Retrotechnology and steampunk
bioephemera | July 18, 2009
While browsing etsy this weekend, I was impressed with some of the unusual pieces from seller 19moons. These salvaged, chimeric pieces look much more expensive than they are.
from their etsy profile:
19 Moons is an eco-conscious creation of San Francisco Bay Area native Niffer Desmond. Inspired by re-use, machinery and DIY culture, her designs integrate these concepts into fashion. Vintage and recycled materials are combined to create wares that are both unique and Eco-friendly. If you like to stand out in the crowd, 19 Moons is your lunar gear station!
While I'd love a little more detail…
bioephemera | July 17, 2009
Alstroemeria, sp.
Robert Buelteman
One of my favorite short stories is Hawthorne's Rappaccini's Daughter, in which an eccentric, Frankensteinian botanist breeds increasingly beautiful, increasingly deadly flowers. These images from Robert Buelteman remind me of Rappaccini's garden. His creative process sure sounds like something Dr. Frankenstein might have employed:
Buelteman hits everything with an electric pulse and the electrons do a dance as they leap from the sheet metal, through the silicone and the plant (and hopefully not through him), while heading back out the jumper cables. In…
bioephemera | July 4, 2009In Seattle, a venerable fireworks show has become the subject of a legal dispute between locals and the city - and since this is Seattle, it's only to be expected that the dispute is over environmental impacts. But it's not the fireworks themselves at issue - it's the fact that the city holds the show in Gas Works Park, a remediated coal gasification plant.
I previously wrote about Gas Works Park back in 2007, when I joined a behind-the scenes tour with one of the original designers responsible for the remediation. You can see the photos I took of the majestic steampunk ruins of the plant…
bioephemera | June 28, 2009
nmohan of the collaborative artists group Robot Disorder just contacted me to let me know they've launched the Robot Disorder 2.0 website, with more robot hordes (and easier navigation). He says they have literally thousands of robot drawings to clean up and post in the coming weeks, so if you haven't yet seen your personal robot, never fear - it's on its way.
And it's not too late to contribute your own robot to the project - just visit the top floor at Artomatic in Washington DC before July 5!
bioephemera | June 22, 2009
Artomatic is one of my favorite things about DC: a cooperative unjuried art gallery in a vacant high-rise, staffed by artists, with live performances and mini-bars on every other floor. It's free (except for the bars). What's not to like? The icing on the top (floor) this year is Draw A Robot - a collective crowdsourced fundraising experiment by the team at RobotDisorder.com.
Draw A Robot is a deliciously haphazard mashup of new tech and low tech. Starting at the low tech end of the process, you sit down with the pens and paper provided at the Draw A Robot booth, and you - wait for it - draw…
bioephemera | June 18, 2009
Joanna of Morbid Anatomy is on a quest to locate private collections of medical oddities. She's already sussed out fourteen such hidden wunderkammern and photographed their treasures, but she wants to find more:
"Who are these private collectors, and what sort of treasures do they possess? How might their methods of displaying collections differ from institutional approaches? Are we reaching a historical moment similar to the pre-museum era of private cabinets, in which the most interesting artifacts are now in private rather than public hands?"
It's a really interesting question.…
bioephemera | June 16, 2009
Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as Industrial Palace)
Fritz Kahn, 1926
Pintura/Anatomias, Sintonizando
Fernando Vicente, 2000
The suddenly blogospherically ubiquitous pinup-artist turned anatomical illustrator Fernando Vicente is clearly influenced by German artist Fritz Kahn. If this is your cup of tea, you'll probably also like "An Iconography of the Industrial Body: Fritz Kahn, Popular Medical Illustration and the Visual Rhetoric of Modernity," a talk by Michael Sappol of the National Library of Medicine, curator of Dream Anatomy and author of A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and…
bioephemera | June 15, 2009
Dahmen Art Barn, Uniontown, WA
While I was growing up, we used to drive past the Dahmen farm every few months. I would always look up from whatever book I was devouring at the time and intently try to count the iron wheels in the fences (there are over a thousand).
The barn, which lies just outside Uniontown, WA, about 16 miles from the Idaho border, was built in 1935 for Jack Dahmen and was part of a commercial dairy for several decades. Its distinctive wheel fence began accumulating sometime after 1952, when Jack's nephew Steve Dahmen and his wife Junette purchased the barn.
Says…
bioephemera | June 13, 2009
I blogged previously about Jan Vormann, who went around medieval villages near Rome patching holes with Lego. Now Vormann has moved on to Berlin, where he's filling World War II bullet holes with multicolored patches. That's just awesome, on many levels. More photos here.
