Layered

Nobuhiro Nakanishi's Layered Drawings series attempts to capture the subtle changes that occur with passing time. I've seen something like this before - laser cut panels of clear acrylic overlaid, but never at this scale or with the eerie floating composition. It's alike to something in a digital space or augmented reality which seems to be a new fad these days with smartphones.

Elevation

A strange data plotting strategy - representing stats through 3D elevation of a map - reminds me a bit of Sim City when you go crazy with the terrain. However, it does highlight the severity of problems (in this case, crime) by creating a severe landscape.

Move

Having wanted to explore different parts of the world someday, videos such as this intrigue me to no end. What a great concept. I always find people travelling are acting the 'tourist' and end up taking 10 pictures of exactly the same scene - whilst concentrating on that, I don't see how people travelling are actually getting what is important about experiencing new places. A good rule of thumb might actually be one second of documenting per scene and leave the rest to your five senses. 

War

In recent times war has been lingering in shreds around the world, leaving parts of the world in shreds - the latest news from Iraq being that US troops have pulled out after nine years of battle. 9 years? Where did it all go? Every once in a while we see it on the news but the constant flashing of images bears no true meaning anymore; a banality hangs over a thing that affects entire countries, soldiers and civilians on both sides of the violence.

Pascal

Images are quite meaningless, especially for the rest of us who haven't experienced anything first hand. Photographer Claire Felicie's Here are the Young Men series captures the images of soldiers before deployment, during war and after coming home. Can we really tell what has changed for these young men? Or are we just kidding ourselves?

Sympathy

@MoataTamaira: I love #eqnz sympathetic street art of a morning. Would be great to see more. #youpoorthing http://twitpic.com/5pongb

Ants

Ever so slightly reminiscent of hot summer afternoons when the ants swarm out from under out brick pathway, here's this. Not more need be said other than these fibreglass ants are overtaking government buildings and think what you want to think. This intriguing installation is by Rafael Gomez Barros.

Limbo

After having not blogged for about a month, it takes something really intriguing to get things going again. I'm always a sucker for shadow puppets, and having done an entire project on that theme before, Limbo really reminded me of what I really love about dark atmospheric sets.

The IGN reviewer writes:

Videogames are an art form made up of visuals, sound, and a mysterious little something we call gameplay. Limbo is the perfect example of these three crafts working together in harmony to create something astounding.

All done in grayscale, Limbo navigates a creepy forest with merely the contrast between light and silhouette, with perceived depth and intricate layering. It is set in the 2D space which further calls to the shadow puppet set in which such effects can all be achieved.

The visuals sit on the fence between bleak and powerfully chiaroscuro - more is hidden than you think in this shadow filled world. Other than adding to the thrill of gameplay, it tugs at our collective fear of darkness and the unknown, becoming nothing more than creatively psychological.

If you are interested in the contemporary use of shadow puppetry, the starting point of my shadow puppet exploration was Little Dragon's Twice MV, and the post Cinema illustrates some of the human scale exploration of shadows.

Kotuku 1

Yesterday I spent the whole day filming and photographing a good friend's beautiful product design project. Created by Kate Ramsay, it is a knitted light fitting and is intriguing at every angle so in a way it was really hard to capture; you were spoiled for choice for shots. 

Once we get past the painful post production process I'll be sure to put up the video but here's a photo of our set up for the shooting. Playing with the light studies I did last year, we painted light with fabric and created a dreamy Rothko/watercolouresque quality as the backdrop and for diffuse lighting. It was great fun! 

This piece is named Kotuku and is the Maori word for White Heron, a famously rare NZ bird that gathers delight whenever people see one. It will be displayed in the Art in the Dark exhibition.

Grow

Now that is how space is made where space doesn't exist. Sure it's new age trompe-l'œil (aka optical illusion) but it has a real presence in a space which seems to be a good squatting place. Go TSF Crew.

Ink

How is ink made? I didn't quite believe a description of this video, that ink making had a very personal touch to it. Were they going to crush up pigment on a stone by hand for industrial purposes? But the mesmerising quality of the process captures something that really makes our printed world the vibrant, textured brilliance that it is today.

A long video, but worth the incredible effort used to make the ink we take for granted. Also check out the blog post about Canon's playful use of ink and sound.

Heart

Some street art on the fence of a rugby venue in Bath in the UK, delineated by the absence of mold.

Just goes to show, no matter where you go, you can't escape the rugby. Since the finals and NZ's victory, the whole thing is being dissected bit by bit, under a microscope with analysis. I feel it's time to move on.

Dump

"DUMP NO WASTE FLOWS TO THE SEA" says the placard over just about every stormwater drain in the city. Yet from the picture, it looks as if the sea can't get enough - the Maltesers, Coke, L&P and, dare I mention it, coffee. As humanity force feeds the seas around us, the semi-sunken ship of Rena comes to remind us of truly how much crap flows to the sea.

Paris1

On an intense 2 day run around Paris, my brain is saturated with the stuff of creative dreaming. How did Monet come to paint the series of Water Lilies? How did Le Corbusier  and his cousin Jeanneret come up with the innovatively planned Maison La Roche when nothing of it's kind had ever been done before?

The Musée de l'Orangerie houses the famous Water Lilies (Nymphéas) series by Claude Monet. Although I have seen these works many a time in publication, I had never expected them to be so large and expansive. You could actually walk along the works - hung in a beautifully daylit oval room - and experience the landscape that Monet really only dapples the impression of. Although the gesture involved in painting these scenes is interesting in itself, Monet proves one of the most powerful of colorists in the way that nothing really looks like it is supposed to, nor sometimes the colour it is in real life, but when seen through squinted eyes (or in my case, removing my glasses) the paintings transform into a hazy but definite portrayal of the idyllic water lily ponds full of depth and personality.

The museum itself, known for it's focus on Impressionism, used to be a glasshouse built especially for growing oranges - yet another whim of one of France's kings. Models show how over time, this 'Orangerie' has changed and developed to it's current form, so elegantly displaying Monet's prize work as well as the likes of Picasso and Cezanne.

Another highlight of my Paris trip was going out of my way to the Le Corbusier Foundation, housed in the Maison La Roche, a wonderful double residential unit + gallery on a tiny site. Multi-storied in a fragmented way with dramatic ramps and the horizontal windows trademarked by the Modernist Architecture movement, one can really see how it all came together and see how this sometimes dated looking period of architecture was a real milestone for our contemporary practice today. Architecture students were all over the place, drawing the rooms, the facade and pilotis, soaking in the inspiration which made Le Corbusier an architect idol of sorts. And I just found out that the day I went was the day of Le Corbusier's birth! Fitting indeed.