Tag: Warped

Vertigo Wallpaper: Warped 3D Room Illusions Transform Flat Gallery Surfaces

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

You could be forgiven for cautiously entering one of these rooms full of wavy sketched lines, stepping over obstacles that aren’t really there, uncertain whether parts of the walls are really projecting out toward you. Artist Peter Kogler creates spatial illusions that take over every surface of a gallery, turning it into a ‘virtual maze.’ A master of the large-scale print, he’s spent the last 30 years perfecting his techniques. The ones involving grids of lines pull off the most disorienting effects.

Pictured here are installations from the last few years, including work displayed at the ING Art Center in Brussels this year, the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna in 2015 and the Galerie im Taxiplalais in 2014. His computer-generated works have even adorned the exterior walls of pavilions and museums, and often feature imagery of snakes, ants and pipes.

According to his artist statement, “Kolger has been interested in new, innovative art practices, not only in the field of visual, but also in performative arts, sound and music. He continued his work by shifting the boundaries of artistic expression and developed a very impressive, emotionally and artistically convincing world, whose layered meanings open communication paths to the widest public.”

“After several years of research at the beginning of his artistic career, in painting, performance and experimental film, since 1984 Kogler has used computer technology. Heralding the future development of computer-generated art already in the ‘60s, in the spirit of that positivist-optimistic time, Michael Noll wrote: ‘The computer is an active medium the artist can interact with at a new level, liberated from many physical limitations of all former media. The artistic possibilities of this kind of creative medium as the artist’s helping device are truly exciting and challenging.”

Illusions in Iran: Surreal 3D Murals Transform Urban Tehran

The blank concrete facades of urban Tehran offer an irresistible canvas for playful large-scale murals that seem to bend reality in unexpected ways. A city of 12 million people that has been …

Body Paint Illusions Transform Human Models into Animals

Intricately painted and carefully posed, the human bodies serving as canvases for artist Gesine Marwedel are virtually unrecognizable as they morph into swans, flamingos and iguanas. The …

Inside Out: Print-Crazy Wallpaper Made for Exterior Surfaces

Why should interior walls have all the fun? Prints are nearly always relegated to the insides of homes and other structures while the outside walls are left bare, but a new wallpaper made …

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

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WebUrbanist

December 31, 2016
Spatial Bodies: Warped Architecture Bends & Twists Osaka Skyline

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

Imagine a world in which an abandoned city goes to seed, but rather than plants reclaiming buildings, the buildings grow and morph like unkempt weeds, twisting the skyline into impossible new patterns.

In their project Spatial Bodies, AUJIK envisions architecture as something organic, skyscrapers like trees and vines that curve, wrap and interlock to create fresh and unpredictable formations.

The team compiled aerial drone footage, manipulating it in Autodesk 3D studio and combining it with Google Maps images. The resulting urban landscapes are both real and surreal, vaguely recognizable and semi-coherent but contorted and distorted. Buildings grow from familiar foundations, but wiggle and wind in unnatural and unexpected ways.

From the artists: “Spatial Bodies depicts the urban landscape and architectural bodies as an autonomous living and self replicating organism. Domesticated and cultivated only by its own nature. A vast concrete vegetation, oscillating between order and chaos.”

Many of the shots in the film are largely static, but in a way that helps make them comprehensible to viewers: it is almost impossible to take in the scenes as they pass by even in still format. Limiting the realtime motion of structures in the video also reflects their plant-like nature, implying that these transformations will take time, just like growing organic material in the wild.

World-Warping Photography Bends, Twists & Tears Reality

Life feels rather rigid and unyielding sometimes, which is why it’s nice to have art like Jan Kriwol’s into which we can escape momentarily. Kriwol’s series “Paper Realities” only consists of …

Crazy Contortionist Street Art: Bodies in Urban Spaces

How would you react if you were walking down a crowded city street and 20 people suddenly ran past you and crammed their bodies into the tiny space between two buildings? What if you happened to …

Living Street Art: Contorted Human Bodies in Urban Spaces

If you were to pass a bunch of colorfully-dressed human figures crammed into a crawlspace beneath a public staircase, you might think they’re mannequins at first, with their splayed limbs and …

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

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WebUrbanist

August 27, 2016
Warped Worlds: 30 Surreal Digitally Manipulated Landscapes

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Photography & Video. ]

The plot of the movie ‘Inception’ is almost an afterthought compared to the impact that its distorted, dreamlike manipulations of architecture and landscapes has had on a generation of artists and designers. Inspired by the concept of warping a scene in ways that completely defy the laws of physics yet still remain photo-realistic, the following artists have created new worlds that are strange and yet also familiar.

Erik Johansson

Nothing is quite as it seems in the images produced by Swedish-born, Berlin-based photo artist Erik Johansson. Grassy land cascades over the edge of the world like a waterfall, the surface of the earth is unzipped, cars appear to hover upside-down on the road. It’s difficult to tell reality from illusion, and that’s the point; the scenes he creates are as playful as they are impossible. Setting up and taking the photos takes about as long as manipulating them in Photoshop, and a single image can consist of over 100 layers.

