Artist Lisa Park Manipulates Water with Her Mind

Conceptual artist Lisa Park has been experimenting with a specialized device called a NeuroSky EEG headset that helps transform brain activity into streams of data that can be manipulated for the purposes of research, or in this case, a Fluxus-inspired performance art piece titled Euonia (Greek for “beautiful thought”). Park used the EEG headset to monitor the delta, theta, alpha, and beta waves of her brain as well as eye movements and transformed the resulting data with specialized software into sound waves. Five speakers are placed under shallow dishes of water which then vibrate in various patterns in accordance with her brain activity.
While the system is not an exact science, Park rehearsed for nearly a month by thinking about specific people whom she had strong emotional reactions to. The artist then correlated each of the five speakers with certain emotions: sadness, anger, hatred, desire, and happiness. According to the Creator’s Project her hope had been to achieve a sort of zen-like state resulting in complete silence, however it proved to be ultimately unattainable, a result that is actually somewhat poetic.
It’s important to note that artists have long been using EEG devices to create “music with the mind”. Composer and experimental musician Alvin Lucier had a somewhat similar performance called Music for Solo Performer back in 1965.

A Wall of Shattered Glass Floods a Benedictine Monastery

Aerial is a new site-specific installation by Baptiste Debombourg (previously) at an old Benedictine monastery called Brauweiler Abbey near Cologne, Germany. Debombourg used numerous sheets of shattered laminate glass to mimic a frothy flood of water rushing into a room. Remarkably beautiful work.

Playtime Back T-Shirt - Kid Times (^ - ^)

Created by mom Becky under the pseudonym Bky Kid, both the collection t-shirts are converted into a playground for children with the impression of a racetrack on their backs. A fun way to rethink the nap and time spent with children. More details to be discovered in the future.

Bjork – Mutual Core MV

After the project absolutely beautiful Solipsist made ​​a year ago, Andrew Thomas Huang is responsible for carrying out the latest video for Bjork's song "Mutual Core." Produced by Sagafilm this video mixed with talent and colorful work unstructured director with the music of the Icelandic singer.

Water Dream Light -By studio Nendo

Heart for the excellent Japanese design studio Nendo has designed a system that combines both shower and lamp to create a unique hybrid object. Designed by Oki Sato, the Axor WaterDream project is to discover details and pictures later in the article.

Brilliant Idea : Wall-Free Graffiti Sprayed on Clear Cellophane

Tagging is typically considered an urban art. At the very least you need walls to write on, right? Not necessarily – some clever artists have started to stretch cellophane between any available supports, making paint-ready surfaces out of thin air.

Suddenly, rural settings (sans buildings) are fair game – mountains and forests can become backdrops for spray-painted expression. The translucent nature of the plastic ‘canvas’ employed adds a fascinating layer of visual complexity for artists like Ches working in the cold winters around Moscow, Russia (above).
 


None of which is to say that city contexts will not work for this alternative approach. In fact, the temporary, light and portable nature of the surface material makes it an easy sell for would-be critics who might not approve of tagging on concrete, brick or other more permanent walls.

Sites like Cellograff feature stretched-plastic installations in impressively central places, including major urban parks, museums and monument sites in and around Paris, France. These two short time-lapse films show how the process works from start to finish.

Ideals from Libraries: Mobile Shelving for Modular Rooms

When libraries want to save space, they employ a rolling stack system that allows access to only one or a few aisles at one time. When not in use, the walkways between disappear as the bookcases are pressed backed together to  open a new aisle. So why limit this ingenious space-saving approach to the library? Why not try out a similar compact mobile track-shelving setup with interior walls instead of bookcases? One for home, one for the office, here are two projects that do.

First, consider Elastic Living, a project by CLEI for Milan Design Week. Knowing you only need to access one or two rooms at a time, this system proposes you pick and choose dynamically, opening, say, one big dinning room for guests, or your bedroom and bathroom when you are getting ready to go to sleep. When you wake up, you can file your sleeping space away for the whole day, until you need it again.




To be fair, the presentation is a bit garish – it could do with fewer drawn figures on the outside walls, and a bit less bold of a background color scheme, but strip away backdrop and the design itself is quite compelling. Each room can be not only opened and closed, but dynamiclaly re-sized to fit its function. The kitchen can host a small an intimidate dinner or an expansive and festive one.


Second, let us shift from residential to take a look a similar process in play in a more formal and commercial setting: the Environmental Grantmakers Association offices designed by Taylor and Miller Architecture and Urban Design. Here we again find the stacks-on-rails system supporting in this case four workstation units.


And also like the first project, we find infinite possibilities for deployment – space two out far enough and you can create a conference room, or pack them all tightly together and set them aside to make space for a big event.

Useful Billboards : Advertisements Extend Into Urban Space

At its best, advertising is entertaining, even useful. At its worst, it is invasive, abrasive, and perhaps even offensive. IBM’s new campaign from Ogilvy France skirts the line, featuring public objects that are useful but which somewhat invade the urban space.

The Smart Ideas for Smarter Cities campaign includes three billboards that extend out from city walls and into the urban environment. One is an awning of sorts, providing a dry space for residents to get out of the rain or a bit of shade to get out of the sun.

Another is a small bench which gives weary pedestrians the chance to sit down for a moment. The last is a ramp that covers a portion of a small staircase, letting cyclists or luggage-wheeling residents take an easier route.
The campaign is meant to inspire viewers to think differently about their cities and how some elements could be tweaked to be more useful for residents. It’s something of a risk, however, since this invasion of the urban environment may not be welcomed by residents who think that advertising is already too ubiquitous on city streets.

(images via: Fast Company)

Little Staircase Cinema & Sidewalk Library Projects

Public art used to be synonymous with huge and impersonal and location-agnostic sculptures made of metal and marble. Countering that classic Modernist trend are installations like this pair: a set small, site-specific and community-oriented design-build projects located in Auckland, New Zealand, and New York City, New York, respectively.


First, from Oh No Sumo (images by Simon Devitt), the Stairway Cinema, a sheltered spot for watching movies on steps rising right off the sidewalk and open to pedestrians passing by. Public participants are invited to curate the collection of films shown on the screen.




About its creators and inspiration: “Our ongoing goal is to experiment with architecture and the way it can engage with the public in unique and exciting ways. This project takes inspiration from the site and its inhabitants. The intersection of Symonds Street and Mount Street is a place of ‘hard waiting’. Bus stops and laundromats create a hard-scape of poor space for social interaction.”

Unauthorized Installations: The Fine Art of Urban Subversion

Brad Downey is familiar with both sides of the art world, with a fine arts degree and gallery exhibitions, on the one hand, and run-ins with the authorities about his sometimes-unsanctioned street art on the other.

His work is harder to describe that it is to simply see, since it is often in the most public places you could imagine (or documented via extensive photography) – erupting from sidewalks, disrupting bicycle lanes or literally ripping up cobbled streets



Per the pictures, sometimes these installations transpose ideas and objects from other contexts, but they also frequently warp existing everyday objects like bicycles, cars, signs, benches, shopping carts and garbage cans.


Sometimes he works alone – sometimes collaboratively. Some of his pieces are stand-alones and one-offs while others form sets, like Wedging (shown above), which is a series of experiments of balance and obstruction in alleys with ordinary household items.


He has had run-ins with police while working in cities ranging from London to Amsterdam, on both art and guerrilla marketing projects performed in that gray area of public and possible vandalism.