Future Faded

megadummy

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 13:27:25 -0400

Just a heads up - I have another tumblr called megadummy where I am posting every single image on my computer in chronological order, with no commentary, just an artist/photographer credit if I have one. It’s already almost 30 pages deep, and I’m only a fraction of the way through. There’s some good stuff, hope you enjoy it.

We Are Looking Too Much

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 18:51:05 -0400

Why are all of the designers I truly admire at least a decade older than I am? I wrote a big post on my portfolio blog about it - designers my age are looking too much, let’s see something new.

Sam Vanallameersch / SOVCHOZ

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 03:20:50 -0400

Sam Vanallameersch / SOVCHOZ

Sam Vanallameersch / SOVCHOZ this one is so creepy :)

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 03:20:02 -0400

Sam Vanallameersch / SOVCHOZ

this one is so creepy :)

Sam Vanallameersch / SOVCHOZ

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 03:17:26 -0400

Sam Vanallameersch / SOVCHOZ

I came across the work of Sam Vanallameersch / SOVCHOZ while...

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 03:16:31 -0400

I came across the work of Sam Vanallameersch / SOVCHOZ while randomly clicking around in somebody’s link list. I look at a lot of illustration and definitely don’t feel the need to post about all of it here, but Sam’s work really caught my attention. For me it was working on two levels - I really like the way he fills a page, and I think his line is fantastic. But his work was really unsettling too, and I really can’t put a finger on it. There is a weird and disturbed/confused/bruised energy in his work that I really appreciate, and find it so much more rewarding than the kind of illustration that really tries hard to be disturbing (I am thinking of what you see in a Juxtapoz ad where there is like a vintage dollhead with hollow eyes and a creepy smile, yaaaaaawn.) Totally subjective, but he really feels to me like he is going off in his own direction, I can’t even think of anybody he reminds me of at all. And there is obviously a story in each piece, they manage to feel complete without making anything obvious. Something is happening, you can see it in the sum of all the little compositional details without having anything spelled out for you.

I picked these particular images because, again, I love the way they use the page, and because the colors are super strange - olive green, purple, grey, peach, and a few hits of lemon yellow? Nobody does that! Nobody!

I try not to hype music very much, but I just came across this...

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 20:40:56 -0400

I try not to hype music very much, but I just came across this video for The Antlers “Rolled Together,” which was my favorite song from Burst Apart, their latest album. It sounds great on the album but is the kind of song that would be extra-amazing live, mostly because Pete Silberman’s hair-raising falsetto is something I would love to hear in person. This video from pitchfork.tv does a fine job of making the viewer feel like they are in the studio, and does it without feeling like somebody’s cousin wandered in and recorded the whole thing with their iPhone. It captures the band performing with Neon Indian (who in my opinion he doesn’t really affect the song that much, just adding some texture - which is fine, and sounds good, and at least he was being respectful of their material - but don’t be expecting a wild mashup of woozy beats and the signature restrained Antlers sound.) Enough about Neon Indian, the song is fantastic. Great audio for an internet video, and the video production is very high quality and artfully done. No special effects or projections or anything, just nice natural lighting and tasteful editing that make a very intimate song more than it was.

These creepy photos show dummies used to gauge the effect of...

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 12:26:22 -0400

These creepy photos show dummies used to gauge the effect of A-Bombs on humans.

via AquaVelvet.

BB King - I would have loved to have seen him in his prime.

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 02:12:45 -0400

BB King - I would have loved to have seen him in his prime.

A lot of people noted the distinctive cover art on last...

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 02:13:26 -0400

A lot of people noted the distinctive cover art on last year’s The Suburbs by Arcade Fire - it won a Grammy award, so it has clearly been in front of a lot of people at this point. Not everyone liked it but I thought it was very appealing and was an excellent complement to the music (which I enjoyed very much then, and still do.) What a lot of people don’t know is that Burlesque of North America’s Wes Winship has continued to design a series of concert posters for Arcade Fire using the same visual language as the album art, but with a more expansive canvas. I think they are amazing looking - fantastic color palette, carefully arranged images, tricky tricky tricky overprinting, unexpected typography, and they don’t look like anything else out there. The ones I have posted here don’t seem to be for sale anymore, but some other great ones are in the Burlesque Store.

Those guys definitely aren’t surveyors, they had to be up...

Wed, 18 May 2011 21:51:59 -0400

Those guys definitely aren’t surveyors, they had to be up to something terribly important up there.

I love how almost-fake this photo is - the perspective, the contrast between the sharp black building in the foreground and the hazy background, those guys looking so perfectly posed like that…

Finally something I made, because I finally made...

Sat, 07 May 2011 16:04:37 -0400

Finally something I made, because I finally made something… art for the “Theoretical Genres” compilation, I was paired up to illustrate “GhettoCell.”

This is the “had to meet the deadline” version, but I am going tokeep working and ghettocellify it some more I think, will post when that happens.

"And I think that’s the state you want to be in most when you work on any kind of story, or any kind..."

