THE BROKERS WITH HANDS ON THEIR FACES BLOG.

Visual dispatches from that locus of economic disaster known as Wall Street.

Real: The Mattress Wallet. Touted these days as “a more secure place to keep your money.” What gets me about this is that they even included the DO NOT REMOVE tag.

Not Real, Sadly: Shi Jinsong’s Gun Shaped Baby Carriage.

Currently on exhibit in Milan, the description (found via designboom) states:

through his razor-sharp sculptures and related works, shi jinsong initiates a dialogue, at once menacing and ironic, between the forms of mythic chinese culture and modern
day globalization. the here featured work is part of the series ‘na zha’, a sort of brand name for an outrageously unsafe line of baby products.

Meticulously assembled in stainless steel from intricate mechanical drawings, they include a deadly carriage; a sadistic cradle; a sinister walker; and a malicious, multi-part toy complete with needle-tipped pacifiers and dismembering abacus. Baby boutique confronts its ’shopper’ with a radically strange and seductive ‘product’, lethal luxury designed to reveal the forces that dominate our lives in unimaginable ways.

One of the currents I love in contemporary art is the way that artists are using industrial and commercial processes to create science-fictional, alternate-universe artifacts that illuminate hidden aspects of our world as well as suggest possibilities of worlds yet undreamed.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a movie called Between The Folds, about the world of modern origami. This shit is bananas.

I.J. Fedora by Robert Lang

This hat by the way, is folded using a crease pattern. One sheet of paper.

Origami scorpions with individual scales. Origami that looks like clay sculpture. An origami tower that rises and falls with a human touch. Origami designed on computers as the expression of high-level mathematics (also see below). New techniques like “crumpling” and the crease fold. I wasn’t prepared to be all that impressed, but the shit blew my mind. I recommend following links from the artists’ section for a moment. It’s pretty goddamn fascinating.

Computational Origami by Erik and Martin Demaine

Branch 89b by Vincent Floderer

Then I see this report:

Stanford scientists are harnessing nanotechnology to quickly produce ultra-lightweight, bendable batteries and supercapacitors in the form of everyday paper.

Simply coating a sheet of paper with ink made of carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires makes a highly conductive storage device, said Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering.

And this brings it all together:

What’s more, you can crumple or fold the paper battery, or even soak it in acidic or basic solutions, and the performance does not degrade. “We just haven’t tested what happens when you burn it,” he said.

Yes. Monster-batteries of origami, powerd by nanotech.  Future, DO NOT DISAPPOINT ME ON THIS.

Originally posted at T-Rex Arms.

(two in an intermittent series of very quick thoughts about possible futures; see the other one here)

Since hip-hop has repeatedly been declared dead for at least a decade, I decided to widen the terms of debate a little and put together five variations of where hip-hop might be headed. Go with me on this, and see if you think I’m not entirely full of shit. (continue reading…)

Finished this a couple of weeks ago, as an experiment in taking a simple sketch and outputting a digital piece in Adobe Illustrator. I also posted a version of the drawing on Mojizu, which is a site for character designers. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s worth checking out. It’s fun to look at the wide range of styles on display. Here’s the final piece, and the sketch will be after the jump:

(continue reading…)

Apologies for the lack of posting the last couple days. I’m trying to get on a daily blogging game up in here, but… sometimes I slip. Mea culpa. Onwards.

Via Laughing Squid, I present to you Sixty-foot Ghost, a site-specific art installation by Todd Freeman and Meg Perec. Installed at 47 Commerce SW in Grand Rapids, MI, it includes a drawing of a giant squid, allowing viewers to experience the creature at its proper scale, and a collection of related objects and books with information.

From the artists’ work statement:

Large animals captivate like few other beings can. They are deified, hunted, consumed and catalogued. While our culture has seemingly amassed a working knowledge of all living species on the planet, one of the world’s giants has successfully eluded the scientific community for centuries. Save for a few partially decomposed specimens virtually nothing is known of Architeuthis dux, the Giant Squid. Architeuthis is a 60 foot ghost, moving unnoticed through deep and dark.

Our representation of the giant squid was conceived out of a need to see the animal for ourselves, beyond pale museum subjects or small renderings in books. At life size, the true scale of Architeuthis becomes clear, a massive, unfamiliar animal deserving of the same fascination and wonder owed to any whale, elephant or dinosaur. Our intent is to bring the myth into a gratifying real space, and give the viewer a chance to be confronted with one of the largest and most secretive animals to ever live.

I love the way this installation uses the entire space, yet it’s not busy; it still focuses your attention where they want it. It has a calming, ghostly atmosphere to it. I also resonate with the notion of bringing “the myth into a gratifying real space”, creating a fictional representation that manages to ground the reality of the thing being depicted.

In a way, although I’m often using overtly sci-fi or cartoony elements in my work, that idea — of bringing a myth or an abstraction to life — is something I strive to incorporate. At some point I’ll probably post some college work in that space. Sixty Foot Ghost also reminds me that it’s been a while since I’ve done an installation. I’ve been working digitally so much, it’d be nice to deal with physical space.

Consider that foreshadowing.

Much more detail on Perec and Freeman’s installation can be found here.

Just a quick reminder that I’m still puttin’ out a short written piece a week over at T-Rex Arms.

This week’s post is a bit of fast fiction, Back In Love With Mystery.

Last week’s was a rant called War Might Be The Answer.

I’d love to hear what you think! You can post comments here or there, or send email to secretlion@trexarms.com.

Oh yeah, older posts can be found here.

acceptance, originally uploaded by Jay from Norway.

Stumbled on this pic on Flickr and liked it. Very peaceful, yet it’s got this epic adventure feel to it as well.

Saw this to the right of an article I was reading and it just made me chuckle.

“They hail you then nail you” indeed. Also like the apparent irony of essentially buying votes to authorize a term extension being a factor in Bloomberg’s diminished influence.

I know this is from last year, but I just found this NES gun and want to post about it:

Sick. (via engadget)

Second, rest easy Virginia, there is a such thing as the perfect crime:

Twins Suspected in Massive Jewelry Heist get set free (der Spiegel)

German law stipulates that each criminal must be individually proven guilty. The problem in the case of the O. brothers is that their twin DNA is so similar that neither can be exclusively linked to the evidence using current methods of DNA analysis. So even though both have criminal records and may have committed the heist together, Hassan and Abbas O. have been set free

I’m watchin’ Mary-Kate and Ashley.  No tellin’ what havoc could be wreaked with them thar devil children.

No tellin’.