Birth

Birth of a Book from Glen Milner on Vimeo.

Following on from the intriguing ink creation process post, here is the "Birth of a Book" that swiftly shows the heart invested effort of creating a book using traditional, and mostly manual, methods of book printing and binding. A truly delicate and intimate process nonetheless.

Alien

Lifecycles

With the limit release that was the motor car, cities sprawled to epic proportions. Today, suburban sprawl is viewed as the big, bad monster of urban design. Those who study architecture or urban design is bound to hear about this phenomena all the time but what is the current action that is combating this vague, self-induced problem?

A more grassroots approach to all this is the Lifecycles project by Matthew Moore. Having a personal attachment to the farmland which would possibly be consumed by the metropolis, Moore set out to express the issue through a set of neat videos on the growth of produce. 

lifecycles - radish from Matthew Moore on Vimeo.

Will this stop the sprawl? That in itself is a big undertaking, but Moore's project is an effort to change the way we think about sprawling cities and an appreciation of the rural areas that hug expanding cities.

For more about the project, see the GOOD article.

Invisible

Nothing like a bit of great technology interacting with the city and people. And selling a car.

Before

Chairlift's 'choose your own adventure' music video is kind of fun. It also forces you to listen to the same dreaded song over and over in pursuit of less boring experiences. It captures the 'what if' scenarios that go on in real life - what if I did this or that, or went to that event would I have...? 

By clicking the arrows, guide the protagonist through a series of events ranging from yawnable to buzzy as (in a psychedelic sense). Funny to note, the hip fashion of nowadays fits really well in the retro days, even with the hair styles that you see around today. 

Imagine how much filming this would have taken. Have fun!

Greenhouse

Junya Ishigami creates art that borders on architectural, or at least, spatial. Does all sculpture/installation do this? In my opinion, not all do (a particularly awful video ensemble at St Paul's Gallery springs to mind..)

What drew my attention to Junya Ishigami is the built form at the 2008 Architectural Biennale in Venice. Titled "Extreme Nature: Landscape of Ambiguous Spaces", it resembles a greenhouse with a playfulness that defies that traditional idea of a greenhouse.

Even the plan for this installation exhibits a light hearted nature, yet 'extreme nature' is an ironic title for the planned and planted.

I always appreciate a 'usefulness' in installations. Not ones that rely on novelty; when forced, the idea or provocation is much too blunt. When you can wander into something and fit in, take in the subtlety of the moments and the design/delivery, they make the most sense. The Serpentine Pavilion by Peter Zumthor I visited in 2011 was just that, including the sense of dramatic lead up that comes with a hulking black exterior, 'inner skin' to a functional courtyard space.

That said, Ishigami has shown breadth in both functional space and statement space. An enormous floating aluminium parallelotope is an imposing object where he wanted to express an enormity, like a looming cloud in the distance that, undetected, creeps up on you. He has also modified architecture and created furniture. A creative that is able to comment on spatial themes in so many forms is quite amazing.

For more on Ishigami, see Architonic's article on some of his work. His own website is nothing more than a really cool contact form.

Robot

Flying robots playing the James Bond theme music. Sounds interesting right?

The last time I watched a robot play music was at the Shanghai World Expo in the Japanese Pavilion that literally took hours to snake into. A humanoid robot played the violin and that was the highlight of the show. Various other augmented reality and android demonstrations fitted around that and the future of Japan was made to seem like a really advanced and different place.

But still, it's not the music that is in any way impressive. It's the feat of programming these mechatronic dream children to coordinate that is amazing and, I think, still a developing art. The Japanese robot goes as far as trying to replicate the subtle humanesque features of musicality but it is still lacking qualities of human made music.