NAME: Little Boxes

AUTHOR: Bego M. Santiago, a Spanish artist currently living in Prague.

DESCRIPTION: Become Godzilla and terrify a bunch of villagers just by walking past them in this Kinect-powered installation. The people projected on wooden boxes run for their lives as soon as the visitor approaches them. Little Boxes refers to figure of the monster found in the B-movies from the 50′s. The fear of destruction represented by Godzilla and other is a social construction inherent to all civilizations. In the installation, humans are at the origin of this fear as well as on the receiving end, as to remind us that we create our own fears.

Source: Gizmodo

NAME: Isotopes V.02

AUTHOR: Nonotak, a creative duo made of Noemi Schipfer and Takami Nakamoto.

DESCRIPTION: Isotopes can be seen as a metaphor on nuclear power, in light of the Fukushima event. First considered as a great energy source, it is only later that one realized the dangers of nuclear power. The installation follows the same narrative. The light movements are slow and hypnotizing at first, luring the visitor into the dematerialized space. They soon become more aggressive to the point that the visitor is trapped behind these immaterial barriers, just as we are stuck with nuclear power. The installation was presented at the 2013 Mapping Festival in Geneva.

AMUSEMENT RATE: Some might point out the similarities between Isotopes and the 3Destruct installation made by AntiVJ artists Yannick Jacquet, Jérémie Peeters and Thomas Vaquié. Nonotak acknowledges the AntiVJ installation as a reference for their work so there is no need to evoke plagiarism or anything. The two works do share visual characteristics but their messages are completely different. Emulation between artists of such a young discipline can only benefit mapping and contribute to its development into a fully grown art form.

Source: Robot Mafia

NAME: Capture Physical Presence

AUTHOR: Travess Smalley, an American artist based in Jersey City.

DESCRIPTION : Traviss Smalley goes against the distinction between the analog and the digital by using techniques from both worlds in his collages. His process starts with the creation of graphics on Photoshop. Once printed, Travess cuts and collages them before scanning them to manipulate the images once again in Photoshop. He then repeats the print/cut/scan process until completion of a piece. The frontiers between our reality and the digital world no longer exist. All is left to admire are Travess’ beautiful psychedelic collages. Travess Smalley is currently having his first New York solo show at Higher Pictures until June, 1st.

Source: It’s Nice That

NAME: GeoGuessr

AUTHOR: Anton Wallén

DESCRIPTION: GeoGuessr transforms Google Street View in a game! Lost somewhere in some random area captured by Google’s camera, you have to guess your location. The environment, architecture, street signs and so on will give you some clues but that is all the help you are going to get. Drop a pin on the world map to find out if you were at least in the right hemisphere. The closer you are, the more points you get. Go get lost on GeoGuessr for free right now.

AMUSEMENT RATE: This game is deadly simple but highly addictive. It is quite easy to figure out your location if you land in a big city but things get complicated if you end up in a national park of some sort. You would almost wish Google had not mapped the world that well… There could be some adjustments made to this Chrome experiment project. A time limit or maybe a limited number of zoom and clicks would make the game even more challenging but, just as it is, GeoGuessr will entertain you for hours and make you discover the most random places of our planet. Amazing.

Source: The Awesomer

NAME: sRGB series

AUTHOR: Christophe Lepot, teacher at La Cambre, in Bruxelles.

DESCRIPTION: Christophe Lepot conducts chromatic experiments but uses pixels instead of paint. He distorts his pictures pixel by pixel to create these vast panoramic images where colors slowly emerge from the upper layers to form a hypnotic pattern. Made with Processing, some of his creations are static but other are animated but both kind are equally mesmerizing, to the point that you might wonder if the static ones are also animated. Head over to his website to discover the entire series as well as the animated versions of his works.

Source: Triangulation

NAME: Architecture & 3D laser scanning

AUTHOR: Scott Page, an American architect who owns his own 3D laser scanning company in California.

DESCRIPTION: 3D laser scanning opens up new possibilities to architecture. This powerful tool can provide a highly accurate representation of existing buildings. Scott Page uses a FARO Focus3D scanner for his projects. Within minutes, the laser sweeps its surroundings and creates point clouds containing millions of measurements that will be translated into a 3D representation of the scanned structure. The data can then be exported to a CAD or BIM (building information modeling) program in order to study or modify the file.

