Starducks★Café

Analogued-Digitalism

shinito — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:38:07 +0000

American graffiti artist Matt W. Moore (MWM) is currently having his first Paris solo exhibition – CRYSTALS & LASERS at SINCE.upian gallery after collaborating with tons of high profile clients such as Adidas, Citroen, Diesel, Nike, Microsoft Zune and many more. Unlike some angry graffiti artists out there, his paintings bring loads of joys and surprises. Inspired by math, architecture, optical illusions, and texture, his “vectorfunk” style is colourful, vibrant, dynamic, asymmetrical with clean-cut geometries yet shines like a piece of Victoria-Cut jewel. However, the precise vectorized-like paintings are all spray-painted and carried out in an analogue way thoroughly even though they look almost architectural and structural.

His current Paris exhibition showcases the artworks that being inspired by French culture, urban fabric, architecture and fashion of Paris during his one month stay in the City of Lights, which you can catch some glimpses of inspiration from his iPhone’s photos. Paris was being illustrated in a such a surreal way by vectorizing WMW’s French experience with intuitively constructed geometries and colors. And of course, in the spirit of graffiti MWM spray-painted on a Parisian wall to mark his colonization with his distinctive style (with the help of tapes of course) like drawing shapes in computer. The outcome does not only create an illusion in term of scales, but also confusion between analogue and digital, 2D and 3D.

Two hours by train from Paris, Lyon-based French Art Director – Lenancker Romain seems to be liaising MWM‘s style with paper and his hyper-sur-real artistic direction. The Puzzle Game project commissioned by Amusement magazine was made with paper sculptures and being staged and photographed in such a way that they look almost 2-dimensional and digital.

These two artists probably don’t really know each other, but one thing for sure is Romain shares the common interest with MWM as all the projects are completely constructed in an analogue way, too. It is his brilliant art direction that makes the sculptures appear to be badly rendered computer graphics, a step down from real material to vector world.

By staging his paper sculptures on-site or mixing up with some products, the juxtaposed effects are even more outstanding, with a good sense of French humor. Again, none of the pictures are CGI, and they work like MWM version 2.0, exaggerated the confusion between lines and form, real and fake, concrete and plastic.Floating objects in between the paper sculptures make the project pretty much like a collage work, blurring the visual and spatial cognition.

In Netherlands, the young electronic band – Nobody Beats The Drum latest’s stop motion animation “Grindin” directed by Rogier van der Zwaag has almost vanished the boundaries in material world visually. At one glance no one could ever tell that is a video made of thousands of photos of sprayed-painted wood blocks. It is bizarre that the editing was perfected to dematerialize the wood blocks while the electro-beats fused in. And it is more bizarre that Rogier van der Zwaag decided to pain-stackingly work in such a low-tech and backward way to create this cyber-realistic video. You can feel the pain by watching the making of.

Concept Bicycle by Peugeot

shinito — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:39:24 +0000

The B1K Bicycle concept recently released by Peugeot. A few notes on the design which are totally revolutionary here; chainless drivetrain, carbon-fiber body which is super light, dynamic form that works like a race bike, structural minimization by using tension cable that distributes the rider’s load, and the wheels that make any bikes look so 18th century. I am extremely curious about the mechanism that shows in the last closed-up picture below, hopefully the design team would reveal the trade secret soon. Remember, this crucial detail will truly transform our future bikes (well, say it really does work).

via Trendsnow

What does the installation that costs $1Billion look like?

shinito — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:58:07 +0000

An installation by Michael Marcovici, One Billion Dollar is stacked on 12 standard pallets, altogether 10 million 100 USD notes. According to Marcovici, the installation is not so much about what you see but what you could do/could not do with the money. Isn’t it a bit ironic looking at it given the economy situation now in the US?

I found a new home for my cat

shinito — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 08:56:39 +0000

I am pretty sure that Koichi Futatsumata is a cat lover, or at least, he must be having one at home. I know this table might look simple and probably meaningless to most of the people but if you have a cat, I bet you will appreciate Futatsumata‘s ingenious idea of transforming a low table into a “Cat Showcase”, well you know, cat is a very unique species, which has high-curiosity and likes all the spaces between spaces. E&Y is going to put this into production soon.