Cubic Landscape by Petey Ulatan

Flattened views of landscapes are flipped and folded to create cubes, their edges bent at 90 degree angles, eliminating the very gradual and subtle curves that make up the surface of the Earth. Artist Petey Ulatan takes inspiration from the films ‘Inception’ and ‘Interstellar’ to reshape the world, almost as if a giant hand were making it into origami.

Turkey Turned Upside-Down by Aydin Büyüktas

Many of the same manipulations are happening in the work of Aydin Büyüktas, except focused on the Turkish city of Istanbul, with all of its landmarks and neighborhoods warped in ways that defy the laws of physics. The artist uses drone photography and 3D software to create these composite images. “We live in places that most of the times don’t draw our attention, places that transform our memories, places that the artist gives another dimension; where the perceptions that generally crosses our minds will be demolished and new ones will arise. These works aims to leave the viewer alone with a surprising visuality ironic as well, multidimensional romantic point of view.”

‘Inception Park’ in Buenos Aires by Black Sheep Films

What if you could ride a trackless rollercoaster around the city, almost as if you’re on the back of some kind of mystical flying creature? Black Sheep Films gives us an idea of what this would feel like with ‘Inception Park,’ a strange little video set in Buenos Aires. It’s fun to watch the snake of rollercoaster cars meander through the space, interacting with architecture.

Twisted Architecture by Nicholas Kennedy Sitton

“These photos are a result of how intriguing the concept of distortion translates to architecture,” says artist Nicholas Kennedy Sitton of his ‘Twisted Architecture’ series. “It creates a sense of falling into itself, like capturing a moment of demolition. I can destroy titanous steel structures with the click of a mouse and create new twisted versions of reality. I was also inspired by San Francisco. I had just moved there and being in a new city was disorienting and exciting and I wanted to capture how my whole world had changed.”

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Warped Worlds 30 Surreal Digitally Manipulated Landscapes

Surreal Fictional Urban Landscapes by Eugene Soloviev …
Impossible Landscapes: Distorted Scenes Disrupt Reality …
Small Worlds: Strange & Shocking Miniature City Scenes …

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Photography & Video. ]

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WebUrbanist

August 2, 2016
Warped Reality: Media Mis-Coverage of Invisibility Cloak

[ By WebUrbanist in Gadgets & Geekery & Technology. ]

This author would like nothing more than to tell you that the above images are of a real-life working prototype of the most amazing invention of the century. That sentence should be clue enough, however, to the contrary. How is it, then, that these photos misled 5,000 publishers worldwide and, consequently, an awed global audience of millions?

It started with HyperStealth Biotechnology Corp, aptly or ironically a company of self-described “Leaders in Camouflage, Concealment and Deception.” They developed a compelling set of pictures of a next-generation technology designed to work without batteries, mirrors or cameras (perhaps more popular than ever after the special effects of the Harry Potter series).

Though they subsequently clarified the photographs were manipulated, their bold headline (“Quantum Stealth; The Invisible Military Becomes A Reality”) suggested to readers – and duped news outlets – that what they were showing were working images of an actual finished product.

By the end of 2012, Guy Cramer of Hyperstealth had conducted “20 interviews on this subject” but there were already “over 5,000 worldwide news stories” that had come out in just over a single week, each one dropping a piece or two of critical information. Most prominently: many failed to mention (or perhaps simply did not understand) that the images shown were not a reality.

To be fair: Guy still claims to have presented the product to multiple governments and militaries, and that what he has does, in reality, work not just at one angle but from all sides – he simply cannot show the prototypes due to high-level non-disclosure agreements. In the interest of playing it safe, this author will not weigh in on the validity of those claims either way.

[ By WebUrbanist in Gadgets & Geekery & Technology. ]

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WebUrbanist

April 17, 2013
Warped Materials: Unusual Rubber, Wood & Metal Furnitures

[ By Delana in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

The form factors of familiar furniture tend to be rather concrete in our minds. When we think of a chair, we expect it to look like a chair – and likewise for tables, benches, and so forth. But by playing with materials, functionality and appearances, furniture designer Thomas Schnur makes us totally re-think our preconceived ideas about furniture.

End tables and plungers are two household items which are so common they are often overlooked. The Rubber Table combines the two into a completely new and kind of bizarre piece of furniture. It’s a flexible rubber tabletop supported by five small plungers which, when pushed in gently, cause the table to adhere to whatever surface it is on through suction.

The beer bench is a symbol of fun times in Germany and everywhere else in the world with beer tents and summer festivals. Schnur’s High Shelf uses the same type of folding legs to bring a simple open metal cabinet up to a usable height. The resulting pieces allow the festival mindset to persist year-round in a home.

The monobloc chair is said to be the world’s most popular chair. The simple stackable plastic lawn chair can be seen in back yards around the world. Schnur took the monobloc aesthetic and extended it into a surprisingly stylish fiberglass bench. As a tongue-in-cheek nod to the Benchchair’s design inspiration, one side of the bench looks just like the classic monobloc chair.

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[ By Delana in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

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WebUrbanist

January 19, 2013