Cooper Griggs

Brad Downey is familiar with both sides of the art world, with a fine arts degree and gallery exhibitions, on the one hand, and run-ins with the authorities about his sometimes-unsanctioned street art on the other.

His work is harder to describe that it is to simply see, since it is often in the most public places you could imagine (or documented via extensive photography) – erupting from sidewalks, disrupting bicycle lanes or literally ripping up cobbled streets

Per the pictures, sometimes these installations transpose ideas and objects from other contexts, but they also frequently warp existing everyday objects like bicycles, cars, signs, benches, shopping carts and garbage cans.

Sometimes he works alone – sometimes collaboratively. Some of his pieces are stand-alones and one-offs while others form sets, like Wedging (shown above), which is a series of experiments of balance and obstruction in alleys with ordinary household items.

He has had run-ins with police while working in cities ranging from London to Amsterdam, on both art and guerrilla marketing projects performed in that gray area of public and possible vandalism.

How dinosaurs happened. [via]

Twitter doesn't only inform at 140 characters a tweet, but it also amuses and delights with pictures. Here's a look at some, certainly not all, of Japan's most adorable, entertaining, and interesting photos found on Twitter.

As with these things, be aware that people in Japan also find these images unusual—hence, them being retweeted numerous times. Many of them were retweeted thousands of times.

Some of the photos are riffs one well-known memes, while others (such as the top image) can be easily explained(it's Halloween). And many of the photos are just people screwing around. You know, hijinks.

Then, there are simply the surprising sights people have encountered and shared online.

Photos: miryou, TSNet64, CatCutePhotos, k_ami_c, xX_harowan_Xx, napalmthing, _G_A_I, sorata22, hayama_syoko, nobu_12_, akiranagahashi, py0nk1ch7, kihhie_1052, Tired_Nova, hyper_shimeji, when_sir, matome, kataoka_k, xxkaixz, yuukitokuda, de_ji_be, nakamukae, Nekopic, ymtk_, kataoka, ag_gt

To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft.

Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

softcastle-mccormick:

lemonsharks:

newcrystalcitysteel:

boysbootsnbooze:

Merica

I understand that the air force has been through budget cuts but damn

90% of war is hurry up and wait.

This is that 90%.

(also it occurs to me that our soldiers are now young enough to have grown up with Harry Potter)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In a different take on the income inequality issue, the Economic Policy Institute, in collaboration with Periscopic, created Inequality Is.

The Inequality.is website brings clarity to the national dialogue on wage and income inequality, using interactive tools and videos to tell the story of how we arrived at the state of inequality we find today and what can be done to reverse course and ensure workers get their fair share.

Inequality is: real, personal, expensive, created, and fixable. These are the categories the interactive takes you through to explain the subject. The first part reminds you of the video we saw on wealth distribution, which showed what people thought was an ideal distribution of wealth, what they thought it was in real life, and then what it actually was. However, in this interactive, you're the one answering, which sort of sets the stage for the rest of the interactive. The goal is to make the data more relatable.

Be sure to go through the whole piece. It rounds off nicely with a video explanation with public policy professor Robert Reich and ways to shift the inequality in the other direction.

Masterplan is a installation by designer and artist Chad Wright inspired by his own experiences growing up in a sprawling suburb of Southern California. The piece is meant to juxtapose the playful childhood experience of building sand castles on the beach with his brother, versus the grim, modern-day reality of our current real estate collapse. Learn more over on his website. Photographed by Lynn Kloythanomsup of Architectural Black. (via this isn’t happiness)

ephemeralol:

Robert Irwin, untitled, 1971

His book was a great read and gave me an appreciation I didn’t have prior to reading it. Highly recommended.

via http://www.tumblr.com/dashboard

via http://drubk.com/?page=7

winneganfake:

crescita-e-conoscenza:

Le chiama fairies… ma a me sembrano tanto alieni queste dolls. Bellissime.

She calls her dolls fairies… but they seems aliens to me. Beautiful.

I may have reblogged these before, but I’m doing it again, because they’re fucking brilliant. 

via http://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/4/21255799551

ephemeralol:

Robert Irwin, untitled, 1971

via http://www.tom-phillips.info/images/interesting.5.htm

This fun hyperlapse video was shot on Tokyo’s fully-automated Yurikamome transit system by a photographer/filmmaker who goes by darwinfish105. The visuals in the video were achieved using an array of mirror and vertical flip effects in Adobe Premiere. You might remember similar videos shot by Daihei Shibata and Craig Shamala from back in 2010, however this new video seems to have been shot predominantly from the front/back of the train giving the video a somewhat different feel. If you liked this you might also enjoy these transit photos by Céline Ramoni, also taken on board the Yurikamome. (via faith is torment)

Go watch this now!  :)

Finding Normal The Web Series Episode Five: Awkward Pass! (by FindingNormalWebShow)

The eternal debate—of whether to soak in the tub or lounge in a hammock—has just been rendered moot, thanks to this stunning carbon fiber hammock tub that lets you do both at the same time. Made by the UK company SplinterWorks, it's called the Vessel, and it makes for an awesome centerpiece for your bathroom, assuming you've got the room for it (and the cash).