Sat, 07 May 2011 14:56:00 -0400

“And I think that’s the state you want to be in most when you work on any kind of story, or any kind of art that is story-based: if you don’t actually feel some sympathy and ideally fall in love with your characters, then something’s wrong. You should really have a really strong affection, even if they’re the most venal, hateful people — you should still have some sort of sympathy and understanding or empathy for them.”

- Chris Ware

"‎I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not..."

Tue, 03 May 2011 10:27:00 -0400

“‎I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”

I have never posted an image more appropriate for the name of...

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 23:21:55 -0400

I have never posted an image more appropriate for the name of this blog… kind of how I’m feeling at the moment though

by Casper Balslev

From the incredible, official NASA flickr set. Go look!

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 14:40:10 -0400

From the incredible, official NASA flickr set. Go look!

I have always been fascinated with maps, so naturally the...

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 14:32:54 -0400

I have always been fascinated with maps, so naturally the map-based work of Jenny O’Dell is very appealing to me. She basically picks a “theme” like cargo ships/swimming pools/empty parking lots and then finds examples on of the theme on google maps, crops them out, and arranges them. It sounds simple enough, but is interesting because when seen as a group, patterns and commonalities become apparent. I also like the idea that this work would have been next-to-impossible only seven years ago, when she would have had to charter a plane hundreds of times over or hacked into like a NASA database to have access to these photographs.

I was cleaning out some of my bookmarks - I have so many that...

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 13:43:00 -0400

I was cleaning out some of my bookmarks - I have so many that they are hardly useful anymore - and I came across this piece of installation art, which I loved the first time I saw it. What I hadn’t remembered was that it was by Ai Weiwei, the renowned Chinese artist who was recently arrested by the Chinese government amidst yet another crackdown on anybody suspected of expressing anti-government sentiment - including Chinese journalists, bloggers, and human rights lawyers. This is not Ai’s first collision with the Chinese government - last year, he was bodily prevented from flying to Oslo to attend the Nobel ceremony for Liu Xiaobo, another Chinese citizen currently under arrest, and earlier this year Chinese authorities destroyed his new studio in Shanghai. Nobody has heard from Ai since his arrest, and nobody knows where he is being held, and yet the Chinese government is “baffled” as to why there is such an uproar about the arrest? Incredible, and a sobering reminder that we should appreciate the freedoms, artistic and otherwise, that we have here.

Back to the art - the installation was at the Tate Modern in London. The sunflower seeds are made of hand-painted porcelain, and there are 100 million of them, all unique. They were created over a 2 year period in Jingdezhen, a small city in China known for porcelain crafting. Visitors are actually encouraged to walk over them - imagine your hesitation in taking that first, precious-porcelain crushing step! There could be nothing casual about it, the art is nearly forcing you to think about it as you physically interact with it - a reaction that much gallery art fails to inspire.

From the dezeen article:

For Ai, sunflower seeds – a common Chinese street snack shared by friends – carry personal associations from the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). While individuals were stripped of personal freedom, propaganda images depicted Chairman Mao as the sun and the mass of people as sunflowers turning towards him. Yet Ai remembers the sharing of sunflower seeds as a gesture of human compassion, providing a space for pleasure, friendship and kindness during a time of extreme poverty, repression and uncertainty. There are also contemporary resonances in the work, with its combination of mass production and traditional craftsmanship inviting us to look more closely at the ‘Made in China’ phenomenon and the geopolitics of cultural and economic exchange.

Sunflower Seeds is a sensory and immersive installation, which visitors can touch, walk on and listen to as the seeds shift beneath their feet. However, the tactile, engaging nature of this work also encourages us to consider highly pertinent questions about ourselves and our world. What does it mean to be an individual in today’s society? Are we insignificant or powerless unless we act together? What do our increasing desires, materialism and number mean for the future? Ai Weiwei has said “From a very young age I started to sense that an individual has to set an example in society. Your own acts and behaviour tell the world who you are and at the same time what kind of society you think it should be.”

I am having a difficult time figuring out why I love this...

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 22:28:36 -0400

I am having a difficult time figuring out why I love this “Everything is Everything” video from Koki Tanaka. I’m sure it’s been a love-it-or-hate-it kind of a thing - He basically sets up random household objects to move or interact with each other in unexpected ways. It’s not exciting, just…interesting. And I think it takes a certain kind of impressive intellect to think like he is in this video, all of it fits together to form a whole. I definitely get the impression that he very carefully curated what made it into the movie….I’m not sure why throwing a mattress down the stairs is ok and, like, pouring milk into a a bathtub wouldn’t be, but that’s just the way it is.

I totally don’t understand the inclusion of the interstitial still shots of food.

This video is a couple years old apparently, but I just saw it - if anybody knows what he has been up to I would love to know.

Originally found on booooooom.

Kalle Gustafsson is worth taking a look at - something about her...

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 23:05:58 -0400

Kalle Gustafsson is worth taking a look at - something about her is so much better than the crowd of photographers going for a similar aesthetic.