Arrested Motion on the beautiful paintings of Pakayla Rae Biehn:

As a technique derived from and almost solely reserved for photographic applications, her ability to so gracefully achieve this signature optic feel with paint and brush could be attributed to her affinity for math, her use of computer applications to break down photographic reference images, as well as her eye disorder strabismus, which imparts a double vision like effect to her sight, all touched on during a recent interview with our friend at Erratic Phenomena. The resulting work is nothing short of majestic, a whimsical mixture of soft colors, delicate focus, enchanting imagery, idiosyncratic composition, and emotional intimacy that is evocative of a nostalgic summer daydream. Illustrating an ability to overcome, if not ingeniously integrate, her visual obstacles into the creative process itself, and with painterly expertise at the core of it all, Pakayla has produced a visceral and emotive experience both distinctive and rewarding.

Remember when we made a connection by handing someone a photo? As our social circle spreads across a wider geographic area, we look for ways to share experiences. Technology has reconnected us to some extent, but we fiddle with too many cables and menus, and those individual connections get drowned out.

Tableau acts as a bridge between users of physical and digital media, taking the best parts of both. It’s a nightstand that quietly drops photos it sees on its Twitter feed into its drawer, for the owner to discover. Images of things placed in the drawer are posted to its account as well.

Tableau is an anti-computer experience. A softly glowing knob that almost imperceptibly shifts color invites interaction without demanding it. The trappings of electronics are removed except for a vestigial cable knob for the paper tray. The nightstand drawer becomes a natural interface to a complex computing task, which now fits into the flow of life.

Tableau by John Kestner
via Cool Hunting

If you’re an image junkie like me, this means you’ve known about FFFFOUND! for a while and you regularly follow Tumblr and Posterous blogs, or you have one of your own.

This also means you know the animated GIF.

Like it’s more technologically advanced cousin, Flash, the animated GIF started off life getting a bad reputation for being the driving force behind obnoxious, animated banner ads. Like Flash though, the animated GIF was discovered by artists and designers as being capable of much more than selling stuff.

Co.Design has a great post on the work of Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg.

They call their animated GIFs ‘cinemagraphs’ which are, in their words, “something more than a photo but less than a video.”

Another great source of cinegraphs is, if we don’t, remember me.

Like the work of Beck and Burg, the slivers of cinema on IWDRM aren’t just sequences exported from the films. If you look closely at the GIFs, only one element has been isolated and animated, giving them a completely different feeling than many GIFs that feature excepts from films. I discovered IWDRM last year and I’ve been collecting their GIFs ever since.

Here’s one from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:

And another one from The Shining:

Perhaps this GIF renaissance has to do with that fact that we’re all moving onto mobile devices like iPhones, iPads where Flash was never designed to work well and thus, has been banished. And if it hasn’t been banished it doesn’t work well.

While expression, storytelling and animation are possible now with the emergence of HTML5 and advanced Javascript classes and frameworks, there’s something beautifully simple about the animated GIF. It requires no plug-in and works as good now as it did 14 years ago when it was conceived.

It’s an autonomous nugget of awesomeness.

An airstream camper of expression.

Matthew Modine’s “Full Metal Jacket Diary” – iPad App
From the producer of the app, Adam Rackoff:

In 2010, I approached Matthew about turning his diary into an “eBook.” We talked at length about the experience of reading on electronic devices and started to imagine something more cinematic and interactive. We wanted to take the reader on a unique journey; one they couldn’t get on an Amazon Kindle or other eReader. We realized then, that Apple’s new iPad was the perfect platform to re-release his book as an “app.” Matthew gave me his blessing and entrusted me with the contents of his book. After 8 months of pre-production work, I’m ready to begin creating what will become the Full Metal Jacket Diary iPad App. I plan to build an immersive experience that includes not only Modine’s diary and photographs, but audio of Matthew reading his book, sound effects, original music, and never-before-seen images and content! As with the book, it’s very important to us both that we create something Kubrick would have been proud of and wanted to own.

via Daring Fireball

On YouTube:

Immediately after the 2011 national Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, a machine built by the Purdue’s Society of Professional Engineers team completed a flawless run of 244 steps setting a world record now featured online by the World Records Academy.

