People People Transparent Speaker

Image: wired.com

Image: peoplepeople.se

People People has designed a transparent speaker than can blend in any room with any décor. The simple, innovative electronic can provide big sound quality while taking up a small amount of space. No matter what colour your walls are or how much room your furniture takes up, the People People Speaker can fit in anywhere. The nippy device is also compatible with wireless systems, which means there’s no need for tangled wires to clutter your interior. The eco-friendly design is built with glass panels that can either be replaced or recycled, making the speaker a home-companion that will last for a very long time.
 
 
 

Doll Art by Bohyun Yoon

Image: juxtapoz.com

Image: juxtapoz.com

Image: juxtapoz.com

Virginia-based artist Bohyun Yoon has deconstructed dolls and taken their parts to create a suggestive shadow display. The installation is titled ‘Unity’ and features various parts of the dolls’ anatomy being strung up and suspended from a ceiling to create alluring shadows of the human body and its flexible capabilities. Made from silicon rubber, wire, steel and a spotlight, the piece evokes a visual that sees silhouetted human bodies entwined in a provocative dance against the backdrop of a plain white wall. The artist spoke about his artwork saying, ‘my art utilizes the body as the tool for an intensive investigation of the public and private’.
 
 
 

MacBook Wood Keyboard

Image: gizmag.com

Image: gizmag.com

Apple designed the MacBook Pro to be the cutting edge of modern computing architecture, but Rawbkny has created a crafty accessory for Apple enthusiasts looking for something different. The MacBook Wood Keyboard is a fitted add-on that can cover your keys in either rosewood or bamboo. The wooden keyboard gives the laptop an organic and homey feel that helps thaw its techy industrial look. Although the wooden kit adds some extra height to the original keys, Rawbkny has said that the keyboard will not damage the MacBook Pro’s screen as there is still a slither of space between the keypad and the display when the laptop is closed.
 
 
 

Balloon Sculpture by Jason Hackenwerth

Pisces balloon sculpture by Jason Hackenwerth from National Museums Scotland on Vimeo.

Image: thisiscolossal.com

Jason Hackenwerth is renowned for his latex balloon sculptures and his latest spectacle has created a colourful splash at the Edinburgh International Science Festival. Using 10 000 balloons, the New York artist produced a piece a called ‘Pisces’ which is inspired by his interpretation of the Greek mythological story of Aphrodite and Eros. In the tale Aphrodite – the Goddess of Love – and her son, Eros, escape the wicked monster Typhon by transforming into a coiled spiral of two fish that has now been blown to life by Hackenwerth and his team. Three of Hackenwerth’s staff members spent almost six days blowing up the balloons that Hackenwerth and his assistant, Leah Blair, would weave into the bright three dimensional kaleidoscope of ‘Pisces’.
 
 
 

Baby Colour Ultrasound

Image: mashable.com

Image: mashable.com

GE Healthcare has launched the HDLive ultrasound which allows expecting parents to see their little one in a colour 3D display. Parents can watch their babies in utero while doctors can accurately track the fetus’s health and development. The system creates a moveable virtual light source that produces shadows and definitions to highlight every bump, fold and detail of the fetus’s body and face. Advanced skin rendering is also embedded in the technology to create realistic human-toned colours. Expecting parents no longer have to agonise over who their baby will look like, as the GE HDLive provides all the details.
 
 
 

MetService Weather Billbaord

Image: admedia.co.nz

Image: admedia.co.nz

Popular New Zealand weather forecaster MetService has collaborated with Y&R NZ advertising agency to create a structure that frames real-time weather. The billboard is designed to look like a web browser while giving a visual of actual weather conditions to emphasise that MetService is the most reliable forecaster in New Zealand. The clever ad has received 30 000 Facebook likes, featured on Reddit’s front page and been named BuzFeed’s ad of the month.
 
 
 

Dove Real Beauty Forensic Drawings

Real Beauty Sketches from John X. Carey on Vimeo.

Image: realbeautysketches.dove.com

Image: realbeautysketches.dove.com

In a campaign run by Dove and marketing firm Ogilvy, FBI-trained forensic sketch artist Gil Zamora shows women they are more beautiful than they might think. The Real Beauty campaign traces Zamora’s work as he sketches numerous women and compares their descriptions of themselves to the descriptions given by strangers. The artist first sketched an image of the women based on their perception of themselves and then a second image from the perception of a stranger. The striking differences illustrate that women see themselves differently and less beautiful than what others see them. The marketing campaign speaks to Dove’s brand initiative as a supporter of natural beauty, yet Dove still controversially stands by its animal testing policy. Dove’s parent company, Unilever, has defended cosmetic testing on animals in the past saying: ‘currently, a very small amount of animal testing is still necessary to deliver innovative products that provide consumer benefits and are market competitive’.
 
