Imaginary Foundation

Living With Robots

Andre Garnier — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:08:00 -0800

Our obsession with robots is as much about the process of self-understanding as it is about the development of technology. Living With Robots, a short film by Joe Berlinger and Honda, ponders life with robots and explores robotics research, highlighting the evolution of their robot, Asimo.

Information Design & Popular Health

Pierre M�ch� — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:01:00 -0800

A bit of a health nut, British information designer David McCandless set out to create himself a quick reference guide to popular health supplements. Realizing that a static image would not represent the constant influx of new research, he created Snake Oil?, an image that is both generative (pulling its updated scientific evidence from this Google doc) and interactive. He employed the help of developer Andy Perkins to write the code for this "living image," which is an exciting advancement in the the realm of information design and its blossoming graphic architecture.

Great Expectations - Visionary architecture Trailer

Mikaela Du Pomzamparc — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 07:47:00 -0800

The 2007 documentary Great Expectations is a journey through possible and impossible architecture projects since the beginning of the 20th century, from concrete illusions of grandeur to underground grass-covered dwellings. The viewer is introduced to utopian visionaries like Buckminster Fuller and Archigram and their ideas of how to build a better world. With the help of animation, unrealized projects come to life in this film that shows astounding visions of a world as it could have been and may one day still become.

Wiki Summaries

Pierre M�ch� — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:12:00 -0800

A new wiki for our post-literate society provides free summaries of books ranging from the classics and current best-sellers, to non-fiction and self-help. How will these CliffsNotes by the collective intelligence affect what it means to be regarded as "well read"?

Cradle to Cradle design

Pierre M�ch� — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 19:25:00 -0800

R. Buckminster Fuller once noted, "Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value." This inspiring documentary is about the "Cradle to Cradle" design concept of chemist Michael Braungart and architect William McDonough, which substantiates and applies Bucky's notions of sustainability. It won the Silver Dragon award at the Beijing International Science Film Festival in 2006.

The Secret Life of Chaos

Neville Bennette — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 07:31:00 -0800

This short preview for the BBC special The Secret Life of Chaos is a concise and succinct three-minute explanation of Mandlebrot's fractal theory of self-similarity.

Birds Making Music

Isadore Muggli — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 07:28:00 -0800

French multi-media artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot staged an interactive installation at the Barbica Centre in London. The result is a delightful play between chance operations and the unlikely intersection of technology and nature.

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HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK?

Rufus Daintree — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 07:18:00 -0800

Dubbed by Britain's Channel 4 as "the crack cocaine of the thinking world," Edge is an organization of thinkers which includes some of the most interesting minds in the world. Each year Edge poses a question, this year collecting 172 essay responses to the question: How is the Internet changing the way you think? This essay from science historian George Dyson was one of our favourites.

KAYAKS vs CANOES
In the North Pacific ocean, there were two approaches to boat building. The Aleuts (and their kayak-building relatives) lived on barren, treeless islands and built their vessels by piecing together skeletal frameworks from fragments of beach-combed wood. The Tlingit (and their dugout canoe-building relatives) built their vessels by selecting entire trees out of the rainforest and removing wood until there was nothing left but a canoe.

The Aleut and the Tlingit achieved similar results–maximum boat/minimum material–by opposite means. The flood of information unleashed by the Internet has produced a similar cultural split. We used to be kayak builders, collecting all available fragments of information to assemble the framework that kept us afloat. Now, we have to learn to become dugout-canoe builders, discarding unnecessary information to reveal the shape of knowledge hidden within.

I was a hardened kayak builder, trained to collect every available stick. I resent having to learn the new skills. But those who don't will be left paddling logs, not canoes.

Read more Edge essays here.

Persistent Pyramids

Isadore Muggli — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:25:00 -0800

Moscow-based art director, designer, and interactive programmer Anatoly Zenkov creates three-dimensional impossibilities in his 2D photo series, Persistent Pyramids. Zenkov created his own application that creates these cubist dreamscapes.

The Unveiling of A Clean Energy Fuel Cell

Neville Bennette — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:42:00 -0800

Great strides are on the horizon for conserving the remainder of our earth's strained resources. A Silicon Valley company, Bloom Energy, will unveil this week a fuel cell that is "capable of producing clean energy in amounts sufficient to power homes and corporations," Information Week reports.

