandestina) Argentine film with filmmaker Q&A’s.

Check back for possible updates throughout the weekend and peruse previous Culture on the Cheap posts for ongoing events.

January 10, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Aqua Dice: Max Mulhern

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American artist Max Mulhern, living in Paris, has long been fascinated by the role that luck plays in life. For the past two years, Mulhern has been sketching and painting floating dice — after earlier designing many sculptures of unrealistic boats — uniting his interest in art and chance. The culmination of his efforts, along with a French kickstarter-like campaign to raise funds, took the shape of two giant orange and blue dice, Aqua Dice, launched to sea from the port of Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands on the appropriately slot-machine-like date of 12/12/12. Mulhern also refers to his Aqua Dice project as “The Greatest Floating Craps Game on Earth”.

The dice were made from bio-composites and are 100% recyclable. They were designed to collapse on impact and, due to their fluorescent orange color, are highly visible to any nearby vessels. Each die has a specially designed GPS unit inside within a “souffle-like” padding that will turn on once a day to enable tracking of their journey. As of January 7th the dice were about 1,100 miles west of the Canary Islands, though one of the dice started heading back east since then, separating from the other.

You can see more photos of the project on Mulhern’s site and follow its progress on the Aqua Dice facebook page. And here’s an interview with the artist on the project.

via the nytimes

January 9, 2013 by collabcubed - 2 Comments

Meggan Gould: Viewfinders

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Photographer Meggan Gould, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is drawn to the surface value of mundane, framed spaces usually ubiquitous within our daily lives such as blackboards, computer screens, backs of photos and, in the series above titled Viewfinders, well, camera viewfinders. Though not commonly captured in photography, these images are both interesting and beautiful; some reminiscent of abstract paintings.

The other series of images I especially like is Verso (see bottom photo) in which Gould photographs the backs of photos. I always get a kick out of reading the backs of old photos and often wish that more photos had notes. But Gould’s images are more than just about the writing; many just show old tape marks or general deterioration, and those, surprisingly, are just as appealing.

You can check out the rest of the Verso series as well as more of Gould’s photographs on her site.

via thegarlicbread

January 8, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Sbagliato: Roman Street Art Collective

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The art collective Sbagliato (meaning “wrong” in Italian) pastes images of windows and doors in the most unexpected places, suggesting a way inside and adding a surreal quality to the ordinary; makes me think of the holes in the Yellow Submarine. The anonymous group redraws urban surfaces, promoting a new reality by subverting order and changing landscapes — in some cases existing buildings, in other cases rock formations, and in still others stone walls by the river banks — by adding a twist with their surprising windows, shutters, and doors.

You can see more of their work here and here.

via tribeart

January 8, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Glenn Ligon: Neon

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Being a type and neon enthusiast, you can imagine my delight upon entering the Luhring Augustine Gallery in Chelsea last month and discovering Glenn Ligon’s Neon exhibit. Bronx-born Ligon still lives and works in NYC. His works explore themes such as race, sexuality, and language. He uses evocative text including quotes from historically relevant material that at times is culturally charged.

Neon will be on exhibit at Luhring Augustine through January 19th, 2013.

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

January 7, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

LMA Exhibition and Lecture Hall: SZK

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The new extension at the Latvian Academy of Art (LMA) in Riga, Latvia, is one of the first and few modern university extensions in the country in several years. SZK Architects have converted a red brick storage building in the academy courtyard, built in 1948, whose style conformed with the rest of the LMA built in 1905 by Baltic-German architect Wilhelm Bockslaff. SZK chose to incorporate three of the existing brick walls of the poorly-constructed storage building, both for aesthetic and practical reasons. The fourth, and new, wall is all glass with a dramatic concrete square tube angled across it that serves as the entrance and mutes the light in the studios and gallery spaces within.

The extension is a bold addition to the older architecture that surrounds it, but I think the contrasting texture and style work, both functionally in its interior and visually on the exterior.

Photos courtesy of a10; dienalv; lma and szk

January 4, 2013 by collabcubed - 2 Comments

NYC Culture on the Cheap: Weekend 1/4

This weekend’s picks for Free & Cheap things to do in NYC (1/4 to 1/6.) Click through on the images above for the corresponding event page and details, or use the links below.

