There’s a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale called The Shadow where a man’s shadow comes to life, turns into a human, demands his former master now becomes his shadow, and when the man refuses, the shadow has him executed. Nice. As sinister and bleak a story as that is, it shows the fascination we have with the fantastical idea of our shadows taking on a life of their own.
Photographer Pol Úbeda Hervàs from Barcelona has created a series of photos called I’m Not There which feature just his shadow with various pairs of shoes sat at its feet. Hervàs presents them with a hint of mystery and a sense of the uncanny (like Andersen’s story) as an empty pair of flip-flops or sneakers inexplicably beget this human shadow. The effect was achieved with some post-production tinkering in Photoshop.
From the comment Hervàs left with the images on Flickr, it seems these photos come at a time in his life when a bit of soul searching is going on. “My shadow is there but I erase myself because I don´t know who I am any longer,” he says. A bit like Andersen’s protagonist then—with both the story and this series sharing the same idea of a loss of identity.
If something glows, it’s going to attract a lot more attention than something that doesn’t. Just look at the glowworm. It gets much more respect than your average garden variety worm. So if you’re going to make a multi-purpose block chair might as well make it glow too—just to be on the safe side.
Called the Media Block Chair, this “smart” seat is created byTokyo-based designers TeamLab and each block consists of three protruding sides and three indented sides. The protruding sides and the indented sides communicate with each other once you link them together, changing color when placed together. For instance, red and blue make purple.
The blocks can sat on individually or you can connect them together to create different styles of seats or a table or a partition or whatever you like. They might not be the comfiest thing to sit on, but who cares when they look like this.
Each week we pay homage to a select “Original Creator”—an iconic artist from days gone by whose work influences and informs today’s creators. These are artists who were innovative and revolutionary in their fields—bold visionaries and radicals, groundbreaking frontiersmen and women who inspired and informed culture as we know it today. This week: Jean-Jacques Perrey.
Synthesized sound appears in just about every form of music today, and most of us take for granted how the range of synthetically possible sounds have joined the ranks of instruments. At one point, synthesizers were a big novelty, and folks were amazed at how closely the sound resembled the real thing. Along with several other pioneers, Jean-Jacques Perrey took synthetic sounds from a parlor trick in mimicry to a versatile instrument capable of producing previously unheard sounds, which has developed into the range of genres of electronic music we hear today. With Perrey having just celebrated his 84th birthday, we look back on a career that spans five decades.
Perrey was in medical school when he first met Georges Jenny, inventer of the Ondioline. A precursor to the machinery of today, this proto-synth could emulate the the sounds of several instruments and allowed the player to control the vibrato by physically moving the key surface. This made it possible to truly humanize the sounds, and if played right, became almost indistinguishable from the real thing. And Perrey played it right. So deeply did Perrey believe in the potential of this instrument that he became a sales rep for Jenny and traveled around promoting the Ondioline, largely through demonstrations. These demos, with Perrey playing the piano and the Ondioline simultaneously, became wildly popular and ended up becoming a touring nightclub act in Europe. He eventually brought his act to the US, where he broke the Ondioline to new audiences.
Perrey on I Have A Secret (1966)
Perrey’s profile rose, and he began working with musicians like Charles Trenet, Django Reinhardt, and, at the height of her career, Edith Piaf. As a big supporter of Perrey’s work, she provided him with recording facilities, which he used to create music by splicing and rearranging sections of tape, a process now known as “sequencing” and conducted on a screen using software. The results were remarkable experiments in yet unheard sounds, and Piaf sent one of these tapes to music contractor Carroll Bratman, who immediately invited Perrey to come to New York. Here, Perrey found a new set of collaborators like percussionist Harry Breuer, Andy Badale, and Billy Goldberg, doing both creative and commercial work. It was when he linked up with Gershon Kingsley that Perrey created the work that truly demonstrated the potential of electronic instruments, and the music that he would be most celebrated for.
Perrey and Kingsley on Spooks In Space (1966)
At the time, Kingsley was an arranger for Vanguard Records and began working with Perrey’s abstract tape loops, combining them with more conventional musical arrangements of the time. Their first album together, The In Sound From Way Out (1966)(not to be confused with the Beastie Boys album of the same name), made Perrey’s experimentalism a bit more accesible, augmented with Kingsley’s arrangements. Yet, the music palpably broke new ground with the types of sounds included in the compositions—cartoonish bleeps and boops that would become Perrey’s signature. His work with Kingsley influenced his later solo work, maintaining the odd pallet of sounds but also maintaining somewhat of a conventional aesthetic.