AMUSEMENT RATE: The scans made by Scott Page have already made itself useful. The technology helped the community of the New Clairvaux Monastery in Vinas, California with the reconstruction of a 12th century chapter house brought from Spain in bricks in 1931. It might not be the prime purpose but there is also an artistic quality to these scans. The 3D representations have a ghostly, almost out-of-this-world aspect. The human presence can only be perceived in the objects left in the room, as if people have suddenly deserted the architecture. It is only a question of time before 3D laser scanners become the favorite creative tool of all the digital artists out there.

Source: designboom

NAME: Pixel is Data

AUTHOR: French creative technologist Matthieu Savary.

DESCRIPTION: This iPhone app lets you modify a picture of your choice by applying one of the 12 presets at your disposal. Modify the parameters, such as the mess or pixel density and you will get a unique piece of pixel art to share with your friends on Facebook, Twitter and such. You can also rearrange the order of the pixels using the RGB component of the picture. The pixels will then be organized by color, a brand new way to look at your picture. The app is available for free in the App Store.

AMUSEMENT RATE: Our perception of an image is only one way among many to see it. Matthieu Savary considers that photographic data is data above all, and can therefore be reinterpreted to reach new levels of representations that go beyond our sense of reality.”Pixel is Data” will let you experiment with these new dimensions of perception while creating unique works of art at the same time.

Source: Co.DESIGN

NAME: Broken Things

AUTHOR: Graphic designer and illustrator Beomyoung Sohn.

DESCRIPTION: A symbol from the digital world, the broken image icon finds its way in our reality. The frames, notepads, envelopes or CDs of the installation are all blank, their content being replaced by the infamous icon.

AMUSEMENT RATE: There is no ctrl+R in real life, no matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to reload this installation to find out what the missing images. The insertion of a digital symbol IRL questions our perception of our world. The icon become a proper image or lets the viewer imagine what could be the eventual original information.

NAME: Nike Flyknit ‘Fit’ Installation

AUTHOR: UK-based digital art and design studio Universal Everything for Nike.

DESCRIPTION: Universal Everything created an installation to promote Nike’s latest technology, Flyknit. The four sides of a video cube stream a slightly altered version of the visitor’s reflection. Kinect cameras capture his presence and translate it in a swarm of colorful particles that follow the visitor’s movement. The installation was presented during the Milano Design week and will be touring the world through out October.

AMUSEMENT RATE: Nike is always great at surrounding itself with the best creative people in order to promote its products. This Universal Everything installation is no exception. The studio did a great job at combining Nike’s promotion needs with an artistic and interactive approach that would entertain the visitors. The freedom of movement brought by the Flyknit technology find a direct translation in the generative design piece created by Universal Everything.

Source: Creative Applications

As we already mentioned earlier this week, the second edition of the Fubiz Awards are currently underway! The competition celebrates the best creative works from the past year divided in 8 categories (Music video, advertising, photography, design, animation, graphism, architecture, movie). Vote for your favorite projects online before May 14th and find out if they won on May 16th, date of the ceremony in Paris.

Today, we have a look at the nominees in the Design category, supported by HTC. The category includes many projects we featured in our own pages, such as the Kinetic Rain installation at the Changi airport in Singapore. Conceived by ART+COM, the sculpture is made of two layers of metallic raindrops controlled by motors that move in the air to create shapes and patterns. Another project is Avoka’s Dyskograf. A writable disk lets you create your own musical sequence by simply applying felt tip marks on its surface. A camera will then read the scribbles and translate them into sound. Not all the projects are technology driven. The Rising Table by Dutch designer Robert van Embricqs is an amazing piece of craftsmanship: a clever folding system transforms a flat sheet of wood into a full-sized table. Head over to the Fubiz Awards website to discover the five other projects of the design category.

Kinetic Rain - ART+COM

Dyskograf - Avoka

The Rising Table - Robert van Embricqs

The Rising Table - Robert van Embricqs

NAME: GIF-ITI

AUTHOR: UK street artist and designer INSA.

DESCRIPTION: Besides being great pieces of Street Art, Insa’s graffitis get a second life in the digital world as GIFs. The animations were not created using Photoshop but were made by successively painting the wall in the different colors.

Source: Booooooom

NAME: Oscillate

AUTHOR: Daniel Sierra, a digital artist and student of the Computer Art MFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

DESCRIPTION: Daniel Sierra considers sine waves as the building blocks of sound. He puts in application this principle in this animation made for his thesis. A simple sine wave quickly evolves into more complex patterns to create a mesmerizing show. Sierra created himself both the music and the animation simultaneously which gave the opportunity of studying how music and visuals influence each other.

