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NK INK: North Korea Graffiti, Stencils & Street Art

17 Apr

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

North Korea may be making the headlines like never before but the world’s graffiti artists have been featuring the Hermit Kingdom’s leaders for years.

When it comes to North Korea, there’s a lot to look down on. Take the country’s unique leadership – a communist dynasty? Who knows what the late Karl Marx might think of that (though it’s not hard to guess). In any case, NK-themed graffiti and street art should never be looked down upon, at least not by those living outside North Korea. Flickr user _eddie999_ brings us our lead image featuring Team America: World Police’s take on Kim Jong-il, snapped in Brighton, UK early in 2012. Just below, Mauricio Balvanera’s (maubrowncow) 2007 photo of a stenciled North Korean soldier with a flower in the muzzle of his rifle gazes out from a wall near the Toy Factory Lofts in Los Angeles, California.

The Sun Is (Still) There

Kim Il-sung (“Kim become the sun”) was North Korea’s first supreme leader – the “Great Leader” in official parlance – who held power from 1948 to his death from natural causes in 1994. Among his most lasting accomplishment was the establishment of the Kim ruling dynasty, now into its third generation in the form of Kim Jong-un. Speaking of lasting accomplishments, Flickr user Loïc Brohard snapped the above artwork captioned “Vote Kim il Sung” in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in April of 2010.

The Son Is Here

Kim Jong-il inherited power from his father in 1994 and was known in North Korea as the “Dear Leader”. Flickr user Larry Jones (westbymidwest) captured this full-color portrait of Kim Jong-il in full panhandler mode on September 20th of 2009 at the Albany Bulb, an artificial landfill peninsula extending westward from the the east shore of San Francisco Bay. It’s uncertain whether the splash of orange paint across the portrait’s “HELP” sign is part of the original composition or a later amendment.

A Spectacles Of Himself

Kim Jong-il was over 50 years old when he assumed North Korea’s leadership but he had been groomed for the position since the early 1980s. Kim the Second raised the cult of personality established and encouraged by his father to ever-greater heights. The stencil above, found in NYC’s Koreatown district, dates from 2009 and was captured in April of that year by Flickr user e.yamasaki.

The Future’s So Bright…

Kim Jong-il’s designer shades take center stage in the above NYC photo pastiche snapped in late 2011 by Flickr user allan molho (amolho4). Sources state Kim Jong-il was a fervent fan of Western cinema, boasting a collection of over 20,000 titles including every Elvis Presley flick. His fascination with “The King” in his late-1960’s rhinestone jumpsuit phase may have influenced Kim’s sartorial preferences, at least when it came to prescription and fashion eyewear.

Thanks, Obama

First rule of tinfoil-hat prognostication and doomsday cult propaganda: never predict near-future events! The unknown creator of the above paste-up mini-manifesto evidently didn’t get that memo. To their credit, they did manage to evoke the spirits (and images) of Lincoln, Churchill and an alarmingly youthful FDR to add weight to their shrill Cassandra callout. Bonus: stating “Prime minister of North Korea said so its the God truth.” Kudos to Flickr users shoehorn99 and allan molho (amolho4) for capturing these ravings in August of 2008 and April of 2009, respectively.

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Nk Ink North Korea Graffiti Stencils Street Art

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

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Steampunk Micro-Home: Mobile Shabby Chic Trailer Rocks Lofty Aesthetic

16 Apr

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

Borrowing stylistic details from urban warehouse lofts and rustic rural cabins, this 200-square-foot home manages to look weathered and sophisticated at the same time.

Reclaimed pine and cedar, a gabled roof and various recycled materials make the exterior of this abode look well-worn but welcoming.

Inside, the so-called Earth and Sky Palace feels surprisingly spacious, complete with a queen bed at one end, bathroom at the other and combination living and dining area in between (as well as small loft above).

While metal, glass and wood detailing help the place feel more upscale (while somehow still minimal), small touches like a large bathroom mirror also help the interior feel larger.

Expensive fixtures and finishes help give an impression of something like a mountain resort lodge, dark but rich in detail right down to the fancy shower heads and butcher-block counter tops.