From left to right, top to bottom:
1. ART: How Much Do I Owe You?: Sound installations, projections, immersive installations in the iconic former Bank of Manhattan in LIC.
2. FILM: 56Up – Michael Apted’s documentary following a group of people every 7 years. Should be excellent.
3. FILM/LECTURE: Ethics in Film – The Terminator.
4. COMEDY: 7th Annual 50 First Jokes – $10 advance. $12 door
5. THEATER/DANCE: COIL 2013 Performance Festival.
6. FILM/ART: Christian Marclay’s The Clock. FREE Fridays 4 to 8pm.
7. FILM: First Look Film Series $12 adults/$9 students
8. ART: Martin Soto Climent, Contemporary Sculpture. 5pm Sat Opening, FREE
9. ART: Lin Tianmiao: Bound Unbound, Chinese Contemporary Art. FREE Fri 6 to 9pm. Other times $10.
10. THEATER: Job by Thomas Bradshaw. A Tarantino-esque tale. $20 to $25
11. MUSIC/DANCE/ART: Target First Saturday at the Brooklyn Museum w/ Lez Zeppelin, Heems from Das Racist and Occupy Wall Street writers. FREE
12. DANCE: Noche Flamenca. $35
13. GRAPHIC DESIGN: The Fifty and Fifty State Mottos Project. 50 posters by 50 designers depicting each state’s motto, graphically. FREE
14. FOOD: The Great CSA Smackdown. Citywide cooking competition. Sat 2 to 4pm. FREE
15. ART: Franck Yefeng Wang’s installation titled Impersonal. FREE
16. ART: Target Free Sundays at the Studio Museum of Harlem. Gallery Tour at 1pm. FREE
17. READINGS: Sunday Night Fiction – Readings by Alexandra Chasin, Dawn Raffel, John Dermot Woods and Halvor Aakhus. Sunday; 7 to 9pm FREE
18. ART: Paint the World Project – Over 20 artists will be creating multiple large scale canvases. FREE

Check back for possible updates throughout the weekend, and check out previous Culture on the Cheap posts for ongoing events.

UPDATES:
Fri 1/4: Altnerative Histories: NY Art Spaces, 1960 to 2010, book launch & reception. 6 to 8pm. FREE
Sat 1/5: Hit and Run Shakespeare: “Twelfth Night” 7 to 8pm $10 to $20.
Sat 1/5: MUSIC – Bridges and Powerlines/Fan Tans/Crazy Pills: 8pm doors 9pm show. $8 to $10.
Sun 1/6: ART – Closing reception for Mike Rader ‘Below See Level’ 4 to 6pm & Man vs. Ultraman extended. FREE.

January 3, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Pantone 2013 Calendars: Pentagram

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Eddie Opara and Brankica Harvey of Pentgram have designed the Pantone 2013 Wall and Engagement Calendars. Using the PMS color chips as image pixels, the designers created a “digitized” seasonal thematic image for each month, much in the way Vik Muniz recreated famous Impressionist paintings with Pantone chips (see here). Each month features a Pantone color and continues with tints of it, each a square for every day of the month.

Cleverly and nicely done, though I have to admit a preference for the images in the engagement version. That donut on the cover is pretty great.

You can purchase the calendar here.

via @pentagram

January 3, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

The New Colossus: Bronze Union Rat Statue

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Last week while waiting on line to deposit a check at a midtown bank, I noticed a new sculpture across the way in the plaza at the Lever House. The New Colossus, as it is titled, is a bronze replica of the giant inflatable rats that labor union strikers often park outside the employer’s premises they are picketing, usually for hiring non-union workers. There’s definitely some irony there, seeing this working class object converted into a piece of fine art in a very white collar part of NYC.

The group behind the sculpture is the Bruce High Quality Foundation known for their provocative art. The rat has actually been at the Lever House since last July when it accompanied an exhibit of the group’s works in the lobby called Art History with Labor: 95 Theses. The show consisted of real objects including a bucket with a mop, a wheelbarrow with a bag of soil, a floor polisher, a ladder, a trash can, and other elements that made it look like a construction site. Each object had a built-in audio speaker with voices emanating from them reading texts about art and labor, as if the objects that experienced the daily work became animated. I wish I had seen the show, but I wasn’t even aware of the rat until last week.

Photos: Lucy Hogg; Lever House art collection; and Polichtallix

January 2, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Hendrik Kerstens: Paula Pictures

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Dutch photographer Hendrik Kerstens has been photographing his daughter Paula since 1995, using her as his model both in photographs reflecting events in her own life, as well as in his humorous series of photos inspired by the 17th century Dutch Masters. His choice of headdresses range from bubble-wrap to trash bags, paper towels to lampshades. Though I’ve seen similar concepts before (see Julia Kissina’s Fairies and Nina Katchadourian’s Lavatory Self-Portraits) Kerstens excellently emulates the Vermeer-style lighting in his Paula Pictures. As an additional fun fact, Alexander McQueen (who had been a collector of Hendriks’ photographs) used the image of Paula with a plastic bag headdress for his Fall 2009 show invitation.

via nunc contemporary

January 2, 2013 by collabcubed - 0 comments

MRtoll: Clay Street Art

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Brooklyn-based painter and street artist MRtoll has been placing his clay street sculptures and street poetry around town for the past couple of years. These brightly colored clay works include everything from humorous word conjugation-like panels (my favorites) to emoticons and more illustrative pieces such as fried eggs, feathery birds, skulls and more. From the looks of his tumblr, the childlike quality of some of these may be toddler-inspired.

