Over the last few years, the dense, vertical architecture of Hong Kong has enchanted many photographers. Michael Wolf and Greer Muldowney studied the region’s urban density. Romain Jacquet-Lagreze photographed the buildings during “blue hour,” when silver moonlight mixes with the fluorescent light pouring out from countless windows. Peter Steinhauer documented the construction process.
Most of these photographers do not fly drones, and most of them have not lived in Hong Kong for their entire lives. These are two things that set photographer Andy Yeung apart. He’s been shooting this place and its architecture from the sky for the last few years, and he’s learned everything from the right time to launch to the proper spots to fly. In fact, in order to avoid electromagnetic interference, he’s been known to take off from a mountain peak.
Walled City, Yeung’s latest body of aerial work, draws its title and inspiration from the Kowloon Walled City. Before it was demolished in the early 1990s, the Kowloon Walled City housed an estimated 33,000 people in only 6.4 acres of land, making it about 119 times as dense as modern-day NYC. Relatively isolated from the rest of the world, the walled city was for the most part ungoverned, and crime-rates were high, though residents managed to set up and maintain small businesses, shops, and factories.
Although the Kowloon Walled City no longer exists, Yeung recognizes symbolic echoes of the place throughout his homeland. According to some reports, sunlight was blocked out by the walled city’s buildings. When photographer Greg Girard made pictures there, he told Business Insider, “It was nighttime all the time in there.” Of course, people in Hong Kong today have access to the sun, but it’s still crowded near to the point of bursting. In many modern high-rise buildings, Yeung says, “the only view out the window is the neighbor’s window.”
Still, Yeung hasn’t lost hope for Hong Kong. Living in such dense conditions poses serious problems, of course, but the photographer also finds beauty in the chaos. “I have noticed that even though Hong Kong is filled with buildings and living space is very cramped, people manage to find a way to live in harmony with each other and make the best use of the land,” he tells me.
Here are the winning photos of 4th annual International Drone Photography Contest 2017. There are thousands of photographs submitted around the world, the contest is judged by National Geographic Deputy Director Patrick Witty and Photo editor Jeff Heimsath as well as Emanuela Ascoli, Photo editor of National Geographic France and Dronestagram.
Movie composer Mark Korven wanted to craft the perfect sounds for horror movies, but the instruments he needed didn’t exist, and he was tired of using the same digital samples. To produce the original effects needed for evoking breathtaking moments of suspension, he teamed up with guitar maker Tony Duggan-Smith to craft an original instrument that would better aid in manufacturing fear. The Apprehension Engine is that tool, a mechanism built with several bowed metal rulers, spring reverbs, a few long metal rods, and other attachments that allow for spooky interludes and effects.
“A normal instrument, you are playing it and expecting it to have a sound that is pleasing,” said Korven to Great Big Story, “but with an instrument like this, the goal is to produce sounds, that in this case, are disturbing.”
The Apprehension Engine expresses the emotions that cannot be expressed in other ways, triggering fear with intense sonic methods. You can listen to more music by the machine tuned to provoke horror in the video below. (via Great Big Story)
Cavity Mechanism #12 w/ Glass Dome. 2013. Mixed. 23″ x 13″ x 13″. All images via Dan Grayber.
Dan Grayber‘s works exist at the intersection of sculpture and physics, pieces carefully designed to solve the problems created by their own existence. The sculptures each include a rock suspended within a glass enclosure, the rock’s weight perfectly balanced by the mechanisms, systems, and pulleys that surround it.
Grayber relates this play of tension and balance to personal relationships, which serves as another influence to his work outside of visual interests in industrial design, construction machinery, and the children’s game Cat’s Cradle.
“Cavity Mechanism #6, from 2009, [seen below] is one of the most obvious pieces to speak about interpersonal relationships that I’ve made,” said Grayber to Venison Magazine. “There are two identical mechanisms inside of a glass display dome, and one small cable that runs between the two mechanisms. This cable holds all of the tension between the two mechanisms, and they both need to remain in place to maintain the tension. I was really thinking about co-dependence when I made the piece. If either mechanism were to slip, or the connection between them to break, it would cause both to fail.”
