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Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

Secret Skies: See Starry Nights Normally Hidden by City Lights

03 May

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

sky glow

With the rise of urbanization, an estimated 80% of the world population has never seen the Milky Way – and while rural dwellers see thousands of stars on a typical night, those in cities typically see a few dozen at best.

night sky la overloook

time lapse anitmation

As part of their Skyglow project, astrophotographers Harun Mehmedinovic and Gavin Heffernan taking pictures from around the country in darkened areas where the night sky is visible, in some cases turning them into true-to-life composites showing what the skies above cities would look like with the lights turned off. In other instances, their timelapses show the rotation of Earth against the sky.

night sky images

night sky timelapse

night urban swirl

Urban light pollution is not just a problem of lost views – it has been known to interfere with bird migrations and other animal behavior, not to mention sleep disorders and disease correlations in humans. Cities like Phoenix, Arizona, are trying to take back the night sky, dimming non-essential artificial lights to cut energy consumption.

You can support the project on Kickstarter for rewards as well: “SKYGLOW will also explore the evolution of our relationship with astronomy over time, including the impact of stars on imagination, mythology, and the sciences. By visiting incredible archaeoastronomy locations like Canyons of the Ancients, Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde, SKYGLOW will explore the relationship between ancient civilizations and the galaxies they worshiped. Can we learn from them? “

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Perfect Pitch: Impossibly Starry City Skies in Blackest Night

There is simply no way to see the starry skies above the typical urban metropolis – but one photographer has found a way to simulate the stunning potential …
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Glow-in-the-Dark Home Furniture Lights Up Nights

These lounge chairs, bars, bathroom counters, plant pots, textiles and wallpaper designs feature integrated lights, glowing in the dark when the lights go out.
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Sucking Smog: Electronic Vacuum Cleaner Clears City Skies

It sounds so preposterous and yet is sufficiently plausible that its designer is now talking to the mayor of Beijing about how to develop for urban use in this …
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Lending a Hand: Selfie Arm Lets You Fake Your Friends

02 May

[ By Steph in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

selfie arm 5

Never mind that given its skin tone, this arm-shaped selfie stick kind of makes it look like you’re dragging a corpse around. Mounting your cell phone onto the end of it to shamelessly selfie away in public places might make you look ridiculous to bystanders while you’re doing it, but at least in the finished photos, you appear to be having a great time with a living companion.

selfie arm 4

selfie arm 3

Artists Aric Snee and Justin Crowe collaborated on the ‘Selfie Arm,’ which is exactly what it sounds like. Poking fun at the self-photography phenomenon and examining the relationships between humans and technology, the device is thoroughly tongue-in-cheek. Ten limited edition, signed copies of the prototype will be made.

selfie arm 2

selfie arm 1

Lightweight and portable thanks to its fiberglass construction, the Selfie Arm also makes for a conversation-starting accessory if you walk around with it poking out of your bag, so maybe it can actually help you meet a human companion who will take photos for you – no fake severed limbs required.

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Gravity: Augmented Reality Tablet Lets You Draw Ideas in 3D

Using a handheld stylus and tablet set combined with an existing augmented reality headset, this invention allows users to sketch in three dimensions and see …
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Impossible Gadget Turns Digital Photos Into Analog Prints

Missing Polaroid photos? The company that bought the world’s last Polaroid film factory has invented a gadget to make iPhone photos into Polaroid prints.
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Almost There: Signs from the Near Future May Blow Your Mind

A few are far-fetched, but most of these notices are shocking in part because they are nearly believable – some may be an accepted reality within the …
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Nocturnal Field Trips: 7 World Wonders Best Explored at Night

01 May

[ By WebUrbanist in 7 Wonders Series & Travel. ]

night light art

When planning out world travel, one typically dwells on destinations more than times, but some of the best sights can only been seen at a particular point in the day or, in the case of these marvels, at night.

fieldtrip

WebUrbanist is pleased to announce a new partnership with Google Field Trip, bringing some of our best and brightest travel articles to their mobile platform, allowing you to find hidden wonders of the world wherever (and whenever) you may be. In this article, we have teamed up to highlight seven amazing places to visit by night, each offering special surprises to the nocturnally inclined.