“Gossipo Perpetuo” from Moog Indigo (1970)
Perrey continues to release music and engage in collaborations that keep him with the times, working with artists like Luke Vibert, Dana Countryman, and David Chazam, in recent years.
In one of Creator U-Ram Choe’s most recent installations, Merry-Go-Round, the piece initially seems to be a beautifully-crafted, aesthetically-pleasing novelty, a miniature replica of a carousel that evokes nostalgia for the “good ol’ days” of cotton candy, arcade tickets, and Ferris wheels.
U-Ram Choe’s Merry-Go-Round
However, as the piece continues to spin, the speed builds, creating a dizzying, overwhelming whirl that seems to be more dystopian than evocative of childhood memories. Perhaps this is meant to represent the difficulties that arise even within the seemingly simple, superficial, and beautiful lives of the privileged (#firstworldproblems).
Typically Choe’s works have a more organic feel than Merry-Go-Round (despite the fact that his sculptures are mostly mechanical), and thus it stands apart within his body of work. As Choe said in an November Interview with Korean Times, “I was more interested in nature, ecosystems, the universe, and the role of technology. Merry-Go-Round is my way of interpreting human life and its endless cycle.”
Sketches for U-Ram Choe’s Merry-Go-Round.
Some of Choe’s other recent work will be on display in an upcoming solo show, “Anima: Choe U-Ram,” at Borusan Contemporary in Istanbul, Turkey from February 2nd—April 14th, including his piece Pavilion, which features a black plastic bag inside a 24K gold casing (American Beauty flashbacks, anyone?).
To learn more about U-Ram Choe’s kinetic sculptures, check out our behind-the-scenes video below.
Seeing celebrities endorsing products isn’t always convincing—how do I know that Derek Jeter really loves Gillette shaving cream? But sometimes you see an icon standing behind a product they actually use and truly believe in. So it’s a bit more of a push when Flying Lotus endorses the new Moog synth.
Prior to its release, Moog sent the artist a prototype Sub Phatty, the latest in the line that includes the widely popular Slim Phatty, and originated with the Little Phatty in 2006. Lotus created the track “Such a Square” (likely in reference to the track’s prominent square wave), for which Adam “lilfuchs” Fuchs created the above video, Moog Sub Phatty: New Machine For Living.
You might recognize lilfuchs’ style from Flying Lotus’ psychedelic “Zodiac Shit” video. In this animation, we see an explosive, colorful amalgamation of the Sub Phatty and get to take a look at the fantastical circuitry inside, and at some point become part of the machine via quarter-inch audio cable fingers—a welcome modification.
Berlin-based South Korean artist Jeongmoon Choi creates vibrant and futuristic installations using thread, metal frames, and UV lights. She illuminates and arranges these threads throughout rooms and across walls where visitors are welcome to wander.
The threads are woven into metal frames, and the black-lit lighting helps to enhance the illusion of depth. This illusion raises larger questions about the definition of space and dimension, and has visitors feeling like they’ve fallen into a futuristic rabbit hole.
Space in Space 2006
100 Conversation 2007
Haus 1 2007
Labyrinth—Nulla Dies Sine Linea, 2010
Light Drawing 1—Metropolis, 2007
RAUM-Skelett, 2007
Light Drawing 1—Metropolis, 2007
A selection of Choi’s works are currently on view as part of her solo exhibition “Dialogue Lineaire” at Galerie Laurent Mueller in Paris, France through January 26th.
Beginning with a miniature Big Bang, we follow the story of an iridescent bubble bifurcating until it becomes a whole population, which then advances in its form and movement. Using a simple format and augmenting it in surprising ways, Max Hattler‘s A Very Large Increase in the Size, Amount, or Importance of Something Over a Very Short Period of Time draws on his pieces X (2012) and 1923 aka Heaven (2010). Though visually simpler than those previous works, this one certainly has Hattler’s spacy style at its core.
