peter callesen: cut paper art

The link takes you to Peter Callesen's online gallery.
Look especially at the cut paper works.
Egad, is I believe the expression.

Audio Cassette Nostalgia

Images of cassette tapes.
That's pretty much what you'll find at tapedeck.org

This. site. is. awesome.

The Poster List

$7.99 each for a series of 12" x 18" posters that make me wish I had a dorm room again.

Visual Treat: Vintage French Ephemera

A blog collection of vintage printed materials from France. Movie posters, textbook pages, trading cards, other random objet.

Yum.

North Korean Mass Games

Along the lines of my previous post of art created from the controlled movements of crowds, are the North Korean "Mass Games", an annual festival of choreographed gymnastics.



Also: in a stadium performance, a brain crushing dynamic mosaic created by more than 15,000 audience members holding aloft various colored sheets of paper:

Street Art: Loro in Sao Paulo, Brazil

[via Wooster Collective]

Calisphere: Digitized California History

The University of California has launched a new online archive of more than 150,000 digitized items, mostly primary sources — photographs, documents, newspaper pages, political cartoons, works of art, diaries, transcribed oral histories, advertising, and more, illuminating the history of California.

Designed primarily as a resource for K-12 teachers and students (in alignment with the California Content Standards), but with plenty of random browsing opportunities.

Someone Else's Vacation Photo

Backpacking trips are temporarily out of our reach. But I can still dream. Here's "Unnamed Tarn near Mono Pass", along the Eastern side of the Sierra, around 4 pm. Photo courtesy of John Beach, who has many other spectacular photos from the same 5-day journey.

Horsemen of the Esophagus

What's better than a week at a rented house near the beach?

A rented house near the beach chock full of magazines.
The grownups passed around back issues of Harper's and The Sunday New York Times Magazine. Liam and Ronan were fascinated by the 3-D cover of the 1000th issue of Rolling Stone. A single copy of InStyle magazine was there to help us "cleanse the palate," and keep us up to date on Jennifer Anniston's New Year's Resolutions.

But the best article I found was in the May 2006 of The Atlantic Monthly. It's a glorious article on the world's top competitors in the International Federation of Competitive Eating, excerpted from Jason Fagone's book, Horsemen of the Esophagus: Competitive Eating and the Big Fat American Dream.

The offbeat subject drew me in. The writing hooked me. Fagone knows how to tell a story, and it helps that the IFOCE promoters are great showmen. The final page of the article online captures the amazing drama of the 2001 Nathan's Famous hot dog eating contest.

Target/Red Cross Emergency Starter Kit

Stylish AND utilitarian.
(Although ideally you wouldn't be in a situation requiring you to use it.)



Includes gloves, ponchos, blanket, lights, radio, and first aid kit.
$10 of each kit purchased ($29.99) in August goes to the American Red Cross.

[via NOTCOT.]

21st Century Busby Berkeley Advertising

Via Wooster Collective, a collection of advertisements featuring overhead/aerial shots of people dressed in colorful outfits, choreographed to form dynamic shapes.

Of course, Busby Berkeley didn't have access to computer-generated extras.









And as a bonus video by Michael Gondry:



What's great about the internet and YouTube is that we can collect all these things together in a single blog post. What's less great is the lack of context: are any of these by the same choreographer? Are some of these copycats of others? (Three involve liquid being "poured" out of a bottle.)

What's great about modern brand advertising is that there are creatives and account planners persuasive enough to convince companies like Coca-Cola to spend bucketloads of money creating a street art stunt that makes me want to watch their commercial repeatedly, but in the aggregate doesn't really do much to sell more corn syrup water.

At least, not enough to justify the cost of the production, agency fees, and media buys.

Barenaked Ladies: Bluegrass One Week

From 2004: "chickety china the chinese chicken" in (almost) four part harmony... either they don't quite hit it or the mic isn't picking up the bass.

The nerd rockers from Canada bring out the mandolin and bass for an acoustic version of their hit "One Week." YouTube page includes link to mp3 file, if you need it.