Show us your feet::Footprints a project by Ann Poochareon and Mark Argo

"Footprints, a project by Ann Poochareon and Mark Argo, is a camera phone based installation that consists of multiple screens displaying images of different pairs of feet embedded in the floor.

The images are self point-of-view portraits of one's own feet at a particular location, a photographic angle that symbolizes one's own presence in a place: "I was here". The audience are asked to participate by uploading their top-down feet images from their camera phone via MMS, email, the website, or wireless connection at the installation site. The images rotate around the grid to show as many images as there are in the system.

Over time the installation reveals a social portrait of those who have interacted with the installation, displaying a diverse range of feet sizes and shoes, and in turn tell a unique story of the people, time and place.

Feet were chosen because they are a symbol of being mobile (so much for those who suspected that only fetishism motivated the project.) A self point-of-view portrait of one's own feet indicates authorship and the ability to document one self at any time, any place -- an ability afforded by the camera phone. Shoes, as fashion, are an indication of class, culture, and generations. The participatory aspect of the installation reveals a portrait of a community, visually representing the connection amongst ourselves made possible by the digital devices.

"Our installation was originally proposed to be a cellphone file-upload type thing (like other CommPose installations where people send images over bluetooth connection)," explains Ann Poochareon, "but most of the Korean phones don't come with bluetooth (the telco wants people to use their network to share files instead) so we had to set up an email where people can send images to. And because of that, we've made it so people can send via email and upload from the website in addition to being able to upload while at the installation."

As the grand prize winning project of the Mobile Asia Competition, Footprints will be installed in the Art Center Nabi in Seoul for Connected, an exhibition curated by Suhjung Hur. Runs from December 7th - 22nd, 2006."

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The History of BRIDGEPORT (trailer):: New Graffiti Documentary

"Following Hip Hop Culture in Bridgeport, Ct.The place Biggie Smalls called Baby New York. Pros crew, Dead Fucking Last and many more...coming soon"

Ari Leinonon's Floating Prefab Sauna

"Architect Ari Leinonon designed this houseboat-sauna for his parents, and since it is Europe and the prefab companies are a little more sophisticated than in North America, it got snapped up by Swedish prefabber Modern Living, which makes a whole range of interesting modern prefabs. (In North America, the Michelle Kaufmanns and Leo Marmols have to build their own factories because the existing prefab manufacturers won't touch them) The SeaSauna comes in three sizes, starting at 200 square feet for $30K to $45K. For those who insist, that is between $150 and $225 per square foot not including shipping and on-site assembly. It is made of native fir and has a wood-burning stove holding 90 pounds of granite. The architect was inspired by Eliel Saarinen' design for a sauna at Hvittrask from the early 20th Century."

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Win A Gorillaz Vinyl Toy::Urban Retro

'A few days left to enter the VTF x UrbanRetro Contest and win yourself a Gorillaz Figure. In case you missed out on this below are the full details for the competition.

Competition: Create a banner for Urban Retro Lifestyle

The only restrictions are as follows:

1. Must be 800 x 158 pixels
2. Must contain the UrbanRetro logo and the title Urban Retro Lifestyle
3. Must be Christmas themed

Please download the logo from here (http://www.urbanretro.co.uk/vinyltoyforum/largeurlogo.jpg) or the psd file from here (http://www.urbanretro.co.uk/vinyltoyforum/largeurlogo.psd).

There is no limit to the actual way it is designed. ie. it can be an illustration or it can be a photo based collage, etc.

There will be 2 winners and the banners will be rotated on urbanretrolifestyle.com

Each winner will receive a Gorillaz figure! View Here

There will also be a link up on www.urbanretrolifestyle.com to all the winners websites.

Entries must be received by November 30th and the winner will be informed by the December 1st. The banners will be up until News Years day.

Please post your banner up at Vinyl Toy Forum for everyone to see AND make sure to email it to info@urbanretrolifestyle.com

Good Luck to every one that enters."

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New BUD Variants:: Atomic and Flame

"Ferg and Vanbeater have exciting things planned for Jamungo's BUD minifigs. Here's a look at unpainted versions of two new BUD variants -- Atomic and Flame. The Flame is pretty sweet -- note the smaller inner shape. Both new variants will make their debut as part of the BUD of the Month Club (details to follow) can't wait to see what's next from Jamungo."

