“Artists/designers Francesco Rugi and Silvia Quintanilla of Milan-based firm Carnovsky have translated their RGB (red, green, blue) wallpaper to silk, creating a collection of three scarves. ‘Rosone’, ‘Jungla’ and ‘Bestiario’ are wearable art pieces which add the element of transparency and movement to the impressions. The three limited edition scarves (99 copies and three artist proofs), are pure silk peau d’ange and are printed and made in Italy. Each copy of the collection is numbered and signed. The patterns themselves combine the primary colors, resulting in an intricate yet disorienting image. If closely examined, or with the aid of a colored filter, the layers reveal a graphic composition of the animal kingdom.”

via: Designboom

About the Hi, 5 Interview Series

Hi, 5 (5 Questions) is a web-only interview series which presents five questions to artists, activists, and creative thinkers alike.  The project acts as an educational device which allows us to gain insight into the narratives that define successful individuals.  We are interested in the motivations behind ambitious ideas and how these individuals chart personal change in relation to their surroundings.

About Luci Everett

Luci Everett is a graphic designer and illustrator living in Melbourne, Australia. She does a lot of paper cutting, painting and scanning.

Luci Everett – Alfalfabet (2012)

Luci Everett

If you had to describe your current self to a 16-year-old you, what would you say?

Relationships and friendships are much easier now. It’s not going to be sudden, but gradually you’ve become much more confident and comfortable with yourself. You pursued graphic design and have a lot of fun. Every year gets better.

Could you describe an evolution in your work or way of thinking?

I think I’ve developed a more discerning eye over the last few years. I have a slightly more practical approach to creative ideas than I did when I was studying design at university – I guess that comes with working on real projects. That said, I’m driven inspiration-wise in pretty much the same way I always have been; I absorb a lot of visual information and that will always inform my work quite intuitively if I’m passionate about it.

Are there any people who have been instrumental in the development of your way of thinking and viewing the world?

No one in particular, although I think a couple of my high school art teachers and uni lecturers were pretty influential in nourishing my inclinations to approach or respond to the world creatively. Of course it’s unavoidable that my parents play a big part in how I view the world.

How do your political beliefs inform or fuel your work as an artist?

My political beliefs are quite separate from my artwork. My love and absorption in aesthetics comes from a different place to my connection and interaction with society. I’m not sure whether that’s a good or bad thing, it’s just the way it feels.

What do you feel a city should be or do for its inhabitants?

It should be a place which nurtures community, with the collective wellbeing of people and environment (equally) is always considered.

“Murmure is a four person creative agency based out of Caen, France who are doing some really interesting work. One thing that caught my eye from their website was these concrete business cards they created for themselves. More and more frequently business cards seem to be a byproduct of the past, so it’s almost like a tongue-in-cheek joke that they’d make a business card of what’s nearly stone. I also think it’s pretty great that each one comes in it’s own tiny box. If I were handed one of these business cards I would never forget about Murmure, but I’d also proudly display their card on a shelf.”

The Fox is Black

via: The Fox is Black

“This amazing panoramic photograph (known as a stereographic projection) was recently captured by Greek photographer Chris Kotsiopoloulos during a mammoth 30-hour photo shoot in Sounio, Greece. The image is comprised of hundreds of photographs shot from daytime to nighttime that have been digitally stitched together to represent an entire rotation of the Earth.”

via: Colossal

“Israel-based product designer Hilla Shamia has always been interested with the imperfections within controlled products. On show during Milan Design Week 2012, ‘wood casting’ is made from a whole tree trunk that enabled shamia to preserve the natural form of the piece while still having distinct boundaries in its creation. The square shape allows a sense of artificiality while leaving the memory of the material. Molten aluminum is poured directly onto the wooden the surface which burns the exterior. The plank is then cut lengthwise and inserted with a frame to define its final structure.”

Designboom

via: Designboom

These illustrations by French artist Julien Pacaud are too amazing not to post. I’ve selected a few of my favourites for your enjoyment.

via: iGNANT

Daragh’s introduction to the video:

Downtown Windsor is framed by two landmarks: the Ambassador Bridge in the West, and the casino in the east. They are sights to behold, especially at night. Last week we looked at the bridge (and in fact we will return to it by way of Indian Road in a later film). So it’s only right that we now turn to the casino.

This week we follow Robin Fitzsimons as she trains to become the ultimate gambler, and then faces off against the mighty Caesars Windsor, icon of Windsor’s tourist industry.

via: Broken City Lab

The image shown above is taken from a new series called Misunderstanding Focus, which exists as a collaboration between book and paper artist Ryuta Iida and artist Yoshihisa Tanaka called Nerhol.

“The numerous portraits are actually different, photographed over a period of three minutes as the subject tried to sit motionless, the idea being that it’s impossible to ever truly be still as our center of gravity shifts and our muscles are tense. The portraits are actually a layered lime-lapse representing several minutes in the subjects life and then cut like an onion to show slices of time, similar to the trunk of a tree.”