During the quieter moments of the day, when model Sheena Liam is somewhere between travelling and photoshoots, she picks up her embroidery hoop and creates portraits of girls with flowing thread hair. The project has enabled Liam to explore her own taste for art direction, and each embroidered piece appears as an inventive contemporary approach to a traditional craft. Liam’s simple line drawings, created with a needle and thread, are layered with a technique of allowing the thread to sit loose against and beyond the canvas. This graces Liam’s work with another dimension, through the impression of flowing hair. The girls in each frame embrace this new possibility of interaction–they appear to be readjusting the thread, cutting it with tiny scissors and even dipping the ends in noodle soup. This endearing play with portraiture is explained by Liam as bringing “a certain sort of soul to the pieces.”
Focused on environmental change rather than flavor, art students Hung I-chen, Guo Yi-hui, and Cheng Yu-ti from the National Taiwan University of the Arts concocted a line of “frozen treats” titled Polluted Water Popsicles. The group collected polluted water from 100 locations in Taiwan, first freezing the collected sewage samples and then preserving their creations in polyester resin.
At first glance the visually pleasing treats seem to imitate the aesthetic of recent craft and artisanal food trends. However on closed inspection you can identify the trash contained within each mold—bits of plastic, bottle caps, and wrappers lying within the popsicles’ murky waters.
The project is intended to spread awareness about water pollution and its deep effect on our world’s population. The 100 pieces, which also included designed wrappers, was nominated for the Young Pin Design Award and featured in the New Generation of Design Exhibition this May at the Taipei World Trade Center. You can view more of the creatively designed inedible works in the video below. More information about the project can be found on the group’s Facebook. (via Mashable and Quartz)
From climate change to capitalism run amok, street artist Blu (previously) pulls no punches in his soaring multi-story murals on the streets of Italy. While mixed with a healthy dose of sarcasm and humor, the inspiration behind each artwork is anything but funny as he translates searing critiques into aesthetically beautiful paintings. For instance a 2016 piece criticizing housing problems in the Celadina district of Bergamo, Italy depicts cramped residents as a brightly hued rainbow but leaves a small group of authorities in the lower right completely devoid of color. Collected here is a selection of murals from the last year, you can see more detailed shots by flipping through his blog. You can also get an idea of how he works—perched on a tiny suspended seat—in this short GIF.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft launched in 2011, arriving at Jupiter in July of 2016 to begin a series of what will eventually be 12 orbits around the Solar System’s largest planet. The path selected for this particular mission is a wide polar orbit, most of which is spent well away from Jupiter. But once every 53 days Juno screams from top to bottom across the surface of the gaseous planet, recording data and snapping photographs for two hours. It takes around 1.5 days to download the six megabytes of data collected during the transit.
Juno only takes a handful of still photographs each time it passes Jupiter, all of which are made available to the public. Lucky for us Sean Doran stitched together the images from Juno’s last transit (colorized by Gerald Eichstädt) to create an approximate video/animation of what it looks like to fly over the giant planet. Music added by Avi Solomon.
Fashion model and embroidery artist Sheena Liam hand sews images of women whose hair seems to gracefully dangle from each of her 2D surfaces, Liam using black thread as a substitute for her subjects’ long locks. The works are all completed and displayed on embroidery hoops, with hair styles extending from the women in french braids, messy buns, and long ponytails. In one particular design, tiny pieces of thread are seen attached to the wall below the hoop, creating the illusion that the embroidered woman above is messily trimming her bangs.
Liam creates relatable, solitary moments within each hand sewn hoop. You can see more of her elegant designs, as well as snapshots from her travels, on her Instagram. (via Teen Vogue)
In his picture series ‘Home Less’ photographer Nelson Garrido shows the impact of financial crisis on Portuguese properties. He shot just one picture a day while capturing various abandoned houses.
As a result of the economic crisis, an increasing number of families have started living on the streets using caravans, campers and sometimes even cars as a shelter. In some way this phenomenon is reshaping the idea of 'home'.
Torre Angela. A suburb in the extreme periphery of Rome.
In a park lot reserved for taxi there is a little caravan which is not used for cheerful holidays but it's a proper 'home' for an Italian couple hit by the great economic crisis.
This is the place where Tommaso and Donatella live and fight their struggle to survive.
He was a carpenter and she was a hairdresser but they had to retire from their job because of the crisis. Tommaso is a disabled person so they were assigned for social housing but their place has been illegally occupied and they have never retrieved their house. They lived in their car with two dogs for ten months.
