CONTEMPORARY CURRENCY FOR THE PRESENT AGE

 

In a world dominated by economic crisis, money is on everyones mind. British newspaper, The Guardian, famous for its international multimedia presence, has requested artists and writers to create modern currency to reflect the political and financial times in which we live. Notable writers and artists such as Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Franzen, and Tracey Emin answered the question, “What is money?” The Guardian has received some pointed, creative, remarkable, and humorous responses. Here are 8 of the 18 pictures they received. To see the complete set visit guardian.co.uk

$18,871.93 To Buy the Worlds Longest Receipt

 

You may have heard about the Store Buyout Project earlier this year: hearing that store owner Hercules was about to lose the lease on his small New York grocery store, a team of clever artists headed into Hercules Fancy Grocery and bought everything in the store. That’s right, everything. They then put it all up online and are currently re-selling it as art, encased in classy clear boxes to display the purchase. It’s pretty cool to know you’re helping out with saving Hercules’ store while getting some pretty different art to show off and a great story to tell.

So what about this “worlds longest receipt?” The total for all purchases generated quite a paper trail: 57 1/2 feet of receipt to be exact. On it are over 3000 individually entered items and a grand total of $18,871.91. See where this is going? The Store Buyout folks have just put up the huge scroll of paper encased in a glass box on Etsy, for the total purchase price of $18,871.91! You can see a copy of the full original receipt here. Wild!

See a video of the buyout day below, then you can follow the story on Reddit, Twitter, or head to storebuyout.com to see what’s for sale.

Interested in another project by Kyle, the mastermind behind this project? He also did the famous One Red Paperclip project, trading a paperclip up to a house!

 

Stanley Kubrick’s Photographs of New York

Stanley Kubrick is best known for his directing credits — Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, etc. — but it was his early ability with the camera that originally propelled him into the art of capturing images. His talent was immense even at 17. In 1945, he sold a photograph of a sad news vendor reacting to the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Look magazine for $25, and a couple months later became the youngest photographer ever hired by the magazine. Kubrick’s career as a photojournalist gives us another look into the man who directed some of the greatest movies ever put onto film. A keen eye for light and shadow drape his subjects under a veil that is strictly characteristic of Kubrick and his control over the camera.

His pictures are rife with an air of wonderment. Loser vs victor. Circus freaks, and paper boys. Organized chaos. The poses and situations of the subjects he captured, speak of a New York filled with the eclecticism it has spent decades parading and perfecting. 25 photos were hand selected out of 10,000 negatives for the currently running show at The Museum of the City in New York. What is being displayed is Kubrick’s 1940s New York, a New York we now get to experience as well: a city seen through the lens of a young master. See a selection of the photographs below then head over to The Museum of the City of New York and VandM to see the rest.

VISUAL BITS #126 > Putting NYC Design on the Map

 

Check out your daily links after the jump 

• How Your Ear Works [Ear]
• Draw A Stick Man [Fun]
• The world’s first statue in honor of Steve Jobs [Steve Jobs]
• Squrl moves hard into tablet video streaming [Video]
• Tap That! [Design]

         Image Source: pentagram.com

Does Wood Have an Expiration Date?

 

The answer to the question above is for most a resounding “NO”… but for the US’s bloated medical industry, this is not the case. Many products that have no logical explanation for an expiration date, including wooden tongue depressors, are thrown away every year. Often these products are in dire need in other countries… so it is no wonder why our country has the highest cost per patient for healthcare of any country in the world.  The unfortunate truth is that it is illegal here to repurpose medical products, even if they have not been used. Worse yet, these products end up in landfills only polluting the world more. Now, an organization called MedWish has set out to find a solution to this problem.

Founded in 1993 by Dr. Lee Ponsky, MedWish International takes discarded supplies and equipment to developing countries with the objective to provide humanitarian aid while reducing solid waste in our environment. The obvious things like syringes, bandages and medicines all come to mind for a project like this.  More interestingly though, often equipment that is in perfect working order ends up thrown away, because our legislation will not allow it to be reused under any circumstances.  So items like microscopes, ultrasounds and more end up in the trash pile instead of in the hands of doctors around the world.

So far, MedWish has managed to keep 2.2 million pounds of medical waste out of landfills. The map above shows the 42 countries they have served so far. While it is a good thing for Americans to reduce the amount of waste heading toward the landfills, it is a miracle for those who are receiving the shipments. MedWish is the perfect example of the kind of innovation the world needs to assure that our increasing population can have improved living conditions while resources become more scarce.  See the MedWish video’s below, then listen to this Freakonomics Podcast interview to hear more.

A London Underground “Tube” Map From Kyle Bean

 

Now this is taking the idea of London’s famous ‘Tube‘ quite literally: Kyle Bean, designer, model maker and all around advertising re-thinker has created the London metro map using colored drinking straws. His map uses the colorful tubes in a playful, elementary school craft-time like fashion, which when finished appears completely to scale and quite grown up… that’s because he’s built the design over a large poster of the actual map. His final design, lacking the station labels needed to navigate the system, is still highly recognizable for what it is, a truly iconic design tribute.

Kyle Bean has been producing exceptionally crafty models for quite some time now. Many of his designs have been featured in high profile print advertising, with clients as varied as Wallpaper*, Scientific American and Louis Vuitton. His recently completed child’s toy like iPhone model, called App, features at the bottom of this post and on the cover of the December issue of Computer Arts magazine. For more of his growing portfolio, see kylebean.co.uk.















Via: trendsnow.net 

Mountains of Books Become Mountains

I thought I’d seen every type of book carving imaginable, until I ran across these jaw dropping creations by Guy Laramee. His works are so sculptural, so movingly natural in their form, they’ve really touched me. His works are inspired by a fascination with so-called progress in society: a thinking which says the book is dead, libraries are obsolete and technology is the only way of the future. His thoughts:

“One might say: so what? Do we really believe that “new technologies” will change anything concerning our existential dilemma, our human condition? And even if we could change the content of all the books on earth, would this change anything in relation to the domination of analytical knowledge over intuitive knowledge? What is it in ourselves that insists on grabbing, on casting the flow of experience into concepts?”

Carving into the discarded stacks of books, he has created fantastic, romantic landscapes which remind us that though our fascinations and the value we put on different ideas have changed, we as a species have not evolved that much.

“Mountains of disused knowledge return to what they really are: mountains. They erode a bit more and they become hills. Then they flatten and become fields where apparently nothing is happening. Piles of obsolete encyclopedias return to that which does not need to say anything, that which simply IS. Fogs and clouds erase everything we know, everything we think we are.”

See more of his beautifully meditative works at guylaramee.com.





































Via: etoday.ru