Link About It: This Week’s Picks
Upside-down ice fishing, where to go skinny dipping and a room exploded with stickers—highlights from the web this week
1. Skittish Tree
Bringing dynamic visual evidence of the impact of the sounds we make, the sound-reactive projection, Skittish Tree, offers a multi-sensory experience in the storefront of JS55 on Clinton Street in New York City. While soft sounds caused the tree to sway languidly side-by-side, loud noises—like, as we see in the video, a child’s giddy screeching—shake the limbs until they fall off in the “wind”.
2. Maurice Sendak
If you weren’t already in love with Maurice Sendak from his masterful work, Where the Wild Things Are, you’re likely to fall once you watch his interview at home. Speaking on the need for ferocity and irreverence in art, and pausing, sweetly, to pet his dog, the 89-year-old illustrator shares his answer to requests over the years to do a WTWA sequel—”I’m not a whore”—while rejecting common notions of money and fame in the creative world.
3. Staple Design for Case Mate
Fit for design geeks and ganguro fashionistas alike, this pigeon-themed iPhone case comes complete with silicone wing embellishments for ergonomics and a dangling pigeon foot charm for flair. Currently only available in-store at Reed Space in NYC, the case keeps in line with Staple Design’s affection for all things pigeon.
4. Short Order Designer Notepads
Once reserved for diner waitresses sporting up-dos, this alternative notebook allows you to categorically record the demands of your next client. They uniquely numbered pages allow you to create and action item list for the project with a lateral column to check items off the list. For designers from designer Adam Oreste.
5. The Skinny Dipping Report
In case you were looking for a resource outlining the best places around the globe to lose your clothes and take a dive, the 2012 Skinny Dipping Report has arrived. The report, which takes the form of a calendar, has detailed info on some great spots to wade in the nude, along with the photographic spreads to back them up.
6. Upside-Down Ice Fishing
In this bizarrely disorienting video J. Mettälä and some friends trekked into the wacky world under the surface of a frozen lake in Finland. The friends claim they were “fishing” but it looks more like they were having a ball pulling off a variety of gags which included a balloon, a wheel barrow and a sled.
7. Schuyler Towne
The thieves and geeks out there have a new guru in Schuyler Towne, who has taken to the Internet to explain the nifty inner workings of locks and master locks, including the key steps in picking them, with a series of video tutorials.
8. My Personal Universe
Curious to discover what the the Big Bang most likely looked like, Zhan Wang blew up a massive boulder from the suburbs of Shandong and captured the result on six HD cameras recording at 2,000 FPS. The Chinese sculptor then used his renderings to recreate the scene moments after using mirrored stainless steel in an interactive studio space.
9. The Obliteration Room
This fantastic installation at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art by artist Yayoi Kusama takes interactive art to a whole new level. Starting with a blank white room the artist invited children to take part using a massive collection of colored dot stickers. The result is a multi-colored wonderland of childish joy.
10. Encyclopedic Landscapes
An apparent commentary on the eroding nature of underutilized knowledge, Guy Laramee has taken old volumes and created ranges of paginated land in a new sculpture series. What start as massive bluffs decay into ranges, crevices before ultimately flattening out into empty plains.
11. Rolling through the Bay
The hard-won result of 35 years, 100,000 toothpicks and an estimated 3,000 hours, this fantasy rendering of San Francisco is a sight to behold. With several “tours” available, the mass is navigable only by ping pong balls that explore all the sights including ocean beach, the Golden Gate Bridge and the rainbow-colored Castro district.
12. Street View Stereographic
Continuing Google’s quest for world domination, the new app lets users create their own planet from any Google Street View images. From the Taj Mahal to your local neighborhood, streetscapes are imposed onto a fantastical space-view photograph.
13. Cloud FTP
One of the most stand-out kickstarter projects in recent months is Cloud FTP, a portable device that connects to any USB device for online sharing through an FTP client. Working with all iOS and Android devices, the affordable storage solution is currently accessed through a rudimentary browser, though it works well with apps set up to stream media through FTP clients.
14. Salvaged Darth Vader Helmet
Apparently Bellino Alain had some extra antique fixtures lying around and needed a project. The result is a very accurate looking Darth Vader sculpture, which maintains the famous Sith lord’s intimidation factor while adding a little floral flair.
15. The Jokers
A series by photographer Bruce Davidson has resurfaced depicting a young gang of boys in 1959 Brooklyn. “The Jokers” personify the now-legendary look of the era, and charmingly reinforce the timelessness of a rebel youth—and stake their claim on pioneering the modern idea of it—with greaser haircuts, tattoo showboating and lots of girls.
16. Talstar Bottle
The bottle for Talstar’s insecticide may look funky but it’s form is much more considered than one might think. Designed to make measuring the appropriate amount of bug poison more efficient, the bottle uses a pressure system that allows the contents to be doled out with a squeeze.
