Pretty Goes with Pretty

Noise Solution

BLDGBLOG points to this article from the Observer, in which researchers are studying what they call “positive soundscapes”—sounds within the urban environment that are pleasing to the ear. According to the researchers’ website,

The team behind this project comes from a very wide range of disciplines—social science, physiological acoustics, sound art, acoustic ecology, psychoacoustics, product perception and room acoustics. They will apply their breadth of experience to investigate soundscapes from many aspects and produce a more nuanced and complete picture of listener response than has so far been achieved.

The aims of the project are:

1) To acknowledge the relevance of positive soundscapes, to move away from a focus on negative noise and to identify a means whereby the concept of positive soundscapes can effectively be incorporated into planning; and

2) The evaluation of the relationship between the acoustic/auditory environment and the responses and behavioural characteristics of people living within it.

Ken Hume, of the Noise Research Group at Manchester Metropolitan University, puts it another way in the Observer article:

Visual aesthetics are a major part of the planning system with strong guidelines determining what is acceptable or unacceptable. A corresponding aesthetics of sound is missing.

I’m curious to see where this goes. They seem to be tackling this project from an urban design perspective, but insomuch as public artworks are a part of urban design, I'd love to see more sound art used as a form a public artwork in cities. Sound works are already here and there in different urban areas; in fact there is one right around the corner from my house in West Hollywood: Bruce Odland’s Tonic, which absorbs the sound of passing traffic and converts it to harmonic tones in real time (it’s by the bus stop on the southeast corner of San Vicente and Santa Monica, fyi). Physically, the piece is two cubes on the ground and a metal pipe attached to the nearby wall (click the link for pictures). I step off the bus at that stop every night, and those cubes are utilized as seats more often than understood as artwork. Honestly I’m not sure anyone standing there even realizes that there is a public artwork there.

That’s okay though. In a way, that’s the beauty of sound art as a public work. Positive Soundscapes, apparently, could actually quantify whether Tonic is a successful work—assuming its aim (or that of any other sound piece in an urban area) is to calm in the face of urban noise. According to the Observer, the Positive Soundscape team uses MRI scanners “to measure participants’ brain activity as they are played a variety of urban noises,” to see which sounds spark activity in the areas of the brain “associated with reward” versus those associated with stress.

Geoff Manaugh at BLDGBLOG notes the many sounds that have caused pleasure for participants—distant airplanes or motor traffic; skateboards rolling through parking garages; “the thud of heavy bass heard on the street outside a nightclub”—and wonders if the result could be a customizable soundscape for each urbanite. But I doubt that will be the case, based on this bit from the Observer article:

Early results have shown interesting anomalies in the public’s perceptions of sound. ‘People can completely change their perception of a sound once they have identified it,’ [Dr. Bill Davies, head of the Positive Soundscape project] said. ‘In the laboratory, many listeners prefer distant motorway noise to rushing water, until they are told what the sounds are.’

In other words, the sounds identified as soothing are only soothing if they remain abstract. Their context—urbanity—must be removed in order for them to function as a calming influence in the face of urbanity. That is precisely what Odland’s Tonic attempts to do, and what other sound artists could accomplish if given the opportunity to create permanent public artworks.

Of course, Davies would also like to see “more water features”—despite his comment that participants have preferred abstract sound over that of rushing water. At any rate, I hope the Brits didn’t spend £1 million just to figure out they need more freakin’ fountains.

Turntable Art: Part IV Sean Duffy vs b3

Artist Sean Duffy (who I’ve written about before) has an installation up at the Arizona State University Art Museum right now. Called The Grove, the installation is a collection of eighteen turntables connected to 400 speakers dangling from the ceiling. The piece is interactive: next to each turntable are crates of records—pop music, classical, audio books, whatever—for you to pick out and play. The more turntables in use, the more chaotic the sound in the room becomes.

