"These enormous, intricate designs are the creation of one man and his snowshoes. Simon Beck, whom you can see in the last image below, conceives and executes these patterns, turning fresh snow into alien messages."

"The debate is an old one. New however is the ease – though, I can assure you, editing away objects in Photoshop in a clean way is far from easy – and the extend in which manipulation can be done today. Magic Wand-ing, cloning and gaussian blur are now part even of the vocabularies of a growing number of retirees with too much spare time and an interest in photography. The expectation that a beautiful images ‘has to be manipulated’ is so ingrained that we don’t even pause to question our own paranoia.

But, rather than bothering ourselves with the question if an image is 100% ‘true’ – something that, in my own opinion will never be – we should ask ourselves if adaptations (not ‘manipulation’) are reasonable; if they add or remove something essential to the image. Erasing some zits from a model’s face is perfectly reasonable. Making eyes a little brighter can be legitimate. Blowing up boobs, lengthening legs and shrinking waists is not.

Ethics surrounding photo-manipulation is never so simple as a yes or no question and is not even a ‘thin line’; it is a mine-field in a no man’s land. That careers can be scuttled be being ‘caught’ doing so is sad, in particular because in the trench war between ‘digital compositors’ and photo-purists, there appears to be little willingness to come to a middle ground."

"We conclude from these results that mere exposure will not always produce an increase in liking for paintings. This puts pressure on Cutting’s conclusions that canon formation is simply a function of cultural exposure, and that quality is not playing a role in artistic judgement."

"This is the latest collection of paintings by one of contemporary surrealism's most influential artists. American Surreal picks up where Dreamland, Schorr's previous bestselling collection of mind-bending paintings, left off. The viewer can look forward to countless hours of eye bulging investigative thought while examining the impeccably rendered subject matter that has become the hallmark of Schorr's outrageous vision."

"Issue 01 contributor Eugenio Recuenco recently updated his portfolio with a striking series of 12 images that span very different eras and cultures, all of which are united by one main character: the violin. The larger images can be seen on Recuenco’s site, and the full series can be seen here, after the cut."

lovely

"Works by Ganga Devi (1928 - 1991), found in the book Ganga Devi: Traditions and Expressions in Mithila Painting by Jyotindra Jain."

"[W]hy didn't prints displace paintings the same way that printed books displaced manuscript codices? Why didn't it become expected that visual artists, like writers, would primarily produce works for reproduction?"

"From the discovery of the 1898 International Dictionary to linotyping the entries to printing the last print on the vandercook to cutting the fingertabs of the deluxe edition, this video gives a quick overview of the process of creating the Pictorial Webster's fine press edition."

"The machine translates words of a text into patent drawings. Seven million patents — linked by over 22 million references — form the vocabulary. By using references to earlier patents, it is possible to find paths between arbitrary patents. They form a kind of subtext."

In case you, reader, cannot see where she is pointing into the corner at her genius: she is pointing at her context, her network, her friends and learning and colleagues and enemies, what she has read and who she has spoken to, what she has done and never noticed, and what she has heard and never noticed and who she has met and never noticed. You are the genius of others.

Via Tim O'Reilly

"I saw today on the blog of Lauren Nassef, one of my favorite illustrators, a post alerting people to a woman by the name of Samantha Beeston, whose online portfolio was comprised almost entirely of work traced/copied from Nassef. In July 2009 Beeston even won an award (which included a cash prize of £750) for work blatantly traced/copied from drawings by Nassef."

"The site-based production offers artists and audiences alike the opportunity to experience large-scale installations and experimental performances that transcend the usual and explore the unknown--this is not a gallery, club, concert hall, or street fair. The young FFIH curators aim to expose and expand their own community of unseen talent by producing a series that is free from expectation, free from censorship, free from tradition, and free of charge. Forth From Its Hinges seeks to represent local art, not as it exists today, but as what it can and will be in the future."

"Uncork your experimental mind! UM School of Art & Design brings its Animation Station to the Top of the Park for three nights of community movie-making using the techniques of stop-motion animation.

The Animation Station is easy to use and allows you to create your own stop-motion animation without previous experience. Dry-erase markers, a whiteboard and various objects for animating will be your tools. Whether it's political satire, random drawings, personal confession, or viral experimentation - bring your imagination and join the loop. (And, if you want, bring your own materials too.)"

"This project aims to create an archive of user contributed clip art that can be freely used. All graphics submitted to the project should be placed into the Public Domain according to the statement by the Creative Commons. If you'd like to help out, please join the mailing list, and review the archives. "

"RiP: A remix manifesto is a documentary film about copyright and remix culture. You can contribute to the film, and follow the conversation on the social networks below."

"It took me a second to figure out what was going on when I first got a look at this table full of analog clocks. But once I stood back from my screen, I realized that none of the clocks have the correct time and the whole thing is a macro timepiece that tells the time using 24 individual clocks."

"Mishu Warner’s anatomy of a Naga, which are serp[e]nt dieties in Buddhist and Hindu Mythology. The main image is the female Naga, or Nagini, but Mishu included the alternate tail, just in case you wanted to know what a Naga’s testicles might look like."

Wandered here after following up on the A2 Mech Shop open house http://annarborchronicle.com/2009/04/13/electric-vehicles-to-be-produced-in-scio/

Probably the piece that most impressed me at the Cranbrook MFA 2009 show this year.

"Holy shit. Anything with “capacitance-sensing whiskers and shape-memory alloy actuators” is more than fine by me"

best in HD

"Ernst Haeckel's 1904 "Kunstformen der Natur" [Artforms of Nature] is a classic of biological illustration. What is less generally known is that the artist started as a Christmas card designer. The book was originally simply an album of holiday designs."

"ColorLib is a library for the Processing programming environment. It makes it easy to import color palettes from different sources like files (.act or .cs) or webservices (colr, kuler and colourLovers). It has some handy functions to create color harmonies and sorting colors."

"Citing Walker Evans, Robert Frank, and Lee Friedlander as an example, "art photography" was a practice valuing the artist's command over the medium, whereas for "conceptual photography" (e.g. Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons...) the emphasis was not on one's mastery over the tool, but rather the tool as a means to express an idea. In applying this contrast to artists working with computers today, Moody astutely observes a similar ethos between conceptual photography and "artist's with computers." In my opinion, one weakness to the post is Moody's stark polarization between his constructed categories, stating, "New media suggests a respect for hardware & software and belief in their newness, something artists with computers don't care about. New media involves a finicky devotion to programming and process, whereas artists with computers are bulls in the Apple Shop.""

Because I want a TAPB movie. Where's the mega-studio monolith to back it?

via:b3ta

Shining Tower redux

"But you, sir, are no painter. And while you hack away at your terminal, or ride your homemade Segway, we painters and musicians are going to be right over here with all the wine, hash, and hot chicks."

Snip stuff up, paste it down. New meaning from old. Cutups, every one---in training.

Amazing series of laser-engraved generated artfoms. Trying to discern if they're paper, plastic, cardstock.. or what. Want one.

via: Brand Flakes for Breakfast

IKEA 2007 catalog normalized

Yes, related. My brother.

WHAT YEAR IS THIS? My god -- that means there's still time!