Thumbs and Ammo posits the idea: would it be funny to replace guns with thumbs up in stills from movies?
YES!
Mini Sculptures On Pencil Leads
Landscapes Made from Shredded Flowers by Gyun Hur
Atlanta-based installation artist Gyun Hur creates arrangements of materials.
She explains:
“Narratives of labor, loss, and place are vital elements in [these] constructions of a specific visual and psychological space. Through the menial process of making, selective collections of found objects transform into a poignant residuum of the past and the present. A sentimental installment of materials and insertion of a physical body facilitate an occupied territory as a platform for opened dialogues, both internal and external.”
Stuff You Can See On Earth
Reading a Poem - B by Sarah Kay - Read by Harper Rose Perez
B
by Sarah Kay
If I should have a daughter…“Instead of “Mom”, she’s gonna call me “Point B.” Because that way, she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me. And I’m going to paint the solar system on the back of her hands so that she has to learn the entire universe before she can say “Oh, I know that like the back of my hand.”
She’s gonna learn that this life will hit you, hard, in the face, wait for you to get back up so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air. There is hurt, here, that cannot be fixed by band-aids or poetry, so the first time she realizes that Wonder-woman isn’t coming, I’ll make sure she knows she doesn’t have to wear the cape all by herself. Because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe me, I’ve tried.
And “Baby,” I’ll tell her “don’t keep your nose up in the air like that, I know that trick, you’re just smelling for smoke so you can follow the trail back to a burning house so you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire to see if you can save him. Or else, find the boy who lit the fire in the first place to see if you can change him.”
But I know that she will anyway, so instead I’ll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boats nearby, ‘cause there is no heartbreak that chocolate can’t fix. Okay, there’s a few heartbreaks chocolate can’t fix. But that’s what the rain boots are for, because rain will wash away everything if you let it.
I want her to see the world through the underside of a glass bottom boat, to look through a magnifying glass at the galaxies that exist on the pin point of a human mind. Because that’s how my mom taught me. That there’ll be days like this, “There’ll be days like this my momma said” when you open your hands to catch and wind up with only blisters and bruises. When you step out of the phone booth and try to fly and the very people you wanna save are the ones standing on your cape. When your boots will fill with rain and you’ll be up to your knees in disappointment and those are the very days you have all the more reason to say “thank you,” ‘cause there is nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline no matter how many times it’s sent away.
You will put the “wind” in win some lose some, you will put the “star” in starting over and over, and no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life.
And yes, on a scale from one to over-trusting I am pretty damn naive but I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily but don’t be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it.
“Baby,” I’ll tell her “remember your mama is a worrier but your papa is a warrior and you are the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more.”
Remember that good things come in threes and so do bad things and always apologize when you’ve done something wrong but don’t you ever apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining.
Your voice is small but don’t ever stop singing and when they finally hand you heartbreak, slip hatred and war under your doorstep and hand you hand-outs on street corners of cynicism and defeat, you tell them that they really ought to meet your mother.
POV Camera from 2013 Coachella
From the video page:
Director Chris Crutchfield shows you the Coachella Music Festival like you've never experienced before. He's strapped a GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition camera to his head and headed into the desert for an insane weekend of energy and lights.
Thousands of Plastic Straws Create Evocative 3D Art
Italian artist Francesca Pasquali has created these evocative 3D forms with thousands of plastic straws, with the end result reminiscent of the Organic Forms in Glass we saw a few weeks ago.
The artist explains:
"Even if plastc is a new material, the tecnique of interlacing it in preconstituted nets is connected to the past. It makes it live again in the shape of sculpture, which spreads out towards the space around, creating various texturzsed effects. Observing nature itself, I transfer the essential being of it. The interlacing forms trasform the industrial material into soft and sensual shapes."
Documenting The Decline of the Newspaper Industry
The Philadelphia Inquirer, the nation's third oldest surviving newspaper, moved from its enormous 526,000 square-foot headquarters to a single floor of an office building, and American photographer Will Steacy, whose father had worked for the newspaper for nearly 30 years has created this series of photos from 2009 to 2013 that captures its ebbing in clear visual detail.
Longest Tower Highline in Moab
Highlining is one of those amazing things I love to watch video of (this Highlining Across the Face of the Full Moon for example) but prolly will never bring myself to do.