After Hattler’s Sync won the award for Best Video Installation at St. Petersburg’s Multivision Festival, the organizers asked him to collaborate with a team of Russian animators who assisted him in bringing a new work to life. As Hattler puts it, “I tried to approach the animation as a living creature. It tries to communicate with you, through abstract words and sounds. This is one of the reasons you can hear some melodies, as it’s hidden in our human phrases.” Once completed, the film piece debuted at the Erarta museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Julien Mier, who we previously featured in our LAYERS column, created the soundtrack, working with Hattler to synchronize sound and visuals to the ideal level. Their attention to detail made the final product an enthralling couple minutes that you’ll find yourself having to play back a couple of times.
Additional reporting by Erica Gorochow (@gorociao).
British artist Matthew Herbert‘s been making music for many, many years—and today sees the announcement of a major boxset looking back over his career from 1996 to 2006. Called Herbert Complete it covers the many musical styles and experiments he’s traversed and undertaken under his Herbert moniker.
The iTunes boxset will feature photos, rare material, remixes by Plaid, DJ Koze, Mr. Oizo, Recloose, and B-sides. Along with special edition albums spanning his early days on the house scene of the 1990s, releasing music on small independent record labels that have long ceased to exist, to his 12" collection 100lbs and kitchen sound dance album Around the House.
It’ll also showcase his seminal audio experiment Bodily Functions, where he forgoes drum machines and synthesizers in favor of sampling the sounds of various body parts, like teeth, bones, and even an unborn child. And finishes with the aural opulence of Scale, recorded with an 80-piece orchestra.
The boxset will be released on Accidental Records on 4th March. But until then you can get a free download of single “Suddenly” below.
And check out the new video for his track “Foreign Bodies”, off the Bodily Functions album too.
To find out more about Herbert’s musical heritage you can watch our short documentary on him below.
Pixelated chaos unfolds in this music video for Xilent’s track “Boss Wave,” which will impress the geek inside us all. Not only do we get shots of retro computer equipment, but we see a computer game featuring an anime-style human-controlled robot come to life to wreak carnage on the streets. Animators Kristofer Ström, Erik Buchholtz, and Mikael Pettersén brought the insane series of events to life using a variety of software, from Sketchbook Pro to Photoshop and After Effects.
The chiptune style leanings of the music perfectly accompanies images that flit between video game sequences and the physical world—a world that oozes the blocky aesthetic of a video game environment, merging CGI and live action.
Experiencing what many a gamer does, our plucky hero mixes reality and fiction as he attempts to save humanity from flying bad guys who are fond of taking people out with headshots. We’ve all done it—too many hours on the latest Grand Theft Auto and a walk to the local shop finds you fighting the urge to steal a car and go on a rampage.
And just like the blurring of reality and fiction that too many hours of play can cause, it’s hard to decipher just where the action is taking place in this video. Is it all happening inside the video game? Or in reality? Or in the guy’s head?
Wi-Fi is something most of us are constantly using, yet it’s invisible to the human eye. We only know it as webpages and emails and streamed music and all the other online activities it lets us do. Artist Peter Jellitsch decided to visualize the signal his apartment received, to produce a sculpture from the fluctuations the signal underwent over a period of 45 days.
Not the first person to give visual form to a Wi-Fi signal—a previous attempt includes Timo Arnall, Einar Sneve Martinussen, and Jørn Georg ‘s light painting wifi project—Jellitsch’s project, called Bleecker Street Documents, involved him recording the signal using a piece of equipment that measures radio waves.
He then mapped this data onto a flat plane over time and the points rose and fell depending on the signal’s strength. The resulting physical sculpture was milled on a CNC machine and looks like a mountain rendered in polygons. The sculpture, what Jellitsch calls a “fragmented space description,” and documentation from its creation were all included in an exhibition of the piece.
We’re fascinated by the artistic process and are constantly trying to peek behind the curtain to see how things are made. We’ll take you into the studios of creatives across all disciplines in order to find out exactly where and how they do what they do. Today, the Bushwick workspace of electronic media artist Phillip Stearns—best known for his Tumblr project, The Year of the Glitch.
In August of last year, Animal New York proclaimed glitch art to be “the new punk rock,” comparing its celebration of corrupted, broken-down imagery to punk’s reaction to commercialized music of the time.
If so, then Phillip Stearns, as one of the best-known glitch artists around, is poised to be the next bad-ass art boy—thanks in large part to a Tumblr he started in January 2012 called Year of the Glitch, where he methodically (and painstakingly) posted a picture of a different glitch experiment of his every single day.
From the “Forest for the Trees” series.
