Thursday, August 6, 2009

the fleeting tags of long exposure

The Halo light by French designer Aissa Logerot is an ephemeral alternative to the typical process of graffiti or street art. Shaped like a clear glass can of spray-paint, the Halo uses an LED bulb in place of the usual cap and a long exposure photograph in place of a wall. Left open, the long exposure camera records the path of the light in what appears to be writing in space. The LED light can be changed for different intensities and colors. The Halo light also cleverly mimics it's real-life counterpart in charging. While shaking a typical spraypaint can, the widget inside liquidizes the paint enough to be sprayed through the nozzle cap, whereas shaking the halo light, the interior battery is charged. Seen on core77 and Gizmodo. Images by Aisso Logerot.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

subdivisions

Artist Ross Racine draws aerial views of imaginary suburbs that blur the lines between reality and whimsy. The drawings borrow from real world examples of the sprawling suburbias so visible from any Google Map and create intense magnifications of the geometric patterns we see. Both fantastic and oddly dystopic at the same time, the images seem to belie a sense disorientation through disorder-by-order. Driving through any American suburb, this feeling may be well familiar. Row after row after spiral after spiral of organized, seemingly generic homes is supposed to be a system of order. But Elm Court, Sycamore Lane, and Poplar Street all share such similarities that it's often impossible to identify where one is. The images created by racine amplify and, in a way, seem to texturize this feeling.
Seen on SpaceInvading and Bad Banana Blog.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

urban islands - cockatoo island

Urban Islands is a architectural studio hosted every two years using the Cockatoo Island as a site for spatial and architectural investigation. Cockatoo is an abandoned factory island in Sydney Harbour, Australia. One of this years instructors was Geoff Manuagh of BLDGBLOG, who recently posted some of the projects from the intensive twelve day studio. According to Manaugh: It's a studio inspired by the amazing Cockatoo Island, an abandoned industrial site – former prison, former shipyard, former quarry, present campground and concert venue, ongoing archaeological site, future megastructural weather-altering agri-utopian astronomy research station at sea (or whatever our students decide to make it) – in Sydney Harbor.

One such project was the Cockatoo Island Zeppelin Airport by MItchell Bonus. Questions Bonus, Why fly when we can float? The project suggests that the abandoned industrial site be updated into a transit hub for a perversely neglected form of transportation - the solar-powered zeppelin. The presentation, packaging and future marketing strategy of the project also attempts to affect change from the ground up. Individual graphic trading cards make up the knowledge campaign for the Cockatoo Island Zeppelin Airport comparing zeppelin use to automobile use, saftey, energy and resource consumption, and even trip costs. To be found in cereal boxes and mailboxes everywhere, the trading cards float quietly over and through consumer conscience.
Images by Mitchell Bonus via BLDGBLOG.