And it isn’t just about the looks: LED track lighting hooked up to dimmers gives users fine-grained control over the atmosphere, as does an app-controlled air conditioning and surround-sound system. Not bad for $ 74,000.

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A Taste of Japan: Immersive Animated Restaurant Shifts with the Seasons

15 Apr

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

The exclusive experience of dining at this Tokyo restaurant, which serves just eight patrons a day, is not really about the food – though Saga Beef restaurant Sagaya-Ginza is not necessarily lacking in quality. It’s just that watching nature spring to life all around you, cycling through the seasons to represent some of Japan’s most striking natural beauty, tends to eclipse whatever’s on your plate. Art collective teamLab, known for their creative projection-based installations, created a multi-sensory immersive experience with ‘Worlds Unleashed and Then Connecting.’

In classic teamLab form, this projection is not just immersive, but also interactive, responding to the dishes as they’re placed on the table as well as movements of the diners and servers. While other well-known works by the collective tend to unfold within a larger space, like a warehouse or gallery, this installation is private and intimate.

“When a dish is placed on the table, the world contained within the dish is unleashed, unfolding onto the table and into the surrounding space,” the artists explain. “The worlds unleashed from each dish connect in the external space creating a new larger world. The worlds unleashed are affected by the other dishes on the table.”

“For example, a bird unleashed from one dish can perch on the branch of a tree unleashed from another. The trees that grow from each dish are not identical; their sizes and shapes are affected by the worlds unleashed by the other dishes on the table. These unleashed worlds are also affected by your behavior. If you stand still, a tiny bird might alight on your hand; if you move suddenly, it might fly away. The worlds unleashed from the dishes on the table influence each other, react to the actions of the visitors, and combine to create one single continuous world. The world is constantly changing from moment to moment and no two moments are alike.”

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Culinary Arts: Rock Candy Geodes Hidden Inside Huge Chocolate Shells

13 Apr

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

Just like the dull rocks that often reveal geode formations in nature, one would not expect to find such a sweet surprise inside what look a bit like giant Easter eggs (or perhaps dinosaur droppings).

As a final thesis project for the Culinary Institute of America in New York, Alex Yeatts and Abby Lee Wilcox spent months crafting these monstrous treats.

After 6 months of hard work @alex.yeatts and I cracked open our chocolate geodes!!! I am so thankful to have had this experience. #proud2bcia #chocolate #geode #foodart #chefstalk #candy #bakerylife #confectionery #foodie #foodporn #cny #pastry #buzzfeast #geodecake

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Orange-red and purple crystals inside look remarkably natural, particularly the latter (resembling typical amethysts). While hardly healthy, one could imagine subsisting on these gigantic desserts indefinitely.

In a similar vein (treats imitating nature), the “flower cakes” (and cupcakes) of Iven Kawi are stunning works of culinary art, so lifelike one could imagine being pricked by the needles on cacti or grind one’s teeth on the sandy landscapes (via Colossal).

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Picasso in 3D: Famous Paintings Transformed Into Physical Objects

13 Apr

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

What would Pablo Picasso think if he saw that another artist had transformed his two-dimensional Cubist works of art into three-dimensional form? While the MIMIC series by Omar Aqil was created digitally and doesn’t exist as physical objects, it’s easy to imagine each piece as a sculpture you can walk around and examine from all angles, and it certainly offers an interesting perspective on the originals.

Aqil used Photoshop, Illustrator and Cinema 4D-Ray to reimagine six of Picasso’s most dynamic, angular paintings, including Buste de femme dans un fauteuil (1949), Seated Woman (1930), Black Figure (1948), Visage (1928) and Composition (1946). Aquil explains that he’s been studying Picasso’s work since beginning his career in art, and has always found the abstract visual language inspiring.

“MIMIC is a series of new visual experiments using art from the past,” says the Pakistan-based artist. “In this project I have randomly picked 6 paintings from the Pablo Picasso’s (one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century) work and recreate them into modern 3D visuals. In this visual mimicry I have shown, how the skill responds when it come across the complexity of someone’s thought and how the meanings of the shapes and forms have been changed and create new physical realities. It’s propose to give a new implication of Picasso’s artworks with a series of hyper-realistic visuals.”