By the end of last year, Stearns had been catapulted to the status of being, well, “internet famous.” He’d also turned into a sort of glitch guru—fielding both technical and theoretical questions from his 40,000-odd followers, while actualizing some of his best works from the Tumblr into snuggle-friendly “glitch blankets."
However, Stearns is kind of the last person you would compare to a “punk rocker.” His professorial demeanor (you know the type: quiet yet verbose, always nimbly jumping from abstract theory to abstract theory) when he opened the door to his Bushwick studio revealed a thoughtfulness that went beyond the desire to create aesthetically-pleasing images out of corrupted data.
In fact, most of Stearns’ profuse projects take on a kind of theoretical profundity once he started talking about them, and after our rambling conversation that circled around the ethos of glitch art, new media theories, and his focus on “process,” I realized that Stearns was accomplishing what many of us wish we could do: take a thoughtful and critical stance towards the technologies that rule our lives.
The author with Phillip Stearns in his Bushwick studio.
The Creators Project: What’s the project you’ve worked on in this studio that you’ve been most proud of?
Phillip Stearns: This skeletal sea creature-looking structure is actually a model for Entity, a room-sized installation that was first shown in 2010.
A prototype for Entity, an interactive light and sound installation which is based on neural networks.
It functions like a neural network, in that sensors cause circuits to fire, and those circuits trigger other circuits which are arranged in layers, and so on.
This thing by the door looks like an electronic wind chime…what is it?
It’s actually an AM receiver that picks up frequencies below what we usually use, so it’s emitting this static signal, like a sound of a waterfall off the distance. The lights are triggered by the signals so that they resemble water falling.
Stearns’ light and sound sculpture Deluge consists of 35 hand-made modules that each contains a transistor receiver, an amplifier with a speaker, and 12 LEDs. Together, they create the impression of rain.
The idea was to take this medium of wireless communication and translate it into a system that contains data. And then use that meaningless data that’s being presented as more of a poetic metaphor.
That reminds me of your introduction on your website, where you wrote, “I tend to focus on things that technology, tools and the media themselves become entangled with the message and content.”
Yeah. It’s like post-McLuhan. That’s kind of what happens in a lot of my work.
What about this Game-Boy-looking-thing over here? What does it do?
The game boy case was a gift from a friend. It’s a video synthesizer, so basically I just take analog signals and put them in a position where normal RGB video signals would be.
The Slain Boy VGA Synth,’ a self-made Game Boy synthesizer.
What happens then?
This device imprints audio signals as video… so you see the sounds as a direct visualization. It gets down to the point where it’s just electric signal that you can sculpt into an experience.
The Game Boy synthesizer, closed.
What kinds of hardware are essential to your practice?
I build things from scraps, from the ground up. So it’s not necessarily that I depend on one particular brand or type. Like this thing, it’s crucial to me, but I built it myself.
How did you become interested in making your own video synthesizers?
I was making “computer music,” where I would open up the case and put probes on the motherboard, then take those signals and convert them into sound.
I wanted to do visuals, and the best way I thought was to convert the signals that I was picking up off the board directly into video.
A self-made analog mixing desk and a row of clip lights, both used in numerous feedback-based performances.
So you were playing the computer as a kind of musical instrument?
Yeah, I was using its operating system to open and close files. The climax of the piece was me selecting all of the files, and opening them all. Eventually the computer came to a screeching halt.
That’s kind of a poetic ending, I don’t know. How often does that happen—where your instrument just breaks down at the end of the performance?
It hasn’t happened so much recently, but it’s been more unintentional than intentional. I like the idea of twisting technologies around, and playing them in such a way that reveals what it is they really are.
You have a lot of clip lights lying around. Did you use them at your recent performance at Silent Barn?
Yep. I have loads of clip lights and use them all the time. For example, I built some boxes that allowed me to take audio signals from a mixing board, and convert them into a signal that will turn the lights on. I was translating sounds into light. Maybe I can do a demonstration?
Above: Phillip Stearns demonstrating how he uses a self-made analog mixing desk, clip lights and Solid State Relay technology to translate sound directly into light during a live performance.
So the light is responding to what comes out of the output, and you can control everything with the fader positions. I’m basically treating this digital thing as an acoustic resonator, but because it’s digital you get these very discreet pitches.
And when there’s instability, it bounces back and forth at a very regular rate. But because this is an analog mixing desk, there’s a bit of fluidity in there, so it’s not as robotic as it might otherwise be.