World’s Largest Urban Bat Colony in Austin, Texas

bridge bat experience austin

At dusk, people flock to watch the emergence of 1.5 million bats from beneath the Congress Avenue Bridge, designed and built in 1980 in a way that inadvertantly turned out to provide an ideal roost for a particular breed of flying nocturnal predators.

bridge bat sign

Often under-appreciated or even feared, these night flyers consume between 10,000 and 20,000 pounds of food each evening, helping them earn their keep. Today, there is even a dedicated Statesman Bat Observation Center from which visitors are encouraged to experience the spectacle.

World’s Largest Ice & Snow Festival in Harbin, China

snow festival by day

snow festival at night

By far the biggest such event in the world, the Harbin International Ice & Snow Sculpture Festival consists of huge works of art and architecture that truly come into their own once the sun sets and glowing lights behind and within bricks of ice come to life.

harbin snow festival building

snow ice festival staircase

Using swing saws to cut ice directly from an adjacent river, artists then turn the frozen building blocks into human, animal and mythical figures as well as huge staircases and structures. Among other honors and awards, a snow sculpture featured at the festival holds the world’s record for size at 750 feet by 28 feet (13,000 cubic meters of snow). Other similarly-impressive global ice festivals can be found in Japan, Canada and Norway as well.

Synchronous Firefly Swarms near Knoxville, Tennessee

night lightning bug sync

lightning bug flying art

Fireflies can be a wonderful sight regardless of the species, but one rare type in particular (Photinus Carolinus), is even more special than its cousins: the so-called Synchronous Firefly swarms light up in unison, pulsing every few seconds at the exact same time.

synchronous firefly swarms

At Great Smoky Mountains National Park, viewers can buy tickets in advance and be taken by shuttle to special viewing areas from which to observe these lightning bugs. Within the park, 18 other species of firefly can also be found, but only one whose constituents almost all flash simultaneously.

Ghost Ship Water Hologram in Amsterdam, Holland

amsterdam light festival ship

A maritime marvel in more ways than one, this 3D optical illusion involves two intersecting planar projections beamed onto perpendicular planes of vertical water.

amsterdam maritime ghost boat

amsterdam light vessel

Created for the Amsterdam Light Festival by VisualSkin, the resulting real-life rendering looks like a 17th-century seafaring vessel seemingly held in stasis and composed of water and light. The effect, naturally, works best at night, turning a fountain by day into a marvelously surprising evening display.

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Nocturnal Field Trips 7 World Wonders Best Explored At Night

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Record-Setting Cities: 7 Urban Wonders of the Modern World

Unbelievable as it may sound, there are those who track urban wonders of all kinds – from the narrowest to the most windy streets of the world and more.
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Buried Cities: 7 (More!) Underground Wonders of the World

Humans burrow into the Earth out of anything from necessity to superstition, driven by coincidence or coerced by circumstance.
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Abandoned Cities: 7 Deserted Wonders of the Modern World

From small towns to entire cities, here are some of the most amazing, strange and surreal urban abandonments of the post-modern world.
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No Exit: Bricked Train Door Blocks German Subway Commuters

01 May

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

brick blocked train car

Presumed a prank at first by online skeptics, authorities have since confirmed that these precisely-stacked cinder blocks were indeed carefully assembled and bonded together to fully block the door of an S-Bahn train in Hamburg.

brick blocked train line

Placed inside the actual sliding doors, the bricks proved a surprise when the aperture slide open to reveal the blockage. Passengers who managed to board before the intervention was reported were forced to exit at an upcoming station while an investigation was performed and the problem ultimately fixed.

bricked train interior view

While some may be amused and no one was trapped inside the car, blocked by blocks, the impacts were significant for those faced with cleaning up after this vandalism. The train was routed to a depot and the wall carefully broken down piece by piece, the story ending 12 hours and an estimated 10,000 dollars later.

bricked subway car line

With no sign of the perpetrators, the biggest clue is the professionalism with which the wall was assembled, apparently by a team of people with construction expertise. With no one claiming credit, overtly or anonymously, one is left to wonder whether some reference to the Berlin Wall was intended or if this was an attempt at some other kind of art or message.

