Shakadelic

Designer Ernesto D Morales has proposed a spoon made out of magnifying glass as part of a series of absurd products for his fictional company Object Solutions (+ movie). (more...)

The zigzagging roof of this family residence in South Korea prompted architecture studio Apparat-C to name it Twin Peaks House (+ slideshow). (more...)

A team of researchers has completed a working prototype for a drone made from a fungal material that will biodegrade if it crashes outdoors. (more...)

Dezeen Book of Interviews: in this interview from our latest book, influential graphic designer Neville Brody discusses the impact of London's punk movement on his work. (more...)

A New York-based company has unveiled designs for a bicycle seat that also functions as a one-metre-long bike lock made of steel links that fold up under the seat for storage during travel (+ slideshow). (more...)

The Whirling Dervish was a willow sculpture by artist Trevor Leat that was installed in 2012 at Shambellie House, in New Abbey, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. Leat is known for his work with willow trees which he grows organically for use in furniture, baskets, and sculptures. Unfortunately, Shambellie House, which housed the National Museum of Costume, closed in 2013, so this piece may no longer be viewable. (via Colossal Submissions)

Fine art photographer Kylli Sparre (previously) has continued to create her dance-inspired photographs, almost all of which depict the artist herself in various dreamlike states and situations. Working with outdoor landscapes, and bodies of water or ice, Sparre fuses years of formal ballet training with these dramatic and performative photographs. The artist has a show in Amsterdam next month at Qlickeditions, and you can follow her work more on Facebook.

A few days ago, UK industrial designer and jeweler Mat Brown shared with the Reddit community his ingenious idea for a set of resin inlaid chestnut shelves. Starting with a cracked piece of chestnut wood he mixed standard resin with some mysterious glow-in-the-dark powder he bought on Ebay which he used to fill in the gaps. And voilà, instant glowing furniture with unknown side effects. Seriously though, they look amazing, and you can see his fully detailed tutorial over on his blog. Brown also makes lots of funky jewelry which he sells over on Etsy.

Product designer Hilla Shamia has developed a novel way to meld poured aluminum with irregularly shaped wood pieces to create sleek tables and benches. The process preserves that natural form of the tree trunk while still allowing the molten aluminum to flow into the crevices of the wood, slightly burning the area where the two materials meet. These remind me somewhat of Greg Klassen’s glass tables from last month here on Colossal. You can see more of Shamia’s work on her website. (via The Fox is Black)

The Rose of Jericho (Selaginella lepidophylla) is a species of desert moss that has the amazing ability to ‘resurrect’ itself after bouts of extreme dehydration lasting months or even years. After just a few hours of exposure to moisture the plants burst to life, uncurling from a tight ball of dry leaves to a green flower-like shape. Videographer Sean Steininger shot this timelapse of several plants as he exposed them to water. (via Cause, Science!)

Update: Apparently a few places sell these plants online.

If you want to create detailed and imaginative flying machine sculptures that look like they’re about to take flight, cardboard is hardly the material to use. Unless of course you’re artist Daniel Agdag (previously), who has been toiling away creating a series of new works each more detailed and fascinating than the next. “The Principles of Aerodynamics” is Agdag’s first solo exhibition where his series of cardboard contraptions that portray his “ongoing pursuit of escape through the metaphor of flight” will be on display through Aug 31, 2014.

As he’s done in the past, Agdag forfeits all blueprints, drawings and plans choosing, instead, to work only from mind and scalpel. His industrial beasts–get close and you can almost smell the oil and smoke; hear the clanking and buzzing–come together only from sliced cardboard hinged with glue.

French freediver David Helder has been diving for over 35 years, and somewhere along the way he discovered a strange ability. Like a dolphin, Helder can blow perfectly controlled bubble rings underwater. While many divers have playfully experimented with blowing these whirling vortexes, Helder has dedicated significant time to perfecting the technique which he uses to perform dozens of different tricks. Watch the video to see him in action, thing get really interesting around the 2:40 mark. (via Sploid)

Based in Oxford, England, illustrator Chloe Giordano creates delicate depictions of miniature animals rendered with freehand embroidery. The final works of a sleeping fawn or mouse are scarcely larger than the size of a thimble, yet can take long periods of time to complete as she mixes myriad thread colors to achieve perfection for each piece. Giordano also creates various 3D sculptures which you can see more of over on her Tumblr, and says that she is currently available for projects and comissions.

Paper artist Maude White cuts meticulous depictions of birds, people, leaves and other compositions embedded with hidden scenes and stories. Each piece can involve thousands of minute cuts giving the works an extreme feel of density and texture. White is currently based in Buffalo and will have work on view next month at the Western New York Book Arts Collaborative as part of a show titled Birds I’ve Been. You can see more of her work in her portfolio and over on Instagram.