What do you mean by fluidity?
For instance, right now, I’m not touching anything but the system is making its own noise or presence.
Another theme that runs through my work is that even though I’m often in a position of control, I relinquish that to the instrument. It’s less about me operating a device, and more about me putting myself in a position of collaboration with the instrument.
When I perform on instruments that I build, it’s with this idea that they have a key role in the performance, where I work through the curveballs they throw at me.
So your instrument has a sense of urgency?
In a way. Maybe more appropriately, uncertainty.
Is that randomness?
No, it’s not randomness, which is another tricky topic. This is just uncertainty, in that I don’t know the outcome.
Why isn’t randomness as relevant to your work?
Well, randomness implies that there is no form. So we’re talking about uncertainty as a property that leads to randomness, maybe, but randomness sounds too loose. There’s no grounding.
Do you have a musical background?
I did middle school band? [laughs]. And yeah, I studied audio engineering at Boulder, music technology in Denver, and then went to Cal Arts for my masters in composition and integrated media. It really helps with structuring performances around these composition ideas.
Stearns’ studio wish-list: “More storage.”
Would you consider yourself a glitch artist? What’s the glitch scene like in New York?
Because of my Year of the Glitch project, people are introduced to what I’m doing through that small path, but it’s just a small part of my practice.
The glitch community is still pretty fringe—there are maybe a handful of people actively involved who I know, and that is Jeff Donaldson (aka noteNdo), myself, and Daniel Temkin.
A lot of the glitch scene happens online. It’s like, decentralized to its core.
So there isn’t a New York community per se?
No, I think the communities are along different lines.
Can I see where you stash your glitch blankets?
Of course. These are the first prints I started doing, which look like Op art, where simple patterns are overpowered by the vertical weirdness this thing induces. Conceptually, I’m hacking the brains of the cameras—and they’re producing imagery that effectively hacks our brains. It’s like this closed loop.
Blankets woven with glitched-out patterns.
Very cool. Let’s get to Year of the Glitch—your enormously popular Tumblr project. It started as a 2012 resolution, and the idea was to post a new glitch project every single day, right? How exhausting was that—are you glad it’s over?
Yeah [laughs]. But at the same time, now I don’t feel as anchored.
I noticed that you compiled a “Top Ten” of your most successful posts. Why do you think those ten, in particular, resonated with people?
I think the top five were all Tumblr Radar picks, and I have no idea how that algorithm works. The number one post (below) was actually a collection of JPG artifacts, which is what happens when you break the file format to produce different distortions—8 by 8 blocks of pixelated weirdness.
Year of the Glitch’s most popular post of 2012 was a series of JPG artifacts.
You’ve kind of become this guru figure, and frequently answer questions about the glitch practice on Year of the Glitch. What do you think are the biggest obstacles that beginners run into?
The introductory technique is to open a JPG in a word processor. And the next question always is, “I’ve gotten this to work, now what?”
So if I had to guess, it would be fully appreciating that the medium is fluid, and once you have zeros and ones, you can take one file and another and copy and paste this chunk into another one—even if they’re different formats.
Right, so it’s kind of like breaking down mental barriers about what you can or can’t do with a certain technology?
Yeah, the reason why I think this is an issue is because I came into glitch through circuit bending, where one of the biggest barriers is, “What happens if I break this thing?” There’s something physical at stake with circuit bending.
For glitch, you can always copy the file and break the copy. But it’s about figuring out how to take that small chunk that you’ve learned and extract the most out of it, in terms of use and application.
So part of it is not being overwhelmed by the cascading pool of possibilities, and part of it is sitting down and actually figuring out what those are.
Are there other kinds of “ethos” that you think are important to glitch artists? Embracing uncertainty seems pretty crucial.
Yeah, “uncertainty” reflects this acceptance that answers don’t have to be black and white—and that the purpose of asking a question is not necessarily to get an answer, but the value of asking a question in the first place.
Another thing I think glitch artists value is a sense of community, where everyone is sharing their ideas and expertise.
Which is what Year of the Glitch was about, right? That kind of “open source” mentality of collective knowledge?
Yeah! For me, it was about laying everything bare, just saying like, “I’m trying to figure this out as much as everyone else is. I’m going to share everything I know.”
