Jmsperling

Scientists at MIT have pulled up a very tiny curtain on their newest invention: a 1.7cm square robot capable of assembling itself like a piece of origami. The Untethered Miniature Origami Robot is powered by a small neodymium magnet and four electromagnetic coils underneath the robot’s surface that create magnet fields necessary for it to operate. The small robot can walk on different surfaces, climb, carry objects twice its own weight, swim in shallow water, burrow, and it even completely dissolves in an acetone solution leaving behind just the magnet.

So what can we do with super tiny self-folding robots? Researchers hope to develop even smaller autonomous robots with additional sensors that can dissolve in water. Such tiny devices could have a variety of medical uses when introduced inside of a human body, maybe zapping cancer cells or cleaning clogged arteries. You can read more about it over at IEEE and in this research paper. (via Laughing Squid)

Back in the early 1990s, an entire fishing village 40 miles east of Shanghai was completely abandoned.

Recently, a team of photographers from China Foto Press captured these stunning images of the village overrun by local vegetation.

Eerie Photos of an Abandoned Chinese Village Overrun by Vegetation

via Cool Hunting

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Over the last few months we’ve marveled at the precision of South African artist Lorraine Loots' tiny paintings (previously here and here). In this new process video shot by Gareth Pon, we finally get to see how she blends pencil and paint to execute the most minute details of a wee hotdog no larger than a coin. Loots is exhibiting no less than 730 of her ‘Paintings for Ants’ at Three Kings Studio in New York starting July 8, 2015.

Oskar Zapirain's photographs capture eerie forests cast in thick fog, hazy light descending upon the foliage in the same green shade that blankets the floor in moss. Zapirain has been attracted to this landscape for years because of the homogenous light as well as the way it forces the viewer directly into a mystical atmosphere.

The forest Zapirain features is a beech forest in Oiartzun, Basque Country in Northern Spain. This particular forest is unique due to the history charcoal production within the region. Instead of clearcutting like we do today, the trees were instead pruned to preserve the trees and maintain the integrity of the forest across generations. The trees have since regrown with short trunks and dramatically long limbs that shoot outward like arms from almost every angle, adding a ghostly feel to each of Zapirain’s photos. You can explore more of his work on Flickr.

Shipping container architecture has become more and more popular over the years. Green Energy Futures checks out an off-grid solar powered example called the Octopod, located near Bobcaygeon, Ontario. 

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What a beautiful homage to the joy of rollerskating.

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Pneumàtic was founded by artists OOSS, Iago Buceta, and Mateu Targa for the street art festival Ús Barcelona. The idea behind the cut salvaged tire installations was to create works that tested the traditional uses of architecture, playing with the audience’s understanding of what is just beyond their physical grasp.

The works, which are all placed in linear or circular arrangements, also test the viewer’s association with architecture, giving a playful tactility to the spaces they occupy. Although most of the sculptures look as if they are only decorative, many impede walking paths, forcing one to walk around their blockade or traipse upon their back like a bridge. Each installation appears as if the solid structures the tires are adhered to are malleable, the pieces disappearing and emerging from the ground and walls like they are being slowly sucked in by quick sand. (via designboom)

Often one associates origami with sharp and precise folds, miniature works that have a crisp perfection. Origami artist Hoang Tien Quyet shies away from this rigidity, instead folding his small objects with a technique called “wet-folding,” which allows curves to be created instead of the typical straight lines. With this technique Vietnam-based Quyet creates posed animals bounding with personality, their heads tilted and wings ready for flight.

The technique of wet folding was created by the late origami master Akira Yoshizawa, and involves dampening the paper so it easily accepts folds. Wet-folding gives the paper works a more realistic appearance, adds a rounded quality to the origami, and allows it to appear malleable even though the pieces dry into hardened forms. Wet-folding also involves using a thicker paper, as traditional origami paper would easily tear if wet.

Quyet is co-author of two books, “50 hours Origami +” and “VOG2 – origami.vn,” both published by Passion Origami. Quyet’s skill and has lead to him being invited to several international origami conventions, including Germany, France, Italy, and Japan. You can see more images of Quyet’s animals on his Flickr. (via My Modern Met)

LATA 65 is connecting art between generational divides, matching older citizens of Lisbon with a relatively young form of art—graffiti (“lata” means “can” in Portuguese). Through workshops attendees learn the history of street art while making their own stencils and tags, ultimately incorporating their work in murals across the city. These bright colors go into run-down parts of the Lisbon, and each new artist is aided by the help of well-known street artists.

The goal of LATA 65 is to eliminate the many cliches that come with street art by widening both its audience and participants. Through introducing the art of graffiti to a different group of makers, the project hopes to create a solidarity between all groups involved while adding some colorful designs to the city along the way. (via mashkulture, Messy Nessy Chic, CollabCubed, and mental_floss)

After Christopher Jonassen and some friends began sharing a cheap house in Australia, the Norwegian photographer suddenly noticed potential in the banged up cooking utensils.

