So after a quick diversion into the robotic realm last week, I thought I’d wrap up this two-part series about my recent European escapades!
Previously I posted some pics of the cool art to be seen in Oslo, Norway and the choicest selections from Berlin’s East Side Gallery. This week’s focus is a bit more on Berlin’s excellent street art scene.
This awesome Japanese woodcut-style portrait decorated the side of a hotel across the street from the East Side Gallery facing the Spree River. We really loved the economical use of color and elegant contours and just thought in general it was great art AND marketing for the hotel; it’s hard to miss AND hard to forget.
After a couple of mis-steps seeking out the cream of the art scene crop that we’d heard so much about before arriving in Berlin, we asked the proprietor of Big Brobot, a very cool book/toy/comic/t-shirt shop in the Friedrichshain section of the city, if he could recommend any good galleries that exhibited more street art and pop art (as opposed to the truly awful installations we’d seen up to that point.) He kindly pointed us in the direction of the NeuroTitan gallery and shop.
After a couple of missed turns, we finally were pointed in the direction of the correct alley leading to the gallery. Once we stepped into the alley, we were greeted with some really wonderful pieces of street art, from spray can art to traditional media to paste-ups.
The alley then led into a courtyard that featured this very cool steam-powered sculpture of a steampunk bat-creature with flapping wings, roving eyes, and flailing proboscis. I really wish I’d switched on my video camera to catch it in action!
Finally, to get to the NeuroTitan gallery, we had to climb a few flights of stairs to enter the shop area before checking out the exhibit. While the exhibit was pretty “meh”, the trip up the stairs was awesome, with the walls just COVERED in really cool graffiti and street art. One of our favorites was the “Fashion Chimp” ad paste-up, done in the style of a 1930s-40s women’s magazine. Who wouldn’t want a giant, life-sized “fashion chimp” for their home?
That pretty much wraps up our 2011 European adventure. Sad as we were not to be able to make it to Tokyo, it was an excellent diversion none the less, and hopefully the planet is done kicking Japan’s ass for a few years and we can make it over there soon.
In OTHER Ex-Boyfriend news—AT LEAST two new designs are going to be up by the end of this week. If you or someone you know is into vampires, kitties, and/or kawaii-style art, be sure to check back!
ALSO: Be sure to tune into The Daily Show on Comedy Central tonight at 11pm. Our good friend Jackson Galaxy from Animal Planet will be sporting our very own Fuzz Aldrin this evening during Aasif Mandvi’s segment! Woot! Be sure to spread the word!
UPDATE: The Daily Show segment featuring Jackson Galaxy wearing Fuzz Aldrin tonight has been postponed thanks to some big political news today, but I’ll keep you guys updated about when it really airs!
The fun folks over at The Onion’s A/V Club recently did a list of the 16+ most ridiculous killer robots of all-time. It was an admirable pursuit, but seemed a bit scattered and inconsistent. Here’s my top five list, with no specific programming criteria, such as murderous impulses.
1. Hedonism Bot, Futurama
The whole point of robotics is to make our lives easier, right? Well, once a robot becomes self-aware and develops its own intelligence, it seems logical that the end-point of their evolution would be the pursuit of their own pleasure. Right?
2. R2D2, Star Wars
Let’s face it: C3PO is a chump. He’s whiny, he talks too much, and would much rather hide from a dirty look than confront danger head-on. R2D2, on the other hand, beeps and boops in the face of danger. He breaks into prisons, hot-wires spacecraft, electrocutes enemies, and knows when to shut up and keep his head down while the things with thumbs shoot lasers at stuff. And all the while with this extremely developed sense of nuance and humor, made all the more impressive by his limited (human) vocabulary and nonexistent facial expressions.
3. Roberto, Futurama
The flip-side of Hedonism Bot, Roberto seems built for one purpose—stabbing things. Ostensibly he’s a criminal in other regards, like robbery and other forms of theft, but it all just seems like a pretense for him to put himself in a situation where he can thrust a blade into something or someone. Calling him “insane” always seems a tad redundant when it’s clear that he spends more of his days stabbing than doing anything else.
4. Awesome Andy, She-Hulk
A/V Club was absolutely right: the Mad Thinker’s Awesome Android was a complete dud until Dan Slott reinvented him as a legal temp in the early 2000s as a supporting character in the pages of She-Hulk. Like R2D2, Andy lacks verbal communication skills (making up for it by scribbling his thoughts on a chalkboard hanging around his neck), but makes up for it by being, in many ways, the most human character in the book. He gets frustrated with his coworkers’ hijinks from time to time, he pines after a female coworker who only thinks of him as a friend, has an annoying roommate, practices tai chi, and loves baseball (he’s a Mets fan.)
5. Optimus Prime, Transformers
Have you ever been in a movie theater full of 7-10 year olds and seen them all burst into tears when a robot dies? No? Then you must not have seen the original Transformers movie in a theater. That’s how big of a deal this stupid truck was to an entire generation of kids.
