Tiny Gigantic

Ah, finally a set of light painting photos that are actually good.

The Sundance Channel has created a new series of, uh, educational insect porn videos. They’re narrated by Isabella Rossellini, and they’re weird, funny, freaky and make me a little uncomfortable. Still, I love that something like this got produced for the mainstream. The worm one is especially weird.

You’ve probably seen his work before, but Ron Mueck’s hyper-real sculpture freaks me out.
Found here.

You can make equal cases for optimism or pessimism. Because, mostly, it comes down to your temperament and whether you’re more disposed to hope or fear. And then you make a semi- conscious decision to live a life under the belief that everything will turn out okay or not. Here’s what Dr. Larry Brilliant, from Google.org, has to say about it:

I’ve been saying forever that it’s actually impossible to be productive with your creativity 8 hours a day. That you have to take good, long breaks. And that any one who says they can do their best all day long without rest, is lying. Now, I’ve got back up.

Eric Clough isn’t your typical architectural designer. Sure, he’ll design you a fine den or kitchen, but he’s clearly got a creative streak that goes much deeper than that.

That’s why, when given the opportunity, he secretly built an incredible scavenger hunt into a US$8.5-million, 4,200-square-foot Park Avenue apartment that included ciphers, riddles, poems and a lot of hidden doors and compartments.

From the New York Times:

“In any case, the finale involved, in part, removing decorative door knockers from two hallway panels, which fit together to make a crank, which in turn opened hidden panels in a credenza in the dining room, which displayed multiple keys and keyholes, which, when the correct ones were used, yielded drawers containing acrylic letters and a table-size cloth imprinted with the beginnings of a crossword puzzle, the answers to which led to one of the rectangular panels lining the tiny den, which concealed a chamfered magnetic cube, which could be used to open the 24 remaining panels, revealing, in large type, the poem written by Mr. Klinsky.”

How amazing is that? It took the family months to discover the scavenger hunt and weeks after that to figure it all out. It’s like living in a children’s book of some kind.

Unfortunately, magical things like this really are only possible when you’re loaded enough to buy an $8.5-million apartment and then give someone another $1.26 million to renovate it without much oversight. But hey, maybe if you’re nice to the guys installing your new fridge they’ll leave a post-it note with a poem stuck behind it as a secret prize for when you move. Not quite as magical, but I’m trying to work within your means here.

More images and details after the jump.

So just as the iPhone craze gets even crazier, and the iPhone backlash get’s even, um, backlashier, this little bit of branded content from a company who makes kick-ass blenders is right on the money.

So a bunch of you know that we’ve been contracted to do a book on our message graffiti project, Written on the City. There’s a a nice little blurb about it in Good mag this month. Check it out and look for the book to hit stores August 20th. Yes!

I’ve just begun using Blackle, a Google search engine with the colors removed, and white type on a black background. And since your computer uses more power to create colors on your screen, or even to create the white background of your traditional Google search screen. What’s smart about this is that very little behavior change on the part of the user is necessary, and people still get the satisfaction of feeling like they’re at least doing something to help. You could call this armchair activism if you want to, but I think that everyone doing small achievable things has more power than a few people endlessly pushing giant activist initiatives up a hill.

So I’m in a tiny little town in Alabama, acting as an advisor for students ofProject M, a design education program that invites design students out to the home of the Rural Studio, to learn how to think about design as a way of approaching social problems.
I’ve been here for about 20 hours. Here’s where I am:

-There are some super smart, committed designers coming out of some unlikely places. That’s encouraging.

-Young designers are exceedingly focused on the vehicle for the communication, as opposed to the content of it.

-Instead of asking the question, “What can I do?” we’ve decided to ask “Who can I help and how?”

-It seems like access (to all kinds of things large and small) is a huge problem worth tackling in rural communities all over the country.

-There’s something about small, almost dead places that puts pity in your heart. And pity mostly doesn’t seem that helpful.

-Instead of assuming, ask.

Whachou think?