Archive for May, 2011
In a move that few others can probably identify with, artist James Howard ditched gmail in favor of Yahoo Mail because the latter’s spam filters allow through “plenty of bizarre underworld imagery.” This unlikely reason to choose an email provider makes more sense when considering that Howard appropriates spam into art.
It’s this imagery that Howard uses in his art. At some point in time, the images had an intentional artist or an owner, but the spam artists have copied, retouched and distorted their work far beyond the original. Howard uses the same process, building all of his works in Photoshop. Realizing that there will come a time when spam will be a forgotten nuisance of the past, Howard has turned his attention to Facebook, of which he remarks: “Why have that much information on a site owned by someone else? They have control over you and your content.” A show featuring Howard’s work at the Charles Saatchi Gallery in London recently concluded, but you can see his spam art this month at Aubin Gallery in London, Detroit Gallery in Stockholm, Sweden and Torrance Art Museum in California. Click through for additional imagery. [via PFSK]
Rather than providing an opinion on or an explanation of endeavors we share here on The Jailbreak, I find it more rewarding to hear directly from the producer of the content — be that an artist, designer, filmmaker, company or goat — as it provides a glimpse into the person’s (or animal’s, if we’re talking about the goat) process and purpose for creating the featured work. Here’s Belgium-based artist (painter, illustrator, caricaturist and photographer) Ben Heine explaining his series, “Pencil vs. Camera“:
Check out my 10 favorites after the break. Movie Map of Manhattan
Posted:
Thursday, May 5, 2011
in Art, Contests, Design, illustration, infographics, Movies & Culture, New York City, pop culture, posters
Bernie Hou of Alien Loves Predator spent five months watching movies and three weeks drawing to create this cinematic cartography of Manhattan, complete with 91 film references.
Hou is giving away a free copy of the 18×24″ poster to the first person who sends him the names of all 91 movies. [Here’s a high-res version of the map with each movie numbered from 1-91.] He plans to release the full list of the films after May 11th. If that’s keeping you on the edge of your seat, you can purchase the poster for $16 here. [via Gothamist]
This is a video of Jell-O bouncing in super slow-motion. It was shot at 6,200 frames per second, which translates to the jello writhing at approximately 200 times slower than we’d witness it in real time. Hypnotic, isn’t it? [via Modernist Cuisine]
(Click to expand) James Wright and Josh Eckert’s “Geek Zodiac” matches up genre-film trends with the birth years when each was most popular. They get points for making a cool infographic, but no matter what it says, I’m a Goonie. [UPDATE: @geekzodiac just notified us of the new and improved version 3 infographic now shown above. This zodiac contains original art from Josh rather than the previous edition's copyrighted imagery. They've also taken steps to address the underrepresentation of women and removed the notes indicating examples of each sign in popular geek culture.] [via Flavorwire]
Crowdsourcing Ramen Noodles
Posted:
Monday, May 2, 2011
in Branding, Contests, Creative Company, Events, pop culture, The Internet, Turning Japanese
Nissin, the original creators of Cup Noodle ramen, are celebrating their 48th anniversary with a “Cup Noodle Election campaign“:
That’s awesome! Cup Noodle is sold throughout the States, but damn if you can’t get flavors like Milk Seafood in your local grocery co-op. Unless your Japanese language skills are superior to Google Translator, you probably can’t participate in this important election. But you can make a great desktop wallpaper out of all the Cup Noodles, as I just did. [via Japan Trends]
You know that feeling you get when you walk into someone’s house and see they’ve still got magnetic poetry on their fridge? It’s a composite of gentle pity mixed with fear they’re going to infect you with a virus sent from their aol account. I guess Chapman University (as part of the LA Times Festival of Books) thought the magnetic poetry idea could use an infusion of humanity. They invited festival-goers (a large number of whom were children, which is cool) to take a photo of themselves with their word of choice. The rest of us can log onto this website and create nonsensical (or, alternately, deeply philosophical) phrases using their pictures. It’s kind of an interesting study to see which words were chosen the most frequently, as well as which words were chosen at all. If you select “mustache,” from the drop-down menu, you’ll find two spellings of mustache and the word “taco”. If you choose “twinkle,” you’ll find a smiling young boy inadvertently covering up the “le” with his hand leaving just “twink” behind. Most of the submissions appear to be jumbles of words that would fail you out of grammar school, but perhaps cohesion isn’t the point. I’m looking forward to someone who has more time on his/her hands doing something very cool with all of this data. Here’s my best 5-minute effort:
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