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Subway Parasite: Stealth Projector Lights Up Train Tunnels

Here to lighten the mood a bit during the duller parts of your nighttime or subterranean transit is a quirky little projector that suctions to vehicular shells.
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Graffiti Sites: Train, Wall, Street & Subway Photos

Though it’s found all over the world, graffiti tends to accumulate on the same spaces in each location. Most commonly: trains, walls, city streets, and subways.
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Transits Of Venus: 8 Women-Only Subway & Train Cars

Subway sandwich: good if you’re hungry, bad if you’re a female commuter. These 8 women-only transit cars offer groups of gals a grope-free rail road trip.
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Lockheed Lounge: Meet The World’s Most Expensive Object

30 Apr

[ By Steph in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

lockheed lounge 1

What about this chaise lounge makes it worth the equivalent of approximately ten middle-class suburban homes, or 5,000 Ikea couches? The Lockheed Lounge by Marc Newson set a record for the world’s most expensive design object created by a living person after it sold for more than £2 million (over $ 3 million USD at today’s exchange rate.)

lockheed lounge 2

One prototype, four artist’s proofs and ten editions of the seat have been created since the Lockheed Lounge’s design in 1990, and it’s perhaps best known to people outside the design community for being prominently featured in Madonna’s 1993 video for the song ‘Rain.’ It’s this particular lounge that got snapped up for millions – over the phone, no less – when it recently went up for auction.

Screen Shot 2015-04-29 at 11.37.21 AM

The aircraft-inspired furniture design was an immediate success when an early version of it debuted at a Sydney gallery, and it’s been in demand among the world’s wealthiest design collectors ever since, especially since the shape was refined to become smoother and more free-flowing. It’s made of thin aluminum plates welded together and riveted from the inside. The core is made of fiberglass-reinforced plastic.

The sale cements Newson’s status as one of the world’s highest-grossing designers. His works collectively brought in over £8.5 million in April alone.

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Pricey Poo: World’s Most Expensive Toilets & Washrooms

Ranging from thousands of dollars to millions of dollars here’s a look at some of the world’s most expensive toilets.
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Great Grandiosity! 9 of the World’s Most Expensive Houses

The World’s most expensive houses include a high-rise residence that takes up an entire skyscraper, to a tree houses larger than your residence.
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Anti-Object: A Public Bench Designed to be Everything-Proof

While many individuals desire multi-functional and space-saving furniture, many cities want quite the opposite: an object that one can sit on but that foils …
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Electronic Autopsy: 24 Sculptures Made of Computer Parts

29 Apr

[ By Steph in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

circuit art mandala 4

Art made of salvaged circuit boards and other computer parts put what is normally hidden on full display in a sort of autopsy of our consumerist society, highlighting how quickly the things we create become obsolete. Is our obsession with technology a sign of our achievements as a species, or a festering problem threatening to overtake the natural world? These artists are all working with unwanted components, but have different takes on the issue of electronic waste.

Computer Bugs by Julie Alice Chappell

circuit art insects 3

circuit art insects 2

CIRCUIT ART 1

Pesky metaphorical computer bugs are made literal when artist Julie Alice Chappell transforms reclaimed circuit boards from electronics into little winged insects. The project started when Chappell discovered a box of tiny electronic components at a ‘craft bank’ in Portsmouth, England, instantly seeing the bodies and legs of bugs. Chappell hopes her work will raise awareness about the problem of electronic waste.

Technological Mandalas by Leonardo Ulian

circuit art mandalas 3

circuit art mandala 5

circuit art mandalas 2

circuit art mandala 4

Circuitry and microchips come together into intricately arranged, perfectly symmetrical mandalas in the work of London-based artist Leonardo Ulian. “With the Technological Mandala series I combined the suggestive and spiritual meaning of the Indian Mandalas with something that has been perceived as far from that sphere of influence, technology,” says Ulian. “The search of perfection as necessity within the electronics industry has stimulated my curiosity to produce this series of pieces in order toe locate that specific need. I wanted to show what has been hidden from the eyes of the consumer, representing electronic circuits as extraordinary objects where the perfection of the design can become almost something ethereal.”

