Jun 04
Point your iPhone’s camera anywhere, and Kuler captures the dominant colors from your surroundings, then creates a palette for you to design with.
May 31
Bumblebee, you’re doing it wrong. Or maybe he just got scared and decided to roll into a ball. This vehicular sculpture was actually made by Indonesian artist Ichwan Noor. He created this Volkswagen sphere that is 1.8 meters across out of the parts of actual Volkswagen Beetle.
To put it in more artsy-fartsy terms:
The sculpture’s visual form yields an impression of a sphere – the basis of all forms. The shape of a car is pressed onto the spherical form, producing a dynamic movement, a certain flexibility, but also fragility. It is a concept of “totems” that is embraced/believed by the people of today.
Or maybe it’s just cool because someone crushed a car into a ball and it looks like Bumblebee. Yeah, that’s why I like it.
[via Japan Times via Colossal via Neatorama]
May 30
Most comic book lovers handle their comics with care. Some of them even buy multiples of one issue or book just to have a perfectly mint copy in hand. But not Amy Watkins. She believes that if you love someone – or something – you have to cut them to pieces and turn them into another art form. KAPOW!
Watkins turns her old comics into collages that highlight comic book sound effects, from Nightcrawler’s teleportation sound to the oldie but goodie pows and blams.
You can see images of Watkins’ other collages on Design Taxi, but if I were you I’d snap up the four collages I featured on this post. Watkins is selling them on her Etsy shop PopUpCollage for just $35-$45 (USD). Those are criminally low prices for such unique and wonderful pieces. She also accepts custom orders for $50, where you get to pick the colors and sound effect to be featured.
[via Design Taxi via Archie McPhee]
May 29
You never know what you’ll find or walk into when you’re at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. For example, Random International’s ”Rain Room” is currently on display there until July 28th.
Being true to its name, you’ll be greeted by a torrent of falling water once you step into it. The coolest thing, though, is that you won’t ever get wet despite the fact that it’s (artificially) raining cats and dogs.
Rain Room is a field of falling water that pauses wherever a human body is detected—offering visitors the experience of controlling the rain. Using digital technology, Rain Room is a carefully choreographed downpour—a monumental work that encourages people to become performers on an unexpected stage, while creating an intimate atmosphere of contemplation.
Viewers are kept dry thanks to the sensors on the roof that temporary halts the downpour of water on the spot where they’re standing. The experience is best described as surreal, since it’s the only time you’ll be able to walk through rain without getting wet and without an umbrella.
[via Dvice]
May 28
When I was growing up, I must have listened to my Return of the Jedi album hundreds of times. And if I had dared to paint all over it my dad would have been pissed. Now that I have seen this awesome painted record and am no longer a child, (okay, that is debatable) I might just paint on mine too.
This Return of the Jedi painted montage is just awesome. It features Admiral Ackbar, the Rancor, an Ewok and Salacious Crumb – all painted on vinyl. This is the work of CyclopticSpider with and was done with watercolor paints of all things. I would think watercolors would be hard to use with all of the grooves, but somehow he pulled it off. He also did Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back versions, in case Ewoks aren’t your thing.
[via Obvious Winner]
May 28
Thanks to videogames, pinball has been relegated to a niche. But it still has its fans, some so addicted to the machines that they hang entire pinball playfields on their walls as decoration. Jeremy Williams and his friend invented Airfield, an LED kit that makes mounted or hung playfields come alive.
Airfield runs on a custom circuit board designed by Williams. It comes with 38 light cables – each with 2 LEDs at the end – plus all the materials you need to attach the board and cables to the rear of your playfield. Williams also commissioned an easy to use LED sequence program that you can find on his website. When you’re happy with the sequence you made, download it then install it to the Airfield via its microSD port (the Airfield kit already comes with a microSD card).
Skip to about 2:55 in the video below for another look at Airfield in action:
You can buy Airfield for $219 (USD) from Ledseq. I hope future models of the Airfield will have the option to add sound effects.
[via Doobybrain]
May 26
Chandeliers add a certain flair to any room you put them in. They can be colorful or glittering with crystals, long or short, and wide or narrow, and fitted with lamps so they can aptly illuminate the room.
Forms of Nature is another chandelier, but it’s more of an art form since the light sculpture does more than just light things up when you turn it on.
Flicking that switch on will cast shadows of twisty and thorny vines and branches on your walls that looks the outline of a very creepy patch of woods. Kind of like the ones Red was running around in when she was running from her wolf of a grandmother.
Forms in Nature was created by Hilden & Diaz, which is a collaboration between artists Thyra Hilden and Pio Diaz.
The light sculpture is described as resembling and being inspired by Darwinist Ernst Haeckel’s drawings and plots of nature. It is described by its creators as “artwork with a light source surrounded by a dense and unruly tree and root system created in minature sculpture. The forest is mirrored around it’s horizontal central axis and forms a circle 360 degrees around the light source and thereby leads one onto the notion of a real world versus an underworld.”
