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Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

Dismaland: Banksy’s Disappointing Dystopian Bemusement Park

22 Aug

[ By Steph in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

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Excited ticket holders rush past sullen-faced guards in mouse ears to gain access to Banksy’s Dismaland, a dilapidated, depressing ‘bemusement park’ that’s far from the happiest place on earth. Contained within a derelict seaside swimming complex, the attraction takes everything you love about Disneyland and subverts it into a dystopian vision where nothing works quite like it should, and whatever can go wrong probably will.

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Visitors pass through a faux security screening complete with cardboard x-ray machines before submitting to a real search, with guards ironically checking for spray paint to make sure no vandals compromise the strange scene Banksy has curated. Inside, they’re greeted by a structure resembling a post-apocalyptic Cinderella’s castle, a giant pinwheel tangled with plastic and the grim reaper as the sole rider at a bumper car attraction.

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A photo backdrop labeled ‘selfie hole’ tells you what it’s for and makes a statement on the person using it at the same time. Step past the ‘No Entry’ gate in the fairytale castle and you’ll be treated to CCTV-like footage of Cinderella and her prince on screens before coming upon the wreckage of her overturned carriage, paparazzi flashbulbs going off in a frenzy deliberately echoing the death of Princess Diana. Everything is designed to be a colossal let-down.

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Abandoned for nearly a century, the 2.5-acre site has just the right grimy atmosphere for Banksy’s display, which includes almost none of his own work. The artists who collaborated on the project and have works featured inside include Jenny Holzer, Damien Hirst and Jimmy Cauty. The park will be open every day through September 27th, with performances by Run the Jewels, Pussy Riot, Massive Attack and others scheduled each Friday. Tickets are £3 on the Dismaland website.

Photos by Christopher Jobson at This is Colossal

[ By Steph in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

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Liberty City: Inside an Urban Governmental Drone Test Complex

20 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Travel & Urban Exploration. ]

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If you have ever wondered how and where the Department Homeland Security evaluates drones for real-world applications, this Freedom of Information Act request reveals some of the secrets behind the operations taking place at one of these rather mysterious locations. Not to be confused with its video game namesake, tracing back to Grand Theft Auto’s own digital Liberty City, this real-world test site is fascinating to learn about remotely but not somewhere you want to have an actual vehicular adventure.

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For years, the government has been testing drones for everything from monitoring infrastructure and special events to patrolling harbors and supporting first responders. Run by Robotic Aircraft for Public Safety (RAPS), Liberty City and sites like it let local, regional and national governments deploy different models of drone and decide which best suit their needs. Like Gravesend in the UK (pictured above), officers and troops are also called in on the ground to interact in these remarkably complete but staged environments.

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Variegated urban terrains help those overseeing the tests determine a drone’s ability to identify key objects and individuals in the built environment, distinguish assailants and perpetrators in complex situations and track persons through challenging architectural landscapes. Simulations revolve around everything from ordinary robberies to hostage situations and terrorist attacks. The goal, ultimately, is to figure out what (completely or partially) autonomous vehicle technologies will work both generally and around specific purposes, for applications ranging from emergency search-and-rescue to broader everyday surveillance. While the work they are doing in these places is not classified as such, it is still highly secretive and much of it still remains undisclosed after years of inquiry.

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Submitted via MuckRock, the FOIA request behind the details featured here sheds light on the reasons and methods behind these processes and places. Per Shawn Musgrave, “The broad objective of RAPS is to determine whether drones can play a practical role in a broad range of public safety deployments. Such applications include law enforcement, firefighting, disaster response, and search-and-rescue. The RAPS testing program evaluates each drone model for ease of operation, durability and performance in simulated scenarios. Reviewers compile their findings into a database for first responders nationwide to use when weighing a drone purchase.”

[ By WebUrbanist in Travel & Urban Exploration. ]

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Skate Park To Go: Duo Designs Mobile Modular Setup

20 Aug

[ By Steph in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

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Skateboarding isn’t classified as a real sport in the Netherlands, but one duo decided to take the resulting lack of decent official skate parks into their own hands with a guerrilla solution. Now, legally or not, virtually any public space can become a skate park thanks to a series of modular DIY components by Martijn Hartwig and Dario Goldbach.

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The JIRAJIRA project is the duo’s final work as graphic design graduates at Willem de Kooning Academy, and consists of nine hand-painted ramps, quarter pipes and benches that can be loaded onto rolling platforms and transported to any location within Rotterdam. Dutch artists Leon Karen and Vincent Blok were commissioned to decorate each element, turning the collective park into a sort of portable gallery.