Photos: newyorkshitty; according2g; hragv’s flickr; saatchionline; and mrtoll.

via according2g

December 28, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

From the C3 Archives: Part II

Here are some more of our popular posts from 2012. Superhero Saints; Ana
Soler’s suspended bouncing balls; the House that Fell from the Sky; the Red People in Russia; Liu Wei’s amazing Cityscapes made from schoolbooks: Liu Bolin’s fun collaboration with JR; So-il’s Kukje Gallery; the amazing Twist Bridge; the Mr. Dictator Heads; Roman Tyc’s replacement traffic lights; J. Mayer H.’s cool number installation Rapport; Kuggen the colorful cog; a typographic bike path; Giant snails take over the roof of a Milan cathedral; and Snarkitecture’s Memorial Bowling.

Click on the photos to be taken to their corresponding post.

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!

December 21, 2012 by collabcubed - 2 Comments

NYC Culture on the Cheap: Weekend 12/21

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This weekend’s picks for free and cheap things to do (12/21 to 12/23) in NYC. Holiday-themed as well as end-of-the-world ones too. Cultural events in art, music, film, dance, theater, design, walking, food, and general fun!

1. Fri 12/21 in Music/Participatory/Fun – The Gaits: A High Line Soundwalk. 3 to 4:30pm. Turn your footsteps into sound. Just one of the many Make Music Winter Events this Friday. See other events here. FREE

2. All weekend in Film/Art – Christian Marclay’s The Clock. Through 1/21/13. FREE Fridays from 4 to 8pm.

3. Fri 12/21 in Art/Film/Music/Magic/Comedy – The End of the World Party. 7pm to midnight. FREE (RSVP here)

4. Fri 12/21 in Comedy/Performance — The Afterlife Comedy Show at 8:30pm: Emily Heller, George Gordon, Erin Judge and more.$8

5. All weekend in Art – George Bellows Paintings through 2/18/13. Pay what you wish.

6. Fri 12/21 & Sat 12/22 in Music – Sō Percussion: Where (we) Live: crafting sonic landscapes from found objects, Brooklyn-based quartet Sō Percussion explores the idea of home with a bold experiment in collaborative art-making. At 7:30pm. $16 to $40

7. All weekend in Dance/Acrobatics – STREB- Forces! The Movical. Elizabeth Streb and her Extreme Action Company a theater of flight with big hardware and big muscles. Good for the whole family. $25 Adults $15 kids Check site for showtimes.

8. Fri 12/21 in Music/Participatory – Yoko Ono’s Imagine Peace: Come together and sing John Lennon’s “Imagine” at the very moment Yoko Ono’s new video IMAGINE PEACE lights up sixteen Times Square billboards at 11:57pm. Meet 11:45pm at Times Square. Part of Make Music Winter. FREE

9. All weekend in Dance/Music/Light – iLuminate Artist of Light: extraordinary effects choreographed with phenomenal dance moves. You can see them in action here. $49.50 adults $30 Students Check site for numerous showtimes through 1/5/12.

10. Fri 12/21 in Music – JD Samson and MEN at the Brooklyn Night Bazaar. 6pm to midnight. FREE

11. Sat 12/22 in Walking/Fun – The Amazing New York Scavenger Hunt: fast-paced team event that is part scavenger hunt and part obstacle course. 12:30pm ~~$17.50~~ Holiday Edition is $35.

12. All weekend in Dance/Performance – The Butt-Cracker Suite: A Trailer Park Ballet, a funny and irreverent adaptation of The Nutcracker. Enter promo code flamingo for $25 tickets. 8:30pm.

13. All weekend in Theater/Multimedia – Reid Farrington’s A Christmas Carol. an imaginative and ghostly multimedia re-telling of Dickens’ seasonal tale. Fri 12/21 & Sat 12/22 at 8pm. Sun 12/23 at 3pm. $25

14. Sat 12/22 in Music – Everett Bradley’s Holidelic: this holiday funk-tacular blends the influences of P-Funk, Sly Stone and other 1970’s and ‘80’s funk and soul bands into original songs that celebrate diversity, mild familial seasonal dysfunction, individuality, and holiday booty shaking. 8pm $20 advance $25 at door

15. Sat 12/22 in Music – The Cecilia Chorus of NY: Mangia! Holiday Music with the Flavor of Italy. 8pm Tkts $25 and up.

16. Sat 12/22 in Music – David Johansen with Romans. 7pm $23 advance; $25 door

17. All weekend in Dance/Comedy/Performance – The Bang Group: Nut/Cracked: a comic/subversive, neo-vaudeville version of The Nutcracker. 7:30pm $24 in advance $30 day of

18. Sun 12/23 in Film – Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel. 2pm and 6pm. $14

Also in Film all weekend – Zero Dark Thirty: The new Kathryn Bigelow film about the manhunt for Bin Laden. $13

UPDATES:
All weekend in Graphic Design – The Fifty and Fifty State Mottos Project at the Ace Hotel Gallery. FREE
Sat 12/22 in Music/Participatory/Holiday – Greenwich Village Caroling Walk at 4pm. FREE
Sat 12/22 in Performance/Improv – The Tarantino: Improvisers performing an improvised Quentin Tarantino movie before your eyes. At 10pm $5.
Sun 12/23 in Film/Holiday – It’s a Wonderful Life at 2pm. $10 tkts