Recently in Art and Design
Odd CB radio cards from the 1970s
Artist Mitch O'Connel bought a some unusual CB radio cards at a flea market.
Love these personal CB radio cards, the more homemade looking the better. The sometimes naive art seems more personal, contains great left field imagery and, as an artist, less threatening!CB radio cards: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Have fun in a capsized ship at Machine Project in Los Angeles, 9/5/2010
Mark Allen of Machine Project in Los Angeles says:
For a period of five weeks Josh Beckman’s Sea Nymph will be host to a whole series of nautical-themed events, performances, lectures, and workshops, as well as an opera by and for dogs. Inside the capsized hull of the ship there will also be a crystal cave. Join us at Machine for the opening on September 5th from 5-10pm, where you can gaze upon the wreckage with accompanying performances by Clay Chaplin, Ambient Force 3000, Ecce, OK Music, Chris Kallmyer, and Colin Woodford.Josh Beckman’s Sea Nymph: A shipwrecked boat inside Machine
Sweet little steampunk automaton
Cory Doctorow at 6:11 AM Sat 
Kamill1 sez, "My first attempt at an automata, I think it turned out pretty well! Super fun build. A little wink to Jake Von Slatt, sitting down to play the pipe organ. Huzzah!"
Steampunk Automata "Orchestra Von Slatt", Completed Friday, Sep 3 2010 (Thanks, kamill1, via Submitterator!)
What Things Do: excellent webcomics
Panels from "Unraveling," part 2, by Jordan Crane
What Things Do is a stunningly good webcomics site, launched by comics artist Jordan Crane and featuring some of the best independent comics artists around, including Gabrielle Bell, Abner Dean, Sammy Harkham, Jaime Hernandez, Kevin Huizenga, Ted May, John Porcellino, Ron Regé Jr., Steve Weissman, and Dan Zettwoch.
Many of the artists here seem to have been mildly influenced by Tintin's Hergé (and Joost Swarte). This is not a big surprise, since Jordan Crane selects all the artists for his site, and Crane himself shows a little Hergé in his work. (I can't think of a better artist than Hergé from which to draw inspiration.)
The comics in What Things Do all have the same yellow-gray color scheme (with a few exceptions) that give the site an elegant cohesiveness. The comics are large clear and readable.
In addition to showcasing the work of contemporary cartoonists, What Things Do, runs "decades-old work" from worthy but not-so-famous cartoonists, as well as articles about comics. What Things Do: excellent webcomics
The Wilderness Downtown: Chrome experiment by Chris Milk and Arcade Fire
The Wilderness Downtown is perhaps the best browser-dominating Net art piece I've experienced since Jodi.org's best work more than a decade ago. An experimental, interactive film by Chris Milk, it's a tour-de-force for the Chrome browser and a lovely visual poem to accompany Arcade Fire's excellent "We Used To Wait" from their album The Suburbs. I won't give the "story" away, but I found it to be a deeply personal and moving experience.
Choreographed windows, interactive flocking, custom rendered maps, real-time compositing, procedural drawing, 3D canvas rendering... this Chrome Experiment has them all. "The Wilderness Downtown" is an interactive interpretation of Arcade Fire's song "We Used To Wait" and was built entirely with the latest open web technologies, including HTML5 video, audio, and canvas.The Wildreness Downtown (Thanks, Jean Hagan!)
"Behind the Work: Arcade Fire 'The Wilderness Downtown'" (Creativity Online)
Curator and artist Aunia Kahn selected a group of 23 lowbrow/pop surrealist artists to interpret one card each of the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck. Hi-Fructose has a sneak preview of 14 of the cards, which will debut October 1 with a full show at Los Angeles's La Luz de Jesus Gallery, a book, and of course a deck of cards. Above left, card back by Daniel Martin Diaz; right, The Devil by Chet Zar
The LowBrow Tarot Card Project preview (Hi-Fructose)
UPDATE: You can see the entire show at the La Luz de Jesus site here.
