Cleveland-based sand sculptor and woodworker Carl Jara (previously) just won fist-place at the Hampton Beach Master Sand Sculpting Competition with this fun sculpture titled Infinity. The piece, which also won the People’s Choice award, depicts a series of five consecutive human figures in the palm of another, each one smaller than the last. As an added bonus, he shot a time-lapse video of the entire piece coming together over a period of three days (warning: dubstep). In the various sand sculpture competitions around the U.S. Jara frequently comes in near or at first place with a imaginative range of figurative works.
You can check out more photos from the Hampton Beach event on Jara’s Flickr page. All photos courtesy Carl Jara.
Artist Federico Uribe (previously here and here) just released a lovely new collection of work made from electrical and a/v cables called, appropriately, Contectado. Uribe works almost exclusively with multitudes of repurposed objects to create vibrantly colored sculptures and 2D artworks like this. Via Now:
Uribe creates sculptures which are not sculpted but constructed and weaved, in all kinds of different ways, curious and unpredictable, repetitive and almost compulsive. They follow the classics canons of figurative and abstract art, but the result is absolutely unusual, whimsical, of enormous efficacy and communicability. When observed from close, his works reveal various kinds of interpretations; they invite us to touch them, to discover the detail and connection between one element and another. When viewed form further away, they offer volumes, forms, textures and color. Distance, proximity and perception are key factors in the interaction between Uribe’s work and its viewers.
You can see many more artworks from this series on his website.
I’m really enjoying these suspended installations by French artist Isa Barbier who uses feathers hung on filament to create abstract geometric volumes. These two works above are definitely my favorite but you can head over to Documents d’artistes to see much more. (via ferme-asile, jean-louis pitteloud)
El mundo de la música es muy extenso y saberse cada una de las letras es tarea imposible. Por eso, si eres de los que se inspira cantando las canciones, existen una serie de alternativas que permiten seguir las letras de las canciones a medida que avanzan (una especie de karaoke online), para no perderte en ningún momento y dejarte llevar por la música.
Spotify es la aplicación por excelencia para escuchar música en streaming y, por eso, también existen apps que se integran directamente con este servicio. A continuación te mostramos algunas aplicaciones que nos permiten seguir las letras de nuestras canciones en Spotify o directamente desde el reproductor de música de Windows, iOS o Android. Veámoslo.
TuneWiki: sencillo y multiplataformas
Uno de los servicios más extensos, con un mayor repertorio de letras de canciones. Podemos encontrar desde el sitio oficial aquellas canciones que queremos conocer su letra o, si lo prefieres, descargar el complemento desde Spotify que nos permite seguir las canciones “en directo”, es decir, palabra por palabra.
Además cuentan con una funcionalidad conocida como Lyric Art. Esta característica nos permite crear y personalizar una imagen, con un fondo en concreto o de la canción en particular, y añadir una parte de la canción que estamos escuchando. Después podremos compartirla a través de las redes sociales o a una persona en concreta que queremos darle un mensaje especial.
TuneWiki cuenta con aplicaciones para Windows, Spotify y dispositivos móviles: iOS, Android, Windows Phone y Nokie. La aplicación analizará el dispositivo en busca de canciones y, cuando las reproduzcamos, nos aparecerá la letra de la canción.
Alternativa similar a TuneWiki aunque, personalmente, la recomiendo más. En este caso, musicXmactch no dispone de una versión Web donde poder visualizar las canciones, pero sí dispone de complemento para Spotify para seguir línea a línea las canciones, con la posibilidad añadida de descubrir nuevas pistas.
Recientemente MusicXmatch ha alcanzado la cifra de 10 millones de descargas y lo muestran a través de una elegante infografía: 7 millones de lyrics (letras de canciones) y 3 millones de horas escuchando letras desde el servicio por parte del usuario (más de 1,5 millones desde la app de Spotify). Escalofriantes cifras.
Disponible en la mayoría de plataformas: Windows 8, Mac, Spotify, iOS, Android y Windows Phone. Aplicación muy completa y prácticamente indispensable para los amantes de la música.
SoundHound: reconocimiento de música y seguimiento de letra
Tal vez SoundHound se trata de una de las aplicaciones más conocidas a nivel mundial, sobretodo por su potente funcionalidad para reconocer el nombre de la canción que esté sonando en ese momento. Más allá de esta característica, SoundHound ofrece otra llamada LiveLyrics, cuya funcionalidad es muy similar a la que ofrecen TuneWiki y musicXmatch.