The piece, in other words, is intended to be cacophonous. It will be interesting, therefore, to see the DJ collective b3 take on the piece on Tuesday night. The six DJs will use Duffy’s old turntables (no mixers or other special equipment), but—I assume/hope—they’ll bring some of their own records. How much structure and/or controlled chaos will these DJs bring to The Grove? Unfortunately I’ll be here in Los Angeles, so hopefully someone in Arizona can report back—ideally with a youtube clip! Meanwhile, here’s a clip of the piece in action, with audio supplied from an NPR profile.

"b3 in The Grove: A Reaction to the Installation by Sean Duffy" happens at the ASU Art Museum on Tuesday, September 25 at 7:30 pm. Admission is free. More info here.

[related: Turntable Art part I; part II;  part III.]

Turntable Art: Part III Simon Elvins

When I saw this at Idolator yesterday I knew I had to file it away along with my other turntables: the artist Simon Elvins has made a turntable entirely out of paper. You have to turn the crank manually to make the record move, and the paper cone serves as both needle and speaker.

Len Lye

City of Sound has a great post up on the work of Len Lye, an experimental film artist working from the 1930s through the 1980s. Rather then doing traditional animation using stop photo techniques, Lye drew, stenciled, or etched directly onto his film.

According to the wikipedia entry on Lye,

His 1935 film A Colour Box.... was made by painting vibrant abstract patterns on the film itself, synchronizing them to a popular dance tune by Don Baretto and His Cuban Orchestra. A panel of animation experts convened in 2005 by the Annecy film festival put this film among the top ten most significant works in the history of animation (his later film Free Radicals was also in the top 50).

In Free Radicals [1958, revised 1978] he used black film stock and scratched designs into the emulsion. The result was a dancing pattern of flashing lines and marks, as dramatic as lightning in the night sky.

Here they are together, thanks to youtube:

CoS has one more, Rainbow Dance. Meanwhile here's a third, Swinging the Lambeth Walk (1940):

Mingering Mike on NPR

I posted once before about Mingering Mike, but now that the book is officially on shelves I thought I'd plug it one more time. NPR's Day to Day did a two-part story on Mike: the first part is an interview with the book's author, Dori Hadar; the second is with Mingering Mike himself. It's really great to hear the story told this way; for one, you get to hear some of the actual songs in the background, plus this is the first time I've heard the story from Mike's mouth.

But of course the best way to get the full story—and to see all the great artwork—is to buy the book. I was the book's editor, so I've read it just shy of 183 times, but I can tell you that the more time you spend with the story and looking at all the details on the album art, the more endearing the whole thing becomes.

Dulce Pinzón: The Real Story of the Superheroes

More here.

[via Tangled Eye.]

High Desert Test Sites

Last year was our first chance to check out High Desert Test Sites since moving to Los Angeles, and it's coming around again May 12–13. My brilliant wife and I had a great time, even if we spent more time in the car than seeing the art, and when we did see the art, guess what—it was hot outside! But it was fun nevertheless, the community spirit of it all. Strangely enough the highlight was doing laughter yoga with a bunch of art snobs. It was a nexus of lame cliches somehow coalescing into a lot of fun. It was almost like we were initiated into California once and for all.

HDTS, if you don't know, is put on once a year in Joshua Tree and Andrea Zittel is one of the organizers. One of the best parts of HDTS is that you get to roam around her property—and if you know anything about her work, you know that that is her work. Her show, currently up at MOCA, is terrific; but it's even better in person.

Last year involved something like twenty or thirty artists or groups, spread miles apart. We therefore missed most of it because we tried to cram it into one day. This year purports to be "more like the early days," with fewer artists (including Zittel, Ann Magnuson, and David Shrigley, among others). Check the site for more details. If you're in Southern California then you should make the trip. For the art, for the fun, for the outdoors, for the sake of getting out of town for a day or two.