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Andrew Schoultz Interview

Yesterday Jesse Pollock of FecalFace.com posted an interview with artist Andrew Schoultz.

"With his work covering walls on streets and alleyways around San Francisco, Andrew Schoultz has been painting murals for the past several years like it was going out of style. He painted so many in fact, that I was surprised to learn that some of my favorites were painted by him years ago. Andrew has also created art and painted murals all across the country and at times outside of the US. Sometimes working alone, sometimes collaborating with other heavy hitters of the mural and art world, his early work was written about in a SF Weekly piece by Sam Chennault that is well worth the read.

That is Andrew Schoultz part one. Part two involves the ever growing number of gallery shows that have included his work. His intricate lines and imagery have won him an audience all over the country, all of whom have written gushing reviews of his work. Hopefully you get the point... I'm more than pleased to bring Andrew Shoultz to Fecal Face for some questions about OCD, blood, and the 'mural art scene'." -Jesse Pollock

You can read more of the interview here.

Transubstantiator:: By Nicholas Stedman

"Transubstantiator, by Nicholas Stedman (whom you might remember as the guy that engineerd the crawling blanket), is another art piece that makes use of the very simple science phenomenon of "grocery" electricity. Transubstantiation is a a doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, it describes the changing of the elements of the bread and wine, when they are consecrated in the Communion, into the body and blood of Christ.

In the installation, a chalice of wine acts as a battery, providing power to a circuit that reads through a passage from the Bible. The passage is commonly used during Communion to bless wine. The wine is eventually depleted of energy and must be replenished.

Video.

Stedman is one of the presenters at the upcoming Dorkbot Toronto, on December 2 and 3."

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Illustration By Andy Coucil

"I really enjoy seeing original styles of illustration and Andy Council definitely has an unique style. I love his superb collection of Bristol Dinosaur illustrations which contain incredibly detailed dinosaurs made up of buildings, roads and cars. This may sound confusing but one look at the illustrations and you will know what I mean. Visit Andy Council’s Website to see more fantastic illustrations."

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Click on images below to see detailed images

4Wall Production Lines

"Londoner Sam Stubbings never really set out to give artists a helping hand, but he came away frustrated after seeing an exhibition by art collective Black Convoy last year, so he decided to set up 4Wall.

Sam seems to work a bit like an art agent with online and real-world gallery spaces, allowing people who want to pay up to tap into the talent the sometimes-sprawling collectives contain. That could mean commercial interests wanting help with a campaign or punters like you and me wanting something pretty to hang up. Oh, and live painting on something they call "The Wall" (see the mural above) is also a speciality.

Next week sees the start of Production Lines, an umbrella term for 4Wall's biggest, multi-faceted show to date. At the Fashion & Textile Museum in Bermondsey, South London, expect to see artists like D-Fuse and Daisy De Villeneuve creating new work, live before your eyes. There'll also be a chance to own a picture by people like artist Tracey Emin or London Mayor Ken Livingstone during the Bargain Bin Art Fair. Also, as a reaction to big beer brands muscling in on the art world, there's something they're calling Beer Futures...

Intrigued? Production Lines runs through 10 December 2006."

Fashion & Textile Museum
83 Bermondsey Street
London SE1 3XF
United Kingdom

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LoopWing Wind Turbine From Japan

"This is the "LoopWing" wind turbine. It is soon to be unveiled in Japan's Eco-Products 2006 Exhibition. The E1500 model turbine is aimed at homeowners, and it sports a unique wing design that operates with low vibration, and at wind speeds as low as 1.6 m/sec. The efficiency specs on the turbine are vague — "43% power performance at optimum wind speeds" is all published."

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Blek Le Rat Goes Big in London

"The photo above is of a massive 6m x 8m poster done by Blek of a homeless beggar as a reminder to the people of London that there will be thousands of homeless people in the city this coming Christmas. It went up this week on the outside of the Leonard Street Gallery. The poster and other works by Blek Le Rat are on view at the Gallery until December 6th 2006."

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Meat chess board

"In Cutting Board, two butchers play chess out of a board made with steaks sliced into squares, re-organizing the natural in order to create the synthetic.