Si es verdad que su integración es bastante peor que la que ofrecen aplicaciones señaladas anteriormente. Cuenta con un repertorio inferior de letras de canciones y además no todas ellas disponen de la características para seguir la canción en modo karaoke. Aun así no deja de ser una alternativa para aquellos que dispongan de un dispositivo o tableta con iOS, Android, Windows Phone o Symbian.
Se tratan de dos aplicaciones exclusivas para iOS (bueno, realmente Instalyrics dispone de versión para para Mac). Ambos, apps de pago por un precio de 0,89 €, nos muestran la letras de nuestras canciones. Veamos cada una por separado.
Singit!. Una de las más completas para iPhone, iPad e iPod Touch. Se integra directamente con nuestra lista de canciones, de manera que cuando reproduzcamos una canción en nuestro dispositivo e inicemos Songit! nos mostrará la letra directamente en la pantalla sin necesidad de conexión a Internet (solo si anteriormente hasta guardado la letra en cuestión).
Instalyrics. Realmente no soy muy fan de esta aplicación. Permite encontrar las letras de canciones para nuestras pistas, tanto si están en nuestro dispositivo o otra canción la cual queremos conocer. Hasta ahí bien, pero a la hora de buscar la letra nos mostrará el navegador Safari, donde los aparecerá la letra. Instalyrics no se integra directamente con la letra, sino que usará otro servicios desde Safari para mostrárnosla. Resulta algo molesto que siempre los muestre el navegador, la verdad.
Beginning in January, the City of New York hosted the Reinvent Payphones Design Challenge to redesign its network of over 11,000 payphones when vendor contracts expire in 2014. The contest received 125 submissions, and out of six finalists, NYFi by Sage and Coombe Architects won the public vote. The double-sided, smartphone-like touchscreens would act as multipurpose free wireless hubs, bus ticket machines, MetroCard dispensers, bicycle share stations, and payphones in an attempt to reduce the number of machines taking up valuable space on the street. The Beacon from Frog Design won for best visual design, Smart Sidewalks won for best functionality, and NYC Loop won for best in creativity. Windchimes, created by students at Parsons the New School for Design, and NYC I/O, created by Control Group and Titan, both won for best community impact. While no single design will be completely implemented, the city plans to use core ideas and features in its final design.
“As the City works to determine the overall future of the public pay telephone, we’re facilitating a number of pilot programs — at no taxpayer cost — which use existing payphone infrastructure to gauge public interest and feedback in the services offered,” NYC Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications Director of Communication Nicholas Sbordone told Wired. ”Each of these pilot figures as part of City’s strategy to garner broad-based feedback on what the public would like to see the future of the public payphone entail. We’ll take the results all of the ongoing efforts above — plus the best ideas from the recently-named Reinvent Payphones Design Challenge finalists, and then “bake” all of that into the City’s formal solicitation (known as a Request for Proposals, or “RFP”) for the future of the payphone. We’ll look to issue that RFP later this year.”
The meeting had not gone well, the man gloomily reflected as he was driven out of East Berlin. His head was still heavy after a few too many snifters of cognac. The American's ambitious scheme to build a life and career in Moscow had sputtered to an unforeseen halt not unlike a Trabant's two-stroke engine; the only concession the Russians had made was to invite him back for another meeting in two weeks' time. The three KGB representatives he had talked to didn't seem very enthusiastic about his offer to defect from the US Army.
The date was 22 February 1953. It was George Washington's Birthday, a holiday for all American troops stationed in Berlin. The drunken man being shuttled out of East Berlin in a Soviet car was Robert Lee Johnson, a 31-year-old sergeant in the United States Army. Most competent intelligence services would have considered the Army clerk useless, dismissing him as an embittered bureaucrat with a grossly inflated sense of self-worth. Nine years later he would, through a combination of luck and circumstance, become one of the most destructive spies the KGB had ever implanted into the US military.
The meeting had not gone well, the man gloomily reflected as he was driven out of East Berlin. His head was still heavy after a few too many snifters of cognac. The American's ambitious scheme to build a life and career in Moscow had sputtered to an unforeseen halt not unlike a Trabant's two-stroke engine; the only concession the Russians had made was to invite him back for another meeting in two weeks' time. The three KGB representatives he had talked to didn't seem very enthusiastic about his offer to defect from the US Army.