Fine Art News
News: Saliva Inducing Scanwiches
Scanner photography + sandwiches = Scanwiches (simply put: "scans of sandwiches for education and delight"). The web-famous Tumblr is the invention of Jon Chonko, a NYC-based designer at thehappycorp global.
News: The Secret Life of a Love Doll
Famed artist and photographer Laurie Simmons boasts an impressive career spanning over three decades. She's shown at some of the world's top art institutions and galleries, and appeared on art world popular PBS television series Art 21. She also happens to be the the proud mother of promising young filmmaker Lena Dunham, the 24-year-old director of last year's indie hit Tiny Furniture.
News: Edible (and Itchy) Icelandic Landscapes
Inspired by the vast and exotic geography of Iceland, Canadian-Hungarian artist Eszter Burghardt uses food and wool to reconstruct her memory of the landscape. The series, "Edible Vistas and Wooly Sagas", is molded from "poppy seeds, coco powder, coffee, milk, and chocolate cake crumbs" and Icelandic wool—there are endless herds of native sheep wandering the countryside. She then captured the dioramas with a macro lens.
News: Meticulous Recreations of Old Family Photographs
It's axiomatic: if you want to know what's different, look to what's the same. And, if you want to know what's the same, look to what's different. What makes Irina Werning's Back to the Future project so amazing then is that, in matching everything that can be matched, she helps us instantly hone in on what can't. In most cases, viewers notice just one thing—the effects of the passage of time on the subjects of the photographs. It's very strange and sometimes even unsettling. But also really,...
News: Stunning Aerial Photos Captured Via Kite and Fishing Rod
When photographer Gerco De Ruijter set out to reveal "the Dutch culturally defined landscape"—a hard regiment of efficiency, gridded out by urban and rural planners—he came up with a beautiful aerial representation of abstract patterns. The series, entitled Baumschule, was captured using kite photography and curiously enough, a fishing rod.
News: AT-AT Made with Spare Computer Parts
Blacksmith Sage Werbock —also known as the Great Nippulini, "pierced weight lifting extraordinaire"—welded together this Star Wars Imperial Walker sculpture with a bunch of old computer parts and scrap metal. Currently listed on Etsy for $450, the AT-AT is artfully assembled as follows:
UPDATE: Wafaa Bilal’s Head Rejects Camera Implant
If you missed our previous posts on Iraqi artist Wafaa Bilal's attempt to go cyborg, here's the short and skinny: First, Bilal announced a plan to implant a camera in his head, a project entitled 3rdi, which would record his daily life while simultaneously feeding the images to monitors at the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar. Then, he actually did it (and, yes, it was gnarly).
News: Blind Photographer "Sees" With Sound
A couple weeks ago, I attended Photo LA with my mother, a photographer. On our way out, we came across a blind man with a seeing eye dog. It begged the obvious question-- "blind photographer" is about as oxymoronic as it gets-- but, then coincidentally, this morning I came across a video of the same man. Pete Eckert is indeed a blind visual artist, a sculptor and industrial designer in his former life, before being diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic eye condition that results in p...
News: Making Ordinary Objects Extraordinary
Kevin Van Aelst creates witty visual "one-liners" by recontextualizing everyday, ordinary objects. With a few simple tweaks, the viewer recognizes a roll of tape as the ocean or reads gummi worms as chromosomes or understands mitosis through the use of sweet, sugary donuts.
News: That Graffiti Is Playing Tricks on Me
Mimmo Rubino applies the art of brain melting to the streets with his perspective-distorting, optical illusion graffiti art. The coolest part is Mimmo includes links to Google Maps for some of the pieces, so you can go take a look for yourself (if you happen to be in the vicinity of Rome).
News: Snowdecahedron
Best snow art I've ever seen. And Wonderment has seen some good stuff: penis, AT-AT, more penis. (Ok, we like the little boy stuff.) But we also like math, and this snowdecahedron is one stylish geometric form plopped right in the middle of the sidewalk in Porter Square, Cambridge, Mass. Nice work, sushiesque.