Company founder K.R. Sridhar explains to a 60 Minutes correspondent how his invention, the Bloom Box, produces electricity through "a chemical reaction created by combining oxygen in the air with any fuel source, including natural gas, bio-gas, and solar energy."

With its technology remaining a guarded secret and mystery within the industry, and nothing at all being announced on the company's website, the Bloom Box is garnering as much excitement and hope as it is skepticism. Watch for an announcement on Wednesday to judge for yourself.

The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal

Pierre M�ch� — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 11:46:00 -0800

This award wining film directed by Matt McCormick is an oldie but a Goldie.

SPACED OUT

Pierre M�ch� — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:22:00 -0800

"The cosmos is within us, we're made of star stuff"

Comming soon

Parkour Documentary "My Playground" by Kasparworks

Mikaela Du Pomzamparc — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:08:00 -0800

Danish filmmaker Kaspark Astrup Schröder offers this preview for his forthcoming documentary about traceurs and freerunners. These athletes challenge the intentions of architecture and manmade environments as they use surface areas of buildings for recreation and physical exploration. In the film, Schröder gives an in-depth look into the development of the first parkour park (located in Copenhagen), designed for the sole use of this burgeoning physical artform.

The dawn of a limitless energy future is here

Kamilla Rousseau — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:25:00 -0800

Founded upon Albert Einstein's E=mc² equation, nuclear fusion is finally producing results after more than 50 years of research. New experiments are giving researchers the confidence that a milestone will be achieved sometime this year. This process of atomic binding, which occurs naturally in stars, has been the focus of experiments at the National Ignition Facility, with the aim of producing controlled fusion power for the production of electricity. Einstein's original vision of nuclear energy was not for destructive uses like the H-bomb, but for the good of humankind. Let's hope his dream will be realized.

Artwork Sells Itself on eBay

Pierre M�ch� — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 07:31:00 -0800

Artist Caleb Larsen's radically thought-provoking A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter (2009) is an extraordinarily profound multimedia work that questions the relationship of media, culture, technology and commerce. Although Minimalist in form, its content is complex and interactive. Within the black acrylic cube lives a device that allows the box to perpetually attempt to sell itself on eBay. Every 7 days, the box begins a new auction and monitors the bidding progress of each auction. Larsen's experience with scripting programs and open-source codes is vital to the success of the work, as it continues to independently sell itself online. The artist's stringent purchase agreement for bidders (listed on the eBay page) provides a structure that protects the box's ownership rights, but can also lead to great profit for both the "collector" and the artist.

grand piano building

Mikaela Du Pomzamparc — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 07:01:00 -0800

This building in Huinan city, Anhui Province, China, is shaped like a giant grand piano with the entrance and stairs shaped like a huge glass violin.

A Banksy Film

Pierre M�ch� — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:21:00 -0800

Banksy's new film "Exit Through The Gift Shop" is a film-within-a-film that begins as a chronicle of guerrilla art and its most prominent creators but morphs into a sly satire of celebrity, consumerism, the art world and filmmaking itself, “Exit Through the Gift Shop” is a nearly impossible work to categorize. That doesn’t begin to describe the contradictions that surround the new movie that’s both about — and made by — the controversial and hugely popular artist.

Visualizing the net

Pierre M�ch� — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 07:39:00 -0800

A visual interpretation of the net by Vancouver based designer Jordan Clarke

A letter to einstein

Neville Bennette — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:53:00 -0800

Return to sender.

The Great Contemporary Art Bubble

Pierre M�ch� — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 07:35:00 -0800

The last five years had witnessed an unprecedented craze for contemporary art, in which works of art sold for record-breaking prices. It all climaxed in September 2008, when Damien Hirst sold 111 million pounds' worth of his art at an auction at Sotheby's – the very day Lehman Brothers collapsed, bringing down the financial markets of the western world. The art auctions in October and November 2008 were a disaster and the art world was in shock. By early 2009, the contemporary art auction market was down 75 percent. Auction houses recorded record losses and were rapidly downsizing. In this inside eye-witness journey into the art world, filmmaker Ben Lewis visits auction houses, art fairs, galleries, and the homes of billionaires across the world, searching for the reasons behind the greatest rise and fall in financial value of art in history.

benjamin ducroz

Pierre M�ch� — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 07:52:00 -0800

Australian multimedia artist Benjamin Ducroz gives life to paper cutouts and hand painted watercolour in this unique motion piece, PRESS+.