It’s all very technical, but it’s helpful to understand that’s a lot of what happens behind glitch art. The output may be crazy and visually compelling, with this kind of aesthetic hype, but getting down to the processes can be very dry.
Learning how the sausage is made! So, we’ve got “uncertainty” and “community” so far. Anything else?
I think glitch art has its value is in this idea of process being important, as a metaphor for other kinds of cultural activities, and the values for the world beyond the technology.
Now that Year of the Glitch is over, what are you planning to do in 2013?
I’m keeping the site up to answer all these questions I’ve gotten, but I’m pretty glitched out. I’m trying to focus back on my sound practice, which has fallen on the wayside.
I also have larger non-electronics based works I might start doing. So this idea of mechanical reproduction in context to the economic climate, and this notion of tension not imposed by the outside, but rather, structural implosion—these ideas are coming together using pulleys and rope [laughs].
I’m also performing at Transmediale, doing a show in Denver, and a visit up to L.A. to present on L.A.’s glitch work. Then, I’m heading out to Amsterdam in the spring to do a residency with STEIM (Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music).
Nearly four years after his debut Drift showed the world that there are different amalgamations of the L.A. sound than Flying Lotus, Nosaj Thing returns with his sophomore album Home, a journey further into the ambient realm he brimmed on with his debut. The first taste of home was the track above, “Eclipse/Blue,” a single that hinted his sound was moving into further abstraction. Subsequent bits and pieces revealed that, while atmosphere is the central effect of many of these soundscapes, Nosaj isn’t afraid to drop a deep beat or two.
Though his current sound is quite meditative, in his early days Nosaj Thing gained plenty of new listeners by remixing an eclectic array of songs and turning them into bangers, somehow converting all the varying styles into a sound that is distinctly his own. We all remember his treatment of The xx’s “Islands,” but we pulled together a few of the less widespread Nosaj Thing remixes that you might not have heard—the Busta Rhymes edit that he tends to occasionally drop in live sets; a chop of a track collab track between MF Doom and Plastic Little; a Jamie xx remix of a Nosaj track; and a little heard remix of Daedelus’ “It’s Madness.” Then, to top it off, a video of his incredible KEXP performance, where you can really see how he operates the MPD.
The closest thing to an art installation that the mall in my suburban town ever had was a stuffed french fry slide, with a hamburger play gym, and a milk-shake-turned-play-house which you could hide in when your parents were trying to drag you away from this oversized Happy Meal wonderland. Needless to say, I was not raised in Dubai, and although my vision of what belongs at the mall may be Hot Topic, Claire’s, and McFlurrys, The Dubai Mall brings a different (i.e. classier) vision to the authentically American concept of the shopping mall.
Commissioned by the Chalhoub Group for the Dubai Mall’s newest shoe mecca (96,000 square feet of shoe retailers) called Level Shoe District, United Visual Artists (UVA) have created a new installation titled Fragment. This installation is over 25 feet tall and will hang from the ceiling in one of the mall’s atriums. The piece consists of 421 eight-sided frames and forms an inverted pyramid.
You might remember UVA from their Coachella Stage in 2011, or Origin, their installation at The Creator’s Project: New York 2011. Their work with responsive light is unprecedentedly innovative, and Fragment is no exception, filled with hundred of light bulbs which will create a play of light within Dubai’s Level Shoe District. The piece has not yet been installed, and is scheduled to be officially unveiled in March, coinciding with Design Days, and the Dubai Art Fair, where UVA will also be exhibiting their work.
As for the concept behind the piece, UVA describe Fragment as “a site specific installation that investigates our (in)ability to correctly interpret the surrounding environment. The work continues the studio’s ongoing study into scientific models of nature and their experiments in utilizing light as a formable material.” Is the Shoe District a correct interpretation of the American shopping center? I don’t know. But UVA’s Fragment will undoubtedly make for a prettier piece of decoration than my beloved jumbo Happy Meal.
We recently came across this inventive practice of long exposure photography and were wowed by these images that show six months of action at a time. If the average picture is worth a thousand words, then by our estimation each of these images is worth 180,000 words. But more importantly, while most of us marvel at its artistic merit, I had a more functional purpose in mind.
You see, someone has been stealing my mail. I don’t know who it is, or even if someone is stealing my mail at all, but the bottom line is that I’m suspicious that someone is stealing my mail and I’ve wanted to do something about it for more than three billing cycles. I can’t afford to buy security cameras, what with my exorbitant action figure expenses, and our superintendent has strictly prohibited me from setting any more booby traps in the mailroom. And so, I was left with no option… until I heard about Matt Bigwood’s long exposure pinhole technique.
