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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Quiet Revolution::Wind Turbine

"Quiet Revolution Ltd has revolutionized the windmill with their new QuietRevolution wind turbine, the QR5. Not only is it one of the most visually appealing wind turbines available on the market, its small scale allows it to fit seamlessly into an urban environment, providing a renewable energy resource in places where space constraints previously made it impossible to hook up green power systems. The genius of the QuietRevolution’s QR5 is its VAWT design, aka Vertical Axis Wind Turbine. The VAWT enables the QR5 to gather power from the winds near around buildings that are constantly changing directions. It is also quieter than your typical wind turbine because the tip speed is slower, due to the triple-helix design, which in turn allows it to be situated closer to buildings and on towers. Exactly how big is the QuietRevolution Turbine you ask? Currently in production, the QR5 is 5m high and 3.1m in diameter. Two more sizes are currently being developed, the OR2.5 (2.5m x 2.5m) and the QR12 (12m x 6m). The QR5 is currently priced at £25,000, which includes the purchase of the wind turbine, integrated control electronics, peak power tracking, auto shutdown and generator. Depending on placement and wind speeds, the QR5 will pay for itself within 15 years or less."
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World’s biggest moving machine

"The world’s biggest moving machine is Bagger 288, a giant trencher or bucket excavator. It is 300 meters long and weighs 45,500 tons! Link"
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Stone Bathtub

"Stone Forest in Santa Fe, New Mexico, makes some awesome bathtubs from natural boulders: Link"
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