The steak is cut into 2" by 2" pieces, with 64 pieces cut total, half of them kissed by a frying pan and hence enhanced in color. The meat is then arranged on a 16" x 16" platform of clear acrylic and placed on top of a podium. On either side of the sculpture are LCD panels hung from the ceiling. Each panel plays a 20-minute loop of a butcher contemplating his next move. Video.

A work by Jiacong Yan.

More flesh art: Zhang Huan's meat bodysuit in My New York 4 performance (image on the left); The Animatronic Flesh Shoe, stitched together with pieces of latex rubber cast out of moulds made from the artist (Adam Brandej)'s own skin to comment on issues of sweatshop labour and content ownership. The shoe's toe and heel raise and lower as it occasionally vibrates/pulsates, and twitches on the floor as if it were still alive.
Victoria Reynolds's meat art series; Jana Sterback's Meat armchair and dress.

Previous posts: Sascha reports from Wetware Hackers Day 1; what might the Meat of Tomorrow be like?: the Meat Helmet; collection of canned meat; Kuniko Maeda's Table Manners; Communication Grill Chang-tei; Bioart - Taxonomy of an Etymological Monster; Victimless leather jacket."

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Gift Wraps:: For The Holidays

"Giving gifts is almost as much about the presentation as it is about the gift inside. As the holiday shopping rush escalates, wrapping paper is a detail that's crucial not to overlook. These five gift wraps leave the creativity to someone else and look great alone without any fussy ribbons or decoration.

(w)rapping paper

Though not quite in production yet, Si Hill Design has been getting a lot of praise for his clever (w)rapping paper that features the instantly recognizable lyrics to popular rap songs. The pun of the gift wrap itself is as funny as it is to read the familiar words in print. The UK-based designer's prototypes include the old school, Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" (pictured left, click for detail), NWA's classic "Straight Outta Compton," the embarrassment of Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" and House of Pain's "Jump Around," all in different two-hue colorways.

eBoy Christmas Gift Wrap
Featuring a snow scape populated with the pixel characters that the Berlin design collective eBoy's known for, this eBoy Christmas Gift Wrap paper (pictured left, click for detail) pares down the holiday to the element of snow. It's available, along with other eBoy patterns and equally unique graphics by other designers, from Nineteen Seventy Three for £1.80 per sheet.

Dude Wrap
Whimsy Press has a selection of Dude Wrap, like the ironic name might imply, is the perfect antidote to saccharine Santas and snowmen. The Paper Invaders set (pictured above left) features vintage video game graphics, the Sticks and Stones set is adorned with skulls and crossbones and the Bugz set has creepy bugs with the words "I love to squish bugs." Each sheet costs $4.50 and is available online.

Paporganics Holiday Hemp Wrap
Printed with 100% vegetable ink on hemp blend (10% hemp/flax, 90% recycled post-consumer fiber processed chlorine-free) paper Paporganics wrapping paper adds eco-chic to traditional (yet un-cheesy) patterns. Available in four nondenominational designs, our favorites are the Peace Doves print (pictured below left) and Pointsettias. $5 will get you two 24"x36" Sheets.

Happy Fucking Whatever
Crass is it may be, Happy Fucking Whatever (pictured below right) wrap adds a little humor—not to mention practicality—to holiday excess. Four 26"x 19" sheets cost $7."

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Bret Simons Ultimate Paper Toy

"Bret Simons has managed to create a copy of his face entirely out of paper. He has even included a PDF so you can create his face yourself. This has got to be the most ambitious and coolest paper craft toy (well I am not sure what else to call it) I have ever come across. See how he got to the final stage at the Bret Simons Paper Clone project page."

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Camera Hacking::MakeZine Podcast

Recently on the MakeZine Weekend Projects: Podcast showed how to make a camera out of old camera parts. The one they decided to show us was designed to have 35mm film in a wide format camera body. You can find the plans and video on The MakeZine site.

Happy T-Day

Old engravings of animals are charmingly strange

"Bibliodyssey has an excellent gallery of 18th century engravings from 'Die Saugthiere in Abbildungen' at Ecole Nationale Vétérinaire de Lyon (named as 'Histoire naturelle des quadrupèdes'."