This is the perfect tool to catch my mail thief because I have plenty of beer cans (I don’t really drink, but luckily everyone around me borders on alcoholism) and the rest of the materials are pretty simple to acquire: a pin, photographic paper, some black cardboard, and lots of black tape. The idea is that I just leave this thing in the mailroom for a couple of days, and if i see someone who’s not wearing my signature bright red jacket accessing my mailbox, I’ll know that there’s a culprit.
There are a lot of holes in my plan: First of all, with this long exposure, if someone even walks by too close to my mailbox, my suspicion will break its restraints and run screaming into the front of my brain. Second, there’s not much natural light in the mailroom, so who knows if it will even work at all. Nevertheless, pinhole cameras are so simple to make that I might as well try.
Finished product looks like garbage? Perfect!
Remove the top of the can with a can opener. Use the tape and cardboard to create a light tight lid. Use the pin to punch a hole into the side of the can. Put a little piece of tape over the hole (this is your shutter). Curl a piece of photographic paper and put it into the can. Make sure theres a gap in the paper where the hole is. Then install it wherever you want to take a photo. For full details, check out Justin Quinnell’s awesome video.
When Bigwood does it, he comes out with beautiful images that capture the serenity of their subjects and provoke thought about the passage of time and our perception of it.
And when I do it, I catch my mail thief! There he is! Get him!
If you haven’t yet tried out our Facebook art project in collaboration with Sticky Monster Lab, SOFTlab, and Sosolimited, then you can check it out here. The idea is to turn your Facebook profile into a 3D printed sculpture, using the data from your account to inform the contours, shapes, and personalities that make up the different artworks.
You can turn yourself into a monster with its own ecosystem, create a geode rock crystal based on your relationships, or transform the text from your profile into a jokey horoscope.
Once you’ve tinkered with these applications and turned your account into a bespoke artwork, you can print the results out through Shapeways to get a permanent, physical interpretation of your online life.
We’re giving people the chance to get their print out for free!
3D printing seems to be gathering more and more pace as the months go by. What this year holds in store for this technology, we can but speculate. But one thing that you can be sure of happening, or at least being attempted, is Dutch design company Universe Architecture building a house using a 3D printer.
It sounds like the stuff of pipe dreams, but the designers aim to create the house section by section using the giant D-Shape printer with the resulting structure resembling a Möbius band, looping round from one end to the other. The group will join forces with Enrico Dini, the man who developed the D-Shape printer, along with artist Rinus Roelofs, in what they’re saying will be a year and a half build, to be completed in 2014.
The Landscape House, as it’s called, will be printed out in 6 × 9 meter pieces and 3ders reports that Dini has suggested printing out the form of the house only, then filling it with fiber reinforced concrete to ensure it’ll be strong enough.
Images: Universe Architecture
If you’re a newbie to the idea of 3D printing, you can watch our introductory documentary on the technology, below.
As a symbol of the future, the hovering car is hard to beat—at least it is when it comes to Hollywood. But even though we’re living in futuristic times with talk of mining asteroids and people on the subway wearing glasses that can augment their vision, there’s still no sign of cars that levitate above the ground. * sigh *
Ah well, we’ll have to make do with photographer Renaud Marion’s series Air Drive, which imagines what some classic cars—the Chevrolet, Cadillac, and Camaro—might look like if they lost the wheels and started floating magically in the air instead. Safe to say they look great, allowing their timeless designs to shine even more.
If you think about making art with an iPhone, you probably imagine some kind of app-based work, but Japanese artist Turi Endo uses the device to build Pepper’s ghost-inspired illusions. Using prisms constructed on top of the phone, he creates animations that look like 3D holograms floating above the phone’s screen.
The trick is achieved by playing animations on the phone’s screen, which are then projected through the prism to give the illusion that the animation is suspended in midair. The animations are either Japanese letters or look like little enlarged microscopic entities, or perhaps strange sea creatures.
Endo unveils his secrets in the video below, showing how he builds this intricate optical setup for his captivating Luminogeist series.
Each week we chat about the tools of the trade with one outstanding creative to find out exactly how they do what they do. The questions are always the same, the answers, not so much. This week: Maxence Parache. Click here for more User Preferences Tech Q&As.