Reproduction of Castiglioni’s classic RR126

shinito — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:21:22 +0000

Designed by brothers Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni in 1965 was really a ground-breaking act back then by ‘boxing-up’ everything a family needed for an AV-system in such a minimal design. Italian manufacturer Brionvega reproduced it with some magic touch by updating it with the CD-MP3 players while the 33/45rpm vinyl turntable stays in style. The design speaks for itself which reflects the modern modular system movement back in the 60s and definitely one of the classic masterpieces by the Castiglionis. Special attention to the details; rounded-wooden corners, polished-lacquered finished, brushed aluminium. Hand-made to orders.

Mark Weaver for GOOD Mag

shinito — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:44:45 +0000

One of my all time favorite illustrators Mark Weaver came up with a series delicious artworks for GOOD Magazine. For those who missed it, have a look here. Well, besides Weaver’s illustrations, the article that features Bruce Sterling, Julian Bleecker, John Maeda, Esther Dyson and Alexander Rose explaining “why slowness might be as important to the future as speed” has some interesting points to ponder, too! For example like what Rose said, “I think the slow movement is very First-World-urban-environment targeted. If you’re an agrarian human, slow food is actually your only option. So we need to be careful not to overly romanticize ‘slow’ in this way. There’s a balance between poverty and privilege.”; and what Dyson said sounds pretty familiar to me, “Maybe the best way to slow down is to sleep a little more, and pay more attention when you’re awake.”, that is the napping culture I have been trying to propose to all my previous corporate employers.

YTL Residence in Kuala Lumpur

shinito — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:19:10 +0000

I finally found some images from Interior Design Mag and CoolHunter.com of the super mansion in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia that my friend has been telling me about. Malaysia-based YTL Group is one of the biggest developers in South East Asia which started from an Immigrant-Chinese family business. After three generations of sweat and blood and many great projects, they finally decided to build a huge house for three generations of family members so they could share their family moments under the same roof. This is a very typical Chinese tradition which has probably lost in the modern China but this immigrant family insists on carry on this tradition oversea, and the outcome is this contemporary version of a Chinese Mansion.

Blood puddle pillow by Keetra

shinito — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 08:37:27 +0000

Keetra is a sweet and energetic talented artist from New York I met in Venice Biennale in 2008 when she took part in an ultra-fantastic interactive corridor installation. I recently found out that underneath her sugarcoated sweet appearance, there is a well-hidden ‘dark side’ after I discovered her Great Slumber a.k.a. Blood Puddle Pillow! According to her own words from her website, “The pillows are inspired by those suspenseful moments when a sleeping loved one is a little too still for a little too long. Using an irreverent combination of comfort & fear the pillows parallel sleep & death.” Way too cool! But to me, by using it on your office desk it sort of shouts out “F*ck off! I’m DEAD tired working for you!“. The feedbacks look pretty good and you might soon find it available. I bet you can’t wait to get one for your cubicle, for the sake of the velvet finish.

Anne Smolders: Seven Sins

shinito — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:44:44 +0000

How Dutch perceive greed, envy, sloth, gluttony, lust, wrath and pride? Probably we can kinda tell from Anne Smolders‘s Seven Sins project. Smolders was born in Netherlands and recently graduated from Design Academy Eindhoven with a series of creative directed photographs and costumes made of paper bags, newspapers and magazines. This artistic project shouts out her annoyance towards Dutch Supermarket’s campaign that encourages over-spending shopping behavior. I am afraid that they are just too pretty to actually stop people from getting off the seven sins.

(Pride)

(Gluttony)

(Sloth)

(Lust)

(Envy)

(Wrath)

(Greed)

Summer of Love by Saiman Chow

shinito — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 10:48:15 +0000

Some recent illustration by Saimon Chow – Summer of Love. It seems like Saimon had a pretty unforgettable summer experience last year eh?