Monday, September 26, 2011

Around the World in Sixty... Seconds?

Below is a pretty amazing time lapse of a satellite cutting diagonally across the western hemisphere, starting over the Pacific ocean and ending near Antarctica. Watch for lightning storms during the night and for the beautiful glow of the ozone layer.


Friday, September 16, 2011

Spotlight on Iceland

Being that the contributors to the Operable Window seem to pick up and post a disproportionally large amount of work coming out of Iceland it is time to compile a post of strictly work from the cold island in the North Atlantic:

Starting with this new, and stunning, time lapse video of the Icelandic Aurora by August Ingvarsson:



Followed by this work, previously featured here in a post about geographic branding, that had our hearts beating like a jungle drum:



An bit of Unbuilt Architecture for an Icelandic Pylon Design Competition creates a new typology of high voltage power lines and pylons:





This design work was done by Jin Choi and Thomas Shine of Choi+Shine in 2008.

Plan - Grzeszykowska & Smaga

and we're back...


Recently I was exposed to, perhaps, one of the most interesting examples of contemporary photography that I have ever scene.  Strikingly beautiful and disturbingly surreal, the work of Aneta Grzeszykowska and Jan Smaga, of Poland,  explores the world of neighbors.  Shot over a two year period (2003-2004), Plan, are compositions of hundreds of detailed images stitched together to achieve an intimate view of living spaces.

There is so much of this that is interesting for so many reasons.  Outside of the works themselves, one aspect that I find incredibly fascinating is the fact that these works use digital photography, and editing tools, to achieve something that was in no way possible even a few years before the project was started.

Though it can be argued that many of the edited images we see today (especially the crappy photo-manipulations so often in print ads) were not possible without Photoshop, but they are still basically similar techniques as were used with film.  It is just easier and perhaps more realistic.

Plan is different though.  It is documenting reality in a new way.  By utilizing the medium,  Grzeszykowska and Smaga, have pushed a boundary.  See for yourself.

The artists in their natural habitat.


Detail of above image.