"The absurd rendering of many of the animals comes about because the engravers/artists working on the project did not actually see the animals. They had to rely on descriptions and their imagination and, as was the fashion of the time, the animals were placed in contrived settings and often given human facial qualities, which only serves to heighten the sense of bizarre. And thankful we are too."

Check Out more prints here.

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Pixel art animation created using post-its

New Banksy How He Did It Videos

Banksy has recently posted some videos of how he pulls off his amazing pieces. We posted earlier this year his work at Disneyland now you can check out how he did it here.
View more of his documentaries at his site.

Mortified: Real Words. Real People. Real Pathetic.

"Mortified: Real Words. Real People. Real Pathetic. is a collection of hilarious real-life letters, journal excerpts, poems, lyrics, and locker notes detailing the excruciatingly embarrassing pitfalls of youth. With all the voyeuristic thrills of reading your sister's diary without the consequences, Mortified is hard to put down. First performed as a live stage show, Mortified has been selling out seats across the country since 2002. Editor David Nadelberg and various contributors will be reading from their personal relics and signing books live in New York, Boston, Chicago, Pasadena and San Francisco during November and December 2006."

Available on Amazon.

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Minale Maeda::Table Manners Collection

"Minale Maeda's "Table Manners Collection" is a clever exploration of the intersection of formal dining and fast food. Toasted directly onto a grilled sandwich, the porcelain pattern lends the refinement of fine china to eating on-the-go. Other works by Mario Minale and Kuniko Maeda, the duo behind this Rotterdam-based design studio, include t-shirts printed with a tablecloth pattern—for those of us who would rather eat topless than on a undressed table—and delicately embroidered paper napkins."
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Convenient Truths::TreeHugger Video Contest

TreeHugger is putting on a video contest called "Convenient Truths".
The contest is in the response to Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", A documentary on the state of the on going climate change. In there own words:

"An Inconvenient Truth made it clear that we need to make changes.

TreeHugger.com and Seventh Generation, Inc. propose a solution. . .

Convenient Truths: a citizen-created video contest, collecting inspiring and pragmatic short videos that provide actionable answers towards stemming climate change.

Winners will be selected by a panel of climate change experts and you, our web viewers. Go to www.truths.treehugger.com to learn more.

Convenient Truths is a carbon-neutral contest endorsed by former Vice-President Al Gore."

"I applaud Treehugger's efforts to support An Inconvenient Truth with their "Convenient Truths" video contest. It's a great way to spread the word and bring the issue into our daily lives."
- Al Gore

Check out the contest site for more info.
Also check out the advert of the contest.

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Warhol soup cans on sale

"Barney's New York department store is selling limited edition "Andy Warhol" cans of Campbell's condensed tomato soup. The cans are available in four colorways based on Warhol's famous screenprints and cost $12/each. According to the Barney's catalog, the imagery is "Printed on special quality paper and with Andy's signature (reproduced)." (In 2004, Campbell sold a similar limited edition four pack of soup cans wrapped in Warhol labels.)" Check out here.

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Aurora Robson

"Made from discarded plastic bottles, Brooklyn-based artist Aurora Robson's bulbous hanging sculptures look something like mutant sea creatures. She says her work stems from her interest in enantiodromia—the Jungian theory that the superabundance of any force inevitably produces its opposite—as it applies to psychology, nature and art," in this case referencing the beings that populate her nightmares. Her next exhibition will be at the Pulse Art Fair Miami with Richard Levy Gallery from 7-10 December 2006."

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Mitsuoka Motors in Japan sells neat car kits

" To support your dream to make up your original car by yourself. Not only people who love cars but also like mechanical things must have dreamed at least once. This model makes your dream come true.

[The K4] is composed of more than 500 parts and takes approximately 40 hours to assemble. The Kit-Car measures just under 2.5 meters (eight feet) long and can run at up to 50 kilometers (31 miles) an hour. The expected cost of each of this vehicle is US $6,460." (Spluch)

Link

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Nike Playstation 3 Airmax

"For the second time, Nike has brought a sneaker to commemorate a Sony Playstation console (the first pair were Playstation Air Force Ones). Like the One Time Only pack, these are a hybrid of Air Max 90s on a 360 sole, and come complete with a 3M reflective hologram Swoosh. Only 24 pairs have been made to mark the launch of the PS3."

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