Hasta La Creative!

(TrendHunter.com) If you were a TV producer launching a new show about 1970s swingers, would you admit the plot was based on the lives of your parents? Mike Kelley, the creator of Swingtown, which airs on June 5 on CBS, didn’t have a problem with the attribution.

Bored of traditional comedies and the flooding of …

(TrendHunter.com) These toilet bowl or urinal stickers are sure to make cleaning bathrooms easier. Target misses around the toilet have got to be the worst bathroom cleaning chore ever. The colour changing stickers make it easy to aim and fun too.

This is a great boon to mothers of small boys who are still learnin…

Just back from the OFFF festival which this year had the very good taste to move to Lisbon. Offf gathers designers, programmers, illustrators and visual artists whose creativity explores and fashions digital aesthetics and software language.

I’ll leave aside all the digital animation and pretty flash websites presentations and go straight to the keynote of the first evening which was performed more than given by web designer and artist Joshua Davis. I’ve always liked his works, they have something very girly in sharp contrast with his tattooed soft-punk image.

Davis likes Jackson Pollock, not so much for his paintings, more for his approach to gesture. Pollock regarded the process of its creation as art and not so much the final product. Like Pollack, Davis’ art is based on gestures, but he relies on technology to create. He designs programs which follow randomly what he draws. He sets the rules and the program takes from there, surprising the artist each time.

Soundwires, 2007

Davis never liked mathematics. He went to art school and had to teach himself math and programming. At art school he was mostly into painting and became obsessed with the idea of creating his own drawing tools and experimenting with his materials. He would put his paintings in the freezer but the outcome was disappointing: the paintings were cold, nothing else happened. More interesting things occurred when Davis baked his paintings in the oven: the varnish on top would dry faster than the oil of the painting. As a result the painting would shatter. But the lesson he learned was that he enjoyed the idea that he didn’t have total control over the final artwork.

According to Davis, computational design is divided in two clans: the purists and the hybrids. The purists are Ben Fry, Casey Reas, John Maeda, Golan Levin, etc. They only use code. The hybrid, like himself, Niko Stumpo, Geoff Lillemon and others blend the code with art works. The artwork is thrown into the swarm system and emerges as a series of art/design works which are all different from the other. The artists defines some parameters such as speed, rotation, indecision and the system maps the drawing according to these lines.

He was commisioned by BMW a series of limited edition prints that would “capture the essence” of the company‘ s Z4 Coup??. The artist translated a number of views of the coup?? and its components into an algorithm that served as the basis for prints. Davis also selected geographic notes and scales from a German school atlas to act as a symbol of mobility in the prints. Video documenting the process.

Despite his reliance on programs and codes, Davis still sees his work as being one of an artist: he creates the programs, sets the rules, chooses the colours to use, feeds the program with his own handmade drawings and ideas and at the end of the process he takes the role of the critics by selecting which of the pieces made by the program will be kept or deleted.

Kimono Blue, 2007

For example, to realize his Kimono series, he gathered the assets and forms found in his collection of books on Kimonos, drew them and fed them to the generative system.

Adobe CS3, the Snow Owl, 2007

He selected only 250 of the resulting drawings. His limited edition prints are all different from each other. But instead of numbering them 1/1, he numbers them 1/250, 2/250, etc. The reason for that is that what matters is the program, not the visual output.

Yellow Tiger

After some crazy hotel carpet stories Davis ran us through some of his latest works and exhibitions:
– His collaboration with Chuck Anderson for AMP Energy drink.
– The cover of the CD Yellow Tiger by Ming Dynasty,
– Solo exhibition at Maxalot Gallery in Barcelona.

Drawing outside the Maxalot gallery in Barcelona

– projection on a building facade for the 4th edition of the TodaysArt Festival in The Hague.
– Davis commented on Random Assistant which was exhibited at OFFF too. Random Assistant is a long stripe of lack and white prints accompanied by transparent watercolors and brushes for the public to colour the print.

As usual, Davis used a generative system to create the artwork, leaving the decision making of the compositions to the programs. This time though, one of the components of the system which governs the way the work is colored and painted was removed from the software. Instead, the public will fulfill this functionality by using the brushes and watercolors at their disposal. Davis did a first version of the project in Rovereto (Italy) for the festival Futuro Presente. The OFFF version was incredibly successful.