It doesn’t have the poetry of other Goldberg pieces I’ve seen (like OK Go’s video, or that Honda commercial), but impressive nonetheless.
via The Escapist

Austin Kleon on How To Steal Like An Artist (And 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me):

There’s an economic theory out there that if you take the incomes of your five closest friends and average them, the resulting number will be pretty close to your own income.

I think the same thing is true of our idea incomes. You’re only going to be as good as the stuff you surround yourself with.

I could have quoted the whole post.
I think I’ll just steal it instead.
via kottke

Shadow boxes become poetic theaters or settings wherein are metamorphosed the element of a childhood pastime.

–Joseph Cornell

While I was home visiting my parents a few weeks ago, my father unearthed another gem from his archives – the manual from my grandmother’s 1963 Ford Fairlane.
There was a brief moment back when my grandmother still drove, that I got to ride in this vehicle. I still remember the red vinyl seats that my legs would stick to when I was in shorts.
When she moved out of Queens and in with us in New Jersey I asked my father if we could put the Fairlane in our driveway. He said no because unfortunately the engine had seized. It was beyond repair.

From John Kricfalusi’s blog (aka John K, creator of Ren & Stimpy):

Some people might wonder what the point is in copying the drawings of others. I’ll tell you. It’s so you can apply what you learned from the copies to your own drawings. It’s not just so you can be good at copying.

I was obsessed Ren & Stimpy back in the early/mid 1990’s when I was in high school. When class projects came up, no matter the subject – physiology, English, chemistry, math – I would create big comic books narrated by Ren & Stimpy. Art and drawing were my entry point into topics I would otherwise be too bored to learn about.
At first it might sound as if I was taking the easy road by creating comic books in all my classes, and while it did come naturally to me, it was still a lot of work.
Before I started a sketchbook, I would first draft up the story I wanted to tell in my comic book. From there I would determine which character I wanted to say what, and what expression/pose they would be making when they delivered those lines.
I transferred these characters in the comic books was by first recording all the episodes and then playing them back on my VCR (yes, I said VCR) and pausing it at the moment Ren or Stimpy made a unique, hilarious expression so that I could draw the image in my sketchbook. If you’ve ever watched the show, you know these moments happened every other second.
(My father would yell at me when he caught me doing this because he said it ruined the tape heads on the VCR. He’s and an engineer and that’s a story for another time.)

Moving Beyond Copying

Back to John K’s quote. Copying is crucial to learning. Whether you’re copying someone’s cartoon characters, CSS files, poster design, acting or music you eventually reach a point of departure. I believe it was Picasso who said that that point of departure, that screw-up in what you copied – that is your voice.
Since my goal was never to become a cartoonist, i never moved beyond copying Ren & Stimpy off of the television, but copying has played a big part in my work as a designer. Whether it’s been code, or style or methodology the first step for any artist or designer is copying.
Once you’ve full absorbed and become one with the subject it’s a natural progression to alter it and make it your own.

Man do love the Beastie Boys and I always will (It’s like what Chris Rock said – whatever music you were listening to when you started getting laid, you’re gonna love that music for the rest of your life). I was sad when I heard Adam Yauch (MCA) has cancer.
Then I got pissed when I found out his moron plan to beat it:

“We are visualizing taking the energy away from the cancer, and then sending it back at the cancer as lightning bolts that will break apart the DNA and RNA of the cells,” he added. “If you have the time, please join us in whipping up this lightening storm. Mind over matter …”

Seriously MCA, what the fuck. I got news for you, meditation is not going to kill your cancer. Regardless, I wish you the best and I hope you prove me wrong.

Via Creative Review:

The free app, called StreetMuseum, has been developed with creative agency Brothers and Sisters and makes use of geo tagging and Google Maps to guide users to various sites in London where, via the iPhone screen, various historical images of the city appear …

Awesome. It’s also a natural evolution of the Flickr group A Look Into the Past that was made it’s way around the blogs earlier this year (via Johnny Juice):

And according to Laughing Squid, A Look Into the Past was inspired by Michael Hughes’ “Souvenir” photoset on Flickr:

What a great chain of influence.