AMUSEMENT RATE: The animation begins by looking like an abstract subaquatic show, but soon enough the sine waves appear to be on fire as their oscillation becomes more frenetic. Once Daniel Sierra graduates later this year, he should definitely look into a career as an animator for Apple. I wouldn’t mind seeing his mind-blowing animations in my iTunes visualizer.

Source: Colossal

NAME: “Domestic Tracking”

AUTHOR: The musical and graphic duet Gangpol & Mit. Find out more about them here.

DESCRIPTION: Gangpol & Mit are back with a new video which showcases one more time their love for black humor. The video is only 37 seconds long so we will not spoil it but it does end with a bang…

AMUSEMENT RATE: Trapped in our own digital bubble, we tend to forget the world surrounding us, neighbors included, which can lead to some drastic action on their part. I’m not sure if the video is about the danger of fire guns, of Internet or both but it sure is funny, enjoy! Gangpol & Mit are currently touring around Europe. They will be at the Mapping Festival in Geneva on May 10th and at the Centre Pompidou in Paris on June 2nd.

The Fubiz Awards are back! The competition launched last year by the inspirational website rewards the best creative works. The 64 nominees, selected from posts from last year, are divided in 8 categories. Music video, advertising, photography, design, animation, graphism, architecture, movie: the entire spectrum of contemporary creativity is represented and you decide who should win! You have until May 14th to vote online for your favorite projects. The results will be announced on May 16th during a ceremony held in Paris.

The Photography category, supported by HTC, features projects so different from one another, it makes the choice even harder. The cold beauty of empty cities found in Lucie and Simon‘s Silent World greatly differs from Gods and Beasts, a series of portraits made by Rémi Chapeaublanc during a 4-month trip in Mongolia. The contrast between the people and animals photographed and the black background adds to the intensity and crudeness of these amazing pictures. Before you cast your vote, don’t forget to have a look at the 6 other great projects competing in the photography category.

"Silent World" - Lucie & Simon

"Silent World" - Lucie & Simon

"Silent World" - Lucie & Simon

"Silent World" - Lucie & Simon

"Gods and Beasts" - Rémi Chapeaublanc

"Gods and Beasts" - Rémi Chapeaublanc

"Gods and Beasts" - Rémi Chapeaublanc

"Gods and Beasts" - Rémi Chapeaublanc

NAME: “Life Through Google’s Eyes”

AUTHOR: Marius Budin

DESCRIPTION: A lifetime summed up through Google’s autocomplete. The suggestions of a simple search for “I’m [age] and” give us a glimpse of the most common concerns affecting the millions of people using Google everyday.

AMUSEMENT RATE: Google’s autocomplete usually have the funniest suggestions but Marius Budin somehow found a way to make it very depressing. The most striking part is how the same fears about relationship, sex, loneliness or career are haunting us for our entire life. That is of course before the final “and I’m tired”. A sad yet accurate portrait of humanity.

Source: Co.DESIGN

NAME: Annals of Time Lost

AUTHOR: Canadian digital artist Jon Rafman, famous for his Google Street View work, 9-Eyes.

DESCRIPTION: The new solo show of Jon Rafman in Berlin interrogates the notion of archive in the digital era. The dissonance between physical and digital archive makes the selection of informations even harder. What should we keep? What is the difference between an original or a copy? A series of installation mixing old and new technologies illustrates his idea. The busts of his New Age Demanded series can be seen on an antique microfiche reader but one example was also created using 3D printing technology. A slide projector features images from the Nine Eyes of Google Street View enhancing furthermore this duality. The exhibition is on view until June 1st at the Future Gallery in Berlin.

AMUSEMENT RATE: The sharp eye of Jon Rafman goes beyond his amazing selection of GSV images to reach far greater issues. No matter how the notion of archive may have evolved over the past decade, we still have a hard time adapting it to this new digital age. The variety of technologies used in the exhibition resonates as a sign of the actual schizophrenia happening in our society. Jon Rafman does not give a straight answer but he gives us the keys to grasp this problem with a fresh pair of eyes.

Fighhhht !!

NAME: Video game-inspired loop animations

AUTHOR: French and Swiss digital artist Nicolas Boillot.