Read more...

via http://poorlifechoices.com/post/18869783940

The Kansas City Atheist Coalition will complete against members of the Abundant Life Baptist Church this weekend in a volleyball match with all proceeds going to a worthy cause:

Six teams of six players will compete, ending with an all-star atheist vs. an all-star Christian playoff!

$5 tickets to watch the tournament can be purchased at the door. All proceeds go directly to Drumm Farm, a Kansas City-based foster and adoptive care resource center.

That’s fantastic

So how did this unlikely partnership even begin?

“Ed Croteau of Abundant Life Baptist Church invited members of the Kansas City Atheist Coalition to a skeptics Q&A at the church earlier this year,” said Sarah Hargreaves, president of KCAC. “Those who attended enjoyed fiery but respectful conversation. Since then, members of both our groups have remained in contact primarily via a Facebook group devoted to discussing issues of faith, Christianity and religion in general.”

Croteau said that “while members of the group remain deeply divided on many philosophical and theological issues, people genuinely seem to like each other. The mood of the group goes from very heavy to very light in a matter of minutes sometimes.”

Hargreaves added that the idea of a Christian vs. atheist volleyball tournament “was originally presented as a joke, I think. But it immediately gained traction in the group, so Ed and I started putting plans together and decided to include a fundraiser for a worthy cause. Someone in the group suggested Drumm Farm, and everyone agreed it was a great choice.”

They should’ve raised the stakes: Losing team has to attend the other group’s meetings for a month.

This cat is trying to save the internet after it was ruined earlier today. It's a pretty decent attempt.

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© Studio Saraceno & Kunstsammlung NRW

© Studio Saraceno & Kunstsammlung NRW

© Studio Saraceno & Kunstsammlung NRW

© Studio Saraceno & Kunstsammlung NRW

© Studio Saraceno & Kunstsammlung NRW

© Studio Saraceno & Kunstsammlung NRW

© Studio Saraceno & Kunstsammlung NRW

In one of his most ambitious suspended installations to date, artist Tomás Saraceno (previously) launches visitors at the K21 Staendehaus museum in Düsseldorf more than 65 feet (20 meters) above the main piazza with a taunt, multi-level web of netting. Titled In Orbit the giant interactive piece is constructed from three separate levels of safety nets accessible from various points in the museum separated by enormous PVC balls measuring almost 30 feet (8.5 meters) in diameter. The resulting aerial landscape is an interesting hybrid between science fiction, spider webs, neural pathways and cloud formations.

Known for breaking the boundaries between art and science, Saraceno often refers to his interactive pieces as living organisms. In fact, over a period of three years Saraceno consulted with arachnologists (experts in the study of spiders), as well as architects and engineers to achieve the final design for In Orbit. Via the museum:

This floating spatial configuration becomes an oscillating network of relationships, resonances, and synchronous communication. When several people enter the audacious construction simultaneously, their presence sets it into motion, altering the tension of the steel wires and the intervals between the three meshwork levels. Visitors can coordinate their activities within the space, and are able – not unlike spiders in a web – to perceive space through the medium of vibration. Saraceno himself speaks of a new hybrid form of communication.

The installation opened to the public starting today. To enter In Orbit patrons must be at least 12 years old and are asked to wear special grip-soled footwear while traversing the webbing. You can read much more over on Art Daily. All imagery courtesy K21 Staendehaus.

(via Jeah! We Mapped Out The 4 Basic Aspects Of Being A ‘Bro’ : Code Switch : NPR)

Photo courtesy Ryan DeCol, Kindig-It Designs.

When it came up for sale two years ago, auction copywriters called it the most original unrestored Futurliner known to exist. Many collector car observers could guess that it wouldn’t remain that way for long, however, and indeed that particular Futurliner has since embarked on a mission to become the most authentic restored Futurliner known to exist.

The 60th anniversary of the re-launch of the new and improved General Motors Parade of Progress Futurliners has gone largely unnoticed amid the various automotive anniversaries being celebrated this year. While General Motors originally built eight giant streamliners designed to cross the country as part of the Parade of Progress mobile technology and innovation display in 1936, the dozen Futurliners built to serve the same purpose didn’t come along until 1941. Stretching to more than 33 feet long and reaching a height of more than 11 feet, the Futurliners originally used a Detroit Diesel 4-71 four-cylinder engine, four-speed manual transmission, and dual wheels front and rear to move around their 33,000-pound bulks. The driver – and only the driver, no passengers – climbed into the bubbletopped cockpit via an internal stairway to command the Futurliner from a towering perch. Put into storage right after Pearl Harbor, the Futurliners wouldn’t see the light of day again until 1953, when GM management decided to revive the Parade of Progress and freshen the Futurliners with a metal roof over the cab, along with a GMC 302-cu.in. straight-six gas engine and Hydra-Matic four-speed automatic transmission. Each Futurliner was assigned a certain display – one showcased Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild entries, another included a popular diorama – and the 12 again traveled North America for the next three years.