Forms in Nature has been such a hit that Hilden & Diaz are currently working on launching a Kickstarter campaign to produce 100 pieces of the light sculpture.
[via Geekologie]
May 23
May 22
Japanese Robot Art – It’s Good, Man!
Illustration, product packaging, statues & sculpture, and even some transhumanist pin-ups; for decades Japan’s been pounding out the robot art like nobody’s business. Last week’s robotics piece examined the artistic legacy influence of giant Japanese robots on the upcoming film Pacific Rim, but this week it’s just cool robot art for the sake of looking at cool robot art.
Some readers might just see the shiny, and that’s cool – some might find a new robo-wallpaper or screensaver, and that’s fun – or, as happens more than one might suspect, the exploration and enjoyment of sci-fi imagery and entertainment can result in actual factual inspiration.
Art Can Make Science, The -Fi Drives the Sci-
A guy named Martin Cooper, inspired by the communicators from the original Star Trek series (60s), went on to lead the Motorola team that invented the first mobile phone (70s). The Panasonic/ActiveLink exoskeletal Power Loader & Power Loader Light look a whole lot like the safety-yellow power loader from Aliens. The 1959 novel Starship Troopers has been cited as a major inspiration for those working on real-life badass robot suits. Sikorsky’s helicopters & Lake’s early submarines were heavily inspired by Jules Verne. It goes on.
Art & The Contemporary Robotics Revolution
The social and economic significance of the ongoing explosion in practical robotics shows a lot of parallels to the communications boom and media upheaval centered around the rise of the internet – in all likelihood, it’s not going to slow down. At all. And one has to wonder how many Gen-X roboticists fell in love with their field as children playing, watching, reading the Transformers, Voltron, Gundam, Star Wars, etc. Certainly went that way with at least one dorky keyboard pounder, as well.
Whatever the result, humans need art – and those of use with deep-seated robo-geekery proclivities, we need robot art. And so, enjoy the four forms below, and see the links at the bottom if you need a little more enjoyment, something that’ll look cool on your laptop or phone, and if the imagery below inspires you to invent, kindly link here when you go public, yeah?!
Form #1 – Illustration Because Illustration:
Doesn’t have to be a whole lot of practicality to robot art, just looking good is good enough. The main image above and the first work below is that of Toshiaki Takayama, who goes all kinds of robo-cyborgy on humans and dragons and other imaginary stuff:
Another great illustration is this Gundam going all robo-rage on… something, via Concept Robots, artist unfindable:
Form #2 – Transformers Box Art:
Now, this is also illustration, but for marketing and product packaging, of course. These images, perhaps modern vintage, were included on the 80s Transformers packaging. With plastic & metal toy in hand, these were the mind’s landscape.
In Japan it was this:
And across the Pacific:
Form #3 – Statues & Sculpture:
The most well-known and pun-intended visible robot statue is the life-size, 1:1-scale Gundam that pun-intended pops up from time to time around Tokyo. Ironically, this is Gundam Suit is, well, Mobile. The attention to detail is fantastic:
And just how big is the 1:1-scale Gundam? Could ask this dude:
Form #4 – Japanese Robot Art for Big Boys & Girls (CAUTION – the link below will deliver some NSFW):
For those who’d like a little more, ummm… nudity and sexuality in their robot art, a good place to begin is the work of nasty robot airbrush wizard Hajime Sorayama. His iconic and widely recognizable work was transhuman before transhumanism was cool, but his name isn’t exactly household. Below is a pretty mild sample, but if you’re like, you know, into that sorta thing, jump through the link down there – but not at work or in front of grandma:
Thanks for viewing – if you’ve got a favorite Japanese or otherwise nationalitied artist who represents with the robot art, let us and other readers know down below.
• • •
Reno J. Tibke is the founder and operator of Anthrobotic.com and a contributor at the non-profit Robohub.org.
Image Sources: Toshiaki Takayama at deviantART – Gundam Gallery at Concept Robots & Blog of DARWINFISH105 – Transformers Box Art at Botch the Crab – Hajime Sorayama’s Beleaguered Website (Google Image Search is better)
May 20
For a technology that’s still largely in its infancy, you can do some things with 3D printing that are pretty much impossible with any other technique. Take, for instance, these intricate 3D-printed mobiles.
Designed by kinetic sculptor Marco Mahler, along with mathematician Henry Segerman, these mobiles are unlike handmade mobiles you might have seen before.
Each one was designed using mathematical equations to generate shapes that range from organic to highly procedural in style. The most complex of the bunch is the Quaternary Tree (Level 6), which has a whopping 1,365 parts. Each model was then output using one of Shapeways’ industrial laser-sintering 3D printers.
Best of all, you can order a variety of these mobiles for yourself over at Shapeways. Since each one is made to order, it’ll take about 1 to 2 weeks to generate and then ship yours. Prices range from $10 (USD) for a small, simple mobile up to $600 for the most complex design.
It still blows my mind that a single 3D printing session can generate complex forms like these in which individual parts come out as separate, moveable objects.
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