Ornate Rug Made from Computer Parts by Federico Uribe

circuit art rug 1

circuit art rug 2

circuit art rug 3

You won’t be getting too comfortable on this particular rug by Federico Uribe, which consists of thousands of tiny, sharp electronic components. The mixed-media piece, which mimics the patterns on traditional Persian carpets, measures 22 by 12 feet. Uribe specializes in making art from unwanted ‘waste’ objects as well as everyday items found in the home.

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Electronic Autopsy 24 Sculptures Made Of Computer Parts

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Sculptures Made of Straws by Sang Sik Hong

Korean artist Sang Sik Hong uses thousands of straws to create eerie, luminous relief sculptures of human body parts.
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Circuitboard Artwork: A Gallery Inside Your Computer

Bland green circuitboards aren’t always so boring, and some intrepid artists have come up with eye-catching and creative techniques to cut back on waste.
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Out-of-the-Box Sculptures: 5 Amazing Cardboard Artists

Cardboard art can be sustainable or simply structurally challenging – or anything in between. These artists warp a generic material to create magnificent works.
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Wanksy: Phallus Graffiti Draws Attention to Dangerous Potholes

29 Apr

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

wanksy pothole street art

In a quest to evoke a faster fix from city authorities, a lone street artist going by the name Wanksy is highlighting holes in the ground with (NSFW) spray paintings sharing one thing in common: the rough but instantly recognizable shape of a phallus.

penis pothole filler art

Like Hanksy, Wanksy is a play on Banksy, a world-renowned art activist. Found all around Manchester, England, Wanksy’s penis-shaped pothole sketches are perhaps crude but they serve more than one point. First, they provoke public calls to officials to clean them up while also filling in the holes. Second, but equally important for the safety of the artist, the phallus represents an easy-to-draw figure that can be sketched quickly with less risk of getting hit bye a vehicle. Third, the rough markings serve as interim warnings to drivers who might not see a water-filled hole at night.

wanksy street artist

Though the paint washes away over time, making these temporary, this response from a local council member shows that the powers that be are not particularly amused: “Has this person, for just one second, considered how families with young children must feel when they are confronted with these obscene symbols as they walk to school? Not only is this vandalism, but it’s also counter-productive. Every penny that we have to spend cleaning off this graffiti is a penny less that we have to spend on actually repairing the potholes.”

wanksy road penis street art

wanksy filled pothole

The notion of highlighting or filling in potholes by activists takes many forms beyond this novel approach, including a Chicago tile artist who fills in holes with mosaics, a guerrilla gardener who plants pansies in these street voids and even a pothole robin hood who steels asphalt from the city to fill in gaps with his own work and time. In the grand scheme, one could argue that this newest contributor is somewhat juvenile, but if it solves a real-world urban infrastructure problem, it is hard not to smile at least a little at his attempt to lighten the mood while fixing city streets.

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Flowering Potholes: Lovely Tile Plants Fill Ugly Street Voids

An uniquely elegant solution to a dirty everyday problem, these gorgeous handcrafted tile mosaics are turning unfilled potholes back into functional pieces …
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Urban Infill: Colorful Tile Mosaics Patch Potholed Streets

In a city with over a half-million open potholes, one artist is helping address the problem and raising awareness by installing his own creative patches, …
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Colorful Calls to Action: Decorated Pothole Projects

Two gorgeous green graffiti projects are calling attention to the world-wide problem of potholes in city streets…and they’re doing it with humor + beauty.
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IKEA 2025: Futuristic Modular Kitchen Caters to Food Drones

29 Apr

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]

futuristic interactive surface design

In a world of increasing automation but decreasing resources, these kitchen concepts include interactive surfaces, flexible storage for on-demand food and responsive innovations to teach people how best to cook, prepare and store meals either made at home or delivered by drone.

