Fun On Friday #144: Elegantly Wasted

Im still not sure what I make of this. It is slightly disturbing but strangely fascinating at the same time. Have a look at the 12LVE project and than come back here to tell me what you think.

Research has proven that we often take out our frustrations on the technology we feel has let us down:

While such outburst might feel cathartic at times, I can't help but feel that the 12LVE project has taken a much more creative approach: they are exhibiting photographs of a range of technology that has been hit with a sledgehammer, attacked with a handsaw, set on fire and (my favourite) run over by a train. At one level, seeing technology destroyed like this is unsettling, and yet I think the photographs are beautiful.

So what do you see? Wreckage and ruin or beauty and brilliance?

{Thanks to Gordon McKinlay for drawing this to my attention.}

Fun On Friday #116: Street Art

I've posted about graffiti before (Fun On Friday #109: Reverse Graffiti) and about street art (sort of, with the photo in Fun on Friday #28: More Optical Illusions) but here's a link to an artist who literally puts his art on the street: Roadsworth.

plug, a photo by nomsaleena on Flickr.

I especially like the one of the zebra crossing that he's turned into a giant footprint and the plug hole one shown here

He is coming to Scotland and will be doing some art near Glasgow, so hopefully I'll get a chance to see his work first hand.

What do you think of Roadsworth's art?

Fun On Friday #109: Reverse Graffiti

Not so much a Fun on Friday, more a Weekend Wonder?

People complain that graffiti is ugly and destructive. This is different. Here is an artist that took something ugly and created beauty:

And what a sad ending!

Fun On Friday #103: Fun with photos

I was surprised to find I haven't featured Dumpr here before. Another site with a silly name - I can understand dropping the "e" since the site links with Flikr... but "dumper"? I don't get it.

To me, Dumpr sounds like you are throwing stuff away, being destructive, but this site allows you to add value and be creative. Essentially, you give it a picture and the site manipulates it in interesting ways. For example, how about a Rubik's Dog:


Or, pictures at an exhibition:


There are twenty-one different effects you can apply and you can upload photos from your hard disk, or pull them in from facebook, Picasa, Flickr or a Web URL.

So what are you waiting for, go and have some fun with photos... And if you do, remember to share your creations by posting a link to them here.

Fun On Friday #99: The View From Above

Contrary to popular belief, the Great Wall of China is not the only man made object visible from space. Various Internet sources claim that you can barely see the Great Wall of China from low orbit. Some objects, however, are clearly visible in the satellite images from Google Maps and thanks to Jesse Vig at the GeoGreeting site, you can use buildings, lakes and other features to send a message:


Even better, the site gives you a link that you can send to people so they see an animation of your message being formed along with details of what and where the letters are.

Literacy across learning? Geography, Art and Design with a bit of ICT thrown in for good measure ...or just good fun?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Evan Roth, Graffiti Research Lab

Evan is interested in the art that connects with popular culture and free culture.

"Lazy like a fox" - Eric Raymond. Maximum impact for minimum effort. In particular, he became interested in hacker culture and how it could be applied in art. First example was adding a small, submersive, message to official US Mail postcards and placing them back into the post office. Another example was using tin foil (I think) letters to write messages on things inside backpacks that would show up on security x-ray machines, e.g. "Mind Your Own Buisness"

{Sorry missing capturing this because he is too interesting!}

He teaches a class where you grade depends on how many hits/likes etc. you get on your online art stuff. Brilliant! Even looks to open source model of distribution - release early and often. Art is research - it is not something you polish and complete in a room before showing in a gallery.

Another example was a video he did with typographic illustrations for Jay-Z.

Now talking about the Graffiti Research Lab and how it fits with open source ideas and how it has morphed into F.A.T. He talked about the "Tootsie Pop" style of his work. There may be a serious message at the heart but it is wrapped up in fun.

He has created a graffiti markup language to capture (and project) graffiti - for archiving and for creating. It is open source and has been adopted and used by others.

{This post completely fails to capture how good this chap was. I hope it has been videoed.}

He wants children to get computers they can hack!

Fun on Friday #59: Sketchfu

Sketchfu is an online painting package but with a twist... or even a few twists. For example, the creation process is captured and can be played back as an animation and people can collaborate on drawings.



Learn how to draw cartoons, comics, and anime at Sketchfu!

You don't have to leave the picture open for others to edit (like the one above). If you want, you can protect your work of art and simply let people watch the animation (like the one below).



Learn how to draw cartoons, comics, and anime at Sketchfu!

Leave comments on my pictures and, as always, if you create something yourself, share it back by letting us know here where it is.

Fun On Friday #47: But Is It Art?

Daughter Number 2 brought this one to my attention: We Feel Fine. The site's tagline is: "An exploration of human emotion, in six movements" - which is at least intriguing if not downright interesting.

Big Heart of Art - 1000 Visual Mashups
Originally uploaded by qthomasbower (away - ill)

I'll quote a fairly large chunk from the site's Mission statement, however, you really have to see it, and play with it, yourself to get an idea of what it is all about:

Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.)...

The result is a database of several million human feelings, increasing by 15,000 - 20,000 new feelings per day. Using a series of playful interfaces, the feelings can be searched and sorted across a number of demographic slices, offering responses to specific questions...

If you haven't done so already, go to the We Feel Fine site, open it, and explore!

Fascinating and mesmerising... but is it art? I think probably yes. What do you think?