(small) creative initiatives that challenge (big) traditional ideas
• ( egoistic ) • activistic • architectural • audible • cinematic • conceptual • graphic • strategic • surface • urban • wireless
Posted by Sebastian on Jan 04, 2012
A series of drawings by Steve Lambert, created to hang in various rooms in your home. Likely to generate some curious/awkward moments when you have guests over.
Limited edition prints are for sale online.
Related entry: The most awkward 404 Not Found page on the internet
High-tech meets street art in this installation by the Ars Electronica Futurelab.
The installation called Shadowgram can take pictures of people in full-size silhouette and seconds later print them as small stickers.
Shadowgram plays with social creativity and the installation is currently placed in the Ars Electronica Center in Linz where visitors are encouraged to place their freshly printed stickers on walls and other surfaces inside the building. Personal text messages can also be added by using complimentary stickers shaped as speech bubbles.
The installation consists of a digital mirror with a build-in camera, a normal looking printer and an illuminated background that people stand in front when having their picture taken.
Related: I wish this was + Data Decorated Walls + Appeel + Social Play With Clay
Copenhagen is about to get itself a new place called the Red Square. As opposed to its famous pendant in Moscow, the one in Copenhagen is red, literally.
The square is painted in red tones and in rectangular shapes. When viewed from above, it looks like a three-dimensional skewed shape.
The square is a part of the urban park 'Superkilen', a long stretch which also contains a green and a black zone. Each zone facilitates different activities.
Ping-Pong tables from Spain
Benches from Kuwait
Signage from Russia
Playground from Japan
Bike racks from Norway
Superkilen is located in Nørrebro (north-west), a multicultural part of Copenhagen with 60 different nationalities represented. To reflect the community, the park will be furnished with elements like benches, bins, trees, playgrounds, ping-pong tables, lamp-posts and signage - all imported from 60 different countries.
Superkilen is created by Superflex, (BIG) Bjarke Ingels Group and TOPOTEK1.
Related color landmarks: Favela Painting + Beukelsblue + Blue Road + Delete project
• www.superkilen.dk (in Danish)
The Free Art and Technology Lab (F.A.T) has created a series of 100 QR stencil designs that can be used to provide directions, information, and warnings to digital nomads in urban space.
The project - called "Hobo Codes" - is inspired by the Hobo signs developed by 19th century vagabonds and migratory workers to cope with the difficulty of nomadic life.
QR codes usually direct users to a URL, but the digital Hobo Codes contains simple information, such as an advice or warning. Scanning the codes reveal messages like "vegans beware", "those aren't women" and "it's fake".
The stencils are made using the "QR Stencil Generator", a utility which converts QR codes into vector-based stencil patterns suitable for laser-cutting. The stencil generator is developed by Golan Levin and Asa Foster III.
• QR Stenciler and QR Hobo Codes
Spotted in Istanbul: Stickers placed around the city to promote an upcoming Amy Winehouse concert on June 20 2011.
Information is kept to a minimum. Fans are trusted to decode the sticker and find out more for themselves.
Since March 2011, the artist Tim Devin has been putting broadsides (small posters) up around the Boston area.
The posters come in different kind of flavors: Street Surveys, Mappy Facts or Poems by Paul Johns.
Street Surveys ask questions that people can answer by removing a slip of paper. Mappy Facts show maps of data about the Boston area - income statistics, FBI crime stats, etc. Poems by Paul Johns feature poems by Paul Johns.
If you'd like to help put posters up in Boston you can mail Tim and he will send you a print-ready file.
And of course, if you don't live in Boston or in the US, you can easily create and adapt the surveys to your own city and language.
Related: Tim Devin's I left this here for you to read
• www.timdevin.com/broadsides.html
Sometimes it takes a small sticker to make a big wish.
The simple fill-in-the-blank stickers are created by artist/designer Candy Chang to help citizens in New Orleans express and share their thoughts on their community.
Stickers are free and can be found in corner stores, cafes, bookstores, bars, hair salons, and other places around New Orleans.
It is not the first time that Candy Chang - a favorite of this site - made a tool designed to empower people and communities. Check for instance the remarkable Post It Note Project for Neighbours, Tenants' Rights Flash Cards and Community Chalkboards.
• www.candychang.com/i-wish-this-was
Posted by Sebastian on Nov 16, 2010
'Measuring the Universe' is a participatory artwork based on museum-goers and their personal data.
Created by Slovakian artist Roman Ondák, the work begins with an empty room with white walls. Museum-visitors can help shape the work by having their heights, their names and the date inscribed on the gallery walls by a museum attendant. Over the course of an exhibition, the white walls gradually evolve into an collective drawing made up of individual pieces of data.
'Measuring the Universe' takes part in the exhibition Taking Place currently showing at the Temporary Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
Related: + Appeel + Social Play with Clay
• More images on Designboom.
Ever since the introduction of the Danish discount supermarket Netto in 80's the color combination of yellow and black has been associated with the slightly negative sense of the word 'cheap'.
So Danish eyebrows were raised when the most conservative bank 'Danske Bank' changed its brand colors overnight - from classic blue/white to discount-colors yellow/black. The cosmetic change was only temporary and the idea was to draw attention to numbers showing that the bank, after all, is not that expensive.
Nice gimmick, but considering the buzz generated by the campaign, it is slightly mysterious that it was not backed up by something that customers could interact with and take action upon, such as a new service or product.
• www.danskebank.dk/billig-bank (campaign site)
Initiated and organized by the Dutch design duo Haas&Hahn, the Favela Painting project aims at transforming favela communities in Rio de Janeiro into landmarks and inspirational monuments.
Inhabitants are encouraged and employed by Haas&Hahn to paint their own neighbourhoods and houses according to pre-arranged patterns provided by the two designers.
The eye-catching project took off in 2007 with a mural in Rio's notorious favela and since then, it has grown in scale and ambition.
Ultimately, Haas&Hahn's dream is to paint an entire hillside favela that will turn the community into an "artwork of epic scale". Hopefully their dream is shared by the people who have to live there.
Related: Other color-landmarks by Dutch artists: BEUKELSBLUE and THE BLUE ROAD + The Austrian DELETE project
Contact: Sebastian Campion