Google Zeitgeist | Here’s to 2013. Zeitgeist 2013. Discover what the world searched for with Google’s year in review: http://www.google.com/zeitgeist

Light Painting Stop Motion Video About a Skateboarding Skeleton. Light painter Darren Pearson (previously here and here) is back with a new stop motion short that follows the adventures of a skateboarding skeleton. In the making for nearly a year, the video involves over 700 individual photographs that were painted in camera using a small flashlight. Source

Blind Spot is an interactive sculpture created specifically for Beakerhead in Calgary, AB. It utilizes 6 wide-angle webcams, 96 hobby servos, 6 serial servo controllers, an Arduino, a PC running Processing, and a few hundred feet of wire to detect people and control 96 corresponding vertical slats independently. The code is freely available for download, analysis, contribution, modification, breaking, etc. Fork it on GitHub at github.com/brendanmatkin.

For Blind Spot, I wanted to emphasize the interaction between the individual and the object through disruption. Preventing people from viewing an object as they have been taught to expect forces them to ponder their intentions. Through unexpected lighting, and obvious visual interruption, this installation draws attention to the way we look at cars and helps us to think about it. On a simpler level, Blind Spot is meant to be playful; it takes advantage of both passive and active forms of interaction. When a user walks past, obvious behaviors are triggered whether intended or not. When the user seeks it out, or is drawn in, and moves in reaction to the installation behavior, the interaction becomes active and immersive. Source 

Large Glowing Panels Mimic Clouds in the Sky

Take a walk through the clouds in this installation by multimedia artist Eduardo Coimbra. Based in Rio de Janeiro, Coimbra studied engineering and architecture, which are both reflected in the majority of his creative projects. Many of his site-specific pieces are large-scale works that explore the idea of landscapes as synthetic constructions that represent reality. He says, ” “[My] work is related to space in a broader sense, many times forcing the boundaries between interiors and exteriors of art spaces.”

For this piece, entitled Nuvem (Cloud), the artist used iron, translucent canvas printing, fluorescent lamps, and mirrors, spread across five light boxes that measured about 17 square feet. Visitors could walk past, around, and in between the glowing walls, in which Coimbra brought the sky down to the ground for his audience to explore. During the day, the mirrored panels reflected the bright lights of a sunny day, while in the later hours, the boxes were illuminated to mimic that same brightness, set against the darkness of night.

Eduardo Coimbra on Nara Roesler Gallery

Source

Colorful Paper Boats Float Across London’s Canary Wharf

Playing with a toy boat in the bathtub as a kid is an activity that has stood the test of time. So, it’s no surprise that media architect Claudio Benghi and artist Gloria Ronchi, of Aether & Hemera, joined forces to develop this awesome take on such a simple concept. Voyage is an extensive journey of illuminated ‘paper boats,’ floating across the surface of London’s Canary Wharf. The artists say that their artistic vision is to “provoke memories, explore aesthetic interactions, and to elicit feelings of connective human experiences in a required-to-participate audience.”

Passers-by can’t help but notice the watery landscape filled with the vibrant rainbow rows, which is unusually organized for a fleet of 300. To master the shape, which is formed out of polypropylene sheets, Benghi and Ronchi planned out the perfect geometry and structure by using special computer software. They maintained an organized installation by connecting the boats, with threads, to the ones nearby, and several threads are also anchored to the riverbed. Finally, each design is weighted so as to not tip over in a blur of sinking ships.

Illuminated by LED lights, the lighting creates an enchanting atmosphere where the artists say everyone is invited to “make the transition from reality to imagination.” The site-specific installation encourages viewers to think back on those bathtub days when pirates roamed the soapy seas and to experience the freedom of traveling anywhere their imaginatiosn will take them.

Aether & Hemera website

Source

Fish Lamps Installation

Back in January of this year architect and artist Frank Gehry unveiled this striking series of fish lamps atGagosian Beverly Hills and later in Paris. The glowing fish are constructed from jagged scales of ColorCore formica mounted on a wireframe and are an extension of a series of similar lights first built between 1984 and 1986. The story goes that while working on a commission for Formica back in the 80s Gehry dropped a piece of ColorCore which shattered, inspiring the idea of fish scales. You can see more views over at Gagosian and onFlickr. (via Dezeen)

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/10/fish-lamps-by-frank-gehry/

“No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

— Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

3Destruct an audiovisual installation. Scopitone Festival / Le Lieu Unique / Nantes / France. Source