My brilliant wife has begun blogging again, I'm happy to say, and if you haven't browsed her blog, upon which I piggyback, take HDTS as your opportunity. She's got a whole smattering of suggestions for hotels and campsites in Joshua Tree.

And if you're thinking about traveling anywhere else—really, anywhere else—you may do well to check in and see if she's got some suggestions for you.  Croatia? India? Kentucky? Madrid? Seriously, she has some suggestions for you.

Turntable Addendum

Looks like Matthew Langley's got turntables on the brain today too. Check out his post on Nate Harrison's "Amen Break."

Turntable Art: Part IISean Duffy vs. Janek Schaefer: The Revenge

Aside from Mingering Mike, the other bit of turntable-related posting I’ve been meaning to do concerns Sean Duffy. Back in November I did a post about one of Duffy’s pieces (above left), which as you can see is a turntable with three tone-arms. In that post I mentioned Janek Schaeffer, who has also been using tri-tone arm turntables for ten years now. Here’s the relevant bits:

…I hope Duffy [is] familiar with Janek Schaefer, a sound artist/DJ who has been using a Tri-Phonic Turntable (above right) since 1997. Two of the tone arms on Schaefer's turntable face one direction and the third plays in reverse; he can also reverse the direction of the turntable itself and therefore invert the 2:1. What's more, he can stack records on top of each other, playing three records simultaneously on one turntable.… I'm not familiar with Duffy's work, and a cursory google seems to point to many other projects (turntable-related and not), but this one, at least, has been done (and better). Duffy's looks better, but on a purely functional level Schaefer's is far more interesting.

Well, two months after that post, Duffy came across it and he emailed me. With his permission—myself two months late!—here is his response:

Yes, I know who Janek Schaefer is. I discovered his work a year or so after I made my first turntable in 1999. Although I've never see it in person, it looks interesting.  And I agree his work is definitely more functional and mine looks better.

I don't know who else knows about Schaefer but it seems like every time I show one of my turntables someone brings up a different person whose done something along these lines. Maybe it'll become a movement all it's own. 

Well, I’ve now made three posts about turntable art—so you may be right! I hadn’t realized that Duffy had been making his turntable pieces for such a long time. And we both agree the purpose of Duffy’s work is very different from that of Schaefer. Duffy also pointed out an error in my post: just because one of Schaefer’s tone arms is reversed does not mean that the sound comes out reversed. My mistake. And that wasn't all! He continued to school me.

The multi-tone-armed turntable goes back to the 1940s when people would put extra tone-arms on their turntables for different cartridges (78, mono and later stereo). Most radio stations had them and some companies manufactured them. Actually most audiophile turntable made today are set up to use more than one tone-arm. I first played with one of these machines in the 1980s.

Here are a couple of photographs of these turntables.

Duffy pointed also pointed me to this website. Thanks Sean for the response. Those of you in Arizona can see Duffy's installation, The Grove, on view at the ASU Nelson Fine Arts Center beginning June 2.

Turntable Art: Part IKim Tae Eun & Mingering Mike Attack the Groove

Lately I've encountered a lot of turntable and record–related art. I'd been meaning to post about a couple things but have been procrastinating. But I keep seeing more and more turntables! So today's the day: here's the first of two posts. [Update: second post here.]

The newly redesigned Art Fag City pointed me to the above piece (via vvork) by Kim Tae Eun, entitled Circle Drawing (2006). The crank in the middle of the table is connected only to the right-hand turntable. Turning the crank makes the pen/“needle” draw circles on the rotating paper, creating “grooves” on the paper. The left-hand turntable is there because… I don’t know why the left-hand turntable is there. According to the artist’s statement, there is no actual sound associated with the piece, so I guess the left-hand turntable is there for symbolic value. The piece is visually interesting but I wish there was a relationship between the drawing and the sound. As it is I'm not sure if there's much depth to it.

