sand fields vs.rice fields

Jim Denevan

via Daily Onigiri

Jim Denevan

via Daily Onigiri

Jim Denevan

from the Serpentine Dance to the modern Tiller Girls.

The creators of this beautiful hypnotic silent movie -the Lumière Brothers, were one of the earliest filmmakers in history. The Serpentine Dance is a video from 19th century, inspired by the dance of Loie Fuller, one of the pioneers of modern dance and stage lighting. The woman in this video is often mistaken for Loie Fuller but it is actually not Loie but some unknown dancer. The Lumière Brothers shot this video in black and white and then hand painted each frame to achieve the affect similar to Loie's live performances.

Loie Fuller

In her live performances, Loie danced in her long silk skirts using different sorts of lights projected onto her skirt creating that misty and magical atmosphere leaving the audience hypnotized and delighted.

Now fast forwarding to our time.
I recently saw a dance performed by 32 robots and I have to admit I had that same hypnotic feeling just as if I was watching people dancing.

"The Tiller Girls" is a project that explores if the actions of a human and a robot can be equally regarded as art performance. The man behind the concept is Louis-Philippe Demers ,a multidisciplinary artist with a list of impressive robotic works so far. This project was inspired by famous dance troupe of 1900s- the Tiller Girls whose performances were hypnotic for the audience because of their preciseness and synchronization.

The Tiller robots were built to have only minimal freedom of movement but yet they achieve a large variety of expressions and behaviors which makes the performance really breath taking. I loved the collision of art and science in this piece, I loved the music and the lighting , the whole viewing experience was truly magical so if you get the chance to see the Tiller Girls, don't miss it.

making music can be easy&fun.

http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix

ToneMatrix is a cute little music synthesizer that lets you create your own audio sequences. It was created by Andre Michelle and it's a 16x16 matrix with grey boxes which you can activate by clicking on them. As soon as you activate the box, it turns white. Each line of boxes has its own individual tone. The sounds will play from left to right based on your selection. You can play around and try to arrange the notes in a way that makes sense but the thing is that almost anything you compose with this little music toy will sound good.
And of course you can save your little masterpieces, so go and have fun !

Gulp.

After the world's smallest stop motion animation Dot , guys from Nokia and Aardman Animations teamed up once again and this time the result is the world's largest stop animation video called Gulp.
Gulp explores the life of a lone fisherman and his little fishing boat. It was shot by three Nokia N8 phones which were attached to the crane and lifted 36 meters above the ground at South Wales seaside.The impressive thing is that all the waves, the sea gulls and the clouds are actually giant sand drawings carved in the beach by sand artists. And just like with Dot, you need to see the "making of" to realize just how amazing this creation is.

All Is Not Lost

The band OK Go continues to make innovative videos ( here's the post about the previous one) and this time the guys teamed up with Google Japan and modern dance company Pilobolus. The experimental video for the track "All is not lost"  is intended to be viewed in Google Chrome. It uses pop-ups in a very unusual way .
In the beginning you see the video in a small pop up in the center of the screen and as the song progresses, screen splits into more and more pop-ups and more dancers are involved and everything looks complex and beautiful.
The video is also interactive because before the video starts to load, you can enter a message which dancers will form at the very end of the video and you are given a choice to save that message or share it with your friends.
Below you can check the regular film version but the real thing is at http://www.allisnotlo.st

I scream, YOU scream !

via Beautiful Life

STOYN is a Russian advertising agency that has developed this genius range of ice creams.  They decided to materialize iconic characters from world's culture such as Darth Vader, Marilyn Monroe, Donald Duck, Che Guevara, Super Mario * <3 * and others in form of these intriguing flavors of ice cream. They really look cool, I would love to try them. The promotional event was organized under the slogan " Lick your idol" and judging by the photos from the event, looks like everyone had great fun doing so.

via fantastic-dl.blogspot.com

Ice cream was an inspiration for one of my favorite artist couples : Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. They like to make king size public art installations of everyday objects. Back in 2001. in Cologne, they installed a giant sculpture of an ice cream cone dropped upside down on top of a building. And they had chosen not just any building, but a shopping mall to emphasize the cornucopia of consumerism.

Another ice cream related piece of art are these ice cream cone lamps for eco-friendly light bulbs which look so real and cute. Designed by studio Mixko, although I'm not sure if they can still be bought somewhere as the designers from this studio parted and they each run their own studios now.

And for the end of this post , my favorite- ice cream taking a poop.

via Doodle Everyday

Titled "Everyone poops", this doodle is a work of an illustrator Lim Heng Swee who decided to do one doodle a day for 365 days hoping to bring a smile on people's faces.

balloons.

photo by Ikunori Yamamoto

This amazing balloon bench was designed by Satoshi Itasaka from h220430 studio. What's great about this bench is that it looks so real, like it's floating away. Of course, this is actually an illusion as the balloons are plastic and have to be bolted to the ceiling. Satoshi found inspiration for this design in a french movie called "Le ballon rouge" from 1956.

Le ballon rouge is a movie about a friendship between a boy and a balloon which follows him around . It has beautiful, dreamy-like atmosphere and watching it is an emotionally moving experience so if you haven't seen this classic, you need to watch it.

Another balloonish thing which looks like it's being lifted by the balloons is this replica house from Pixar's movie Up built by a team from National Geographic. Only this is not an illusion. This house really does float aided by the help of 300 huge helium-filled balloons. All this was an experiment made by a group of scientists, engineers, world-class balloon pilots and thousands of volunteers who managed to get the small house into the air just like in Pixar's movie Up.

head art.

From time to time,  I become obsessed with something. This weekend my attention was focused on hats. I discovered some breathtaking hat designs. To me they represent true sculpture art.

The exploration started with Philip Treacy .

Then I was fascinated by Stephen Jones's latest dreamy surreal collection.

And finally, I was blown away with a hat exhibition made by Japanese design studio Nendo for Akio Harata, Japan's most famous hat designer. People from Nendo have chosen a perfect way to put accent on Hirata's work: they made 4000 white "ghost hats" which float around giving a dramatic contrast to the "real" hats which are on display. I can only imagine what an amazing feeling it must be to walk through these flying hats.

photo by Daici Ano

photo by Daici Ano

photo by Daici Ano

Visual Thinking

This is the most popular sketch from Sam+Friends TV show which was aired back in the 50's. The author of the show was the famous puppeteer Jim Henson who later developed these characters and created The Muppets. I love this sketch. It features Kermit The Frog and Harry The Hipster. I find it very interesting that a character's name from this vintage TV show was Harry The Hipster. Harry was actually a black sock puppet with white shades, distinguished taste in everything and big jazz lover who always spoke in hip slang. The thing that I love about this sketch is that it explores visual thinking and especially visualizing music which in a way reminded me of my ongoing fascination with synesthesia.
"Oh I don't like jazz."  * SQUARE*

Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus

Last year's famous virus Stuxnet is considered to be the first weapon made entirely out of code. Many speculate it was built to destroy Iran's nuclear program.

Australian designer Patrick Claire made a beautifully designed video about Stuxnet . This amazing infographic also gives you the chill because it brings up the question about the future of this powerful weapon. Watch the video here.