From the video:
"Andy Lewis takes on the world's longest freestanding tower highline spanning across Moab's beautiful desert terrain to the infamous Raptor Tower. This 80 meter long line (262 feet) was rigged and walked for the first time this past winter during very cold and frigid conditions. After a week of hard work and perseverance on the line, Andy was able to successfully walk its entire length several times without falling in both directions."
Song of the Day - Q.U.E.E.N by Janelle Monae
from Wikipedia:
Janelle Monáe Robinson (born December 1, 1985), known as Janelle Monáe is an American R&B and soul musician, composer and record producer signed to Bad Boy Records and Atlantic Records. After making a mark with her first unofficial album, The Audition, Monáe debuted with a conceptual EP, Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase). The EP had a modest commercial impact, peaking at No. 115 on the Billboard charts in the United States.
Mechanical Buddhas
Vertical Horizon: Looking Up in Hong Kong with Romain Jacquet-Lagreze
French photographer Romain Jacquet-Lagreze created Vertical Horizon, a project of gazing up in the megapolis of Hong Kong, "the geometry of the urban environment and the vivid lives it shelters."
"... a deep immersion into the city's thick atmospheres and a visual record of its wildly diverse built environment. This book is like a contemplative dive into the raw nature of Hong Kong and an expression of its vertical élan."
APP of the Day - GLITCHÉ
Sure there are plenty of apps out there that will help pretty up your photos, but Glitché is an app that helps you rough your photos up, make them seem like that are recovered from some digital archeology or part of the video sequence of The Ring.
Filters include glitch, scan, invert, grid, scene, pxlgrid, LCD and datamosh, each making your photo trippy and odd.
Stylish Illustrations from the story of Moby Dick and other monsters
I was put onto Tom Neely, a painter and cartoonist living in Los Angeles, by Adam Albright-Hanna (@adamah). Neely's imaginary creatures reminded him of the fantastical Photoshop Bestiary from a few days ago.
Neely is best known for the cult-hit indie comic book Henry & Glenn Forever, which he created with his artist collective The Igloo Tornado whom were voted LA Weekly's "Best People in LA 2011."
From the book description:
"Starring super-notorious musclebound punk/metaldudes Glenn Danzig and Henry Rollins..."
It is his brief series of illustrations from the story of Moby Dick (which, honest to God, I love and keep re-reading now. I hated it in high school and college, but came to it again in grad school and gave myself permission to think of Melville's voice as sly and funny amidst the mythological and timeless), that have really caught my imagination.
Shooting Toys in the Real World
1:1 Toys is a photo series Ottawa-based photographer Daniel Picard.
"The road in front was going to be closed down in two days, for almost a year. So, with no time for a human model, I tried shooting it with a robot I had just bought, the first of my collection. I liked the result so much, that it was the beginning of not only my toy series but my interest in building a fun toy collection."
"[Shooting the toys in the real world] takes care of lighting and white balance and all that instead of shooting green screen in my studio and trying to match things hours, days, or even weeks later.
"The rest is all computer magic not unlike what Hollywood does with CG in films like District 9 and Lord of the Rings with Gollum. I just use already built, amazingly detailed toys instead of amazingly detailed 3D models."
MIDNIGHT BARCELONA
With a city as gorgeous and vibrant as Barcelona, it might be hard to make a timelapse that can live up to it.
This one, directed by Pau García Laita does for me at least.
Peering Inside an Active Volcano in Eastern Russia
Andrew and Luda, Kyrgyzstan-based photographers, post outstanding nature photography, including of active volcanoes on their joint Live Journal account.
They recently headed to the volcano complex known as Tolbachik, which was in active eruption on the Kamchatka Peninsula in eastern Russia. The video and the photos are really phenomenal.
Pendulum Waves
Who doesn't love a good pendulum wave video?
Church Tanks by Kris Kuksi
Kris Kuksi makes these startling sculptures, aptly named Church Tank, with the same macabre overabundance that has garnered such attention from the likes of Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labirynth).
“A post-industrial Rococo master, Kris Kuksi obsessively arranges characters and architecture in asymmetric compositions with an exquisite sense of drama. Instead of stones and shells he uses screaming plastic soldiers, miniature engine blocks, towering spires and assorted debris to form his landscapes.The political, spiritual and material conflict within these shrines is enacted under the calm gaze of remote deities and august statuary. Kuksi manages to evoke, at once, a sanctum and a mausoleum for our suffocated spirit.”
Ice Climbing at Night
Photographer Ray Demski and climber Alex Luger shot a project called “Ice Nights” entirely at night with the use of powerful flash units and a medium format camera.
