It’s simply impossible for Tetris to be un-cool. I don’t think it can be done, and so this doesn’t need much explanation. All that really needs to be done is relax and marvel in it’s pure orgasm-inducing awesomness. Czech designer Martin Zampach has give the world “Tetrice”. Silicon ice-cube trays that give you Tetris-shaped ice. You drink, you play, you drink… you play.
Brazilian designer Rafael Morgan is one of my new faves. Not only does he have a modern aesthetic that I clearly enjoy, but his work explores the intersection of the organic and technological (another one of my weak spots) and social awareness. Forward-thinking design with a globally inclusive message – what more could you ask for?
First up is “Light Drop”. The tap is steel, the “water” is silicone, and the intensity of the LED light is controlled, intuitively, by the tap. Turn it higher, more light. Turn it doesn, less light. Morgan says ” the Light Drop is supposed to make people think about how we are
dealing with our natural resources, in this particular case, the water, which is the main source of energy for every living organism in this
fantastic world. Water is energy indeed.” I love this guy.
The 3rd place winner in designboom’s Bright LED design competition, “Light Drop” was originally a concept piece, but keep your eyes peeled as it’s going to be produced and up for sale some time in 2008 from Belgian design firm Dark.
On more of a social awareness tip, Morgan’s “Indigestive Plate” plates are deliciously subversive in how they deliver their message at the most opportune time. A collaboration between Morgan and Ben Collette, hard-to-swallow facts about world hunger are printed in Victorian script on porcelain plates. Created with heat-sensitive ink, the messages (like “Every day 16,000 children die from hunger related causes” – how ’bout them apples?) only appear once hot food is plated. That gives the message time to appear, so that just while the eater is finishing their meal they’ll discover what’s underneath.
Like Morgan himself suggests, it would be amazing to re-stock a restaurant with “Indigestive Plates” and then watch what goes down before dessert is served.
This article also appeared on Josh Spear
Just as it’s title so succinctly implies, Learning To Love You More is an on-going interactive web project created by artists Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July that teaches us to explore ourselves from every angle.
Managed by California-based artist and designer Yuri Ono, the site challenges potential participants to complete a series of 68 assignments. New tasks are always being added and they can be completed in any order you chose. The results – whether it’s a video or picture or drawing – are submitted to the site and added to the chronicle of each task. Ranging from the artistic (#27 – Take a picture of the sun) and the anarchic (#34 – Make a protest sign and protest) to the ephemeral (#68 – Feel the news) and the sublime (#36 – Grow a garden in an unexpected spot), each new idea moves you to take on a new talent, face a new fear, or potentially dig up the past to get it done.
Since it’s creation in 2002, more than 5000 people around the world have put pieces of themselves into Learning To Love Your More. Those works have been gathered into a constantly shape-shifting exhibition and screening of the project, including a presentation at NYC’s Whitney Museum, and the project has also been documented in a new book.
The simple power of each task and the collaboration between strangers all around the world points to one eternally poignant message. By accessing the most personal facets of your self and then having the courage to share them, you can’t help but see a beautiful truth: nobody is alone.
A version of this article also appeared on Josh Spear
Hiding beneath the vibrant candy colours of Canadian photographer Liz Wolfe’s stunning work is a whole bunch of twisted contradictions.
Exploring the juxtaposition between what we commonly consider pretty (flowers) and what we mostly consider gross (an octopus), the sugary perfections of her work force us to re-evaluate those considerations. Her shots include tentacles gently curled inside the curves of a rose and a pattern of sardines and daisies laid on the grass beneath a woman’s high-heeled feet.
My personal fave is a prostrate hand impaled on a candy stick that bleeds red sprinkles. Never what they first seem, her photos make the ugly look exquisite and the horrific seem cute. One of the great powers of her work is that by forcing us to try and understand why a bouquet of fish heads can looks so beautiful, we’re driven to re-evaluate our very ideas of beauty itself.
As the world gets flatter, it’s not shocking how many new ways we find to reach out to strangers around the world. This time the surprise is that we’re not doing it with messages of the once-in-a-lifetime, but of the everyday.
Synchronicity is an on-going project open to everyone with a clock and a camera. Even if you’ve got nothing better to do than floss and walk the dog, the world wants to see. Unless you want to masturbate – in which case Xtube wants to see.
Via Cool Hunting
This article also appeared on Josh Spear
We’ve all experienced that high school moment where you realize that if you don’t wear the right jeans to your next hallway appearance, you… will… die.
Exactitudes, a 13-year collaboration between Rotterdam-based photographer Ari Versluis and stylist Ellie Uyttenbroek, is a study of how groups of people around the world express their individuality… by dressing alike. Whether the pull is created by class, gender, rebellion or other faces of identity, each individual subject in a series is posed and shot exactly the same. When placed together it’s the groups ubiquitous style code that’s immediately apparent, but the real interest is that by looking through the convenient veneer of sameness it’s actually each person’s differences that begin to unexpectedly shine through.
Plus, there are French surfer boys with no shirts on. And that never hurts.
I came up with so many nifty lines to kick off this post that I couldn’t pick just one. It came down to “I’ve got my eye on you” and “Look me in the eye” and then I couldn’t choose. Sophie had it hard.
From amazing celeb and editorial photographer Rankin comes Eyescapes. He created round prints from zoomed in images of people’s irises. The result is spectacular. See for yourself! (Alright, I couldn’t resist…)
Via NOTCOT
I’m not sure why documenting the most mundane details of your life can turn into such a fascinating visual case study. It’s almost like taking “one man’s trash is another’s man’s treasure” one step too far – not even sifting through it but simply just stock-piling everything and photographing it. That’s exactly what Beijing-based artist Hong Hao has been doing for more than 15 years.
My Things No. 2 (2001-2002)
He collects all the ephemera and trinkets from his life and documents it. Then it’s just pleasurably voyeuristic and odd to look at it all think “this is someone’s life”. If you were to disappear today this would be the material left in your wake. The stuff you would dispose of says as much as the keepsakes you horde away. It all says everything and it all says nothing.
My Things No. 1 (2000-2002)
Via Cool Hunting
Design can’t get too modern for me. I would live in a lucite spaceship if I could just find one in my price range. Bathroom design is particularly adventurous. My theory is that things like beds and chairs have 700+ years of King Louis XXIV four-poster colonial baroque nonsense for designers to get over. Bathrooms haven’t been around that long, so they’re one step ahead. Bring on the stark white uber-modernism!
Whenever I start to daydream about the perfect bathroom, my lap top somehow drifts over to Wow Bathrooms. Horrendous site name (was “Bathrooms R Us” already taken?) but an awesome site.
Enter the Visentin Ice Light LED Chromatherapy shower. That’s right… chromatherapy. Besides being a big transparent rectangle (which alone would have been enough for me) the Ice Light shower changes colours. Just waking up? Set the shower for “warm” and get some sunshiny reds and yellows. Stressed from work? Choose “relaxing” and shower within the calm blue ocean blues and greens. The only thing it doesn’t do is shoot scented oils at you. Which would be a good idea. I’m going to invent a 5 sensory shower that has various massage settings, changes colour, shoots scented oils at you, plays music, and dilutes Crystal Light in the water so you can drink it. It will be called The Sensewer.
But what if I want to take a bath? Check out The Stub (that’s what I’ve named it, anyway) by Us Together. Part of their Ebb Bathroom line, it’s a one-piece modular sink and bathtub.
Via Wow Bathrooms
shape+colour 