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Keeping the whole setup mobile is ideal, since the cops are likely to come along and tell you to get lost. The modular parts are designed to work in conjunction with objects typically found in parks and city squares, like trash cans and benches. Since skaters are going to make use of any surfaces they can find anyway, possibly including some of the city’s temptingly curvy war monuments, it’s a decent compromise with the authorities.

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Rotterdam’s only skate park, a metallic monstrosity known as the Westblaak, closed down after being deemed unsafe. In a profile on the city’s scene, skateboarding magazine Kingpin says that since nearly the entire city was destroyed during World War II, most of the streets are smooth and there’s plenty of eminently skateable new construction. “The only downside would be that The Netherlands is pretty much flat, so not too many stairs and or rails,” they note, so clearly the JIRAJIRA project is filling an underserved niche.

[ By Steph in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

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Twisting History: 40+ Surreal Altered Vintage Photographs

20 Aug

[ By Steph in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

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Many of us have picked up old black and white photographs and wondered what their backstories are, but these artists take history into their own hands, altering the images to produce new narratives. In the following 40+ revised photographic histories, new elements are combined with the mysterious original images, giving them a sense of surreality that could then serve as the basis of an entire book if the creative chain were to continue.

Black-and-White to Colorfully Surreal by Jane Long

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A figure in a found black-and-white photograph catches artist Jane Long’s eye and she begins to envision them in a new setting, giving them a story, making them somehow less anonymous. She digitally restores and colorizes each image and combines them with other photographs to create entirely new, surreal compositions. “I wanted people to see these figures as real people, more than just an old photograph. Adding color completely changes our perception of images.”

Library of Congress Images Get Horror Makeover by Jim Kazanjian

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Historical photographs archived by the Library of Congress are a lot more interesting in the hands of digital artist Jim Kazanjian, who combines them in unexpected ways to create terrifying architectural creations straight out of a horror movie. “I’ve chosen photography as a medium because of the cultural misunderstanding that it has a sort of built-in objectivity. This allows me to set up a visual tension within the work, to make it resonate and lure the viewer further inside. My current series is inspired by the classic horror literature of H.P. Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood and similar authors.”

Crazy Hyper-Colored Collages by Eugenia Loli

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These smash-ups of vividly colored vintage photographs juxtapose entirely unexpected elements, like gigantic children riding tortoises through a city park or a war plane dropping candy instead of bombs. “I start by finding a ‘base’ image, and then I sort of build around it. Sometimes I have a concrete idea of what I want to do, and sometimes I leave the images to fit together by themselves,” says artist Eugenia Loli. “Sometimes, after a lot of juxtaposing, the ‘base’ image might not even be a part of the final collage. Most of the time I try to ‘say’ something important via my art, but other times it’s just about doodling.”

Bizarre Details Painted Onto Photos by Colin Batty

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Can you imagine what the original subjects of these photos would think if they saw artist Colin Batty’s alterations? They might be a tad disturbed to see their own heads on fire or replaced by gigantic eyeballs. The artist paints with acrylics directly onto cabinet cards from the early 1900s.

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Twisting History 40 Surreal Altered Vintage Photographs

[ By Steph in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

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City Museum: Abandoned Warehouse Full of Caves, Rides & Slides

19 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

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Somewhere between a huge funhouse, playground and circus, the City Museum of St. Louis may be the most entertaining and interactive urban architectural experiment in the world. And if you are not having a good time, you can always hop on the 10-story slide, a remnant of the structure’s days as a shoe factory (originally designed to send products down the side of the building).

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Eclectic from its stylings to its offerings, this unique place features everything from recycled buses and airplanes to giant multi-story slides and artificial caverns as well as more conventional kid-friendly fun in the form of skate parks and ball pits.

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Various other imported, salvaged and upcycled oddities can be found throughout, including a vault and safety deposit boxes from a Chicago bank. And the place is constantly changing, being reconfigured and hacked away at by the Cassilly Crew.

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What started inside of a derelict structure in the late 1990s has burst from the walls of the building, featuring an array of exterior ‘exhibits’ as well. Visitors can climb ramps, bridges and tunnels to access a high-hanging plane and other repurposed spaces. Up on the roof sits a small Ferris Wheel while a bus hangs over the edge of the building (and of course: people are welcome to climb inside).