The Art of Kate MccGwire

Pierre M�ch� — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 07:45:00 -0800

London-based sculpture Kate MccGwire employed the help of hundreds of supporters to collect tens-of-housands of found pigeon feathers, which she laboriously crafted into mythical creatures that resemble both bird and serpent. There is a strong sense of pattern-seeking in the artist's work. This, in combination with her exploration of materials and her broad definition of beauty, allows the humble pigeon feather to transcend nature and become an integral part of a supernatural design that is both beautiful and grotesque.

Sluice, 2009

Sluice (detail), 2009

Vex, 2008

Public Clock

Pierre M�ch� — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 07:37:00 -0800

One of our favorite local Swiss product designer's Nicolas Le Moigne was commissioned by the city of Geneva to create a Public Clock, which serves as both a site-specific art installation and a practical centrally-located timepiece. The clock tells time in words instead of numbers, and changes every minute.

The Seed

Pierre M�ch� — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 07:36:00 -0800

A two-minute animated voyage through nature's life cycle, following the trials and tribulations of a humble apple seed.

Know your meme: autotune

Kamilla Rousseau — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 07:41:00 -0800

Auto-Tune is a pitch correction plug-in that's used to fix a singer's off-key vocals. This hilarious short by know your meme traces the phenomenon of Auto-Tune, from its introduction to the industry, to its overexposure, parody and remix, and then to a postulated equilibrium. All with the help of "Weird Al" Yankovic.

Maurizio Cattelan

Pierre M�ch� — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 07:26:00 -0800

Maurizio Cattelan is a self-taught sculpture, satirist, and curator. His work does not take a moral stand, but instead challenges viewers, often through the use of humour and absurdity, to reach their own conclusions. Cattelan's Frank and Jamie inverts icons of authority, rendering them powerless. The complexity of their position mirrors the complexity of society's justice systems. The ambiguity of the work leads to an unending trail of questioning. "What would happen IF the system was turned on its head?" is good place to start.

the photography of architecture

Pierre M�ch� — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 07:30:00 -0800

This film by Alex Roman on the photography of architecture is sublime.

Robert ParkeHarrison

Pierre M�ch� — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 07:39:00 -0800

Robert ParkeHarrison combines photography, collage, sculpture, and performance to create imaginary worlds that tell very real stories of "loss, human struggle, and personal exploration within landscapes scarred by technology and over-use." The artist further states that he strives to "metaphorically and poetically link laborious actions, idiosyncratic rituals and strangely crude machines into tales about our modern experience." Parkeharrison's Architect's Brother series serves as a reminder of the importance (and power) of the imagination.

Itinerant Home

Pierre M�ch� — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 07:36:00 -0800

Mary Hale's Itinerant Home marks a poignant moment in the history of inflatable structures, mobile architecture, and city rebuilding in the face of disaster. Marrying the three, she created a mobile dwelling place that focuses on mobility, community, shelter, and survival. The work, which was commissioned by the New Orleans Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and was on view during DesCours week in December, symbolizes and stimulates ways of thinking about architecture of the home and the future of New Orleans as a city. Preceding Hale's work, and serving as an influence, is the 1992 Refuge Wear project (pictured below) by Lucy Orta, which popularized the term "body architecture."

Itinerant Home in its completion

One of Itinerant Home's body suits in progress

A piece from Lucy Orta's Refuge Wear project

Hyperrealist Paintings

Pierre M�ch� — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 07:40:00 -0800

Brooklyn-based painter Alyssa Monks creates images that have the detail and fine resolution of a photo, yet are crafted from oil and brush. Whereas her photorealist predecessors (such as Denis Peterson and Chuck Close) create paintings based on a single photograph, 31-year-old Monks works within the constraints of hyperrealism, a new genre that gave rise in the 2000s and can be considered an extension of photorealism. Hyperrealist painters employ similar techniques to create photo-like surfaces, textures, lighting and shadow, but their paintings depict a moment that exists only in itself, borne from the imagination of the artist.