Improv Everywhere!!!

Improv Everywhere is a group of people based in New York who organize events that are purely for fun.
People are more than welcomed to join in on their events. What they do is stage large events that cause people to notice them or catch people attention.
To find out more, you can check out their website http://improveverywhere.com

Heres a few of my favorites of what they've done so far:

Old Times

Was sifting through some of my older photos of when i was travelling around Buffalo, Pittsburgh and New York. Realized that i went to a lot of interesting places. Trouble is that i didn't really realize that those places were that interesting at first so all the photos i took have been deleted. I've kept some that i thought looked cool and maybe in the future i may want to get it blown up and printed so i can hang it up as a poster.
The dates are still on it so that i can reminisce about it.

First of all, steel town, Pittsburgh. Theres a few where i don't remember which museum i took it at but if anyone else has seen these pieces of art and know which museum its actually from, please correct me.
First stop was the Andy Warhol Museum. I must admit that i really didn't enjoy this one too much. Anyone who's heard of Andy Warhol will have a rough idea of how twisted he is and this museum was a pretty good reflection of it. There were many x-rated pieces of art that i'm pretty sure most people wouldn't want to know about. If you think you do then i'll give you an example....he had a series of printed work that were depictions of poodles having threesomes.


This one here i thought was pretty cool looking. I always liked this russian symbol so i thought i'd keep this one for a good poster one day.
Room of floating pillows. The reflectiveness of the material makes it seem like its some sort of heavy metal yet they float weightlessly in this room. These pillows have been filled with helium and people are allowed to venture in and just play around with them.

A series of punching bags which have more or less been painted the same way except for a few minor changes such as the words on the top and bottom of these bags. Makes for a cool effect when you spin them all around.

Next we move on to someone that i really appreciate through his work, that man is Frank Lloyd Wright. I truly admire his architectural work out arts. still amazes me when i look at them now.

This is the Duncan House. I seem to have deleted all other photos of this house for some reason so this is the only one left. Not a verry good depiction of what i saw but its a little taste.
This house had very low ceilings which stared the rumour of Frank Lloyd Wright to be really short to circulate but in reality, the ceilings were short because he wanted people to feel protected, he wanted people to feel like they were comfortable and to do that he made the house closer to people.There was an amazingly large backyard property to this house and even a trail. Along this trail, there were many art pieces just around among the trees and fields. This one was by far the weirdest and coolest. It was just an army of red sihlouettes. Each of these silhouettes are about 175cm tall so anybody could easily jsut stand within them.

A closer look at these marvelous red figures.

Another Frank Lloyd Wright house that i visited was the one that i've heard of the most before actually going to it.
This is Falling Water, one of the greatest cantilever houses.
Stationed on top of rocks over a waterfall, with cantilevering balconies, this would be a dream home.
Again, forgive me for the bad photography but this shows that iw as actually there rather than pulling out better images off the net.

Next place i visited was actually a small piece of art that was near this installation art museum. The installation art didn't amuse me much but this next house really did. There weren't any details of it so i can't really tell you who its by or the story of it.

I know it was a man, and what he's done is write all of his poems and notes on the outside of his house as a display. If anyone recognizes this, please tell me.

To round of my Pittsburgh trip, i went to the Carnegie Museum.


These are just a few of my favorites from this museum. I must say that the last archer sculpture really fueled my love for archers. That stance is so strong and they have such great dexterity.

Photos from Buffalo and New York soon to come. I just need to sort out the pictures as these events did happed 3-4 years ago....

A Plant to Father Time

About 2 weeks ago, me and the housemates decided to grow some plants in lieu of my guinea pig passing away. We planted some peas, tomatoes and strawberries and i must admit, i was fairly excited about it. I checked them everyday until they finally grew. I was so impressed with this process that i decided to plant some more. They just started sprouting which gave me the idea that maybe i should document this plants life cuz afterall, every plant is a little prayer that fathers time. You can literally see how much time has passed from looking at plants and their growth cycle.

So here it is, our first batch of plants.

Some beautiful peas plants which would hopefully provide some much needed legumes in the house. There is a sad little one in the bottom left corner which i don't think will make it. Those darn slugs just go nuts over these.

These guys are the tomatoes that are just starting to grow. I think we'll have to pluck some of them out because they seem a little close to each other.


Here's a baby pea plant that was just planted about 7 days ago. Its just starting to germinate so we can see the progress of this one a lot better as i post pictures of it growing.
Some more tomatoes, but this time they seem even more clustered together. I think we will definitely have to pluck some of those out. Makes me sad that some of them will have to die just because we didn't read the instructions on how far to plant them in the first place.

The strawberries seem to have gone MIA so i can't say much about them or maybe they've starting sprouting and just look sorta like weeds so i may have plucked them out.

I will be posting new photos of their progress every few days so both you and i can have a look at exactly how much and how fast they're growing. I might leave a camera on them for a day just to see if they grow within that day.

