Brianrhart

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Diaper Horse

Banned music concealed in Soviet bones.

In 1950s Russia, one of the only ways to hear blues, jazz and rock’n'roll from America was to get hold of one of these – a bootleg record pressed up on a discarded X-ray plate.

Being caught with banned music could get you arrested, but music-starved Soviet citizens used their nous to turn salvaged hospital waste into what’s effectively an incognito dubplate.

With a special lathe, bootlegs were pressed on thick radiographs found in hospital bins and then cut into rough discs around 25 centimetres across, sometimes using a cigarette to burn the central hole.

If you’re proficient in German you can read more about these artefacts of Soviet censorship on Der Spiegel; we found them via Vinyl of the Day.

Endless Forms/Endless Species: Explorations in an Evolutionary Development Park by Kathryn Fleming for RCA Design Interactions. Almost Seussical creations are the charming inhabitants of a fantastical Regent’s Park.

(Want more? See NOTCOT.org and NOTCOT.com)

Google’s Street View, made possible by their custom-designed panoramic camera, has become the eyes of streets large and small in almost every major city. So it makes perfect sense that they’re now pointing their panoramic lenses to the walls around the world by adding street art to their portfolio. Earlier this week Google announced the launch of their Street Art Project, a new initiative to document and preserve the often transient nature of street art. The project launched with over 5,000 high resolution images including work that no longer exists, like the 5Pointz murals in Long Island City or the walls of the Tour Paris 13. (via Laughing Squid)

This is amazing! Californian glassworker Loren Stump is a celebrated expert at manipulating the fickle and delicate medium of glass. Known especially for his work with murrine, over 40 years Stump has mastered the technique of layering coloured molten glass around a core and then stretching the whole thing into a rod.

Once cooled and cut into, a cross-section of this rod reveals intricate patterns. Think of it like an incredible detailed candy-cane.

Not only is Stump adept at making murrine that he can create figurative images within the cross-sections that are hidden until the rod is sliced, he is also able to combine the two-dimensional forms into three-dimensional objects.

Some of his work is mind-boggling and it’s difficult to imagine how he even begins to create these classical pictures by mixing molten glass together. But he does and the results are incredible.

Each slice of this ‘loaf’ sold for $5000!

The post This glass ‘loaf’ with detailed artwork is the most awesome thing we’ve seen all year appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

Brazilian artist Henrique Oliveira (previously) recently completed work on his largest installation to date titled Transarquitetônica at Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade in São Paulo. As with much of his earlier sculptural and installation work the enormous piece is built from tapumes, a kind of temporary siding made from inexpensive wood that is commonly used to obscure construction sites. Oliveira uses the repurposed wood pieces as a skin nailed to an organic framework that looks intentionally like a large root system. Because the space provided by the museum was so immense, the artist expanded the installation into a fully immersive environment where viewers are welcome to enter the artwork and explore the cavernous interior. Transarquitetônica will be on view through the end of November this year, and you can watch the video above by Crane TV to hear Oliveira discuss its creation.

The Legend of Diaper Horse by Cassandra Twobears

Before the insanely popular Lil Bub or the hilarious Doge memes of today was the photography of Harry Whittier Frees, a man who was capturing dogs and cats in odd-yet-amusing situations long before you and I were around. He fashioned a career from these adorable pictures and used them in postcards, calendars, and children’s books. The positive reception (and the fact that it made him wealthy) further proves that our obsession with cuteness is timeless. Some things really do remain the same.

These strange images show cats and dogs in dresses and bonnets, performing household chores like hanging clothes to dry or watering the plants. While it’s hard to deny the cute factor, you can’t help but feel a little uncomfortable by the unnatural positions these actors are posed in. It’s reminiscent to the work of Walter Potter, whom we recently shared here. Although there is a certain similarity to the stiff adorableness, you can feel better knowing that Frees’ animals stayed alive for their photo shoots.

Photographing these tiny creatures was no simple feat and Frees would only photograph three months out of the year. He writes about his experiences in his book Animal Land on the Air:

Rabbits are the easiest to photograph in costume, but incapable of taking many ”human“ parts. Puppies are tractable when rightly understood, but the kitten is the most versatile animal actor, and possesses the greatest variety of appeal. The pig is the most difficult to deal with, but effective on occasion. The best period of young animal models is a short one, being when they are from six to ten weeks of age. An interesting fact is that a kitten’s attention is best held through the sense of sight, while that of a puppy is most influenced by sound, and equally readily distracted by it. The native reasoning powers of young animals moreover, quite as pronounced as those of the human species, and relatively far surer. (Via Co.Design)

 

The post Harry Whittier Frees Was Photographing Cute Animals In Weird Costumes Long Before We Were appeared first on Beautiful/Decay Artist & Design.