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The owners boast that they are “always building,” and Gallery Hip summarizes the strange paradoxes of this ever-changing place: “popular among residents and tourists, the museum bills itself as an ‘eclectic mixture of children’s playground, funhouse, surrealistic pavilion, and architectural marvel.’ Visitors are encouraged to feel, touch, climb on, and play in the various exhibits.” Or, as Colossal describes it: “hundreds of feet of tunnels that traverse from floor to floor, an aquarium, ball pits, a shoe lace factory, a circus arts facility, restaurants, and even a bar… because why not?”

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Faced with this amazing place, one is left to wonder: would such an unusual endeavor be approved of were it being started from scratch today, or would safety-minded citizens suck the fun out before it got started? Like Adventure Playgrounds, also more popular in an era now past, it is hard to imagine this kind of project getting off the ground, but thankfully there is a precedent: it is hard to argue with the success of the City Museum.

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

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Synth Series: Yarn Installation Represents Music in 3D

18 Aug

[ By Steph in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

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An abandoned building becomes the setting for a surreal installation of colorful criss-crossing yarn as artist duo Toki seeks to render music in physical form. Recent architecture grads Toluwalase Rufai and Khai Grubbs present their visual soundscape as part of their ‘Synth’ series, temporarily altering public space “through establishing rhythm, movement, transparency, and ephemerality.”

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The setting is a dilapidated building on the corners of Channing and Reed streets in Washington, D.C. It took the artists two days to install an undisclosed amount of yarn, winding it around support columns and occasionally using nailed-on boards for extra support. The project was completed guerrilla-style, and D.C. residents who tried to get in to see it in person report that it has since been cut down, with ‘No Trespassing’ signs posted on the property.

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The first yarn piece Toki created was carried out in a more accessible place, enabling the public to watch the piece take form over a period of three days. They hoped that occupying an abandoned building would “engage the viewer on an urban exploration… inciting a sense of wonder.” This edition of the series may not have been up long, but there will be more installed throughout the Washington D.C. metropolitan area.

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“Our initial decision to create this series was more impulsive than planned, and influenced by the desire to express the music we hear three-dimensionally,” say the artists. “These creations allow us to represent the sound of music as physical worlds. They start with lines of distinct colors you can follow and the more you immerse yourself, the more they blend in and the more you surrender to the symphony of color. Similar to music, the space we create allows you to slip between worlds, to be in two places simultaneously.”

[ By Steph in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

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Livin’ in a Lair: 12 Villainous-Looking Futuristic Houses

18 Aug

[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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Every one of these somewhat ominous-looking futuristic homes is just waiting for its big Hollywood break as the lair from which some supervillain hatches nefarious plans. In fact, some of them have already been used as filming locations, or got their inspiration directly from a sci-fi series. While most Bond-style villains might live in cliff-clinging complexes or hidden underground houses, these particular residences look a little more alien.

Sci-Fi Style Desert House in California

Combining science fiction aesthetics with organic and sustainable materials, this home by Kendrick Bangs Kellogg features an exoskeleton-like stepped roof supported by 26 concrete piers. Everything about the residence is sculptural in nature, inside and out, and it’s easy to imagine it being a setting for a futuristic film. Completed in 1993 and located in Joshua Tree, it went up for sale for $ 3 million in 2014.

Spaceship House by Zaha Hadid

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Designed by Zaha Hadid for supermodel Naomi Campbell’s Russian billionaire boyfriend, ‘Capital Hill Residence’ is a sculptural glass and concrete creation with a central tower looking out over the woods from the hillside. Maybe it’s a combination of the cold materials, strange layout, binocular-like tower and the Moscow setting, but this has ‘super villain’ written all over it.

Villa Kogelhof

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Set mostly underground, the only partially visible profile of Villa Kogelhof by Paul de Ruiter is required to blend into the landscape as part of the deal to build on a protected habitat. The entrance, parking for six cars, storage, bathroom and a workspace are all subterranean, while the floating glass box holds the living spaces. The home is self-sufficient, generating its own energy and recycling its trash.

Spaceship Prefab by NOEM

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A client with a fondness for Star Wars wanted a home that would be quick and relatively inexpensive to construct, raised above ground level to enjoy views of his plot in central Spain. NOEM architecture created a polished metallic pod elevated on a metal frame and accessible via a restored airplane stairway. A futuristic wall-mounted panel controls all the functions of the house, including automatically raising and lowering shutters depending on the time of day or temperature.

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Livin In A Lair 12 Villainous Looking Futuristic Houses

[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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Slide & Hide: Stealth Staircases Save Space in Micro-Suites

17 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]

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Maximizing usable space in a series of compact short-term apartments, these retractable steps slip back into a wall, all but disappearing beneath lofted bedroom areas when not needed. Drawers and other storage slots are designed around the dimensions of the zigzag shape created by the profile of the stairs while the railing above sits flush with the bedroom space divider.