The choice of ‘materials’ used in the renderings is interesting in and of itself; while some might have given them textures and finishes resembling more classic sculptural materials like stone, Aquil’s sculptural visions seem to be made of plastic, as if they could be sold as tchotchkes in museum shops.

Considering that Picasso is famously quoted as saying “Good artists copy, great artists steal,” perhaps he wouldn’t have minded.

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Underpass Art & Parks: 15 Fun Projects Reclaiming Disused Urban Space

13 Apr

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

Climbing walls, skate parks, art installations, theaters and even miniature marinas take advantage of the cathedral-like spaces beneath highways and bridges, revitalizing formerly disused and depressed square footage in urban areas. In cities around the world, underpasses are often fenced off, strewn with trash and generally unappreciated, but these intervention projects reclaim the space in fun and creative ways that benefit the community.

Folly for a Flyover by Assemble, England

“Starting with the idea that how spaces are imagined is often as important as their physical characteristics in determining their use, the Folly reclaimed the future of the site by re-imagining its past,” says ASSEMBLE of its ‘Folly for a Flyover’ installation beneath a disused motorway underpass in Hackney Wick. “The new ‘fairy tale’ for the site described the Folly as the home of a stubborn landlord who refused to move to make way for the motorway, which was subsequently built around him, leaving him and his pitched roof stuck between the East and Westbound lanes. The Folly hosted an extensive program of cinema, performance and play… by day the Folly hosted a cafe, events and boat trips exploring the surrounding waterways; at night, audiences congregated on the building’s steps to watch screenings, from blockbusting animation classics to early cinema accompanied by a live score.

A8ernA, Zaanstad Underpass Installation by NL Architects

Another underpass project offering access to the adjacent waterway is A8ernA by NL Architects, located on the river Zaan in the Zoog aan de Zaan village near Amsterdam. The architects describe the new highway, built on columns, as a “brutal cut in the urban tissue.” Their installation attempts to heal this cut while taking advantage of the cathedral-like space, creating an “optimistic intervention” encouraging a new type of urban life, and includes a supermarket, flower and fish shop, parking, a park and a ‘graffiti gallery.’ There’s also a skate bowl, a mini-marina, a soccer field and a small hilly park.

Underpass Park, Toronto

Toronto’s Underpass Park is not only the most extensive park to ever be built beneath an overpass in Canada, but one of the most unusual parks of its kind throughout the world. Transforming a derelict and underused space into a new urban neighborhood feature and pedestrian passageway, the park turns what was formerly a barrier between the north and south parts of the community into a connection. Murals by world-renowned graffiti artists, playgrounds, sculptural installations, sports fields and other amenities draw locals in to engage with the space on an unprecedented level.

Ballroom Luminoso Installation by JB Public Art, San Antonio

The I-35 freeway underpass in San Antonio briefly became ‘Ballroom Luminoso’ thanks to a public art installation by JB Public Art, featuring six color-changing chandeliers made of recycled bicycle parts and sprockets. After dark, the lanterns would light up, casting intricate gear-shaped shadows all over the concrete structure.

Seattle’s Fremont Troll

Frequently popping up in movies and television shows set in Seattle, the Fremont Troll is a public sculpture by four local artists set beneath a bridge in the Fremont neighborhood. The piece won a neighborhood competition in 1990 as an idea to revitalize what was, at the time, a dumping ground. The troll sculpture is clutching an actual Volkswagen Beetle.

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Underpass Art Parks 15 Fun Projects Reclaiming Disused Urban Space

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Raining Pitchforks: Artist Lures Visitors Under 300 Spikey Forks of Doom

12 Apr

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

When someone exclaims “It’s raining pitchforks and hammer handles out there” they rarely mean it quite so literally. Dubbed The Crusher, this installation sounds as much like a pro wrestler or horror movie as a piece of art. And as the ominous name suggests: it is something to be awed … and perhaps at least a little bit feared.

British artist Simon Birch works in a variety of mediums, but this installation in a Los Angeles is a bit of a departure from his safely-on-the-canvass oil paintings. The 300 suspended forks feature three to five prongs for a total of over a thousand points on which one could be impaled.