In spite of all the adversities they held their dignity and a strong will to go on so that they decided to transform the caravan in their new house.
They live with a minimum retirement pension and Donatella does little tailoring works. Sometimes they also benefit from the help and solidarity of other residents that love this family and consider them as a symbol of this quarter.
Also the authorities who tried to remove them at the beginning are now tolerating this 'strange' presence.
Tommaso opened up his first carpenter's shop in this quarter and his memories flow very fast from the beginnings to the happy moments of his life...the wedding, the family, his sons and daughters, until their actual situation.
Talking about their story help them to ease their pain and to find out the strenght to look ahead and to care about themselves and try not to be a burden for their sons and daughters.
The door of their caravan is always open and they are ready to make a good coffee to share with friend and to enjoy the company.
The famous Le Corbusier's quote 'A house is a machine for living in' seems to be written to describe Tommaso and Donatella's story.
Home is the place where we come back, it's a shelter and protection from the external agents, and that is what Tommaso and Donatella found in a camper: their right place.
I have never seen The Garden of the Words, but as far as anime movies go, it’s apparently one of the most beautiful movies of the genre you can see. In the picture gallery below, you can compare some of the visuals of the film with their real life equivalent in Tokyo. Please note that in all of the pictures, the top section is from the anime, and the bottom one from a real photo of the location.
I’m sure you’ve all seen plenty of Rube Goldberg machines on the web in the past, some of them as big as a whole warehouse. However, in this video, Seiko presents us what is probably the world’s tiniest Rube Goldberg machine, made entirely from mechanical watch parts.
Illustrator Diego Sanches has put together a series of pixel art for a forthcoming game featuring famous scientists, each of whom has special attacks based on their work. They include Charles Darwin using evolution:
Stephen Hawking using a wormhole:
And Isaac Newton using gravity:
Check out Diego’s site for the full set of animation.
Spider embryo. Molecular characterization and embryonic origin of the eyes in the common house spider Parasteatoda tepidariorum. Göttingen University.
Taken from recent research into the development of eyes in spiders, this microscopic image shows what a common house spider looks like as it develops inside an egg. For some reason, it’s disturbingly… cute? This little cthulhu-like spider embryo is nearing the final stage before hatching and appears to be stuck in a tiny self hug. You can learn more about the embryonic origin of eyes in common house spider over on BioMed Central. (via Reddit, Göttingen University)
These amazing street photos of Hong Kong catured by Self taught Chinese photographer Fan Ho. He arrived from Shanghai in 1949 and he fascinated by streets of Hong Kong. These Photos are part of his book “A Hong Kong Memoir“.
One of about 20 Russian soldiers fired the BUK missile that brought down flight MH17 in July 2014, according to international research collective Bellingcat. All of the 20 soldiers know who gave the orders and who actually pressed the button, Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat, said
The death of film has been widely reported, but technologies are only perfected after they’ve been made obsolete. It may not be instant photography, but there is at least one machine that will take 35mm film and 5×7″ prints and develop them automatically. It’s called the Filmomat, and while it won’t end up in the studios of many photographers, it is an incredible example of automation.
The Filmomat is an incredible confabulation of valves, tubes, and pumps that will automatically process any reasonably sized film, from 35mm to 5×7 color slides. The main body of the machine is an acrylic cube subdivided into different sections containing photo processing chemicals, rinse water, and baths. With a microcontroller, an OLED display, and a rotary encoder, different developing processes can be programmed in, the chemicals heated, developer agitated, and film processed. The Filomat is capable of storing fifty different processes that use three chemicals and a maximum of ten steps.
The video for this device is what sells it, although not quite yet; if enough people are interested, the Filmomat might be sold one day. This is likely the easiest film developing will ever get, but then again a technology is only perfected after it has been made obsolete.
With its 5.7-inch QHD AMOLED display the Nexus 6P is a little smaller than last year's Nexus 6 in terms of both display size and overall dimensions. It comes with an aluminum shell and overall high-end specs, along with a new 12.3MP Sony sensor and an F2.0 aperture. DxOMark's mobile evaluation puts it at third place in its rankings - find out why. Read more
Every other Monday, our team of blacksmiths and craftsman will be building some of your favorite weapons, and some weapons that you’ve never seen before. This week, we’re forging a big fan request – the wicked Soul Reaver Sword from Legacy of Kain!
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