Small World 2010 photomicrography winners: “
Above is a mosquito heart, at a magnification of 100x. Biologist Jonas King, of Vanderbilt University, used fluorescence to make this stunning example of photomicrography. King’s photo landed first place this year in Nikon’s annual Small World competition. All of the winners are absolutely stunning. Small World gallery, 2010
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Squid suit: “
Flickr user Lucy Lou (AKA cartoonist Lucy Knisley) models the awesomesauce squid suit her roommate, Nora Renick-Rinehart, made.
(via Super Punch)
Update: Thanks to all the commenters who made the Lucy Lou/Lucy Knisley connection for me! Duh!
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Here’s a nice little collection of rural Norwegian homes whose roofs have been given over to the traditional turf — and even small forests.
Turf roofs in Norway are a tradition and you will see them everywhere. Roofs in Scandinavia have probably been covered with birch bark and sod since prehistory. During the Viking and Middle Ages most houses had sod roofs. In rural areas sod roofs were almost universal until the beginning of the 18th century. Tile roofs, which appeared much earlier in towns and on rural manors, gradually superseded sod roofs except in remote inland areas during the 19th century. Corrugated iron and other industrial materials also became a threat to ancient traditions. But just before extinction, the national romantics proclaimed a revival of vernacular traditions, including sod roofs. A new market was opened by the demand for mountain lodges and holiday homes. At the same time, open air museums and the preservation movement created a reservation for ancient building traditions. From these reservations, sod roofs have begun to reappear as an alternative to modern materials.
Every year, since 2000, an award is also given to the best green roof proje
(via Geisha Asobi)
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Robotic privacy curtain moves across window to block snoops: “
John Park of MAKE says: ‘Niklas Roy cannot be contained! He’s built a curtain in his shop window that uses machine vision and fast linear positioning to block the view of nosy onlookers.’
My workshop is located in an old storefront with a big window facing towards the street. In an attempt to create more privacy inside, I’ve decided to install a small but smart curtain in that window. The curtain is smaller than the window, but an additional surveillance camera and an old laptop provide it with intelligence: The computer sees the pedestrians and locates them. With a motor attached, it positions the curtain exactly where the pedestrians are.
The whole setup works really well. But in the end, it doesn’t protect my privacy at all. It seems that the existence of my little curtain is leading itself ad absurdum, simply by doing its job very well. My moving curtain attracts the looks of people which usually would never care about my window. It is even the star of the street, now! My curtain is just engaged. And because of that, it fails.
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Enola Gay co-pilot’s sculpture of mushroom cloud: “
Conelrad is running Bill Geerhart’s fantastic and utterly bizarre article about a mushroom cloud sculpture made by Robert Lewis — the co-pilot of the plane that dropped the a-bomb on Hiroshima. (Lewis named his work ‘God’s Wind,’ but I think he should have called it ‘This is Not a Phallus.’)
Decades ago, Dieter Rosellen dubbed an unusual piece of art acquired by his best friend as “The ‘Shroom.” He still refers to the white Italian marble mushroom cloud sculpture by that nickname.The artist’s more formal (and thought provoking) title for the work is etched into its base: ‘God’s Wind’ at Hiroshima? The sculptor, Robert Lewis—the co-pilot of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb in warfare—died in 1983 and Rosellen’s pal, author and psychologist Glenn Van Warrebey, passed away twenty-one years later. The ‘Shroom survives both of them.
This is the story of the sculpture’s evolution: From its birth in the tortured imagination of an atomic veteran to its current state—an unsettling curiosity that has to be seen to be believed. It is also a tale of the intersecting lives of the man who created it and the man who exploited it.
Bill Geerhart on The ‘Shroom, a sculpture by Robert Lewis, co-pilot of the Enola Gay
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Curiosity/taxidermy exhibition in London: “
Morbid Anatomy’s Joanna Ebenstein reports from London where she visited The Museum of Everything’s ‘Exhibition #3,’ ‘a carnivalesque spree exploring all things collectory, side-show, circus, grotto, and taxidermological.’ The show includes a restaging of Victorian taxidermist Walter Potter’s famously strange wunderkammer, the contents of which are now owned by the likes of Damien Hirst and Sir Peter Blake. The Guardian also covered the exhibit with more history of Potter’s collection.
‘Morbid Anatomy on The Museum of Everything, Exhibition # 3 (Morbid Anatomy)
Genius or grotesquery? The arrestingly strange world of Walter Potter (The Guardian)
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[Sorry, seems to be getting cut off on the page — see it here: http://xkcd.com/806/ ]
Tech Support: “
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What do 100 million hand painted fake sunflower seeds look like?: “
The Unilever Series: Ai Weiwei, Sunflower Seeds 2010.Photocredit: Tate Photography © Ai Weiwei
The sunflower seeds in the photo above are made of porcelain. Each of them was sculpted by hand and painted by craftspeople in a Chinese city.
Ai Weiwei, one of China’s leading Conceptual artists and an outspoken cultural and social commentator, has undertaken the eleventh commission in The Unilever Series.
Sunflower Seeds is made up of millions of small works, each apparently identical, but actually unique. However realistic they may seem, these life-sized sunflower seed husks are in fact intricately hand-crafted in porcelain. Each seed has been individually sculpted and painted by specialists working in small-scale workshops in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen. Far from being industrially produced, they are the effort of hundreds of skilled hands.
Poured into the interior of the Turbine Hall’s vast industrial space, the 100 million seeds form a seemingly infinite landscape. Sunflower Seeds is a sensory and immersive installation, which we can touch, walk on and listen to as the seeds shift under our feet. The casual act of walking on the work’s surface contrasts with the immense effort of production and the precious nature of the material. Porcelain is almost synonymous with China and, to make this work, Ai Weiwei has manipulated traditional methods of crafting what has historically been one of China’s most prized exports. Sunflower Seeds invites us to look more closely at the ‘Made in China’ phenomenon and the geo-politics of cultural and economic exchange today.
What do 100 million hand painted fake sunflower seeds look like? (Via Steve Silberman)
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Nine ways to identify clutter, by Gretchen Rubin: “Gretchen Rubin of the Happiness Project (see my review of her excellent book of the same name) wrote a useful piece for Zen Habits called ‘Nine Quick Tips to Identify Clutter.’
As I sifted through our possessions, I identified nine questions to ask myself when I was confronted with a questionable object. This list helped me decide what to keep and what to toss, recycle, or give away.
1. Does this thing work? I was surprised by how hard it was to admit that something was broken and couldn’t be fixed—say, our dud toaster or my daughter’s frog clock. Why was I hanging on to these things?
2. Would I replace it if it were broken or lost? If not, I must not really need it.
3. Does it seem potentially useful—but never actually gets used? Something like an oversized water-bottle, a corkscrew with an exotic mechanism, or a tiny vase. Or duplicates. How many spare glass jars did I need to keep on hand?
Nine Quick Tips to Identify Clutter
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PageKeeper: “
I’ve used a PageKeeper bookmark for several years and love it. Once in place it stays put. You don’t have to do anything until you’ve finished reading whatever book you’ve put it in. It keeps your place for you without you having to move it, or dog-ear the page. Best of all it won’t fall out of your book, so no more flipping through trying to find where you were when stopped reading.
I’ve never seen anything similar to PageKeeper, and being a life long bookworm I’ve seen and used A LOT of bookmarks. I actually have two that I use, as it’s not uncommon for me to be reading multiple books at once. When I’m not using both, I keep one in my purse in case I pick up a book to read while I’m out.
— Laura C.
Pagekeeper
$8
Available from and manufactured by Page Keeper
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