What do you think? Any notable omissions? Add them in the comments section below!
So I’ve been working furiously for about a week and a half on a new design that was pretty ambitious. It features a lot of different elements, two conflicting styles of art, all for kind of a weird payoff. But I think it looks pretty cool:
It’s called Robo Retro Carnival, and it’s sort of a synthesis of two of my favorite art and cultural movements of the 20th century: art nouveau, and futurism. Art nouveau poster design from the 1890′s and 1900′s features some of the coolest illustration and painting, with very dense and detailed work. In contrast, the space-age futurism of the 1950′s and 1960′s is all about clean lines, primary colors, and space (both figurative and literal), much like art deco in the 1920′s and 1930′s, but depicting artistic visions of the future.
So what better way to combine the two than with a robotic carnival?
I also decided to record myself working on this design, and hopefully will wrap up editing today and be able to post the video tomorrow. You won’t see much of me besides the top of my head, but hopefully it’ll be cool to watch this whole thing come together!
Pretty cool, huh? A recent(-ish; this started a few years back) fad in Japan has been nighttime “factory tours” in Kawasaki to view industrial buildings lit up at night. It’s heartening to know that even signifiers of the coming ecological collapse (at least as far as humans and polar bears are concerned) can produce art.
Hey guys, sorry for interrupting my usual boozy Thirsty Thursday post, but we just added two awesome new designs from new guest artist Jamie Fales that I couldn’t wait to introduce!
Jamie operates out of NYC as Noosed Kitty, and her art mixes a love of Japanese pop art signifiers with western design trends to create a unique illustration style that’s very cool. Check out her designs Post-Apocalyptic Heartache and Injured Owl, and also her other art in her Etsy store.
1.Where are you from (both originally and currently)?
Long Island, NY
2. Has that at all shaped you as an artist, or otherwise affected your creative processes?
Not really.
3. Can you let us know about some other visual artists that you admire and draw inspiration from?
Some artists I admire are Paul Barnes, Jessica Joslin, and Jonathan Weiner, but the list is endless. I’m inspired by anything from mundane daily activities to a crazy dream I had. Japanese art was an early influence on my work.
4. How about non-visual artists (musicians, friends, family, public figures, filmmakers, writers, etc)?
I’m sure there are but I can’t think of any as I’m typing up answers to these questions.
5. Did you receive any formal art training, whether it be in college, or elective classes in high school, middle school and so on?
Yes, I graduated college with a BFA.
6. What’s your creative process like? Do you work in silence, or with music/TV/some other background noise on? Do you have a specific space set aside for working on art? What are your preferred mediums?
I tend to do all my work on the floor with the tv on in the background. I usually work in watercolor and pencil but I’ve recently started using oil paints which I’m enjoying thus far.
7. Do you have any pop cultural guilty pleasures you’d like to admit to?
Not really.
8. What are some of your favorite web haunts? Any blogs or websites you’d like to turn more people on to?
I probably spend more time on flickr than any other website. Other sites I like: Etsy, Vinyl Pulse, All Recipes, Mental Floss, Crime Library… you know, the usual.
9. Do you have any pets?
One cat named George, or as I like to call him – Captain Awesome.
10. Beer, wine, or liquor? Which kind (ales, porters, pilsners, reds, whites, rums, vodkas)?
None of the above.
11. If you had access to Doc Brown’s Delorean in Back to the Future, when in time would you go?
I’m pretty happy right here. Perhaps I’d travel back a few years to when I had dinner at the Good ‘n Plenty restaurant. That was one of my favorite meals and I wouldn’t mind eating it again. Sorry if this interview is somewhat lackluster. (Ed. Note: It’s cool, we’ll just assume you’re Batwoman and trying to throw us off the scent of your crime-fighting alter-ego.)
12. Cake, pie or cookies (ice cream and candy are also acceptable, but be specific)?
All of the above. Cake – 30th Anniversary Cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory. Pie – apple crumb. Cookies – Girl Scout Tagalongs. Ice cream – homemade cheesecake ice cream (that’s right, I make my own ice cream). Candy – Swedish Fish and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. I like me some yummy food.
Alright class, that’s about it. Say hi to Jamie, and be sure to check out the rest of the guest artist series! We’ll be back on our regular blogging schedule next week!
Seriously? No thanks, Japan. I’m fine with Rosie Jetson, C3PO and R2D2—robots that look like robots. But when it veers into the realm of creepy humanoid/Michael Myers-in-William-Shatner-mask automatons, I get scared. Especially when they giggle like a demure geisha.