Kinder in einem Feriendorf / Martin Munkacsi / 1929

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has released a vast archive of 400,000 (mostly) hi-resolution digital images online that you can download and use for non-commercial purposes. From a 12-megapixel scan of Rembrandt’s 1660 self-portrait to over 18,000 photos spanning almost two centuries. Here are a few quick gems from the Photography collection, see also: Arms & Armor, Modern and Contemporary Art, and other highlights. (via Kottke)

Daughters of Jerusalem / Julia Margaret Camero / 1865

Head of Man with Hat and Cigar / Leon Levinstein / 1960

Isambard Kingdom Brunel Standing Before the Launching Chains of the Great Eastern / Robert Howlett / 1857

A Study, No. 1 / Rudolph Eickemeyer / 1901

Street Minstrel, Gose / Shinichi Suzuki / 1870s

Group of Thirteen Decapitated Soldiers / Unknown / 1910

Sincerely Yours, Woodrow Wilson / Arthur S. Mole / 1918

A Girl, Carmel / Johan Hagemeyer / 1930.           Unidentified Child Picking Nose / Walker Evans / 1930.

Hardy Boys No.199 “The Hardy Boys Lose Their Shit”

If you’ve ever worked in the hospitality industry you’ll know just how much food goes to waste at the end of a dinner shift. Kilos upon kilos. So a group of non-wasters got together to create an app – PareUp – that allows users to buy leftover restaurant goodies.

The mobile app ‘will store inventories of participating retailers’ products, allow retailers to update and set prices for the listings, and inform customers of the offerings for the day’. A pretty neat idea, right? Not only will it save you those late night dumpster dives, but it will also save good food from going to landfill.

The post An app for restaurants to sell discounted leftovers (instead of throwing them away) appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

Bibliothèque de Genève, Switzerland

Hot on the heels of a post earlier this week about centuries-old guide for mixing watercolors, I stumbled onto this 18th century instrument designed to measure the blueness of the sky called a Cyanometer. The simple device was invented in 1789 by Swiss physicist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure and German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt who used the circular array of 53 shaded sections in experiments above the skies over Geneva, Chamonix and Mont Blanc. The Cyanometer helped lead to a successful conclusion that the blueness of the sky is a measure of transparency caused by the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. You can learn more at the Royal Society of Chemistry. (via Free Parking)

Wikipedia

Tokyobike

Humade

Kintsugi (or kintsukuroi) is a Japanese method for repairing broken ceramics with a special lacquer mixed with gold, silver, or platinum. The philosophy behind the technique is to recognize the history of the object and to visibly incorporate the repair into the new piece instead of disguising it. The process usually results in something more beautiful than the original.

The video above was filmed at Tokyobike in London which recently had a Kintsugi workshop. If you’d like to try the technique yourself, Humade offers gold and silver DIY kintsugi kits. See also: When Mending Becomes an Art. (via Kottke and The Kid Should See This)

Paul Robertson is an Australian animator and digital artist who is known for his pixel art  used in short films and video games. He is mostly known for Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World: The Game and the recent release, Mercenary Kings. Apart from his seasoned career as a game designer and movie creator, Robertson has been recently spotted on Tumblr with these GIFS.

His interest in inserting flashing neon colors, geometric shapes, Japanese character animation, and 1990′s computer imagery, deems his work as heavily influenced by the Seapunk/Vaporwave aesthetic.

    

The post Video Game Designer Paul Robertson Creates Mesmerizingly Entertaining GIFS appeared first on Beautiful/Decay Artist & Design.

Photo by horiyan

This is one of those things you might never believe if somebody told you, and yet even when faced with the evidence in photos, video, or Google Maps, you find yourself questioning reality (and maybe shaking off a serious case of the heebie jeebies). Welcome to Nagoro, a small village tucked into the valleys of Shikoku, Japan, a place where old residents are being replaced by life-sized dolls.

The work is part of a project by longtime resident and artist Ayano Tsukimi who returned to the village after an 11-year absence to discover many of her old neighbors and friends had left for larger cities or simply passed away. The town itself is dying with a dwindling population of about 35 people.

While gardening one day, Tsukimi constructed a scarecrow in the image of her father and was suddenly struck with the idea to replace other friends and family members with similar dolls. Over 350 dolls and 10 years later, her work continues. She places each doll in a place she feels is important to the memory of that person, so strolling through the down you might discover these inanimate memorials working in fields, fishing in rivers, or passing time in chairs along the road.