A Little Awkward but Worth It

A bit of procrastination in the right places led me to something pretty interesting. I dunno if i'd like it if i were on the other end of these things but i wouldn't mind being the person who designed it.

This is the Diesel Denim Gallery in Aoyama, Japan. This place was built as Diesels signature store as well as a space for art installations and exhibitions for talented upcoming artists throughout the year.

This year, Makoto Tanijiri and Masaaki Takahashi have created a forest art installation for Diesel's clothing line. This has been named "Nature Factory"

Makoto Tanijiri: Principle of Suppose Design Office has design over 60 residential spaces. Also works with commercial and exhibition spaces.

Masaaki Takahashi: Independant writer and editor, specializes in various fields of design.
Looks pretty cool but i would never walk in a store like this expecting to buy anything at all. Its a lil intimidating and i feel like i could get lost in it. The idea was for it to look like a forest and i guess it succeeded because i wouldn't venture in a forest without my compass or else i probably wouldn't come back out, at least not for a few days.


This has to be one of the most borderline products for the world right now. All this sensitivity towards violence at the moment and somebody decides to come up with this thing. I would've love to be the one getting all the complaints from this one because i bet that there will also be tons of people buying this too so those complaints with just strengthen my bond with this product.

This is the Persuader Bag
This is designed by James Piatt constructed by lasercut leather with absolutely no stitching involved. Features a cellphone compartment as the clip.

I can't help but laugh a little thinking about all the reactions this would get out of people.

Something more to my liking

I was updating on a band that i've been listening to for quite a long while now and i realized that i pretty much love all of their album artwork. That is until their most recent one. I really question their thought process or at least their artist's thought process.

Here's a few of their album covers from oldest to newest. They have waaayyy too many for me to post them all, i still need to collect all their cds.

And finally......BAM!.....what is this?!?!

Why are there so many colours? Why is it so cartoony?
I'm afraid to listen to it because if this is any indication that they've changed their style of music then its definitely not something to look forward to.
They've lost that fierce look, that look for something deeper in their music. Now they just look like a band craving for attention. I'm not jumping the bandwaggon, i'm just saying that their choice of album art is to be questioned, if their music is still the same heavy metal i grew to love then i will continue listening.

Hair

This is an ad by MTV. I don't know what it means and its kinda scary to be honest. I will however give props to the animation done because it looks very cool and is very smooth.
If anyone knows what this is about, please do tell.

To Be or Not To Be

Trying to find a new perspective on things, i decided to see how professional designers are seeing things in our world. How they interpret things within our environment into design that would not only fit into our world, but also stand out in its place. I went on www.ted.com to look up talks from designers to see what they had to share. Most of the talks didn't really stick to me but there was one designer who's opinion or point of view really stuck to me. Unfortunately for that designer, it didn't stick in a good way.

That person is Rob Forbes

Rob Forbes is the founder of the Design company Design Within Reach. Simply put, what he does is he will go out into the city with his camera and take photos of everything that seems the tiniest bit interesting to him whether it be a pattern or a structural marvel, he will take a snap shot of it. He talks about taking over 5000 photos in a year. He will then go through each of these photos later to see if there really is anything he likes in them. He will also look into the meaning of them such as why a flag was hung outside a building, if there were any historical meaning to it. He will also go to the most common of places such as supermarkets and take pictures of the way produce is stacked and why people will go to that stack of oranges to pick one that they like.
Although they do seem interesting, many argue that he is really just stealing other people's design and putting it in a different context. Putting a pattern you found on the side walk onto the surface of a car doesn't justify design enough. His reasoning behind patterns is that they hide bad forms which i agree to a certain extent because i did look at some forms that had patterns on them and realized without that pattern, it would really be nothing.

This picture was pretty cool though because Mr. Forbes rides his scooter to work everyday and parks it here with all the other two wheelers. On this specific day, he looked across as he finished parking his scooter, that all the other bikes were red. That must've been a special day.

He claims that everything looks the same in the modern world which is why there are designers around. His perspective is a way of looking at simple things that appeal to character and personality. I don't think he's really done that because the forms and patterns he took have already done their job in their respective locations, he is making money off people by giving them that exact same impression with nothing added.
I do however like his look on the simpler things in life. We may not look much into it but construction sites are full of interesting wonders both in past and future. Forbes says that he is capturing the art of construction sites because they are a sign of progress and in the end, all we see if the finished piece, we don't see what happened. So he captures this still picture to remember what has been put into it, and the design of it all before the final structure has even been built.

Those were the most interesting points from his talk even though i may disagree with them. There were comments from others that i agreed with such as one person who said he can't believe that Forbes is getting paid the salary that he does for pretty much doing nothing.
But then again, he's well off for doing what he's doing so what can i say about it besides good job.

Book/Wine/DVD/Toys shelf. It can pretty much store anything that will fit into the slots. Made with expanded Polypropylene which is the same material as bike helmets and car bumpers.