Visitors to this site-specific work are invited to view it now just from the side but also from beneath. The rundown appearance of the surrounding structure and variety of aged potential death traps above do little to assuage one’s anxiety while going below (or watching others do so).

So far, the work has been hugely popular, but one has to wonder: what if there were an earthquake, or one of the forks slipped loose somehow?

Simon Birch “has also ventured into film and installation work … These large multimedia projects integrated paintings with film, installation, sculpture, and performance housed in specifically configured spaces” (via MMM).

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Filling the Void: 25 Resin-Inlaid Wood Furniture Designs Become Whole Again

11 Apr

[ By SA Rogers in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

When married with clear resin, voids in wood or stone created by years of use, natural burls, intentional damage and even shipworms are made whole again, while leaving their ‘wounds’ visible. Broken furniture is repaired with ghostly additions, splintery snapped boards are made smooth and literally ancient time-worn wood is preserved for posterity like insects caught in amber. The results not only salvage items though to be beyond repair, but also make them feel like museum-worthy artifacts.

Disappearing Furniture: Broken Pieces Healed with Resin

Pieces of furniture that seem broken beyond repair are proven salvageable after all, with their missing pieces seemingly made invisible. Tatiane Freitas created the series ‘My Old New chair’ using translucent acrylic, the new elements matching the scale of the older pieces but not the style. The results intentionally leave the ‘wounds’ of the old furniture visible and highly noticeable, as if the acrylic is a ghost of what once was or a hint at what it could evolve into.

Broken Board Series by Jack Craig

Smashed and reconstituted pine wood gets a whole new purpose – and surface – thanks to Detroit-based industrial designer Jack Craig, who seals them with caramelized resin for his ‘Broken Board Series.’ The splintered ends of the wood are visible through the resin for an interesting textural effect.

Forest Artifacts by Alcarol

Design duo Alcarol creates ‘forest artifacts’ by pairing wood and resin in various designs, from an irregular wooden bench made sharply rectilinear to ‘fisheye stools,’ the latter of which features timber poles salvaged from the foundations of the city of Venice. The poles, the designers explain, were “driven into the lagoon’s caranto layer – a mixture of solid clay and sand situated at great depths. In spite of everything, Venice continues its fight against the muddy ground and ever increasing water levels. Fish Eye, which is sculpted by water, salt, shipworms and time, is a tribute to this epic submarine struggle that has transcended millennia. During their stay in the Laguna, these Oak logs are deeply sculpted by Teredo Navalis, shipworms that leave traces of their passing on the wooden surface producing striking patterns of circular holes, whilst avoiding the inner core of the log, allowing it to maintain its health and strength. This creates a beautiful contrast between other decay and inner robustness.”

MANUFRACT Furniture Inspired by Self-Healing Trees

The MANUFRACT series of furniture by Marcel Dunger mimics the way trees heal themselves by releasing resin into their ‘wounds.’ The hand-crafted furniture is made of broken wood patched with tinted resin in a manner reminiscent of kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing a broken piece of pottery with gold.

VOLIS by Atelier Insolite

The ‘VOLIS’ series by Atelier Insolite embeds objects with resin, including shelves, side tables, coffee tables, consoles and other furniture items. The designers intentionally seek out wood with natural voids and broken-off elements so they can fill in the spaces with blue-tinted resin, giving the finished pieces an oceanic feel.

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Filling The Void 25 Resin Inlaid Wood Stone Furniture Designs

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A Drunkard’s Dream: This Cloud Rains Tequila Whenever it’s Rainy Outside

11 Apr

[ By SA Rogers in Design & Guerilla Ads & Marketing. ]

It rains more in Berlin than it does in England, especially during the cold and dreary months of winter, so enticing Germans to vacation in Mexico with a cloud that literally rains tequila is probably pretty effective. And this isn’t just a cloud-shaped installation that pours a mist of tequila out of a showerhead or something equally predictable – it’s a real cloud of tequila condensation that turns liquid in response to vibration, timed to coincide with real-life rain outside.

