organic art

while browsing designboom.com i came across two intriguing installations using plastic straws...i wonder if the artists have seen each other's work?


tokujin yoshioka - rememberance installation, 2006,
(this show featured work from the past 3 years, i wonder if this came out in 2003, the same year as ms. donovan's haze?

The ‘cloud installation of 550,000 transparent straws' was designed for a window display at maison hermes in tokyo. bunches of straws are tightly accumlated together to suggest clouds. the use of weightless materials expresses the idea of ‘formless’ and ‘fluid air’.

VS.

Tara Donovan, Haze, 2003, Stacked Clear Plastic Drinking Straws

uses common, everyday, consumable objects such as scotch tape, drinking straws, plastic cups and paper plates to create incredibly organic sculptures that mimic natural landscapes, clouds, cell structures, fungus... to suggest the biological growth of man-made objects.

the new polaroid

Zink's Integrated Digital Camera and Printer
how cool is this?! The integrated digital camera/printer is a full featured digital camera with a built-in full color printer. i wonder what the pricing will be.

wonsaponatime

I've been wearing glasses/contacts since I was about 10. Yesterday I went and got LASIK surgery to correct my vision. The positives of this are immense, the conveniences of having 20/20 or 20/15 as the case may be are great. However, the healing time will take weeks to months.

I spent the evening listening to Neil Gaiman's Stardust - once a comic book, then a novel, now a movie. I recommend it. "Are we human because we gaze at the stars? Or do we gaze at them because we are human?" I also thought of things I did and haven't done in so long, one of them being the various types of martial arts I used to take. At one point I was on the road to a first degree black belt but stopped. Then I took judo, got tired of learning how to fall, and stopped. Then I took a self-defense class offered by a martial arts school in Fredonia, NY and ended up working and training there for 2 years in their Kung Fu program. Since I was a broke college kid, the deal was that I would mop, dust, and put away all the materials we used for free class.

I learned the most in those two years. Stances of defense, stances of resistance, to weaponry - to intricate, meditative moves that required balance, calmness, and swiftness that I've since lost. It seems my teachers are no longer teaching in Fredonia. However, I was able to track down a school and some history: here.



Misty Bradigan is on the left, with her husband Jerry, Master Reeders and Marilynn Reeders. Mitsy was my teacher and had a lot of faith in me. She helped me do amazing things like touch the ground as one would touch their toes, but I was standing on several blocks of wood about a foot higher than I am. She also helped me learn to focus and break through inches of wood with an open hand as well as break a cinder block. I doubt I could do this now, it's been 10 years.

Now I'm thinking of all the other things I used to do that I miss and probably kept me sane.

The Green Harlem House

Designed by Brooklyn architect Hannah Purdy.
inhabit.com takes a first hand look at this eco-friendly townhouse in Harlem.

In the "Building Green in Harlem" video series, Dwell follows a New York couple through the challenges—and triumphs—of renovation, from finding the contractors to finalizing the design.

Watch The Video from Dwell
Check out Green Street Inc.

Big car with a small footprint

Smart Cars are coming to the US in 2008. Finally!
Take a test drive near you.

"smart is a vehicle that challenges the status quo and appeals to your sense of adventure and to your desire for a unique driving experience. Smart embodies innovation, functionality and the joy of driving."

www.smartusa.com

Where's my t-shirt?!

An interesting Roundtable on Women in Development from RailsConf via the Ruby on Rails Podcast:

Part I
Part II

say what? speech accent archive

The speech accent archive uniformly presents a large set of speech samples from a variety of language backgrounds. Native and non-native speakers of English read the same paragraph and are carefully transcribed. The archive is used by people who wish to compare and analyze the accents of different English speakers.

This is awesome

I remember this episode. It's one of my favorites next to the one with Harry Belafonte.