If you want to see some records with drawn-in grooves that do have depth—or at least a story with a lot of heart—you may want to check out the book Mingering Mike, which will be published next month. (Full disclosure: I was involved in the making of this book.) Mike spent about ten years of his life during the 1960s and 70s imagining himself to be on a par with James Brown, Marvin Gaye, etc. He and his cousin would write and record songs on their boom box, then Mike would create the album artwork. His level of detail was sick: he’d make a full-color gatefold sleeve, with lyrics, thank-yous, liner notes, catalog numbers, and much more. He would take the shrinkwrap from other albums and put it over his so that they’d feel like they came straight from the store. He made actual “records,” also out of cardboard, to fit inside—and he would draw in the grooves, in correspondence with the length of the songs! And he did this over about ten years, from his mid-teens to early twenties. Here are a few:

There’s a whole long story behind it all, including when Mike dodged the draft (yet never left Washington D.C.), plus a ton of albums (with details) in the book, which comes out in early May from Princeton Architectural Press.

You can also see a little more at the Mingering Mike website.

The Maps of Louisa Bufardeci

Archlog points to this map of the world as floor plan.  The map was done by Louisa Bufardeci, who has some other great works at her site. Another map-inspired piece is Governing Values, from 2004. The maps are created by substituting longitude and latitude with the x and y axes of statistical data.

Check out her site for a more detailed explanation, more maps, and other works.

Eloísa Cartonera

In the wake of a drastic economic collapse in 2001, in which Argentina’s currency was devalued and prices for nearly everything skyrocketed, paper became a luxury many publishers could not afford. Enter Eloísa Cartonera, a small press based in Buenos Aires comprised of a handful of artists. They’ve published more than fifty books, available in stores throughout the country, with interior pages simply Xeroxed, then hand-bound between covers made from cardboard (a cartonero is someone who scavenges cardboard to sell for cash). Each cover is hand-stenciled and drawn, making every single copy a unique object in itself.

Other Latin American publishers are apparently following Eloísa Cartonera’s lead as cardboard books have begun sprouting up all over the region. A little more information can be found in this article from Arizona State University, which recently had a small exhibition of the books.

Speaking of Steve Roden

Speaking of Steve Roden, he’ll be presenting a new sound work at the MOCA Gallery at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood this weekend, January 20 and 21. The piece will only run for the weekend, and accompany the Rothko show currently on display there (also closing this weekend, so all the more reason to go down and check it out). Roden and Rothko seems like a natural fit, to me. If you’ve not experienced Roden’s work before, you can head over to the brilliant Ubuweb to hear a five-hour piece he improvised at the 2005 Soundwalk in Long Beach.

There is a reception at the PDC MOCA on Saturday, January 20, from 6–8 pm, including a talk with architect Michael Maltzen. Whatever day you decide to go, admission is free.

Edward Burtynsky: Manufactured Landscape

Modern Art Notes highlights an upcoming feature-length documentary on Edward Burtynsky, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival later this month. Here's the trailer. It looks interesting (though not as interesting as a Burtynsky-directed IMAX film could be, as Green says Burtynsky has said he wants to do himself some day. Here's hoping.)

Center for Land Use Interpretation

Matthew Langley has an interesting take on the Center for Land Use Interpretation (who I have mentioned once before):

The Center is notorious in not taking a political or should I say accountable stand in the actual use of land. The mundane of the administrative is really the focus - this acts as a substitute for the drama of the tangible (or the beautiful). This approach - using some of the smaller strategies from conceptual art and looking at the edges of our cultural use of the space we live in is the open ended map that The CLUI is creating.

If you've never checked out the CLUI before, you should. You can get lost in their land use database. You can also get lost in their recently published book, Overlook.