United States-based creative agency LAPIZ teamed up wit the Mexico Tourism Board to create an ad specifically tailored to boost German tourism to the sunny, margarita-soaked nation. Installed in Urban Spree, a Berlin art gallery, the project mimics the look of natural clouds by containing condensation within a cumulus-shaped sculpture. You can see the mist rolling off the cloud in Instagram videos of the installation.

#tequilacloud Serving free shots of delicious Silver Tequila since 2016. Come to Urban Spree, Revaler Strasse 99 for a taste #mexico #travel #tequila #art #berlin

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this is how @pojpojberlin spends feierabend. with #tequilacloud @urban_spree come by. #pøjpøj #feierabend #feierabendtequila #mexico #olé #avocado #tequila

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Make it rain tequila. #tequila #cloud #artistic #installation #vapor #alcohol #mexico #agave #makeitrain #pouritup #kunst #innovation #wowfactor #cloudydrink #tequilacloud #liquid #tequilashots #shot #urbanspree #weather #cloudy #smoke #vape

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A flash of lightning heralds an oncoming tequila storm, and onlookers gather to hold a shot glass under the cloud. It’s the third year in a row that Lapiz teamed up with the tourism board to get Germans to Mexico, and it seems certain that this would be their most successful effort yet. Who doesn’t like free tequila? “This time, we combined the Mexican thing Germans love most, tequila, with the type of weather they like the least, rain, and created the Tequila Cloud,” they explain.

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Artistically Enabled: 18 Weird & Creative Handicapped Parking Signs

10 Apr

[ By Steve in Culture & History & Travel. ]

Blue & white Handicapped Parking signs and stencils are one of urban life’s most familiar icons… and then there are those that have been creatively hacked.

There’s a fine line between amusement and mean-spiritedness but when it comes to visual imagery, outrage is often in the eye of the beholder. With that in mind, this edgy, spiky, flame-enhanced “Parking Space Designator” (is that what the kids are calling them these days?) follows the road blazed by TV’s Dr House and his boss flame-graphic walking cane. You’ll find the stencil on steroids above outside a Retail Boutique Incubator, tentatively attributed to Sean McDougal of Disfunctional Design Store.

Interlocked & Loaded

Those interlocking driveway paving stones can be fit together in any number of patterns, including a reasonable, recognizable facsimile of the accessible parking graphic. Flickr user zwei zwei (zwei1189) captured this image on February 5th of 2015.

Brazil Not

A parking spot reserved for the “Sorcerer” truck, we assume? Not quite – this clever conjunction of a designated handicapped parking space and some awesome eye-fooling 3D graphic art comes from Brazil, where there’s an ongoing problem of able-bodied people parking in handicapped spaces “just for a minute”. Yeah, riiight. The explanatory text on the wall roughly translates from Portuguese to read “When you stop in place for disabled, you make his life more difficult”. It’s a theme we’ll revisit further on in this post.

Hold My Beer And Park This

Flickr user Mike Klassen snapped this mildly yet distinctively modified accessible parking sign behind a BC Liquor store in late September of 2008. As for that “fine line” we mentioned previously, well, this edges close to it but we’ll leave the last word to Nathan Ridge, one of the commenters at Klassen’s photo page: “I’ve heard of discrimination against disabled persons, but this is the first time I’ve heard of it the other way around! I love it, especially since I’m in a wheelchair myself!”

Triple Chair Lift

When Mexico sends us their handicapped parking place stencils, they’re not… actually sometimes they ARE sending us their best. Take the “EXCLUSIVO” stencil above, snapped by Flickr user Mary Doyle (buffoonmeatmary) on August 5th of 2007. We can’t say whether this awesome graphic shows a disabled person getting into or out of their wheelchair but either way, the image demands a Six Million Dollar Man bionic sound effect to accompany it.

Elderly Man Driver

Elderly man driver, that elderly man driver, he don’t say nothing but he must know something, he just keeps rolling along… at 10mph under the speed limit until he (or she) parks, right on top of this designated Elderly-only parking space. Who knew this even existed? One might state just being a senior citizen isn’t actually a “disability” in the strict sense, though don’t try convincing any grouchy cane-wielding oldster of that. Flickr user Wee Viraporn snapped what appears to be a standardized stencil on January 3rd of 2010.

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Enabled 18 Weird Creative Handicapped Parking Signs

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