Random Assistant, OFFF, Lisbon, Day 1

Random Assistant, OFFF, Lisbon, Day 2

For Tropism in New York he worked on new organic forms to create a “super nature.” For the first time his generative graphics were turned into 3D-printed objects: a series of vases in porcelain.

Tropism vase, 2007

– To celebrate the launch of his first line of housewares (trash cans and pillows) at the Umbra Concept Store in Toronto, Davis used the Tropism Engine to generate huge panels (like he did at the OFFF Festival in New York.), he had them printed and pasted on the window of the shop.

Image blogto

The artist then listed his sources of inspiration: there’s Basquiat, Cy Twombly, the indeed awesome 18th century painter Ito Jakuchu, the Batu Cave in Malaysia, etc.

Ito Jakuchu, Rooster and Hen with Hydrangeas

Davis ended the presentation with a list of (not very original) tips for the audience:
Look for what you don’t see in your immediate environment, you don’t have to fly to the other end of the globe to find some source of inspiration, make work for love, not for awards or acceptance, complacency is your enemy, find your own voice, if you are using someone else’s you run out of conversation pretty quickly. And work like hell.

(TrendHunter.com) Recent discussions of property rights n the moon has pointed out an interesting point – that the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 makes it legal for corporations to claim lunar property.

Companies could therefore stick their proverbial flag in the moon dust to mark it as their own.

Talk about an incre…

(TrendHunter.com) With everything in the world becoming digital, artist Ingo Schmid has something to say. His ‘Web is Nut Enough’ performance art piece is billed as, “The first analog website in the world.”

It is a statement and social commentary about our obsession with all things digital.

Yanko Design explains,…

(TrendHunter.com) Only a university based in Sin City would have the moxie to offer an actual class on how to run a night club. I guess its not unreasonable to believe that all those strippers really are attending college with their tip money. Want to make some real cash after graduation? Forget about Harvard or Sta…

As certain as if it was put into your hands.

Advertising Agency: Ogilvy Budapest, Hungary
Creative Director / Copywriter: Gabor Spielmann
Art Director: Bruno Almeida
Illustrator: Morpho
Photographer: Pál Nánási
Published: January 2008

Advertising Agency: Ogilvy Budapest, Hungary
Creative Director / Copywriter: Gabor Spielmann
Art Directors: Bruno Almeida, Eric Napier, Viktor Uhrin
Illustrator: Morpho
Photographer: Pál Nánási
Published: January 2008

The print category received 376 entries. A Gold Pencil was awarded to art director/writer duo Elliot Nordstrom and Phil Van Buren of the University of Colorado for their campaign titled “There is Only One” which artfully featured the unique Doritos chip as the standout in a sea of generic potatoes chips, tortilla chips and crackers.

Other highlights of the show include a Gold Pencil awarded in the Interactive category to art director Thomas Jonsson and writer Cark Fredrik Jannerfeldt of Berghs School of Communication, Stockholm for “We don’t like banners,” an innovative computer plug-in program that would detect where advertising banners are placed and override them with your own personalized content. The tag line reads: “What if the Internet was just like a bag of Doritos. Filled only with the stuff you like.”

read more

The footage of Cameron Diaz, drunk getting hitched to an equally soused Ashton Kutcher was “leaked” on the web to help boost interested in the movie “What happens in Vegas” which opened May 9. Adage reported:

those surveyed were asked for their top three choices of movies to see this summer, only 13% of Marketcast respondents named “What Happens in Vegas.” Instead, most mentioned blockbusters such as “Indiana Jones” (May 22) or “Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” (May 16). In short, when a film is tracking behind pictures that don’t even open until two to three weeks after it does, the studio releasing it has a potentially significant problem.

Complicating matters, Ms. Diaz was forced to skip its press junket last weekend after the sudden death of her father on April 15.

That has not been lost on Fox. The studio hastily cut new TV spots showcasing broader humor that might skew more male, and the planned leak of the illicit “wedding video” may yet stir up interest among heretofore unenthusiastic males.

“The ‘wedding video’ is only in the actual movie for a little bit, but they shot 10 minutes of footage, and it’s fucking hilarious,” said Shawn Levy, a producer on “Vegas” who has also directed the comedies “Night at the Museum” and “Cheaper by the Dozen” for Fox.

So far “What happens in Vegas” has received mixed reviews, and how many saw it the opening weekend hasn’t been announced yet.

read more