Artist and TED Fellow Aparna Rao re-imagines the familiar in surprising, often humorous ways. With her collaborator Soren Pors, Rao creates high-tech art installations — a typewriter that sends emails, a camera that tracks you through the room only to make you invisible on screen — that put a playful spin on ordinary objects and interactions.
Very Creative!
from www.fastcompany.com
What Your Home Will Look Like In 2015
BY ARIEL SCHWARTZToday
It’s not the house of the future. More like the house of the near-future. It will be smaller and more energy efficient (but don’t worry, you can keep your walk-in closet).
Here at FastCompany we often write about futurist predictions of life in 20, 30, even 100 years down the line. But the National Association of Home Builders is offering up a vision of how we’ll live in just four years–and it’s a little different than what you might expect.
The NAHB sent out a survey last year that asked members–designers, architects, manufacturers, and more– what they think homes will look like in 2015. Some of the results aren’t that surprising. The survey reveals that the average single-family home is likely to drop to 2,150 square feet from 2,400 square feet today, probably as a result of tough economic times and rising energy prices.
That drop in square footage will lead to the living room disappearing altogether, instead being swallowed up by the kitchen or family room to form a single “great room.” Other features that may become increasingly uncommon include sunrooms, dining rooms, media rooms, mudrooms, and skylights. Laundry rooms and walk-in closets aren’t going anywhere but on the whole, it looks like Americans will scale back. McMansions may give way to more sensible living arrangements.
A more important future trend is the use of resource-efficient features. NAHB members imagine that dual flush toilets, low-flow faucets, low-E windows, powerful insulation, and Energy Star home ratings will all grow in popularity. Solar systems may also become popular features, but wind and geothermal energy won’t be widespread–unsurprising since there are already so many cash-saving ways for homeowners to install solar systems, but not for other renewable energy sources.
Los Angeles seems to have a talent for the carnivalesque. What I mean is a scene where people are packed together in a dense, noisy stream, flowing through streets lined with bright, colorful sights and music. The L.A. Art Walk is like that, at least in mid-summer. The Día de los Muertos celebration in Hollywood Forever Cemetery is also an explosion of crowd feeling and popular creativity. People flow through the cemetery along paths lined with ofrendas, the traditional free-form altars built on this holiday to honor and recall the dead. At Hollywood Forever, the inventiveness is amazing: lights, candles, video, illuminated balloons, photographs, paintings and other art, live music and live (dead) dancers. These are not ofrendas like your abuelita used to make. Near the entrance is a display of Aztec drumming and dancing. Costumed dead roam the paths; many visitors are also in costume and makeup to fit the occasion. And of course there are food trucks, souvenir booths, films projected on the large walls, and performances on the main stage (roughly where they show movies on other weekends). We caught the following before one act: “…recordamos nuestros muertitos, se nos imaginamos cuando eran jóvenes y gozaban de la vida, del sexo, del amor, de la comida…” (we remember our dead darlings, we imagine them when they were young and full of the joy of life, sex, love, food). It is the pure spirit of carnival.
Occupy L.A. is not far removed from this. People swarm over it with the most varied agendas: end the Fed (Ron Paul’s minions were much in evidence that day), legalize marijuana, go vegan, PETA, peace (of course), neo-Zapatista, go green, 9/11 conspiracy, anti-9/11-conspiracy. Raps and speeches from the podium are non-stop. The grounds are covered with camping tents; it is dirty, scruffy, fascinating.
I don’t know if other cities are like this (I assume the “Occupy” areas are somewhat similar). I don’t know if L.A. has always been like this. Is it a special time in the city’s history? Will we look back with nostalgia on the Decade of Dudamel?
At his Stanford University commencement speech, Steve Jobs, CEO and co-founder of Apple and Pixar, urges us to pursue our dreams and see the opportunities in life’s setbacks — including death itself.
How do you stage an international art show with work from 100 different artists? If you’re Shea Hembrey, you invent all of the artists and artwork yourself — from large-scale outdoor installations to tiny paintings drawn with a single-haired brush. Watch this funny, mind-bending talk to see the explosion of creativity and diversity of skills a single artist is capable of.
Opening in time for the London Design Festival, Dainow&Dainow’s Imagined Cities exhibit will present a selection of the freshest architectural art that London has to offer.
The catch is this: Dainow&Dainow has focused on the best works from London’s newest graduates, and have placed them alongside works from established talents.
For example, architecture graduate Catrina Stewart’s project, The London Farmhouse, examines how urban sprawl and waste can be used for good. Her drawings will accompany an explanation of her idea to integrate agriculture – including electric eels and feces – into inner city housing, eventually leading to self-sufficient urban communities.
Participating artists include Charlotte Baker, Lukas Barry, Charlie Caswell, Nathan Freise, Tom Greenall, Claire Jamieson, Sebastian Kite, Will Laslett, Tom Lea, Pete McMahon, Jenny Melville, Tom Noonan, Alastair Parvin, Tom Reynolds, Ostap Rudakevych, Patrick Skingley, Catrina Stewart, Robert Taylor and Colin Wharry.
Catrina Stewart – The London Farmhouse Tower from Miles Langley on Vimeo.
“There are no facts, only interpretations.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“Chick” is a humorous true-life story about male-female relations. Infatuation and its consequences are depicted in a ironic way: meeting a guy, dancing, having fun, a sexual act. A man, giddy with the charm of a femme fatale, leaves a room. He is followed by failure and doom.