Each premise of IKEA’s Concept Kitchen 2025 seems like a sound extrapolation of current trends: easy-to-order ingredients and automated meals mean less need for conventional storage space and greater attention to rising demand for modular storage, water use and recycling.

temporary futuristic kitchen design

Fast (sharing economy or drone) delivery of food and automated repurchasing means pantries can be slimmer, reducing spatial as well as energy needs. At the core of the design is a multi-functional kitchen surface that includes an induction cooking element and other fancy features: “as the world changes, so will our needs. That means that the table of the future will be designed to do so much more: it’s our preparation surface, hob, dining table, work bench and children’s play area.”

responsive kitchen tabletop design

It is not too much of a stretch to imagine a Kinect-like device hovering over your kitchen island, sensing and responding to your movements below, whether you are in the process of cooking, working or playing with your kids.

kitchen overview

graywater system

It also seems like a logical extension of current conditions and technology to assume kitchens will be better equipped to sort out our recycling and help save water through graywater systems and other measures.

kitchen trash concept

futuristic kitchen pantry concept

Presented in Milan for Design Week in collaboration with IDEO and dozens of industrial design students, this IKEA “exhibition is just one part of an ongoing investigation by IKEA into how people’s relationship to food is changing. It serves to tangibly show what we might be doing in 2025: how we’ll be growing our food, storing it; how we’ll be cooking, eating, living and working in the kitchen.”

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Compact Cooking: 15 Modular & Multipurpose Kitchen Designs

Most of us only use our kitchens a couple times daily, so why should they take up an entire room of valuable space? Compact, modular kitchens that can be …
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Livable Luxury: 14 Creative Kitchen Interior Designs

The best in modern kitchen design isn’t just minimalist and visually appealing, but fits the most function into the smallest space possible.
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5 Inventive Kitchen Furniture & Interior Design Concepts

When you think of interesting design in the home, the kitchen typically isn’t the first room that springs to mind. It is the heart of the home and requires …
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Soundcloud Test

28 Apr

[ By WebUrbanist in Drawing & Digital. ]

test test

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Radiotopia Fundraiser: Support 7 Story-Centric PRX Podcasts

Last year, Roman Mars of 99% Invisible and PRX broke records, raising $ 375,000 with a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign – this year, …
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UP for Auction: Bids Fail to Save World-Famous Holdout House

In the esoteric realm of ‘nail houses’ – properties whose owners refuse to sell them to developers at any cost – Edith …
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Test Your Geography Skills with Google Maps Game

Guess what city – or even what continent – the geography game GeoGuessr has dropped you into using nothing more than images from Google Maps.
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Stellar Caves: Illuminated Underground String Installation

28 Apr

[ By Steph in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

salaud caves 1

Eighty-two feet under the surface of the earth, hidden within the cellars of the Maison Ackerman winery in Saumur, France, an eerie blue-violet wonderland blooms in carefully constructed arrangements of UV-coated string. Artist Julien Salaud wound 28 miles of cotton thread around 65,000 nails for his installation Fleuve Céleste, which explores themes of nature, mysticism and shamanism against the natural rock walls of the space.

salaud caves 5

salaud caves 4

salaud caves 3

At first glance, the images seem as if they were created on a computer. But anyone who takes a tour of the winery can walk within tunnels of the glowing string, illuminated by a projected ultraviolet light.

salaud caves 2

salaud caves 7

salaud caves 6

According to Salaud, the work offers “a different viewpoint of what an animal can be: that of the Cartesian or the geneticist, of the predator or the prey, of the sorcerer or the mystic.” Conceived specifically for this unusual space, the work will be on display for three years and is the first exhibition originating from the Ackerman + Fontrevaud La Scéne residency.

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Tying Us Together: Portraits on Hanging Elastic String

Korean artist Hong Sung Chul prints images of human body parts onto individual strings so that they come together into ghostly three-dimensional sculptures.
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Crochet Playscapes: 13 Interactive String Art Installations

Miles of yarn and string stretch across inflatable structures, galleries and outdoor environments in these crocheted and knotted art installations, offering …
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Light Art Looms Large: 10 Artists Project Illuminated Images

Churches are scrawled with ephemeral graffiti, public squares transmit profound messages and trees come to life with the moving heads of Cambodian deities when …
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