According to Ryan DeCol of Kindig-It Designs, a custom and restoration shop in Salt Lake City, Utah, this particular Futurliner, believed to be No. 3 with chassis number ADF859017, displayed a cutaway Allison J-35 to illustrate how jet engines worked. What happened to it in the years immediately after GM disposed of the Futurliners, nobody seems to really know, though it would later end up in the collection of five Futurliners that concept car collector Joe Bortz assembled in a field near Chicago in the 1980s. According to Bruce Berghoff and George Ferris’s book, “General Motors Parade of Progress & A Futurliner Returns,” the Futurliner had sat in storage in a warehouse in Dana, Indiana, before Phoenix, Arizona, resident William Pozzi eventually bought it and in turn sold it sometime in the late 1990s to Brad Boyajian of American Movie Trucks in Chatsworth, California. Boyajian later offered No. 3 for sale in Hemmings Motor News for $450,000 and through his own site for $400,000. He ultimately sold it at or immediately after the Worldwide Auctioneers Auburn sale in September 2011, reportedly for $247,500, against a $300,000 to $500,000 pre-auction estimate.

The current owner, who wishes to remain anonymous, turned it over to Kindig-It this past January for a full restoration. According to DeCol, the project manager for the Futurliner’s restoration, it arrived in the shop complete but not running. “Somebody had roller-brush painted the whole sides red and white and the lower storage doors were held on with All Thread and nuts,” he said. “The windshield is missing – somebody had just put in a piece of Plexiglas and screwed it to the windshield trim. And most of the rest of it was half-destroyed by rust – it looked like it was sitting in Lake Michigan. Still, we have no clue how this one stayed this together all this time; a lot of the rest of the Futurliners lost a lot of parts over the years.”

According to Worldwide’s auction description, the 302-cu.in. six-cylinder and Hydra-Matic four-speed with the Futurliner are the original 1953 units, and the Futurliner retains most of the original exterior script and block letters – including the massive cast-zinc GM letters up front – that have proven nigh-impossible to find in other Futurliner restorations. Inside, it even wore some of the display labels for the jet engine cutaway – along with No. 3 markings on the interior panels – helping identify it as the No. 3 Futurliner.

(In a conversation with Don Mayton, who led the effort to restore Futurliner No. 10, he noted that it’s virtually impossible to accurately identify which of the nine remaining Futurliners served which of the original dozen roles for the vehicles, considering that GM appeared to assign different displays to the Futurliners during their time on the road. Mayton also noted that this particular Futurliner did not actually sell at the Worldwide auction, but in a private sale afterward.)

DeCol and the three-man crew at Kindig-It assigned to the Futurliner’s restoration began by stripping it of its aluminum and steel body panels to get at the 18 or 19 gauge hat-channel skeleton underneath. About 20 percent of that skeleton remained in salvageable condition, DeCol said, but the rest had to be replaced, which is fine because the only modification DeCol and the owner of the Futurliner wanted to make was to strengthen the notoriously weak structure that supported the retractable light bar mounted to the roof. Heavier-gauge hat channel and additional roof bracing should strengthen that area.

Some interesting artifacts of the Futurliner’s construction and 1953 refurbishment have turned up as DeCol has stripped it down, he said. The original clutch pedal, from the 1941 configuration, remained in place, but had been paneled over. And the roof that replaced the bubbletop dome appeared to have been tacked on using wood covered with steel.

In addition to the skeleton, DeCol said all of the aluminum body panels – which comprise about 65 percent of the Futurliner’s body – and the floor sections will be replaced. He’s contracted with other shops to rebuild the drivetrain and wiring harness and already has a set of eight Coker reproduction tires ready to go. He said he’s not likely to find a replacement glass windshield, so he’ll have to contract for one of those as well. Some of the smaller items have proven elusive, too: For example, he had to have the dash-mounted turn signal switch handle remade from scratch, and he’s still looking for the small red and yellow glass ball reflectors that dotted the perimeter of the Futurliner as well as one of the parking light assemblies and the front and rear door handles. “In fact, I don’t even know what types of door handles GM used in the back,” DeCol said. “Nobody ever seemed to take any pictures of the backs of the Futurliners when they were traveling the country.”

Oh, and he would like to find an Allison J-35 jet engine to display in the Futurliner as well, either cutaway or complete.

In addition to all of the original parts that DeCol will use in the Futurliner’s restoration, he and the crew at Kindig-It have also employed some modern technology to aid in the restoration. “When we first got it into the shop, we had it scanned into SolidWorks, so we have a digital file of it for reference,” DeCol said. “So, for example, after we’ve finished polishing the lettering, we’ll check the scan to put it all back right where it’s supposed to go.”

As far as a target completion date, DeCol said he initially believed the restoration would take 14 to 18 months and estimates that the restoration is currently about a quarter finished. However, for a project this large and unusual, he expects that target date to be flexible. “Our goal is just to make it the most original restoration possible,” DeCol said.

For more photos and updates on the Futurliner’s restoration, visit KindigIt.com.

UPDATE: Joe Bortz sent along a few photos of the Futurliner at auction in Auburn in 2011. Bortz said he bought his five Futurliners all at once from a potential restaurant partner in around 1980 and doesn’t know where that previous owner found this particular Futurliner.