Using the bottoms of old frying pans, Jonassen transformed the mundane into otherworldly planets.

Photographer Turns Old Frying Pans Into Otherworldly Planets

via Faith is Torment

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Palette of Marc Chagall

Since 2007 photographer Matthias Schaller has photographed raw, abstract paintings. The paintings however are not found on canvas, but rather smeared onto the tools used to craft each work of art—the palettes. His series, Das Meisterstück (The Masterpiece), claims these behind-the-scene objects as portraits of the artist, while also giving a direct insight into the detailed techniques performed by each painter.

Schaller was first inspired to begin his photographic collection during a visit to Cy Twombly’s late studio. During the visit he stumbled upon the artist’s palette, which he discovered to be an accurate reflection of the artist’s paintings. Encouraged to further discover the similarities between palette and painting, Schaller has gone on to photograph over two hundred of these historic portraits. His search has led him to collect palettes from all across Europe and the United States, finding the objects in major museums and private foundations and in the custody of artists’ relatives and collectors. The palettes he’s photographed so far in the series belong to seventy painters from both the 19th and 20th century, and include such artists as Monet, van Gogh, Matisse, and Picasso. To accurately analyze the details from paint hue to brushstroke, Schaller presents the images in large format, each work existing at approximately 190 x 150 cm.

Schaller’s practice focuses on non traditional portraits, which he considers “indirect portraits.” Other subject matter has included children’s rooms in Naples, Italy, 150 Italian opera houses, astronaut suits, and early punk vinyls. Through June 8, the Giorgio Cini Foundation will present Schaller’s Das Meisterstück alongside the Venice Biennale, an exhibition that will focus on 20 of Schaller’s palette photographs. (via Hyperallergic)

Palette of Paula Modersohn-Becker / Palette of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Palette of Wassily Kandinsky, 2007, 190x156cm, Copyright: Matthias Schaller,Lenbachhaus, München;

Palette of Claude Monet / Palette of Édouard Manet

Palette of Edgar Degas

Palette of Eugene Delacroix / Palette of Georges Seurat

Palette of J.M.W. Turner, 2013, 190x156cm, Copyright: Matthias Schaller, The Royal Academy of Arts, London;

Palette of Francis Bacon, 2007, 190x156cm, Copyright: Matthias Schaller, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, Dublin.

Palette of Cy Twombly, 2007, 190x156cm, Copyright: Matthias Schaller, Collezione Nicola del Roscio, Gaeta;

Palette of Pablo Picasso / Palette of Henri Matisse

Palette of Vincent van Gogh, 2007, 190x156cm, Copyright: Matthias Schaller, Musée d’Orsay, Paris;

all photos by Steve Messam courtesy the artist

While it’s certainly not the longest, this weight-bearing structure is definitely one of the more interesting bridges we’ve come across. Unveiled earlier this month, PaperBridge is the latest site-specific installation by environmental artist Steve Messam. It was constructed using 22,000 sheets of bright, red paper. And despite weighing in at over 4.2 tons, the free-standing structure doesn’t have a single screw, bolt or swab of glue holding it together.

On an aesthetic level, PaperBridge acts as focal point that creates a stark contrast between the bridge and the lush landscape. But on a conceptual level, Messam explains the key relationship between the bridge and its surroundings:

Paper is a simple material made from wood pulp and water. The intensity of colour used in the bridge contrasts with the verdant landscape making a bold statement of form and design. Alongside this the materials used have a resonance with the natural environment and the construction of the bridge also reflects local architectural forms, specifically pack horse bridges found throughout the area. All of the paper used in PaperBridge will be recovered and returned to the Burneside Mill for recycling into new paper once the project ends. This transparent cycle is part of the overall environmental narrative of the piece.

PaperBridge was part of the ‘Lakes Ignite’ project. It was located in the Grisedale Valley, near Patterdale and the public was invited to walk across it before it gets taken down today. (via Designboom and The Kid Should See This)

British ceramicist Tamsin van Essen is fascinated by what she describes as the “the fragile boundary between attraction and repulsion,” a place where tension is created by the visible and the obscured. For her Erosion series Essen created layered blocks of alternating black and white porcelain which she then sandblasted to mimic biological forms similar to a parasitic virus in the process of devouring a host. In a even more literal example, she created a series of ceramic vessels that appear to be infected with specific bacteria.

Essen just spent three months working on a new body of work currently on view at Siobhan Davies Studios in London, and you can see additional pieces over on Saatchi Art. (via Coroflot)

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You’ve undoubtedly heard of the ongoing drought in California, but it’s rare that you get a photo series that approaches the issue so personally.