From the series Landscape Multiple, 2013. Reworked second hand ceramics. Dimensions 52 x 42 x 7 cm. Collection Röhsska Museum, Gothenburg (S)

From the series Landscape Multiple, 2007. Reworked second hand ceramics. Ø 26 cm

From the series Landscape Multiple, 2012. Reworked second hand ceramics. Ø 26 cm

From the series Landscape Multiple, 2009. Reworked second hand ceramics. Ø 33 cm

Helsinki-based artist Caroline Slotte manipulates artwork found on acquired antique ceramics to create layered landscapes and isolated images. One of her most striking bodies of work titled Landscape Multiple involves a process of carving and sanding through stacked dinner plates to create new, unexpected landscapes. From her artist statement:

The reworking of second hand objects play a pivotal role in Caroline Slotte´s practice. She manipulates found materials, primarily ceramic everyday items, so that they take on new meanings. The tensions between the recognizable and the enigmatic, the ordinary and the unexpected are recurring thematic concerns. More recent explorations reveal an expanded interest in material perception and material recognition, teasing out situations where the initial visual identification fails resulting in an unsettling state of material confusion. Demonstrating an engaged sensitivity towards the associations, memories and narratives inherent in the objects, Slotte´s intricate physical interventions allows us to see things we would otherwise not have seen.

What you see here is just a sample of Slotte’s work, head over to her website to see all of these pieces close up, and also check out her wood sculptures. Slotte had several additional pieces on view earlier this year at Kunstnerforbundet Gallery in Oslo. (via Yellowtrace)

Mineral Admiration is a new series of watercolor paintings by Vienna-based artist and illustrator Karina Eibatova. The juxtaposition of using a water-based medium to create images of stone is in line with Eibatova’s desire to only create images from nature, an exploration that has lead to dozens of publications in magazines, newspapers, and journals around the world. These new paintings are available as prints in her online shop.

Gli ultimi sprazzi di estate ci portano in quel di Conversano, dove domani inaugurerà la prima personale dell’illustratore nostrano Emiliano Ponzi nella suggestiva location del Monastero di San Benedetto. La mostra curata dall’amico e caparbio Gianvito Fanelli metterà in esposizione più di 70 opere a ripercorrere i tratti salienti della carriera di Ponzi, con approfondimenti legati a Charles Bukowski, Milano e alla sua reintepretazione dei gironi infernali della Divina Commedia dantesca. Ingresso libero.

Detroit studio Rootoftwo has installed weather vanes shaped like headless chickens on five buildings in Folkestone, England, which spin around and change colour in response to fear levels on the internet rather than the climate (+ slideshow). (more...)

For a major retrospective of Dutch furniture designer and architect Gerrit Rietveld, the team at Studio Wieki Somers collaborated with chocolatier Rafael Mutter to create Chocolate Mill. The piece was comprised of a giant cylindrical chocolate block that was carefully organized in 10 stacked layers, with flavored shapes used to create different geometric patterns. As a crank-turned blade similar to a cheese slicer grazed shavings off the top, the hidden layers were slowly revealed. You can watch a timelapse of the piece in the video above. (via Designboom, Design You Trust)

In her ongoing series of figurative sculptures titled Milky Ways, artist Mihoko Ogaki explores ideas of life, death, and rebirth. The dead or dying human forms are constructed from Fibre-reinforced plastic and embedded with bright LEDs that when lit project fields of light resembling stars in the surrounding space. You can see many more installation views over on her website. (via mori yu gallery)

Pratt student Melanie Hoff connected cables carrying 15,000 volts of electricity to a large plank of wood and then documented the results. Surprisingly the areas around each contact point don’t simply catch on fire or burn in a circle, but rather traverse outward in a fractal-like pattern, like lighting in slow motion. Watch it all unfold above. (via colossal submissions)

Artist Vik Muniz (previously here and here) has three new works made from gold scrap metal that will be on view as digital prints at the Armory Show in New York starting March 7th, 2013 through Rena Bransten Gallery. Muniz is known for creating images using multitudes of discarded objects and trash, and you may have seen his work in the 2010 documentary Waste Land.

Side note: for the first time ever the Armory Show has partnered with Artsy to offer a gorgeous full-blown preview of the fair featuring hundreds of works in beautiful high-definition. For those of us who can’t make it to many of the art fairs, more like this please? (via hyperallergic)

David Schwen si è divertito a creare questi riferimenti Pantone usando del cibo vero. Il risultato sta facendo il giro del web in 24 ore.

Le falangi-puntina si trovano qui.

