magpie's shiny things

shiny things in messy little piles

Month: June 2010 (Page 2 of 4)

Morning Linkage (Jun 15)

June 15, 2010 /

(Confused) Transportation Options

A Smart Car mon­ster truck. If any­one ever asks you to define the term twee oxy­moron — show them this pic­ture. Srl­sy. And there’s video. More hap­pi­ly there’s a post over at Men’s Men­tore about race car trans­porters from the 50’s. Lord, are these fab­u­lous look­ing. An El Camino car­ry­ing an open wheel rac­er and a swoopy round haunched Mer­cedes with a fro­mu­la car on the back. Swoon. I need­ed a moto pic­ture for this morn­ing’s links so I went to the big buck­et of trans­porta­tion RSS feeds and there this was — right on the top

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Literature and Culture.

It’s sum­mer — we all need some­thing to read at the beach. But how to choose a sum­mer win­ner? Um, maybe ask the writer who penned your favorite book? William Gib­son weighs in on sci-fi and Peter Cary gives you his­tor­i­cal fic­tion, along with 4 oth­ers. Pro­pa­gan­da mate­r­i­al of the ages is a rich source of visu­al inspi­ra­tion. Meant to grab and jerk the view­er from a dis­tance with­out much con­sid­er­a­tion for sub­tle­ty. Smash­ing gives us a look at 100 years of his­to­ry and some of the best and worst exam­ples. Judg­ing the images and their effec­tive­ness with­out con­sid­er­ing the mes­sages is an try­ing exer­cise in design mind.

Art, Images, and Design

Sci­ence Tele­vi­sion is Gian­mar­co Mag­nani. A design­er and print mak­er. His two cur­rent series of prints, Vil­lains and Rid­ers, and  For­got­ten Monar­chy bring spot col­or and line work to the fore. Vague­ly ani­me inspired, girls and motos. Can’t miss. Paper and paint mixed with bits of toy-train set world-building goods. Land­scape through the eyes of Gre­go­ry Euclide. Dan­ny St. (saint) takes pic­tures in Sin­ga­pore. Street pic­tures that pro­vide por­traits of the peo­ple and place. This gallery gives some of the hun­dreds of won­der­ful images.

Animation

Group ther­a­py for naughty lit­tle un-deads. Okay, it’s called Nos­fer­atu Over The Cuck­oo’s Nest. You fig­ure it out.

Noisy, Smoky, Generally Bad

Bejamin Gudel (from a cou­ple of days ago) has a nice new web­site.  But you have got to seri­ous­ly admire a guy who includes a link to this animated/audio-ated mess of a 2007 web­site. Healthy sense of humor, or mor­bid self fla­gel­la­tion. You make the call. (Mov­ing parts, noise, and an obscene tat­too) NSFW

Tea drunk, links up, next … plumb­ing — urk.

Morning Linkage (Jun 14)

June 14, 2010 /

Bikes and Swap Meets.

From the mid­dle of nowhere France, Mike Wern­er reports on the week­end mar­ket at Cany-Barville. Indoor and out­door dis­play space, piles of junk, and one very cute beach scene. You won’t rec­og­nize a lot of the vehi­cles but it does­n’t mat­ter. These lit­tle trea­sures are fine. Can any­one iden­ti­fy the red and black bike in the 3rd and 4th pictures?

So while I was look­ing for some­thing that would help to ID a cou­ple of the items in the pre­vi­ous gallery I came across this report from the 2007 Her­shey, PA swap meet. And now I want a Sim­plex Ser­vi­cy­cle, 6th pho­to down. Or how about a 1952 moped that runs on diesel? 2nd pho­to down.

Infrastructure and Illustrated Cities

And back to for­eign shores. How do you han­dle mov­ing motor traf­fic from a coun­try that dri­ves on the right (Chi­na) to an island that dri­ves on the left (Hong Kong.) Not to men­tion a com­plex set of bor­der cross­ing pro­to­cols. You can attempt to hide the mechan­ics of the process or you cel­e­brate the com­plex­i­ty. NL Archi­tects designed a loop­ing road dot­ted with arti­fi­cial islands and tons of sub­lime. Cau­tion huge wash­es of archi­tec­ture and urban design speak.

Some­what jum­bled — hasty com­pi­la­tion? Tak­ing crime data from the city of San Fran­sis­co and run­ning it through a map and some 3‑D soft­ware gets these topo­graph­ic look­ing maps show­ing crime as a ter­rain of peaks and valleys.

Imaginary Places

I know I’ve seen this work before but I can’t find any evi­dence that I’ve shared it with you all. A 4 year project, A Cas­tle on the Ocean has lights, trains, and all the gin­ger­bread cas­tle bits any princess could want. And a Fer­ris Wheel. Wataru Itou.

Flash put to good use. The world of Syfy chan­nel’s mini-series, Tin­man. BTW Tin­man is now stream­able on Net­flix. Flash — Sound.

