Art
Two young men who spend their time together building Mad Max-esque vehicles and weapons see their lives and friendship thrown into violent disarray when one of them meets a girl - that's the premise of Bellflower, an independent American film that has been hitting the festivals and arthouse theaters since it was released this August. It's a simultaneously brutal and poetic movie, which writer/director/star Evan Glodell wanted to reflect in the look of its onscreen images. While he perhaps could have tried simply applying some digital effects in post production, he decided to ingrain the film's look on a deeper level ... so he had it shot with cameras that he jerry-rigged together himself. Read More
Crayola Trace and Draw case lets kids create art with an iPad 2
While a tablet can be a great toy for kids, it's best to give little Johnny the likes of a VINCI Tab or a LeapPad, instead of your precious iPad 2. Otherwise, a kid-resistant tablet case may prove useful. The Crayola Trace & Draw case not only protects the iPad from children, but actually encourages toddlers to treat the tablet as a coloring book or a drawing board. Read More
Artist's trike prints Chinese calligraphy on the ground, using water
When Canadian media artist Nicholas Hanna first moved to the Chinese city of Beijing, he was quite taken with the water calligraphy that he saw people creating in the parks. The art form consists of using a large brush to paint Chinese calligraphy on the road, in water, so the characters disappear as the water evaporates. Hanna decided to put his own spin on it, and rigged up a cargo tricycle with a computer-controlled dot matrix water release system, that squirts out passages of Chinese poetry on the road behind him as he rides. Read More
One-of-a-kind Gravity Harp features robotic pendulums
This half-pendulum half-harp musical instrument is the creation of New York based interactive design company, Pattern Studio. Dubbed "The Gravity Harp," it was commissioned by Icelandic musician Bjork for her recent Biophilia tour. The innovative device features four robotic pendulums, each housing an eleven string harp. Hanging 20 feet above ground, the pendulums slowly swing back and forth whilst communicating with a control computer using an RS485 network. In order to maintain an even sequence of notes, each pendulum swings 90 degrees out of phase with its neighbor and is controlled by a motor attached at the top. Read More
Do you like car stereos with good, thumping bass? I mean, do you really, really like them? If so, you might be appreciative of "Tank," a creation by Berlin artist Nik Nowak. The fully-functioning tracked vehicle sports six 12-inch mid-range drivers, three 18-inch subwoofers, four tweeters, and pumps out 4,000 watts of gut-wobbling sound - just think of it as an acoustic assault vehicle. Read More
Although E FUN may have just released its APEN, Wacom today introduced its very similar – yet different – Inkling digital sketch pen. Like the APEN, Inkling is a ballpoint pen that writes in ink on regular paper, and is combined with a small receiver that users clip to the top of the page. That receiver logs the location of the pen on the paper. When that data is transferred to a computer, a digital image of whatever was written or drawn is the result. Inkling is unique, however, in that it also incorporates pressure-sensing technology. This means that the relative line weights of the inked content will be transferred to the digital images, which makes it particularly well-suited to artwork. Read More
Have you ever questioned what it would be like if a car “could experience with a kind of consciousness its own passage through spacetime”? Well, Rotterdam artist Olaf Mooij has. It drove him to create “braincar,” which is ... well, it’s a car with a brain on the back. By day, the car captures stills and videos of its travels down the roads. By night, it remixes those images, then projects them on the inside of its translucent brain. Read More
Initially presented in 2009 as a rather eccentric architect's idea, one of the world's narrowest houses will be built in Warsaw, Poland. Referred to as an "impossible house" by its designer Jakub Szczesny of Centrala design studio, the house will be 152 cm (60 in) across in its widest spot on the outside. It's located in the center of Warsaw in a small slot between two buildings, and will be officially defined as an art installation, as it does not meet any legal standards of construction in Poland. Read More
If you think that heavy construction machinery like a Caterpillar 5230B Excavator is an unlikely source of inspiration for a piece of art, then you obviously don't work for Michigan art studio Woodchuck and Co. The team there has built a highly detailed wooden model, or rather, a semi-working replica of the large machine, in 1/16th scale. The collector's piece is up for sale at US$35,900. Read More
We tend to quickly forget about technology that's no longer shiny and state-of-the-art, which is part of the reason that piles of discarded electronics are becoming larger and larger. Polish sculptor Marek Tomasik, however, thought of a way of bringing them back to life ... sort of. He created an enormous and disturbing rectangular, walk-in sculpture made of several thousand discarded computer parts. The piece, entitled "Sometimes You Have To Be Open," is in the form of a room measuring 5m x 4m x 4.5m (16' x 14' x 15'), based around a wooden structure. Read More
