anyone interested?

unfortunately i had to abandon my blog for quite a while and many different reasons but if you out there are still interested in it leave a comment on this post. cheers.

finger breakdance

fun piece of finger breakdance. wonder how long it took for the guy to get his moves right. next thing you, there are worldwide finger breakdance contests with millions of dollar in prize money.

man catches glasses with face

this is kind of fun but it seems people really like it. the reason why i say kind of is because some of the transitions are too amateur like and obvious. having that said i found it still worth watching and entertaining. i looked at it a couple of times during the democratic tv debate last saturday when bill richardson talked – poor guy.

op art

dave bollinger has created a series of works that are similar to op-art, squeezing the same basic shape into atightly packed and dense array. bollinger suggests, ‘most of these are intended to be viewed “from a distance” as a whole, not studied in detail up close’. the simple shapes create mesmerizing patterns that play with the eye, similar to optical illusions. well, i’d say after 10 minutes of starring on them i can see complex figurative images of dancing cows and other things. try that!

worksamples dave bollinger

whopper freakout zone

nice piece of third party endorsement advertising. burger king ran an experiment where they pretended in one burger king that the whopper was discontinued. see the peoples reaction. pretty clever.

website with full-res version

  

interactive ad for hema

haven’t seen this before. check out this fun interactive ad for hema.

website – interactive ad

fotofest beijing

not really recent but nevertheless interesting. some of the images have a truth and reality to it you don’t find that often anymore. in october 2006, fotofest international partnered with hewlett packard china and a team of chinese photographers and businessmen to sponsor an event bringing together 278 contemporary chinese photographers and 35 influential professionals from the professional and art photography world in europe, north america, china and australia – meeting place fotofest beijing 2006 (MPFB2006).

MBFB2006 was an unprecedented event in china. it was designed to open up new opportunities for contemporary chinese photography. it was the first time a large number of contemporary photographers in china were able to show their work to such a broad-based group of important international curators, commercial gallery owners, photography festival directors, editors, representatives of photo agencies, educators, and director/curators of artist spaces.

photographers came to beijing from all over china. some were long-time professionals and others were recent graduates of chinese art and film schools. for four days, the international reviewers met with chinese photographers on a one-to-one basis, looked at their work and shared professional knowledge. the range of photography presented was remarkably broad, from classical black and white documentary to conceptual color works.

website fotofest

brazilian baile funk

came across this fun piece and wanted to share.

room/building tetris

i love when people have strange and surprising ideas like these. the videos with people “playing” room or building tetris is quite cool. either way, electronically or manually controlled, it’s fun.

herbaceous planted fashion retail shop

mass studies is a korean based architecture firm that was founded in 2003 by minsuk cho in seoul. the studio recently finished the design of shop for fashion retailer ann demeulemeester. the building consists of four levels, the shop, a multi-store and restaurant on the top floors. the project’s facade is made from a geo-textile planted with herbaceous perennials to form a living wall. the greenery is carried into the shop, incorporating nature whenever possible. the studio focuses on issues involving density and living in urban korean areas. the shop’s location is in a residential neighborhood that is evolving into a shopping district.

rdi awards

the 2007 ‘royal designer for industry’ awards were given out early this month, honoring 6 uk designers; in addition 6 international designers, received ‘honourary royal designer for industry’ distinctions. the awards were set up by the ‘royal society for the encouragement of arts, manufactures & commerce’ in 1936 to encourage high standards in design. only 200 designers can hold the distinction at any time, making it one of the most highly regarded design honours in the uk. the distinction of ‘honorary royal designer for industry’ is also only awarded to a limited number of designers.the 2007 ‘rdi’ awards were given to edward barber and jay osgerby, nigel gee, margaret howell, ben kelly and simon waterfall. the honourary ‘rdi’ awards were given to naoto fukasawa, antonio citterio, john lasseter, mark pollack, erik spiekermann and piero tosi.

the “le monde” newspaper design by erik spiekermann

stable

funny. a typical skittles commercial. no other comments.

unicef image of the year

this shot by stephanie sinclair is amazing. it shows an 11 year old afghan girl which was just married to a 40 year old afghan man. not only that i believe he is lying (doesn’t he look like he is at least 132 years old?) but also the look she gives him (kind of like “dude, wash you beard”) – just great. this image is a reality portrait out of thousand and one nights. 

santa’s ghetto

interesting art project in israel, check out the website. “bethlehem is one of the most contentious places on earth. perched at the edge of the judaen desert at the intersection of europe, asia and africa in the state of palestine it was governed by the british following the collapse of the ottoman empire. after world war II the united nations voted to partition the region into two states - one jewish, one arab and there’s been fighting ever since.it’s obviously not the job of a loose collection of idiot doodlers to tell you what’s right or wrong about this situation, so you’re advised to do further reading yourself (this month’s national geographic has an excellent article all about Bethlehem).

we would like to make it very clear “santa’s ghetto” is not allied to ANY race, creed, religion, political organization or lobby group. as an organisation the only thing we’ll say on behalf of our artists is that we don’t speak on behalf of our artists. this show simply offers the ink-stained hand of friendship to ordinary people in an extraordinary situation.every shekel made in the store will be used on local projects for children and young people. not one cent will go to any political groups, governmental institutions or, in fact, any grown-ups at all. salaam.”

santa’s ghetto website

violin playing toyota robot

pretty crazy what we have to face in a few years and obviously that’s not the end. pretty sure our dark visions of robotic future will come true in one or the other way but if we develop and build robots for human pleasure now everyone knows how far the military versions of these must be already.