Art, Images, and Printers

Take one pho­tog­ra­ph­er — not afraid of water, add some nifty cam­era gear, and a real tal­ent for push­ing post pro­cess­ing to the lim­its and you get this set of pho­tographs from Clark Lit­tle’s new book “The Shore­break Art of Clark Little”

Ignore the art school speak and just look. Espe­cial­ly study the work­ing draw­ings and pro­to­type videos. Joon Y. Moon has cre­at­ed an world of light and shad­ow that moves, grows, and goes qui­es­cent as the user manip­u­lates blocks on a surface.

Hard work­ing Lego peo­ple. Or what you always want­ed to tell your kids was going on inside the print­er.

Archiving the Universe

June 11, 2010 /

In prepa­ra­tion for some seri­ous site upgrades. And because I have bet­ter things to do that I’m, obvi­ous­ly, not doing.

All of the Morn­ing Link­age posts are now avail­able on the website.

So if you think you remem­ber see­ing it in Link­age but can’t find it now you can search for it here.

I did­n’t do any tidy­ing up, there are no tags and no sum­maries but it’s all here. A year and change after that first April Fools Day post…

Morning Linkage (Jun 11)

June 11, 2010 /

Transportation

There’s no way to link into Lucy Pep­per’s blog to get at this love­ly lit­tle sketch of a tod­dler on his pop­pa’s scoot­er.

If you like Lucy’s style click through for her unique take on life as an ex-pat in Portugal.Her lit­tle Piag­gio sketch is a grin too.

I do not know how I feel about this. Some­how it puts me in mind of a 1970’s won­der woman car­toon. That can’t be good can it? Har­ris?

Suzu­ki again, this time a frame for the Sav­age.

Scientific Shopping

Next place to spend too much mon­ey. The Evo­lu­tion Store. Tons of nat­ur­al his­to­ry good­ies and creepy lit­tle treasures.

Society: Politics and Trivia

The dig­i­tal age of pol­i­tics has arrived, like it or not. The expert use of dig­i­tal media will be cru­cial in deter­min­ing the win­ners and losers. Google rolls out tools for cam­paigns and cam­paign­ers. Some­times it’s hard to remem­ber that sauce for the goose (your favorite may­or) is sauce for the gan­der (your least favorite coun­ty coun­cil member)

Amer­i­ca is Num­ber 1 in ser­i­al killers. Cana­da is num­ber 1 in fruit juice drinkers. Because every coun­try is best at something…

Art, Images, and Design

As Good as Any God is made of wood, paint, and nails. Which is kind of like say­ing trees are made of wood  and water. It only gets bet­ter with Embrac­ing Sto­chas­tic­i­ty, One Hun­dred Per­cent Sav­age, and Idol for the Absurd. There’s a sin­gle in progress shot in this set — pon­der and be boggled.

AJ Fos­ik talks about his work.

Le Cre­ative Sweat­shop. Cute name. Dead­ly seri­ous about com­mer­cial paper art. Tons of work for the fash­ion indus­try. You’ll love the first cou­ple of images in the La Rinascente installation.

Animation

Mani­a­cal beats, mor­ph­ing char­ac­ters, and a case of the mir­rored uni­vers­es. Love and Theft by Film Bilder. (NSFW — car­toon nudes)

BTW check out youTube’s goog­lesque logo homage (foot­ball!)

see you again next week

Morning Linkage (Jun 10)

June 10, 2010 /

Trans­porta­tion

We all know that the Gold­wing is the most capa­ble race machine out there. Right?

But, it’s been done before. More con­vinc­ing­ly. (Pho­tos and sto­ry cour­tesy of Phil Kopp.)

Go here. Choose your favorite style of bicy­cle. The Pla­to — town­ie. The Aris­to­tle — free or fixed. Or the slight­ly more cool Aris­tolte CRMO. Click “build” and start cus­tomiz­ing your col­or­ful new toy. Addic­tive and harm­less fun.

I have no idea what this site is actu­al­ly about but the sweet blue 750 wait­ing patient­ly for bet­ter weath­er is dear.

Food

Does this belong in Food or Design? A math­e­mat­i­cal­ly per­fect set of knives.

Art, Images, and Design

As we go through our day — sit­ting in front of com­put­ers, con­sum­ing text — we rarely see the let­ters and sym­bols for them­selves. They are beau­ti­ful. Look at some of the scripts and writ­ing sys­tems that do not share our famil­iar west­ern let­ter forms and remem­ber that the sym­bols that we use to con­vey mean­ing have a grace all their own.

Sarah Bridg­land is mak­ing found paper con­struc­tions. Lots of very nice ones.  Her Swing­line Sta­ples is par­tic­u­lar­ly pleas­ing to fans of let­ters. (thx tfmktm)

Form Gold­en Age Com­ic Book Sto­ries. The Chil­dren of Odin. Hand cut let­ter­ing and sim­ple block draw­ings. Willy Pogany’s illus­tra­tions would make the finest col­or­ing book.

… it’s always something.

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