[via Modern Art Notes]

Sean Duffy vs. Janek Schaefer

Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes has a chat with Stephanie Hanor, a curator from the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, about artists on the museum's wishlist. Among others, she mentions Sean Duffy, who did this "turntable piece" (above left). That's all well and good, but I hope Hanor, Green, and Duffy are familiar with Janek Schaefer, a sound artist/DJ who has been using a Tri-Phonic Turntable (above right) since 1997. Two of the tone arms on Schaefer's turntable face one direction and the third plays in reverse; he can also reverse the direction of the turntable itself and therefore invert the 2:1. What's more, he can stack records on top of each other, playing three records simultaneously on one turntable. More about Schaefer's turntable here. I'm not familiar with Duffy's work, and a cursory google seems to point to many other projects (turntable-related and not), but this one, at least, has been done (and better). Duffy's looks better, but on a purely functional level Schaefer's is far more interesting.

Nike Savvas: Atomic

Posting is light around these parts lately. Partly due to the mid-August doldrums that seem to ground the entire world of culture to a halt, partly due to jury duty having stalled the first half of my week and thus throwing the second half of my week into disarray. So in the meantime I direct you to Gravestmor, who gives us this shot of the artist Nike Savvass's piece Atomic: full of love, full of wonder. Gravestmor describes the piece, which is currently on view at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia:

Suspended polystyrene balls held in place on nylon wire fill the room in a rough grid, running though the spectrum from reds to blues up the room with a few rogue orange balls escaping their hue, bubbling up into the cooler tones.

Occasionally a set of industrial fans blow the whole thing into a jittery field of wobbling uncertainty. Like most things the balls soon reach thier natural frequency and begin bobbing in time, like a matrix of nervous junkies.

More images of Atomic and other pieces in the show at Gravestmor's blog and flickr page.

Dissipation and Disintigration

Starting today, the Center for Land Use presents the exhibition Dissipation and Disintigration. Here is a brief description of the content:

When measured from the base to the top—the peak of 10,064 foot Mount San Antonio (also known as Mount Baldy)—the San Gabriels are taller than the Rocky Mountains. This vertical shift, next to the second largest city in the United States, presents both a challenge and an opportunity. At the base of the mountains lies an extensive system of flood control structures designed to hold back the cascading debris that tumbles down the disintegrating mountains. On the peaks of the mountains, antennas radiate the transmissions of the city - its television, radio, taxis, fire, police, and telephones—telecommunications that hold the social fabric of the city together. The mountains are an ally as well as a menace.

These debris basins and antenna sites show the divergent links between humans and the wild: At the top, the mountains are surmounted and used as an electromagnetic platform of social communication and control, radiating forever outward. At their base they must be contained, their inevitable collapse restrained, as they threaten our engineered landscape, and the fragile order we have established.

The exhibit runs through August 27th. The CLUI is open Friday–Sunday from 12–5, free admission.

Burtynsky Slide Show

Manufacturing #10AB, Cankun Factory, Xiamen City, 2005

I've been tongue-wagging over Edward Burtynsky's latest book, China, every time I've visited the book store in the last six months or so. The photos are just brilliant. But if, like me, you have a hard time parting with $85 in one fell swoop, check this slide show for a sample. [via Modern Art Notes, who found it via 3 Quarks Daily—a blog I'd never heard of before but is now bookmarked. Recommended.]

Matthew Moore: Rotations

Matthew Moore is an artist and fourth-generation farmer based in Arizona. Some time last year he and his family sold a portion of their farmland to a developer who has begun to turn that land into a new housing development. Last summer Moore acquired the plans for this development, and on a site exactly adjacent to where the houses will eventually be erected, Moore has created an exact replica of the development—in wheat. According to Moore:

The proposed earthwork uses the exact map of the first planned community to be erected on my family's land. The acreage the development will soon engulf will be planted in three types of grain. Each variety of wheat has been chosen specifically for its color to aid in crop map, black wheat for the asphalt, reddish/brown for the houses, white for the background. Every house and road will be depicted in the 42 acre field, as it will appear on the landscape in the future.

