Hasta La Creative!

There are lots of ways to make billboards more appealing. You can turn them into art. You can make them into homes or playgrounds. You can get them to help the environment. Or you can just completely white them out.

The latest response to billboard blight? Seamlessly blending them into their surroundings.

That’s what artist Brian Kane did over the past month with “Healing Tool,” a project that took over two digital highway billboards in Massachusetts. Healing Tool is a Photoshop tool that allows you to clone areas of an image to patch over other areas. Kane mimics that process here by making the board space look like its surroundings—trees in the daytime, moon and starscapes at night.

“The goal is to provide a moment of temporary relief and unexpected beauty during the daily grind of commuting,” Kane writes on his website. “During the day hours, a series of images from the specific location are shown on the display. We replace the missing background and create a magic dimensional window. A dynamic motion parallax effect occurs as the vehicle passes the location.

“During the evening hours, high-resolution images of the moon are shown. Synced to the daily phase, people can view the moon despite the effects of urban light pollution. An image of the Milky Way is shown on new moon night.”

The changing images give drivers “something to look forward to: a curious and abstract narrative over time,” says Kane, adding that the project is a form of “unvertising.”

“By removing the marketing message from the advertising space, we create an unexpected moment of introspection,” he says. “People are allowed to interpret an image based on their own experience, and not necessarily with the singular focus of the advertiser’s intent.”

The project wrapped on Sunday after a month. More images and a video below.

Via Osocio.

The next Campbell’s Soup billboard you see might just be a masterpiece.

In fact, it could be Andy Warhol’s iconic “Campbell’s Soup Can” from 1964. Reproductions of that particular work, along with 57 others, will be popping up throughout the month of August on some 50,000 static and digital billboards, outdoor kiosks and transit signs in 170 American cities and towns in all 50 states—part of a project called Art Everywhere U.S.

Inspired by a similar program last year in the U.K., the U.S. version is sponsored by the Outdoor Advertising Association of America in conjunction with the Art Institute of Chicago, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Whitney Museum in New York. Those institutions hope to attract visitors, while the OAAA is showcasing the latest technology. (You can scan the artwork via smartphone to learn about the images, their creators and the museums.)

Art Everywhere U.S. hasn’t assessed the value of the donated ad space, but the signage used for the British effort last summer—which ran for two weeks and had fewer than half as many installations—was worth almost $5 million.

Check out a map of the locations here.

The U.S. effort launches today in Times Square and will showcase 50 works selected by the public and eight chosen by the museums. Folks were asked to pick their favorites from among 100 possibilities; 170,000 votes were cast, and Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks”—the oft-parodied, quintessentially American “lonely diner” scene from 1942—topped the poll.

The selections span 230 years of U.S. history, from 1778 to 2008, and it’s amazing how evocatively these works, viewed as a progression, capture the increasing complexity and ambiguity of the American experience. Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of George Washington shows our first president, who sat for the artist in 1793, in a suitably stately and assured pose. By the time we reach Grant Wood’s Iowa farm couple in “American Gothic” (1930), we see a society clinging to traditions but bedeviled by change (ouch, that pitchfork!). Later works informed by mass media, like Roy Lichtenstein’s Disney-fied “Look Mickey” (1961), and the aforementioned Warhol, show artists forging new forms amid sensory overload, striving to simplify and make sense of a world spinning out of control.

In the context of Art Everywhere, “Campbell’s Soup Can” really resonates. This hyper-realistic interpretation of a product that appeared in countless ads will now replace the advertising it skewered, bringing Warhol’s trenchant comment on our commoditized existence full circle.

It seems fitting that in our fickle, media-centric society, Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame keep running into overtime.

Photos via: 1 2 3 4

Le studio allemand Design Addicted nous démontre avec Glitch Me sa capacité à modifier, détourner et répéter avec talent différents éléments pour leur donner une seconde vie. Des compositions impressionnantes et visuellement impactantes à découvrir dans une série d’images.

L’artiste Benjamin Swanson a fait la belle série très conceptuelle appelée « The Conquest of Materials », dans laquelle il joue avec des matières vues à travers notre perception, le tout avec une dominante de nuances de teintes grises, blanches et noires. A découvrir dans la suite de l’article.

Claudio Parmiggiani a conçu cette installation d’un labyrinthe fait de vitres, au sein de la Galerie d’Art Moderne à Bologne en Italie. Dans ce labyrinthe très singulier, il faudrait briser les vitres de glace avec un marteau pour pouvoir en sortir. Ce qu’il reste est un labyrinthe brisé. Plus de photos dans la suite.

Phillip Stearns imagine de magnifiques visuels, à l’aide d’une pratique pour le moins étonnante : il applique divers produits chimiques ménagers à la surface d’un film qu’il enclenche avec 15.000 volts. En un éclair, l’impulsion électrique créée des impressions spectaculaires ressemblant à des réseaux de vaisseaux sanguins dans la rétine.

Le sculpteur italien Livio Scarpella nous fait découvrir des œuvres de sa collection, en particulier des sculptures de portraits, aux caractères androgynes, cachées sous un voile transparent laissant transparaitre l’expression de leur visage. Ces sculptures sont complétées par une pierre colorée remplaçant le cœur de l’humain.

A guide to seven new magazines, each offering its own niche perspective on fashion.

Après la ville de Paris, l’artiste français Etienne Lavie s’attaque aux panneaux publicitaires de la ville de Milan, en les remplaçant par des peintures classiques et célèbres. L’artiste utilise l’art comme un substitut de la publicité, le tout dans un décor urbain. Une belle série à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.

While there used to be innate suspicion toward Wikipedia among museum staffs, even hostility, in recent years there has increasingly been cooperation.