Berlin-based filmmaker Fritz Schumann recently visited with the 64-year-old artist and shot the documentary short above. (via Dan Sinker, The Verge)

Jonathan Smith of Vice snapped some photos of the Satanic monument being built for the Oklahoma State house. Hurray for the First Amendment! Now I want to erect a giant Dobbshead there.

The statue is a direct response to the state's installation of a Ten Commandments monument outside the Capitol in 2012. State Representative Mike Ritze paid for the controversial statue with his own money, and therefore it was considered a donation and OK to place on government property. Following that line of reasoning, the Satanic Temple submitted a formal application for their monument.

I was offered an early peek at the work in progress by Temple spokesperson Lucien Greaves. Greaves told me he has received numerous threats from people who want to attack the sculpture, but that he “wouldn’t expect these outraged and nearly insensible reactionaries to actually know how to assault a bronze monument without severely hurting themselves in the process.” Still, he’s not taking any chances. The Temple is building a mold of the sculpture so they can pop these things out like evil, terribly expensive action figures whenever they need a new one.

Photos of the new Satanic monument being built for Oklahoma's Statehouse

IT'S A VIDEO! HEAD TO THE WEBSITE TO SEE IT!

Here on this corner of the internet, we see a lot of abandoned places. For some of them, we can even understand how circumstances might have led their abandonment. This however, is a head-in-hands kind of moment.

The Castello di Sammezzano is a show-stopper, a jaw-dropper. Hidden away in the Tuscan hills of Northern Italy, this electrifyingly beautiful Moorish castle was built a whopping 400+ years ago in 1605, but for more than two decades, it’s been sitting empty, neglected, vulnerable to vandalism and to the elements.

(c) Massimo Listri

There are 365 rooms in the Castello di Sammazzano, one for every day of the year. The Moroccan-style palatial villa is a labyrinthe of exquisitely tiled rooms, each one intricately unique. Originally built by a Spanish noble, Ximenes of Aragon in the 17th century, it wasn’t until the 19th century that the castle would find its arabian identity and be transformed into the etherial palace it resembles today.

(c) Dan Raven

(c) Martino Zegwaard

(c) Darmé

This is all owed to its inheritor, Marquis Ferdinando Panciatichi Ximenes, a largely forgotten but key cultural, social and political figure in Florence when the city was the capital of Italy. Ferdinando, who lived and died at the property, spent 40 years planning, financing and realizing this exotic castle that would become the most important example of orientalist architecture in Italy– only to be left to ruin at the hands of modern-day investors.

After the Marquis’ death at the end of the 19th century, there was a period of uncertainty for the property and historical records appear to be rather patchy. During the war, the Germans came looting, stealing mainly from the castle’s surrounding park that had once been considered the largest and most exotic in Tuscany. They took many important statues and fountains of Moorish style, as well as an entire bridge and a grotto featuring a statue of Venus. When the war ended, the castle became a luxury hotel, restaurant and bar.

Unfortunately there appears to be no photographs of the villa during this period, I couldn’t even get the name of the hotel, which reportedly closed its doors in 1990. For a decade, it stood without a master of the house until 1999, when a British company ceremoniously bought the Castello di Sammezzano at auction. But still, the castello would remain unoccupied; it’s vaulted rooms and archways empty and unappreciated.

The plan for Sammezzano called for an 18-hole championship golf course and a large sports facility and clubhouse. But construction hadn’t yet begun when the investment company ran into “economic issues” and the castle was forgotten, left to fall into an extreme state of disrepair. The exterior damage by vandals and the weather is fairly evident. On the inside, many windows were broken, railings cut, chandeliers and rosettes stolen.

It wasn’t until 2013 that a local non-profit committee was founded to help raise awareness of the increasingly decaying castle. They have no ownership of Sammezzano but they help to arrange and promote public openings. And while the Comitato FPXA (after the initials of Ferdinando Panciatichi Ximenes of Aragon) has been doing their part, the property has been quietly sold to the global developer, Palmerston Hotel & Resorts.

On their website, the developer’s to-do list includes several worldwide projects, including the Castello Sammezzano, which they intend to develop into a “luxurious sporting resort, incorporating a boutique hotel, apartments, spa and country club with golf, tennis and various sporting amenities”. They have obtained all necessary planning approvals and claim redevelopment is scheduled to commence in 2014.

Another luxury hotel development might not be the fairytale ending we were necessarily waiting for, but here’s hoping this arabian castle will finally be restored to its former glory– and maybe they’ll let us come round for a mint tea under those otherworldly ceilings.

Stay tuned for updates on the Comitato FPXA facebook page. 

Images by urban exploration photographers Dan Raven / Darmé / Martino Zegwaard

True Detective + The Family Circus = timeisaflatcircus.tumblr.com

(thanks, @sfslim!)