Below is a detail shot of the work shown above.

via: Colossal

About the Hi, 5 Interview Series

Hi, 5 (5 Questions) is a web-only interview series which presents five questions to artists, activists, and creative thinkers alike.  The project acts as an educational device which allows us to gain insight into the narratives that define successful individuals.  We are interested in the motivations behind ambitious ideas and how these individuals chart personal change in relation to their surroundings.

About Sandy Noble

Sandy Noble is a maker, a designer and a programmer. Sandy’s website is called Up To Much. Not home-spun exactly, but conceptually simple pieces, usually with some kind of particular conceit that makes them look more complex than they are, or complex, but with an elegant appearance: a series of elaborations on a basic concept.

Sandy Noble – Polargraph Machine

Sandy Noble

February 22/2012

If you had to describe your current self to a 16-year-old you, what would you say?

Just like you, but all the the things that made you a bit odd then, are the things that make me valuable now.

Could you describe an evolution in your work or way of thinking?

I’m very attached to how things work, rather than what they look like, or probably even what they do.  When I was a kid I made lots of plastic models, and enjoyed making some much more than others.  Some kits assembled beautifully, with lots of sub-assemblies, tabs, interlocking pieces.  Others left much more up to the builder’s skill to judge where a part should be stuck.  I never painted them – that’s the boring bit – where’s the fun?

I’m still very technically-focused, and working on projects where I am the designer and also the implementer suits that focus, it’s absolutely appropriate.  But it can be a handicap in the ideation phase of a project so I needed to learn to know when to switch it off. Learning about the stagey, iterative nature of the design process taught me when I should be thinking technically and when I should be thinking free-form.

I’m not very good at the free-form stuff, that’s the problem, and it’s partly a skills issue – I just never got very good at sketching fast, representation.  Everything I do I tend to want to boil it down to a series of diagrams, and just hold the gestalt of it in my head.  This skills problem really does flavour what I get around to doing – if it’s hard to express, it just doesn’t get done, or at least, it doesn’t get put down on paper.  It just floats around in my head until it crystalizes enough to be diagrammed, and that’s unfortunately a good way to lose inspiration, and can be discouraging when I look in my sketchbook and see the same old thing page after page, rather than all the amazing ideas I think I’m having but can’t express very clearly.

Generally my work is very tools-led.  I like using the tools much more than I like having the finished object.  Design is nice because design itself is a great big tool that can be used to make anything. So I made a desk once, and it works great as a desk, but my favourite thing about it is the work I did designing it.

So my art is entirely a product of the machine – the machine is the real piece of work, the drawings that come from it are only the proofs.  The polargraph machine is interesting too because it’s very very technical.  It’s programmed with a certain behaviour, and that’s where I see the art in it, that’s where the magic is.  Which is nice, because as a professional software developer, it’s the exact same art that I use during my day job.

So even though I’m a little wary of just giving all my hard work away, I realize I must because I owe it.

Are there any people who have been instrumental in the development of your way of thinking and viewing the world?

Other than my immediate family, very few.  My mom and dad are very practical people who would be happy to fix and make things from scratch.  They tell me “I’ll show you how, then you can do it yourself” and in many cases this the result of being tired of endlessly doing stuff for other people, but in other cases it is a genuine wish to share something they find marvelous and engaging.  Their house has a gate at the back with this carved wooden handle on the back, just a plain one, functional.  And it’d been carved and polished up and sat there every day for forty years.  I remember being amazed and proud when only fairly recently I realized my dad had made it from a block of wood rather than just buying one from a shop.  It was clearly the product of some love, some enjoyment of the process. Because actually it was pretty unnecessary in that place.  I was horrified when they threw that door away to get a new one, handle and all, all replaced by off-the-shelf hardware.  They are very unsentimental like that.

I suppose I am too, which is why I don’t like things which are purely decorative.  Even if a photograph or a painting looks beautiful, I’m more interested in knowing what technical aspects create that feeling, or how it was made than just letting it wash over me, and if I don’t know that, I can’t really decide if I like it or not.

How do your political beliefs inform or fuel your work as an artist?

I feel that if people take from others, they should give to others. And, paying forward rather than paying back.  People would like me to claim that I invented the polargraph machine, or that I am a trail blazer of some sort for using 3d printing in jewellry, and are a little dismayed when I tell them these things are just the most recent development of very commonplace technology – there is no high-tech here, no genius, no special insight, only the will to experiment for it’s own sake, and the will to publicly invest in something.  That in itself, like art, is quite attractive and will get people’s attention.

So even though I’m a little wary of just giving all my hard work away, I realize I must because I owe it.  This is especially true in areas with a strong community, learning aspect, that is, open source software and hardware, and the people who made that possible.  It feels very wrong to take something that is free, bottle it and try to sell it back.

What do you feel a city should be or do for its inhabitants?

A city should be present enough to lead people into a community, but get out of the way enough to allow people to shape it, splinter it, build individual identities within it.  Easier said than done.

Up to Much (Sandy Noble)