Since he’s spent his entire life in California’s Central Valley, photographer Matt Black’s images of the crisis are both intimate and heartbreaking.

California’s Epic Drought Captured by a Lifelong Resident

via NPR

Since we last learned about NeSpoon last year, the Polish street artist has popped up everywhere with new pieces in Perth, Tunisia, Portugal, and elsewhere. NeSpoon translates traditional lace patterns into large-scale murals or stencils, ceramic installations, and even embroidery. The artworks are part of her ongoing series of “public jewelry” that seeks to turn unadorned spaces and surfaces into something beautiful. You can see more over on Behance.

All of Japanese photographer Hayato Wakabayashi’s fascinating projects focus on finding otherworldly scenes here on earth.

The latest addition to his portfolio comes from the coastal region of Japan, where frozen waterfalls and bizarre caves form alien landscapes.

Frozen Waterfalls and Stunning Caves From the Coast of Japan

via Huffington Post

While visiting the Louvre last last year, artist and filmmaker Julien de Casabianca was struck by an Ingres painting of a female prisoner tucked unceremoniously into a corner of the museum. He suddenly had an idea: what if he could somehow free her—both figuratively and literally—by reproducing her figure on a public street. People may not know the painting, or even the artist, but at least the image would be seen by potentially hundreds or even thousands more people who may never visit the Louvre. With that single act, the Outings Project was born.

Since sharing photos of the first artwork online, people in at least 18 cities have liberated similar anonymous characters found in master paintings and pasted them up in public spaces in London, Barcelona, Chicago, Rome, and elsewhere. Casabianca says the global participation was completely unplanned and unexpected but he’s embraced the idea wholeheartedly.

When asked about the possibility of an artwork being taken out of context or without attribution he shares via email, “we don’t want to tell you something that you don’t know, and we don’t want people to feel ignorant. You have just to feel that [the artwork] is ancient and shifted, you have just to be touched by the emotion, by the esthetic, by the art.”

Art enthusiasts aren’t the only ones paying attention to the Outings Project. Two museums in Madrid and Poland have also engaged the artist to “play with their art in public.” Casabianca is now on a 12-city tour around the United States bringing more unknown figures in local museums into the light. You can follow the most recent classical art paste-ups on the project’s Facebook or Instagram. (via This Isn’t Happiness, Slate, Hyperallergic)

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Working along a single stretch of coastline in Sian Ka’an, Mexico’s largest federally-protected reserve, artist Alejandro Duran collects countless bits of trash that washes up from locations around the world. So far he’s discovered plastic debris from dozens of countries on this shore of the Caribbean coast which he utilizes for site site-specific installations for an ongoing project titled Washed Up. By creating aesthetically pleasing landscapes from a disheartening medium, it’s Duran’s hope to create a harsh juxtaposition that draws attention to the global catastrophe of ocean pollution. He shares in a statement about Washed Up:

Over the course of this project, I have identified plastic waste from fifty nations on six continents that have washed ashore along the coast of Sian Ka’an. I have used this international debris to create color-based, site-specific sculptures. Conflating the hand of man and nature, at times I distribute the objects the way the waves would; at other times, the plastic takes on the shape of algae, roots, rivers, or fruit, reflecting the infiltration of plastics into the natural environment.

More than creating a surreal or fantastical landscape, these installations mirror the reality of our current environmental predicament. The resulting photo series depicts a new form of colonization by consumerism, where even undeveloped land is not safe from the far-reaching impact of our disposable culture.

Duran just received the Juror’s Award from CENTER for his efforts, and has upcoming exhibitions at Habana Outpost in Brooklyn and at the XO KI’IN Retreat Center. (via This Isn’t Happiness, LENSCRATCH)

Of all the places you’d expect a wild mountain lion to call home, Los Angeles’s Griffith Park has to be one of the most unlikely.

After setting up hidden cameras and waiting nearly 15 months, photographer Steve Winter finally captured the elusive creature against the backdrop of L.A.

A Photographer’s Quest to Capture L.A.’s Famous Mountain Lion

via It’s Nice That

Our new favorite Instagram account comes courtesy of the distinguished parody chef, “Jacques La Merde.”

The pioneering taste maker plates your every day convenience store junk food in the style of high class restaurant dishes.

Instagrammer Plates Everyday Junk Food Like High Class Cuisine

via Twisted Sifter

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As a continuation of her impossibly miniature painting project, South African artist Lorraine Loots (previously) has embarked on her latest endeavor for 2015: Potluck 100. The new series involves 100 new artworks painted in four categories: Microcosm Mondays, Tiny Tuesdays (vintage book covers), Fursdays, and Free Fridays (images of anything). All 100 paintings are being auctioned on her Instagram account and a limited edition of 10 prints for each work are being made available on her site. Loots also has an upcoming exhibition in New York at Three Kings Studio in July. (via My Modern Met)