The white section is the Möbius strip and is flexible. It is made from silicone rubber, and has a twist, which means that — despite what your eyes and brain are telling you — it only has teeth along one side (because it only has one side).
The outer, black strip has a double twist that I still can’t make out after letting my eyes follow it around for a good 10 minutes now. Somehow, the little blue rubber “spur” gears guide these two impossible shapes and allow them to mesh. In theory, either the blue gears (planets, as this is essentially a planetary gear system) or the white “sun” strip can drive the movement. In practice, it’s easier to move the white strip by hand, and even then, the blue gears pop out occasionally.
I’m finding it hard to tear myself away from this picture, but I managed it for long enough to read Hoover’s detailed description of the planning and printing process (.pdf) from start to finish. It, too, is almost impossible to understand for a layman like me, but reading the nightmarishly complex calculations needed to make the gears line up makes this deceptively simple model seem even more impressive.
The other day, I was lucky enough to be at an event to bring the arts back into schools and got to see an amazing collaboration between Yo-Yo Ma and a young dancer in LA, Lil Buck. Someone who knows Yo-Yo Ma had seen Lil Buck on YouTube and put them together. The dancing is Lil Buck’s own creation and unlike anything I’ve seen. Hope you enjoy.
Vivian Maier was a nanny who lived in Chicago for most of her life and passed away in 2009 at the age of 83. Little more is known about her, except that she was an avid street photographer. Her work was discovered at an auction in 2007, more than 100,000 negatives and undeveloped rolls of film, sold by a storage facility who were cleaning out her locker for delinquent rent. Here is a small sampling of Vivian Maier's stunning work from the Maloof Collection, spanning from the 1950s to the 1970s. Many of the photos, if they had any information at all, only provided a year and/or city.Considering she didn't get many of them developed, it makes me wonder if she thought they were any good [I found them stunning].
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La Negra in 1980 and 2010, Buenos Aires Porteña photographer Irina Werning has her subjects reenact moments from much earlier in their lives. In replicating these fuzzy yet candid memories, she has attended well to their placement, clothing, the sort and source of the lighting, and photo quality. It also looks like her subjects had a lot of fun too. Only a few of my favorites here, visit the artist for the full, on-going project. |
A key post-impressionist painter, Georges Seurat moved away from the apparent spontaneity and rapidity of impressionism and developed a structured, more monumental art to depict modern urban life. For several of his large compositions, Seurat painted many small studies.
Seurat studied avant-garde painting techniques, especially impressionism and the latest scientific theories pertaining to light and color. From 1885 to 1886 he developed the divisionist technique. This new style, which consisted of systematically applied small touches of unmodulated color, was based on contemporary optical theories of color relationships.
Two years after his first neo-impressionist work was shown at the Salon des Indépendants, Seurat exhibited A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (1886, The Art Institute of Chicago) at the eighth and final impressionist group show in 1886. His disciplined technique exerted a considerable influence over neo-impressionist artists such as Camille Pissarro, Henri Edmond Cross, and Paul Signac.Sources:
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| Conrad Gesner [26 March 1516 – 13 December 1565] |
His Historiae animalium (Zürich, 1551-1587; "Studies on Animals") is considered to be the first modern zoological work. Building a bridge between ancient, medieval, and modern science, he chronicles data from old sources, such as The Old Testament, Aristotle and medieval bestiaries, and adds his own observations, creating a new, comprehensive description of the Animal Kingdom. In what is the first attempt by anyone to describe many of the animals accurately, the book is illustrated with hand-colored woodcuts drawn from personal observations by Gesner and his colleagues.
This is a few years old, but remains one of the coolest art projects I've seen on the internets. David Gallaugher of Dalhousie University created this mobile statement about the need to have more greenspace in urban areas. I wouldn't mind moving around Boston in one of those things. It would detract from the ugliness of Cleveland Circle while I was on my way to the Boston Commons and the public gardens. Shout out to Halifax, yall!
[Original source]
Guerror del arco iris, 1990
Uruguayan Alexandro Garcia saw something in the sky that changed him permanently. Attempting to describe his UFO experience impelled Garcia to develop his natural gift for drawing and painting. With no formal training, he built his chaotic style upon piece after piece etched with common pens, pencils, and on any available paper, such as the back of an almanac. With time he began to elaborate his style, bringing forth eye-poping colorscapes, convoluted geometries, and visions of psychedelic Other-worlds. His collections are considered in the vanguard of so-called "outsider art" [whatever, that label is hegemonic]
[Via Synaptic Stimuli, this flickr photostream, and the Christian Berst Galerie d'Art].
[Click each for full effect]