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Driving these space-saving retrofits is a desire to make hotel rooms feel more like homes, particularly since many guests of Zoku in Amsterdam end up staying for longer than a typical traveler would.

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Each of the 133 units (270 square feet each) redesigned by Concrete features a similar set of unconventional amenities: a secret desk tucked beneath the bed, a slatted wood divider providing both privacy and light to the bedroom area above, hidden stairs that slide into the wall for access and a pair of suspended gymnast hoops hanging from the ceiling.

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A combination of black and white, wood and bamboo, ceramic and organic elements help the spaces feel more variegated, like a house populated with individual furnishings and objects over time rather than a place made by a corporate hotel.

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From the owners and architects: “A room at Zoku is much more than just a hotel room. It is a spacious micro-apartment. As space is becoming scarcer in urban areas, the way we use it sustainably to meet long-term accommodation requirements is more and more relevant. Smart solutions that create the opportunity to use less square metres and facilitate 24/7 multifunctional use are needed.”

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]

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Gone Fur Good: 10 Abandoned Petting Zoos & Game Parks

16 Aug

[ By Steve in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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Generations of adults cherish childhood memories of these now-abandoned petting zoos. As for the animals fed & petted there, maybe they remember, too…

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White Pines Deer Park near Oregon, Illinois is remembered fondly by several generations of kids who enjoyed feeding the 200-odd deer kept in a spacious enclosure. “It’s excellent,” stated 8-year-old T.J. Turner in the summer of 1992. “Deer come right up to you. Outside you never get to pet them or see them.” Inside too, nowadays.

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Flickr user BillsExplorations visited what remains of White Pines Deer Park in February of 2013, about two decades after the park closed in the mid-1990’s. Though it adjoins White Pines Forest State Park (an Illinois Nature Preserve since 2001), Bill didn’t see any deer roaming about – blame it on carelessly disposed-of Polaroid film waste.

Gotta Flat

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Flickr user Quinn Dombrowski (quinn.anya) brings us this curious “Flat Petting Zoo”… says they sell furs there. Better not tell PETA or Elaine Benes.

Benson’s Hedges

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Benson’s Wild Animal Farm in Hudson, New Hampshire, opened in 1926 and closed in 1987 following a decades-long decline. In 2009, the town of Hudson acquired the property and it’s gradually being redeveloped as a public park and nature area sans petting zoo.

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Some of the much-deteriorated old buildings including the Old Lady in the Shoe’s house are to be restored though non-native plants, animals and animal-petters are no longer welcome.

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Gone Fur Good 10 Abandoned Petting Zoos Game Parks

[ By Steve in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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McBike: Meal Tote Helps Cyclists Carry Burger, Fries & Drink

16 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

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Solving a series of long-standing issues associated with taking out the typical fast food trifecta, this clever carrying case is a useful alternative to Happy Meal boxes, bags and cupholders that work better for cars than people traveling on foot or by bike.

The solution is more subtle than it might first appear – yes, it solves the timeless question of how to hold a drink as well as a meal, but it also separates out the warm foods (french fries and hamburger above) from the cool drink (soda or shake suspended below), then unfolds into a ready-to-eat spread. Thin cardboard makes the entire container easy to collapse as well.

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Customers can hold the package in their hand or slip it over the handlebars and continue cycling unencumbered. Targeted initially toward markets in two bicycle-friendly cities (Copenhagen, Denmark and Medellin, Colombia), the company is also looking to give these a go in Amsterdam, Holland and Tokyo, Japan.

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For now, it is a trial redesign that is as much about marketing toward young urban bikers, but if the packaging is sound there seems to be no obvious reason for McDonalds not to ultimately deploy these around the world (and for other fast food chains to follow suit).

360Photography

Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

Dismaland: Banksy’s Disappointing Dystopian Bemusement Park

Liberty City: Inside an Urban Governmental Drone Test Complex

Skate Park To Go: Duo Designs Mobile Modular Setup

Twisting History: 40+ Surreal Altered Vintage Photographs

Black-and-White to Colorfully Surreal by Jane Long

Library of Congress Images Get Horror Makeover by Jim Kazanjian

Crazy Hyper-Colored Collages by Eugenia Loli

Bizarre Details Painted Onto Photos by Colin Batty

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Twisting History 40 Surreal Altered Vintage Photographs

City Museum: Abandoned Warehouse Full of Caves, Rides & Slides

Synth Series: Yarn Installation Represents Music in 3D