Vormann is represented by the gallery Jarmuschek + Partner. Via today and tomorrow.
bioephemera | May 23, 2009
Morgan Care Pharmacy on P St. in Georgetown has all the character so sorely lacking from new drugstore franchises. Drugstores used to be so different: as a child, I savored root beer floats at our local drugstore soda fountain counter. (I know, very Norman Rockwell of me.) Are there any pharmacy soda fountain/luncheonette counters left today?
bioephemera | May 20, 2009
Los Angeles Electric Isle
Brooks Salzwedel
Brooks Salzwedel's solo show opened May 16 at the Tinlark Gallery.
The artist works in layers of graphite and translucent resin, which create an especially nice effect in vintage tins. Imagine if you picked up a rusty old tin on an abandoned worksite or in an old mining town, opened it, and found someone's half-remembered memory inside - gradually accreted there like candle wax. Salzwedel's work is a little like that.
Little Anacin Tin
Brooks Salzwedel
High Forest Tin
Brooks Salzwedel
Broken Wires
Brooks Salzwedel
Via NOTCOT
bioephemera | May 2, 2009
The Ambassadors, 1533
Hans Holbein the Younger
In the artistic technique called anamorphosis, an object is depicted in distorted perspective, so that the viewer has to take special action, like looking from a specific angle, to see the "correct" image.
The most famous example of anamorphic painting is Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors (1533), a double portrait in which the illusion of highly detailed reality is fractured by a blurred grey streak superimposed across the painting's bottom third. If one stands at an acute angle, close to the painting, the blurred streak resolves itself into a…
bioephemera | April 27, 2009Simple, but surprisingly charming - and somewhat reminiscent of an ant colony or other biological collective:
Fluid Sculpture (click for larger video) from Charlie Bucket on Vimeo.
bioephemera | April 3, 2009
Fixed Heart
offal with mixed metal components
Lisa Black, 2008
I blogged about New Zealand artist Lisa Black before, but I can't get over this great piece of hers. What does it signify? Does it represent the gradual replacement of the natural world around us with technology, to the point where our own bodies become artificial? Is it critiquing the reductionist tendencies of neurobiologists who believe our deepest emotions are complex but purely chemical reactions? Is it a steampunk Valentine? I don't know, and I don't really care - it's just cool.
Check out more from Black here.
bioephemera | March 25, 2009
Richard Avedon, The New Yorker, 1995
Via Haute Macabre, an unbelievable fashion editorial created by Richard Avedon for the New Yorker. I have no words.
Richard Avedon, The New Yorker, 1995
See the complete editorial at Haute Macabre.
bioephemera | March 18, 2009
Via Bora's blog, a delightfully cheesy1955 filmstrip about why science education is more important than anything else - even fishing. It starts out slow, but this Sputnik-era treasure turns into a veritable propagandafest about how science literacy is a civic duty. Plus, it raises vital questions like "Why do these kids have weird pseudo-Southern accents even though their parents don't?" and "How can science help Betty 'hook some guy'?"
Remember, women need to know as much about science as some men do! Are you going to be ready?
(Look how bored Betty looks by the end.)
Provenance:…
bioephemera | March 8, 2009
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
--WB Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium"
My coveted bauble of the week is this fabulous, foot-high Gladiator Raven from Anthropologie. Maybe it's not hammered gold and gold enamelling, but the patina and quirky textures in this piece should satisfy any ephemeraphile with $648 to spare.
bioephemera | March 2, 2009
Wax anatomical figure of reclining woman, Florence, Italy, 1771-1800
Science Museum London
Starting today, the Wellcome Trust and sciencemuseum.org.uk open a brand spanking new collection of medical history archives. "Brought to Life: Exploring the History of Medicine" is searchable by people, place, thing, theme, and time. You can view a timeline of medical history in Europe next to similar timelines for the Islamic empire, Egypt and Greece (I do wish China and India were as prominently placed). You can read essays about larger questions, like what "wellness" means, or play with a cool…
bioephemera | February 27, 2009
Yup, that's a flying bat gripping a lamp in its mouth, with his buddy, a coiled snake, crawling along above him. And it's not a faux-Victorian, nouveau-Goth creation - it's a replica of an actual late 1800s fixture, by eclectic lighting company Rejuvenation. Seriously - over a hundred years ago, someone thought this was the greatest lamp evah! I'm not sure I'd actually choose the Dracula-esque Drake fixture for myself, mind you; not only is it more than $2K, I think you need a very special space for this 45" long creation. Like a living room designed by Edward Gorey. But if you've got that…
bioephemera | February 21, 2009Smartcars are cute. But when you add a turning windup key, they're so cute it's almost wrong. I saw this specimen in a flotilla of Smartcars in Alexandria president's day parade last week - the custom license plate says "wnd itup". Nice.