DESCRIPTION: In his series of loop animations entitled Lambeaux, Nicolas Boillot deconstructs a video by a process of motion capture which extracts in real time all the moving parts of the stream and accumulates them on a 24 fps loop. One of his more recent GIFs, Loops of Marvel vs Capcom, shows us this process applied to the eponymous game: the entire surface of the screen is occupied by an explosion of colors. He also made a loop animation of the video game Geometry Wars where the epileptic aspect of the game becomes even more visible.

AMUSEMENT RATE:  It is no surprise that video games are so addictive when you realize how our eyes are submitted to a constant stimulation. The flashes of light that occur all over the screen keep us permanently excited, making us play even more. Make sure to check out the entire Lambeaux series. Nicolas Boillot applied the same principle to other sources such as TV streams or videos he finds on the Internet. The result is different every time but always visually mesmerizing.

Source: Triangulation

Loops of Marvel vs Capcom

NAME: Resin sculptures

AUTHOR: Amy Brener, a Canadian artist based in New York.

DESCRIPTION: The totemic sculptures created by Amy Brenner could be the “artifacts of an imagined future”. Fossilized in resin, remains of our modern technology are visible through the glass-like material. Brener drops parts of keyboards, old Nokia phones or diods into the mold to imprint their shapes on the surface of the sculptures. The resin is mixed with neon and pastel pigments to produce different shades of colors.

AMUSEMENT RATE: The archeology of the future seems to be on trend right now. After Grégory Chatonsky who dedicated an entire exhibition to the subject, here is Amy Brener who approaches the subject under another angle. Both fossils from our time and esoteric monuments one could worship, only a close inspection will reveal the details of her sculptures.

Source: Gizmodo

NAME: Hyper Current Living

AUTHOR: American digital artist and founder of OKFocus, Ryder Ripps.

DESCRIPTION: From April 28th to May 5th, Ryder Ripps will be living and working at the Red Bull Music Academy, in a residency space designed by Chen Chen and Kai Williams. He will be drinking Red Bull and generating ideas for artworks and online projects that will be live streamed on his Twitter account. Dubbed “Conceptual art as a sport”, the performance questions the relevancy of creating art in the social media era. Why spending hours producing an artwork when it will be almost immediately lost in the proliferation of informations we are confronted with every day? Ryder Ripps takes the problem literally and only generates ideas, without ever thinking of their eventual realization.

AMUSEMENT RATE: Drinking that many Red Bulls a day is definitely not healthy but the energy drink does fuel Ripps’ creativity in an unprecedented way. Three days into the experiment, Ryder Ripps has already had 13 Red Bulls and produced 104 ideas. Quite a result, especially when you take a closer look at the ideas. No matter how crazy they are, we would love to see some ideas produced. Who wouldn’t like to see a “a karl lagerfelfd look a like contest with cats” or “a geolocated real-time map of people listening to bob marley at any moment”! Creating at the speed of social media has never been more relevant.

Source: Rhizome

a service where u submit an image and it tells u on a scale from 1-100 how trendy it is #hypercurrentliving

— retweeted (@ryder_ripps) 29 avril 2013

classes to become an IRL fruit ninja.. like with real swords.. #hypercurrentliving #typo

— retweeted (@ryder_ripps) 29 avril 2013

a social network where people just complain about stuff called complnr.com #hypercurrentliving

— retweeted (@ryder_ripps) 29 avril 2013

a show where depressed people live in a house together complaining about how their life sucks #hypercurrentliving

— retweeted (@ryder_ripps) 29 avril 2013

a temp staffing service to make your company seem larger than it is for a meeting #hypercurrentliving

— retweeted (@ryder_ripps) 29 avril 2013

NAME: drop

AUTHOR: Markus ‘Notch’ Persson, the creator of Minecraft.

DESCRIPTION: Put your typing skills to the test with drop. Type the letters appearing in the minimalist white cube as fast as you can. The letters form words that keep coming up over and over in a random order, making the typing a bit easier, that is until the cube starts spinning frenetically. If a letter leaves the screen untypes, you’re dead!  Play the game for free here.

AMUSEMENT RATE: I wonder what would be the score of Barbara Blackburn, the world’s fastest typist. When you know she can type 212 words-per-minute, she would probably finish the game in a few minutes. You might not be as fast as her but drop is the perfect game to improve your typing skills. Who knew typing could be so much fun!

Source: The Verge