News: A Complicated Solution for a Simple Act of Vandalism
Swedish graffiti artist Akay's latest “Instrument of Mass Destruction” is Robo-Rainbow, self-described as a "complicated technical solutions to aide in a simple act of vandalism.”
News: There Are Some Things a Dress Should Hide
Um, genital anatomy is probably one of them. The image below first turned up on Buzzfeed, leading to shock, awe, and lots of head scratching over who could have possibly come up with such an interesting contribution to the world of fashion...
News: "Seeing" Beethoven with Milk
Photographer Sara Naim creates an oddly beautiful visual documentation of sound: Beethoven's classic Moonlight Sonata, envisioned with milk.
News: Video Games vs. Real Life
Alex Lewis imagines what the world would look like infiltrated by video game characters in his digital montage series “Video Games vs. Real Life”. (P.S. If you like what you see, check out Lewis' t-shirt designs at Threadless).
Bark: An Intimate Look at the World’s Trees
Stunning selection of photographs from French photographer Cedric Pollet's new book, Bark: An Intimate Look at the World’s Trees. The photographer traveled across five continents to capture the the exquisite patterns and textures of the world's many varieties of tree bark.
News: Cigarette Ash City
In "Cigarette Ash Landscape", Chinese artist and photographer Yang Yongliang suspends a huge cigarette sculpture above a pile of black and white photos, fake grass and artificial flowers. Upon closer examination, the tip of the cigarette reveals a tiny city made of fastidiously layered, paper-cut urban skylines.
News: Liar, Liar, House On Fire
See a burning building? Hold all calls to the fire department. Canadian artist Isabelle Hayeur fools passerbyers with her installation, "Fire with Fire", an artwork that creates the illusion of a fire-swept four-story heritage building in the downtown eastside of Vancouver. "The Downtown Eastside is the oldest neighbourhood in Vancouver; it is also the most run-down. This historic area is infamous for being plagued by social problems due to poverty. Before falling prey to serious urban decay,...
News: Vincent Van Gogh Rises From the Dead (Well, Sorta)
The formula goes something like this: crazy amazing "life painting" artist Alexa Meade x the genius idea behind Van Gogh Photoshop magic x some mad make-up skills = voilà, a living, breathing, hyperrealistic facsimile of our one-eared icon, Vincent.
News: Peeing German Cop Sculpture Makes the Police Awfully... Pissed
The German police have their panties in a bunch over a highly inflammatory sculpture of a urinating policewoman by artist Marcel Walldorf. Entitled "Petra", the hyperrealistic figure depicts a female officer crouched, peeing with buttocks exposed. The most chilling detail is her riot baton casually propped on the wall next to her.
News: Gorcelain, the Bloody Side of Porcelain
One normally thinks of porcelain as decor or dishware for ladies who lunch, but artist Jessica Harrison has injected a horror show twist into the traditional ceramic delicacy.
News: The Evolution of the Batmobile
Sometimes ads are good for something. Such as documenting every single batmobile EVER, and publishing as a massive infographic. Comic book nerds, rejoice:
Warning: Do NOT Build This (Not Responsible For Death or Injury)
Glacial Wanderer demonstrates how to build a high-speed air gap flash fast enough to capture a speeding bullet without it getting blurred. These types of flash units usually run around $8K+, but for a few hundred dollars you can build you own and capture sick stuff like...
Human Mutation Through Age: Year 0 To 100 Side-By-Side
Luckily for us, human aging is a long, slow process. One day newborn babe... 36,500 days later, you're old. Really old. And how you looked in between is all but forgotten. To see a side-by-side mapping of the long and slow human mutation process, check out Danish photojournalists Sofia Wraber and Nanna Kreutzmann's 101 photographs of males, ages 0 to 100.
News: NYC's Secret Video Game World
While it's unlikely you'll encounter this caliber of insane pixelated madness in real-life, everyday New York City, you might be lucky enough to walk past a tangible "portal" of sorts. Below, images from Pixel Pour 2.0, an installation on Mercer Street in Soho.