Moore’s crops are nearly matured, so there should be some even better images to come in the ensuing weeks. Next year, I imagine, will be even more impressive as the actual development will be constructed right next door. Keep checking back at his site to see how the project continues to progress. Rotations will also be a part of the Arizona State Museum of Art's upcoming exhibition, New American City: Artists Look Forward, slated for the fall of this year.

Serial No. 3817131

Rachel Papo, Serial No. 3817131 #5

Photographer Rachel Papo documents Israeli women, aged 18–20, in their mandatory two-year stint in the army. Lots more at her website. [via Centripital Notion]

That Guy Almost Fell into a Pit of Chalk Art

Life Without Buildings has some more street art by Julian Beever. I don't think I've ever been impressed by a guy drawing with chalk on a sidewalk before, but Beever's work is pretty fun.

Polar Inertia

© Sergio Belinchon 2006

The newest issue of Polar Inertia Journal is up and includes a bunch of great photos, including the one above, from the Ephemeral City series, Sergio Belinchon’s depiction of a Spanish coastal town in the lonely offseason.

The Sound of Silence

This weekend I toured a number of galleries around Los Angeles. Over at the Mary Goldman Gallery were photos by Miranda Lichtenstien. All of the photos were somehow about meditation—a woman in a bathtub, a man with his eyes closed at a desk, and so on. Fine photographs, sure, but the one that grabbed me the most was the above, Anechoic Chamber. It’s a great photo, but I think that’s due in large part to the space itself. I’ve never heard of an anechoic chamber before, so home to google I went.

Anechoic means “without echo.” These chambers exist all over the country, many used as chambers in which to test antennae or electronic systems, as they have no ambient sound whatsoever. Hence they make powerful meditation rooms as well, as the only thing you can hear is the sound of your own body—and absolutely nothing else. According to wikipdia, one of these chambers inspired John Cage's 4'33", after he spent some time in one and listened to his own blood flowing through his body. More chambers below, though to Lichtenstein’s credit, none as beautiful as hers.

SoundTransit

Yesterday I booked a trip from Buenos Aires to Sarajevo, with stopovers in Montreal, Antwerp, and Vientiane along the way. A little circuitous, sure, but it was free and it only took about eight minutes! I booked it via SoundTransit, and there are plenty more options. Pick your departure and destination points and how many stopovers you’d like in between. SoundTransit will give you your itinerary and present you with field recordings strung together from each location.

The field recordings are supplied by locals; if you’d like to supply a recording of your own city, you can contribute to the site and they’ll add your location to future itineraries.

Cartoon Violence

On the subject of the lego recreations of video games, my wife reminds me of the artist Jon Haddock, who a few years ago did Screenshots—isometric drawings of real-world or pop-culture events, done to look as if they were video games. However when I went to his site to find a couple images, I recalled that as great as they are, I really like the Cartoon Violence drawings even more. Same basic concept, but the drawings are done in the style of cartoons from the 1930s. These and much more at his website.

Math My Grandma Can Do

This blog has covered a range of topics—science, music, architecture, art, and more—since I began it all these month ago. Despite such a democratic take on things,  I never thought I'd be posting about crafting. But my wife has pointed me to two projects that are just bizarre enough to intrigue me.

First, some lunatic Belgian mathematician-crafters have taken the Lorenz equations—three-dimensional equations that describe the nature of chaotic systems—and turned them into crochet patterns. Crocheted chaos.

Try to follow along. These three equations—

—somehow create something that looks like this:

Follow? Me neither. But the lunatic Belgians do, and they've also got mad skills with the crochet sticks.

If you would like dabble in your own crochet lunacy, you can download the pattern [pdf].

"Piece of cake," I can hear my grandma crowing. Well, granny, how about quilts based on topographical maps? That's what I thought!

These are done by Ian Hundley, who had a little blurb with photos in the latest issue of Vogue. (Actually, the ones in the magazine are better, and more maplike, than this one; but this is all I can find online.) You can see his quilts at Earnest Cut & Sew in New York throughout March.