Sub5Zero | -

The Type 1 (aka Beetle) may be the most recognizable early Volkswagen product, but the Type 2 (aka Microbus) is a close second. Introduced in 1950, VW’s first van (known to air-cooled VeeDub devotees as the T1, short for Transporter 1) has been a favorite of surfers, tradesmen, hippies, couriers, families and more in the decades since. And like its insect-esque sedan sibling, it has also been popular with customizers.

However, few T1s have been altered quite as radically as the yellow one seen here. It was commissioned by the ÖAMTC, which is basically the Austrian equivalent of AAA. Specifically, this Bus – or, as it’s affectionately known to many German speakers, Bulli – is being used by ÖAMTC’s youth outreach program, which dabbles in dispensing safe driving advice, travel planning services and other transportation-related nuggets relevant to the Land of the Edelweiss’s millenials. And what better to attract these smartphone-addicted throngs than the ultimate all-terrain party bus?

The 1966 T1 panel van body is adorned with matching snowboarder or waterskiier (depending on the season/venue) murals on both sides, and the big VW badge on the front has been removed and replaced by the club’s logo. The front doors are welded shut – cabin access is now through the sliding rear door on the passenger side – and the stock wheel wells have been filled in. They aren’t necessary anymore because this thing isn’t riding on wheels anymore; instead, the Bulli body has been placed on the chassis of a 1960 Bombardier B01 Spurgrat snowcat. A vintage Ford of Germany Taunus V4 sends power to the left and right tracks via a transmission system that allows the van to move forward, backward, and spin on its own axis.

Of course, most youths would not be all that impressed by a T1 riding on caterpillar tracks. They would just look up from their iPhones, say “Meh” (or whatever the German analogue is) and go back to their iPhones. They would be impressed, however, by a T1 riding on caterpillar tracks and a DJ booth that pops out of the freakin’ roof! Fresh mixes are bumped toward the crowd by way of a 1,000 watt subwoofer, a five-channel Behringer mixer and a pair of Technic turntables. Not exactly the stuff beginners would use.

So how much did this thing cost? The official price tag is 60,000 euros, or about $79,000. That might seem spendy, but when you consider all the modifications that have been made and stuff that’s been added to it, that’s really not bad. Factor in all the publicity it generates and it becomes an absolute bargain. See it in action, though make sure those around you enjoy hip-hop auf Deutsch if you aren’t wearing headphones.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Source: ÖAMTC

Austrian Auto Club Turns a VW Bus into a Snowcat/DJ Booth [w/ Video] by Tom Anderson

I was astounded to learn that 22-year-old Hungarian photographer Noell S. Oszvald who lives and works in Budapest picked up a camera only a year ago. The gifted artist has shared only two dozen or so images with the world via Flickr but they already show an accomplished grasp of composition, editing and digital manipulation. Oszvald tells Alice over at My Modern Met that she chooses only to work in black and white because she finds color distracting from her conceptual ideas. She also mentions that she wishes for viewers of her work to find their own meaning and interpretation of each image. “I don’t want to tell people what to see in my images,” explains Oszland to My Modern Met, “this is the reason why I never really write any descriptions other than titles. It shows what I wish to express but everyone is free to figure out what the picture says to them. It’s very interesting to read so many different thoughts about the same piece of work.” See many more of her photographs here. (via my modern met)

When first approaching the artwork of Japanese artist Takahiro Iwasaki it’s entirely possible you might miss it altogether. Not only are his small buildings and electrical towers excruciatingly small and delicate, but they also rest on absurdly mundane objects: rolls of tape, a haphazardly wrinkled towel, or from the bristles of a discarded toothbrush. Only on close inspection do the small details come into focus, faint hints of urbanization sprouting from disorder. My favorite pieces are his topographical maps that have been carefully cut from thick rolls of gray and blue electrical tape. Many of these objects were on view as part of the Constellations show at Cornerhouse in Manchester back in 2011 and at C24 Gallery last year. However Iwasaki currently has a new collection of much larger works at the 7th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at GOMA in Queensland, much of which you can see over at designboom. (via artscharity.org, cornerhouse, c24 gallery, karl steel)

As part of an innovative partnership called Home Sweet Home (Lar Doce Lar) between multidisciplinary design firm Rosenbaum and TV producer Luciano Huck, the teams went through dozens of Brazilian homes doing dramatic makeovers of interior and exterior spaces. On their 48th home Rosenbaum designed a pretty amazing vertical garden that was suspended in a narrow walkway just outside the house. Reponse to the garden was so huge the firm quickly released design schematics (in Portugese) detailing how to build one. A huge thanks to the team at Rosenbaum for sharing these photos with Colossal!

Hackney-based Studio Weave has constructed a network of listening pipes in a back courtyard of London's Great Ormond Street Hospital to create a secret factory of lullabies for children (+ slideshow). (more...)

Sogni d’oro, piccolo astronauta!