The Creators Project: Who are you and what do you do?
Maxence Parache: I’m a French multidisciplinary designer and digital artist. I create interactive installations and design compelling user experiences based on physical computing. I like to see people amazed by new technologies, when they’re talking about something “magical” they just experienced. They speak to the piece and with an equal force, the piece speaks back. It’s all about creating a dialogue with technology. I strongly believe in open source, sharing knowledge, freedom of information, and I’m looking forward to working on future technologies, integrated devices, and meaningful user experiences. People have already started to create and personalize their own devices, “Atoms are the new bits.”
Museum goers at the Geffrye Museum in London interact with Parache’s installation, Hyper(Reality).
The Creators Project: What kind of hardware do you use?
Maxence Parache: I’m using a Macbook Pro running both OSX and Windows. My treasure chest also contains a Kinect, webcams, a projector, DSLR, GoPro, an Arduino card with all kind of sensors, as well as everything you’d find in an good workshop. A 3D printer would be nice. The future of human-computer interaction is looking bright with new revolutionary and affordable devices being announced every year. The developer version of the Leap Motion is already shipping and other technologies such as Kickstarter-funded Oculus Rift, Raspberry Pi or haptic touchscreens will be, among other things, new toys to play with.
The Creators Project: What kind of software do you use?
Maxence Parache: I’m using a broad range of softwares but I often collaborate with good creative technologists when I need heavy coding skills. You can’t learn C++ in a week. If I have to give a few names, I’d say openFrameworks, Arduino, Processing, Unity3D, Ableton Live, and MadMapper. The hard part is getting all these softwares to communicate with each other on the same machine. Also like most designers, I’m using the Adobe Creative Suite to create content.
A user’s experience of Hyper(Reality).
The Creators Project: What piece of equipment can you simply not live without?
Maxence Parache: I’m not a phone person, so probably my laptop, passport, and a good pair of shoes.
The Creators Project: If money were no object, how would you change your current setup?
Maxence Parache: If money were no object, I’d restart the Death Star construction, of course. On a more serious note, a lot of new technologies are now affordable, which encourages people to tinker, personalize, and just be more creative. Money is important for commercial projects, but prototyping an idea can be far more creative and successful. Expensive commercial devices are an issue— no one would start playing with a brand new smartphone and a soldering iron, and that’s something we need to change somehow. For example I’ve heard of people attaching their old iPhone to a weather balloon to take pictures from the edge of space. Now, that’s the kind of project I’m talking about. Open source communities or the MIT Media Lab are showing the way.
The Creators Project: Is there any piece of technology that inspired you to take the path you did?
Maxence Parache: Most probably the Kinect. Before it was released, I was already working on a basic 3D scanning setup using Structured Light , created by Kyle McDonald for the openFrameworks community. The results were basic but encouraging. Then the Kinect came out, and it blew my mind.
Immersed into this dream-like virtual space, the user gradually discovers the collection of curiosities, creating a new sensorial experience.
The Creators Project: What is your favorite piece of technology from your childhood?
Maxence Parache: I grew up in the countryside so I used to build stuff with my own hands. But since tree houses weren’t connected yet, I’d say my first PC and everything created by Nintendo until the Wii came out.
The Creators Project: What fantasy piece of technology would you like to see invented?
Maxence Parache: Light speed transportation and affordable space tourism. I’m sure I’m not the only one who would like to see a sunrise from the rings of Saturn right now. Cassini is one lucky space probe. In design, there are still so many things to invent and develop. Technology isn’t just about the latest geeky product that you can’t afford but rather a deep understanding of human needs and behaviors. I’ve seen amazing projects that use solar power to clean polluted water or physically print dishes and tools out of sand. These are the kind of projects I would like to see in everyone’s hands.
Hyper(Reality), a vision created by Maxence Parache.
While these images might appear distorted, you likely recognize most of their subjects behind a thin, disorienting veil. In his series Kontaktbogenbilder, German photographer Thomas Kellner envisions famous landmarks from all over the world through a distorted lens, sectionally rearranging the angle of the photos, each of which is like a large pixel within the composition. The effect is like seeing the object from several perspectives at once, allowing the recognition of these iconic structures to register before realizing the distortion before your eyes.
Kellner’s works are on display at Kunstverein in Bad Nauheim, Germany until February 17th.