Bilal is an Iraqi-born NYU art professor who is WILLINGLY TURNING HIMSELF INTO A FIRST-GENERATION BORG. For the sake of “art”, this insane gentleman had that little digital camera (pictured in the foreground there) IMPLANTED IN THE BACK OF HIS HEAD. The “art” will basically consist of a slideshow of images snapped at one-minute intervals by the camera over the course of one year. This little installation was commissioned by a new museum in Qatar that is opening on Dec. 30th.
Bilal is currently in talks with NYU about how best to protect student and fellow faculty privacy over the course of the year. Because of how having a third eye in the back of one’s head is, y’know, CREEPY AS SHIT!
Now, some might be saying “But Matt, how is this any different from, say, an artificial limb? Surely you wouldn’t begrudge an amputee the opportunity to achieve a semblance of appendage-ial (not a word) normalcy?” To which my response is OF COURSE NOT. But the difference here is that Bilal already has two functional eyes. Sure, an Iraq or Afghanistan vet might possess the synthetic arm that one day sparks the artificial intelligence that becomes Skynet and destroys us all. But at least the human race can take solace in the fact that before that shit went down, that Marine was able to use that synthetic arm to shake a little extra parmesan on a jumbo slice once or twice before the robot uprising forced them to huddle around small fires in caves.
(Via Salon.com)
Don’t forget to enter Fashionably Geek’s giveaway contest! The contest runs through Dec. 5th, and the prize is a $50 Ex-Boyfriend gift card, and everyone could use more ex in their life.
Also, don’t miss out on the awesome promotion I’m running right now—buy 2 keychain bottle openers, and get a third free! Check it out!
Leave it to the Germans to engineer a more efficient way to snuggle: Remove other humans from equation entirely.
Creepy sociopathic designer Stefan Ulrich has created amorphous pillow-blobs out of “electro-active polymers” that react to touch and temperature as a proxy for those of us too emotionally crippled to form bonds with other humans. Think a Tempur-Pedic matress, but shaped like Gloop and Gleep from The Herculoids.
Actually, I shouldn’t be coming down too hard on Stefan. This probably is a great idea—I just think Ulrich’s sales pitch could use some work. I think something like this could be genuinely useful to individuals with Asperger’s or social anxiety as a therapeutic device. But he’s essentially marketing it as a less-pervy version of a Real Doll, a la Jason Lee’s character in Mumford or Ryan Gosling’s in Lars and the Real Girl. Stefan says “People already bury themselves in possessions and shield themselves from real life with technology. So if robots and objects can fulfill all their emotional needs as well, why do they need other humans?”
That said, I’m fortunate enough to have already dupedtricked won the heart of my wife, and on the frequent occasions that I find myself in the doghouse, I at least have my cats around for snuggling. Maybe I’m just not the target demographic.
Clearly one of you guys lurking around here has some juice with Science, because ever since I called Science out a few months ago, it’s been crossing out items on my list of grievances. First the miracle pill that banishes hangover symptoms, now a commercially viable jetpack? My cup runneth 2/10ths full!
And since I clearly have Science’s attention, I’d like to amend my list to include improving supermarket self-checkout robots: If I have my transaction frozen one more time because one of those R2D2 rejects mistakenly thinks an “unknown item” has been placed in the bagging area, I am gonna get medieval on that thing like Jabba the Hutt’s torture droid.
There’s a lot of disappointment inherent in living in the modern age, or as I like to call it, “the era when all the lies our parents told us about the future come home to roost”.
I like to think of myself as a futurist. Well, not a futurist per se, but a fan of futurism. I like to think that eventually we will get all those wonderful toys Q dreamed up for James Bond, the gadgets at the beck and call of The Avengers, the Justice League, Starfleet, and the Rebel Alliance. Futurists are the people that actualize all that sci-fi goodness.
I had dinner last night with my cousin and a friend of his who, when asked about his job, replied “Well, I predict the future.”
What the what?! Who talks like that? Better yet, why can’t I talk like that?
But it got me thinking about the never-ending wish list my wife and I have containing all the fantastical future-tech that Science has as of yet not provided. And how maybe it’s time that Science stop wasting my time and money detailing the differences between shaken and stirred martinis and confirming that yes, we as a society treat attractive people better than unattractive ones. We have real crises at hand here, Science! Namely, AIDS, cancer, and where’s my f-ing hoverboard?!
10. An effective cure for baldness that also cures excessive and unsightly body hair.
9. A pill that gives you six-pack abs that you can wash down with a six-pack of beer while sitting on the couch.
8. A cure for getting old.
7. Hoverboards
6. Flying cars
5. Jetpacks (or some sort of hydrogen fuel cell/mag-lev alternative)
4. Laser guns
3. Androids/robots that are more or less indistinguishable from people.
2. Time travel
1. Teleportation
You’re on notice, Science. Get to work!
What about it, you guys? What’s missing from our list?
(Thanks to Jarrett C. for his invaluable help in compiling such an epically awesome list!)
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1.Where are you from (both originally and currently)?