News: Where Man and Machine Should Never Meet
Household appliances enslave random body parts in a series of sculptures entitled "Integration Series" by Joseph Barbaccia.
News: Apple Toys Destroyed With Bullets, Sledgehammers & Torches
We know it's fun to break stuff, but Santa sure isn't going to be as good to Michael Tompert next year. The San Francisco digital imaging and CGI artist destroyed a whole slew of brand-new Apple gadgets as a statement on "our relationship with fetish, fashion, freedom, and bondage."
News: Rainwater + Solar Power = DIY Rainbow Machine
Artist Michael Jones McKean has harnessed nature with his DIY rainbow machine, a mechanism that uses reclaimed rainwater and solar power to shoot man-made rainbows across the sky at whim. High powered jets and fountain nozzles shoot a heavy wall of rainwater into the air, creating a faux rainstorm. Sunshine does the rest.
News: There Is a (Creepy) Baby in Every One of Us
"There Is a Baby in Every One of Us", artist Ben Heine titles the first image in the collection below, taken from the latest in his pencil vs. camera series:
News: It's On Like Holiday Kong
Happy Holidays from everyone at WonderHowTo! Have a wonderful Christmas, and an amazing New Year.
News: Star Trails Captured in Time Lapse
YouTube user Nachtwolke captures beautiful star trails with 1262 photos taken at 30-second exposures.
News: It's Magic! See 3D Without the Glasses
On last week's Gizmodo Shooting Challenge, submittors were challenged to create photos that could be seen in 3D, simply by refocusing the eyes to merge two appropriately placed white dots.
News: Creating the Cosmos With Ink, Paint & Water
Artist Pery Burge uses water, paint and ink to create images that look like they might have been captured by the Hubble Telescope or under the super-zoom of a powerful microscope.
News: Hacking Photography With Chrono-Cubism
Brazilian photographer Diego Kuffer says he's "hacked" the idea of photography with his chrono-cubism method of compositing photos into collages, resulting in a vibrant tracking of time, space and movement:
News: Japanese Artist Mutates Underwater Creatures Into Beautiful, Glowing Specimens
UPDATE: Looks like the previously featured mysterious translucent skeletal specimens aren't the work of unknown scientists, but rather a project by Japanese scientist-turned-artist Iori Tomita. Tomita majored in fisheries as an undergraduate student, and has since used his knowledge to create a beautiful collection of mutated sea creatures, called “New World Transparent Specimens". Tomita creates his specimens by dissolving their flesh, and then injecting dye into the skeletal system.
News: Grafitti Dog Goes For a Stroll
Nowhere Near Here, by Pahnl, is made with the graffiti light writing technique (stop motion animation that uses a combination of light with stencils and long exposure photography). Over 300 hours in the making and more than 200 stencils later, the tale of a "dog running around the city at night, doing whatever a dog does": Vocals by Karin Dreijer Andersson of the Knife and Fever Ray.
News: Enter the Trippy Vortex of Optical Distortion
New York based studio softlab's latest installation "(n)arcissus" is an eye-bending site specific installation currently on display at the Frankfurter Kunstverein art center in Frankfurt, Germany. The piece, made with over 1,000 mylar and vinyl laser cut panels, hangs in a stairwell, measuring 9 meters tall from the lobby ceiling.
News: Would You Surgically Implant a Camera in Your Skull?
UPDATE: New York University photography professor Wafaa Bilal talked the talk, and now he's walked the walk with his recent camera implant. And guess what? It hurt. What a surprise.
News: The Birth of Skateboard Culture
Beautiful images from photographer Hugh Holland's recent show at M+B Gallery in L.A., "Locals Only", a portrait of 70s skateboard culture.
News: 1,200 Hot Wheels in Perpetual (NOISY) Motion
Chris Burden's latest piece is a portrait of L.A.'s hot mess of traffic, entitled Metropolis II. The artist has constructed a miniature highway system, complete with 1,200 custom-designed cars, 18 lanes, 13 toy trains and tracks, and a landscape of buildings made with wood block, tiles, Legos and Lincoln Logs. Burden tells the New York Times: