Conspicuous consumption
bioephemera | February 11, 2010
Just in time for Valentine's Day: the "Copulating Earthworm Necklace," from heronadornment on etsy.
Also love her anatomical heart locket.
bioephemera | February 11, 2010
Year of the Tiger, 2010
Chris Jordan
Depicts 3200 toy tigers, equal to the estimated number of tigers remaining on Earth. The space in the middle would hold 40,000 of these tigers, equal to the global tiger population in 1970.
SEED has put together a slideshow of works by Chris Jordan, an artist I mentioned in last week's review of Visual Language (he did the Barbie doll breast image), and also in an October post on his photos of the tragic birds of Midway.
"I believe it is worth connecting with these issues and allowing them to matter to us personally, despite the complex mixtures of anger…
bioephemera | February 8, 2010Well, not quite. I got an intriguing abstract in my inbox earlier today, to this new paper from BMC Neuroscience:
Here using a new conditioned suppression paradigm, we investigated whether the ability of a foot-shockpaired conditioned stimulus to suppress chocolate-seeking behavior was antagonized by previous exposure to a chronic stressful experience, thus modeling aberrant chocolate seeking in sated mice. Our findings demonstrate that while Control (non-food deprived) animals showed a profound conditioned suppression of chocolate seeking during presentation of conditioned stimulus,…
bioephemera | January 31, 2010
Another clever use of the periodic table in design: Washington State's Wines of Substance, who won Seattle Magazine's "Coolest Wine Label" Award in 2008.
According to Substance, "wine is as much an art as it is a science. What better way to express this basis than a Periodic Table of Wine with each varietal reflected as an element or substance?" Their interactive "periodic table" website is hardly scientific, but it does look pretty awesome:
In addition to looking all sciencetastic, Substance sponsors selected nonprofits - in January, 25% of all purchases go to Helpline Women's Shelter.…
bioephemera | January 20, 2010
Camille Allen's tiny baby sculptures have been all over the blogosphere. Contrary to popular belief, though, they're not made of marzipan (almond candy) or icing - they're polymer clay and mohair. So you're not supposed to eat them - thank heavens. Still amazing, though. (And a perfect counterpoint to the giant baby sculptures by Ron Mueck - or the giant baby I just posted by Parmigianino.)
bioephemera | January 15, 2010
"A Love Aquatic"
letterpress notecards and posters by Sarah Adler on etsy.
bioephemera | January 10, 2010
The Endangered Species Print Project has a clever approach to conservation: a series of limited-edition prints depicting endangered species, with the number of prints correlating with the number of individuals left in the wild. For this sunlight-saturated Panamanian Golden Frog by Jenny Kendler, that's a wild population/print run of only 100. All the proceeds from print sales go to Project Golden Frog. (For other species, proceeds go to a conservation group helping that particular species).
Artists Jenny Kendler and Molly Schafer created the project, and maintain a detailed blog on…
bioephemera | January 6, 2010
Boston's fatorangecat studio has a wonderful blog where photographer Li Ward posts some of her most spontaneous work (like the time her furry subject got all tangled up with Cameron Diaz). Ranging from the absurd to the poignant, Li's photos capture what we love best about our pets. (I'm pretty sure the cats above are plotting our demise as a species for subjecting them to years of heinous indignity.)
I'm a kitten person, not a puppy person, but these photos are adorable!
Perhaps the most poignant of all Li's work is this candid shot of Kepler, an aging Weimeraner:
Looking at this photo…
bioephemera | December 31, 2009
With the Mallard Heels from anthropologie, you can say "Yes, I'm wearing a 3-inch high duck decoy!" with confidence. But alas, I waited too long to blog these - they're out of stock. :( Sorry, Isis.
bioephemera | December 30, 2009
If you've ever worked in a bio lab, you know what I mean: these look too real!
Yes, I know Pharyngula and BoingBoing already got to them early this month, while I was in the middle of finals, but I just had to blog them anyway. They're too bioE. Besides, you can use them as a New Year's diet aid.
bioephemera | December 23, 2009
A year or two ago in Washington, DC, I saw this charming series of windows in the downtown Macy's. It's a technical makeover of the traditional Santa's workshop, complete with pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo like "Through Synchronous Siphonization, Gigglium added in 2:1 ratio to Teeheelium," "Octopusilex arms begin extension/contraction/reaction sequence," and "Once outspoutified, capillary action introduces .43 milligrams per 100 parts of Elation Suspension." I never got around to blogging it, I guess! So here you go. . . Merry Christmas!
bioephemera | December 20, 2009
artwork by Ryan Abblegen, via iO9.
(Since he was BoingBoinged, his etsy shop is all out of mechanized murder cards, so bookmark him for after the holidays).
bioephemera | December 19, 2009
Photo: Jana Asenbrennerova / The Chronicle
SFGate has a great interview with Raven Hanna of madewithmolecules! I love Raven's stuff an am thrilled to see her getting recognition.
bioephemera | December 18, 2009
"Insectopedia"
Kiff Slemmons
Self-taught metal artist Kiff Slemmons' classic series "Insectopedia" is a collection of metal pins fusing insects with typography. She's also known for working with found objects like shells, stones and bones, as in the following pieces from her recent show with Kay Sekimachi at Velvet da Vinci in NYC:
"Corallary 2 & 3" Brooches
Kiff Slemmons
"Atoll" Necklace
Kiff Slemmons
View a complete set of photos from the Velvet da Vinci show here.
More:
Article on Kiff Slemmons at Ornament Magazine
bioephemera | December 2, 2009Product placement is old news, but just in case you're wondering how saturated films really are with implicit advertising, brandchannel.com's brandcameo-films index tells you which brands were featured where:
It's hard to make audiences feel okay, and even good, about innocent people being gored, beheaded and axed to death--but Friday the 13th knows the trick is to populate the film with beautiful, shallow characters who feel self-entitled to a life of partying, comfort and money. Enter Jason Voorhees, the maladjusted and disfigured karma-maker. Though none of the characters seem to have…
bioephemera | November 27, 2009
A few of my favorite holiday shopping suggestions from the past year of blogging. . .
#1. Pandemic, the Board Game. Turn H1N1 into holiday fun for everyone! (Already have Pandemic? Z-Man games has an upgrade pack.)
#2. Blue Barnhouse letterpress. Yeah, they're artistic and individually pressed, but these are not your parents' greeting cards. In addition to their Happy Colonoscopy cards, they have many more offensive yet hilarious greetings - these invites were perfect for a certain unexpurgated physiologist of my acquaintance. . .
#3. Like some paper with your science? Ork posters' heart…
bioephemera | November 27, 2009
Apparently this toy company needs a zoologist on staff. (Parents: this is the perfect gift to seriously confuse your pre-adolescent wanna-be biologist, and derail them into a more profitable career in law!) From FailBlog.
bioephemera | November 23, 2009There's a new humor presence on Twitter and Facebook: rejectedcards. The author says, "I'm a copywriter for a major greeting card company. I get bored and create cards I know we'll never print. These are those cards."
Cards like. . .
"Another Year, Same Birthday Question: (inside) Are you sure you don't want us to pull the plug?"
or
"So sorry you lost your job. Are there other professions that use poles?"
I wish this writer would collaborate with the snarky letterpress outlet Blue Barnhouse. I'd totally buy their products. But FYI: some of them are pretty offensive, so don't say I didn't…
bioephemera | November 22, 2009Pop quiz: this Google Trends chart represents searches for what word or phrase?
the answer? a word that the vast majority of people never use - except on Thanksgiving.
Go chemistry! :)