Blog in Land Art

 

Agnes Denes, Tree Mountain: A Living Time Capsule - 11,000 Trees - 11,000 People - 400 Years, original drawings, 1983; planted in 1996.

Apropos of the previous post, the only thing I’d love to be more than a landscape architect, in my fantasy world, would be a land artist. Let’s face it: Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer outcool Ken Smith and Peter Walker any day of the week. Sure, land art tends to be less than functional and often utterly ephemeral, but it more than makes up for it in beauty and sheer awe.

The most popular land artists are Robert Smithson and Andy Goldsworthy. But the one that really strikes a chord for me is Agnes Denes. She might be best known for her 1982 project in what would one day become New York’s Battery Park: Wheatfield: A Confrontation (you can see absolutely gorgeous images over at Pruned’s archives). At the time, this area was essentially a dumping ground for all the excess waste resulting from the construction of the World Trade Center. Denes turned the area into subsidized farmland for a full year.

And while it is a great, great piece, I think it is her best-known work frankly because it is the most photographic. For my money, her Tree Mountain project in Ylöjärvi, Finland is probably the most astounding piece of land art I’ve ever seen.

Denes planted a forest—let me just say that again; Denes planted a forest—on a mountain in Finland. And before I even describe the rest of the project, I’d like to also point out that before she planted the forest, she built the motherfucking mountain. This fact always seems to be a footnote wherever I’ve read about the project, but to my mind it is as just as mind-boggling as the rest. The forest is made up of 11,000 trees, each planted by an individual who is considered a “custodian” of that tree. The trees are planted in a complex mathematical pattern, and will take a full 400 years to grow into full maturity. Like all of her projects, the land was a formerly toxic sight which she reclaimed. Tree Mountain was paid for by the Finnish government, and was such a success that she repeated the project a few years later in Australia. Check back in 2396 to see how it all turns out.

The Little Artists

Salvador Dalí's Lobster Phone

Dan Flavin's Blue Light

Yves Klein's Blue Torso

Damien Hirst, standing in front of his Shark Tank

Donald Judd's Blocks

I stumbled across these while searching Google for a little info on Dalí. An hour later, I don't remember why I was looking Dalí up in the first place. These images come from the  exhibit Art Craziest Nation, a collection of Lego works done by a duo known as The Little Artists (aka John Cake and Darren Neave). Apparently the exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery just ended, but then again I’m nowhere near Liverpool anyway, and I’ll bet neither are you. Luckily you can take the tour of masterworks at the Walker website.

Even more fun is going to the Little Artists' website. Along with the Lego works, there are also blueprints for trapping art dealers, contemporary artists playing Pictionary, and more.

Four Takes on the AT-AT

I'm no Star Wars nerd—I haven't even seen the Sith episode—but sometimes you can't deny the zeitgeist.

(via bldgblog)

(via Cinetmatical)

(via Aeropause)

Olivo Barbieri: Site Specific

Santa Monica Pier, Los Angles

I was thumbing through the newest issue of Metropolis over the weekend and was stopped cold by the photos of Olivo Barbieri. Barbieri takes ariel photographs using a tilt-shift lens, which apparently gives his shots their "model" effect. (I can't imagine it's as simple as a lens choice, but I'll let Barbieri keep his secret as long as he keeps making work like this. More images and a short article are at the Metropolis website.

The New York-New York Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas


An aqueduct on the periphery of Rome

Literary Jenga

My wife and I spent much of last night re-"shelving" our books—a term I use loosely since we have no actual bookshelves, but rather we artfully pile them in one corner of our living room. (and, full disclosure: she did the vast majority of the work, bless her heart.) But as lovely as our books look crawling up the walls, I wish we'd thought of something a little more elaborate, such as the installation by the artist Matej Krén I just saw at Booklust.

The piece is part of Beauty and the Book, an exhibition at the Israel Museum in Jeruselem.