Mechanical wall-hung clockwork sculptures
Here's more wonderful stuff from Brett Dickins, AKA MechanicalSculptor, who makes wall-hung mechanical clockworks that explode/disintegrate/transform and reform. I'm absolutely besotted by the self-sawing piece around 1:55.
Kinetic Wall Sculptures - Dizzy
Boing Boing/Imaginary Foundation/Marshall McLuhan t-shirt
I'm pleased to announce another co-designed t-shirt from Imaginary Foundation and Boing Boing! We hope you dig it! This design is a play on media theorist Marshall McLuhan's most famous soundbite, "The medium is the message." It's available in small-XXL. The front of the t-shirt is printed with a flock process, giving the blue text a lush texture. The back (above left) is a super soft "discharge" print with the BB and IF logos and the following text:
"Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media with which men communicate than by the content of the communication." –Marshall McLuhan, 1969Boing Boing/Imaginary Foundation t-shirt: The MessageThis design is a celebration of the t-shirt as a medium. We are all media, so we may as well get good at it.
Brian McCarty's book of art toy photos
We've featured Brian McCarty's terrific toy photography many times on Boing Boing. He's a master at setting a perfect scene and using just the right perspective to trick me into thinking that the strange vinyl characters on my shelf come alive when I'm not looking. Brian's photos are now collected in a wonderful hardcover book appropriately titled Art-Toys. The book includes more than 100 photos, each on its own page, featuring toys designed by Mark Ryden, Gama-Go, Frank Kozik, FriendsWithYou, Tim Biskup, Amanda Visell, Attaboy, and dozens of other artists. BB pal Douglas Rushkoff wrote the intro. I really dig the back-of-the-book "behind-the-scenes" snapshots that reveal the time, detail, and love that goes into every one of Brian's photos. Art-Toys by Brian McCarty (Amazon)
Cleveland, Ohio is slowly starting to honor its most important son. No, not Drew Carey (although BB loves him too). In 1933, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two boys from Jewish immigrant families who lived in the Glenville neighborhood of Cleveland, created Superman. This month, Smithsonian magazine tells the story behind the superhero, and what some citizens are doing to show their pride. The image above, from Jim Bowers/CapedWonder.com, is a fence at the address of Joe Shuster's old house. From Smithsonian:
Shortly after Siegel and Shuster died in the 1990s, a... struggle for recognition of Superman’s creators took place in Cleveland. Michael Sangiacomo, a comic books critic and a reporter for Cleveland's The Plain Dealer, called on the city to honor Siegel and Shuster. Nothing came of it. Every few years he would trot the idea out again, writing an article calling on Cleveland to honor the pair. “I pointed out that the Siegel house was here [the home of Joe Shuster had been torn down], and that is the home of Superman, and the city should do something.”Cleveland, the True Birthplace of Superman
In his will, Siegel asked that half of his ashes be donated to the city of Cleveland; his widow also wanted to donate some of his belongings to the city, such as his typewriter. She visited Cleveland to find a home for them, and Sangiacomo escorted her around town. “Nobody wanted them,” he remembers. “It was a low point. I felt horrible for her and mad at the city...”
Sangiacomo and (comic writer Brad) Meltzer decided to raise money to restore the house. Melzer uploaded a video of himself at the house that went viral. He followed by sponsoring an auction of comics-related art, raising over $100,000 in the process. Sangiacomo and Meltzer formed the nonprofit Siegel and Shuster Society, and asked the Glenville Community Development Corporation to take charge of restoring the house, in partnership with the Grays.
Andrea James is a Los Angeles-based writer and troublemaker.
Following up on David Ng's great biodiversity posts, here's a nice video on graboids. If you only know about these land sharks from old skits or classic cartoons, filmmaker Frank Robnik put together this nicely animated piece that dispels many misconceptions about these misunderstood creatures. Great score by Sebastian Birkl, too!
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Mark
Read free sample chapters from my new book, Made By Hand.
Cory
Latest novel: For the Win
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Australia: World Science Fiction Convention/Melbourne Writers Festival, Sept 2-5
Germany: Little Brother tour, Sept 13-23
Netherlands: PICNIC/Bits of Freedom (Dutch Makers launch), Sept 23-25
Xeni
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Rob
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