 
 

Sandwich Bikes

Sandwichbike Ready to Ride from Sandwichbikes on Vimeo.

Image: facebook

Image: facebook.com

Bicycles carry different meanings to different people: some use them as a means of transport, while others ride as a hobby or for health and fitness purposes. Whatever the reason, bicycles can be a pricey piece of equipment. Sandwich Bikes has found a solution to this predicament by manufacturing a bicycle that can easily be built at home with a minimal shipping fee. The Dutch-designed stylish ride is delivered to your doorstep in 50 pieces, with the two weather coated plywood frames being the primary structural element of the bicycle. The frames are held together by ‘smart cylinders’ that ensure a durable, fresh ride. The Sandwich Bike has yet be released, but it is estimated the bicycles will be hitting the streets later this year.
 
 
 

Alternative Limb Project

Image: lookinart.com

Image: obviouswinner.com

Losing a limb understandably creates insecurity and low self-esteem in patients who have endured amputations. Prosthetics aren’t always the most attractive designs and often appear too industrial or manufactured. To answer this problem, The Alternative Limb Project has partnered with ProActive Prosthetics to create a vibrant line of prosthetics that allow amputee patients to wear their prosthetics as fashionable limbs. From henna tattoo arms to floral leg limbs, The Alternative Limb Project aims to help their clients get noticed for more than their absent body parts. The alternative limbs can give a personality to their wearers that allows strangers to see them as more than disabled.
 
 
 

Images: peoplepeople.se, wired.com, facebook.com, thisiscolossal.com, obviouswinner.com, lookinart.tv, gizmag.com, realbeautysketches.dove.com, admedia.co.nz, mashable.com, juxtapoz.com

one small seed (OSS): Tell us more about yourself. A little background, what do you do?

Andrew Miller (AM): I’m a writer. I was born in PE, and I’ve been living in Jozi since my folks moved up in 1998. And aside from the writing, my wife and I run Unity Gallery. And that’s a full-time gig.

OSS: Tell us about unity gallery. When did it start and how did it begin?

AM: It’s very organic. My wife’s an artist, and I’m a writer/poet. When we first hooked up and moved in before we got married or anything we were dead broke, so we needed to earn a living from our writing and our art. So we set up the company, and in the first few years it was kind of learning how to earn money. After that we steadily came into contact with more artists and writers in the city. We were working from home, and then we decided to open up a gallery because it’s kind of a natural evolution. So Robyn found this place in Vrededorp, this abandoned place we could get for a very low rent, cost us quite a bit to fix it up, but it was a nice gritty kind of urban space, and we set up the gallery from there, then everything else kind of followed in a natural process. People walk in the door, and if you, as a creative space, are willing to say hi, the rest grows from there, I mean that was like 6-7 years ago, and yeah it just evolved.

OSS: Unity gallery… What’s that all about?

AM: In its current incarnation, it’s a gallery space, it’s a creative space so it caters to writers and artists, and it’s got a social folk, so as much of the Joburg art scene does, it’s got somewhat of a collaborative intent. It’s a place where people can come and share things on a philosophical or creative level, and/or share on a business level, because a lot of artists need to learn how to make money. Once you’ve left the training institution it’s really hard if you’re not born into a wealthy environment, it’s really hard to figure out how you’re gonna make a living. I think Unity’s one of the few spaces where you can access resources, internet, stuff like that, and get access to fellow artists, and start to talk about your career and how you’re gonna turn a buck. That’s in a nutshell.

OSS: What type of art do you guys display?

AM: We are underground, we represent a lot of emerging artists and that means artists who are making their way up. That said and now that we’ve been going a while, some of the people who were initially emerging artists have now emerged, so we are lucky to have now a good range of people who qualify as investment artists. People come in to buy their art not only because they like the art but also because of the financial value that it will grow.

OSS: Tell us about this industry, negatives and positives.

AM: I’ll start with the negatives. It’s who you are or the kind of life you were born into, as with the rest of South Africa, that’s a defining factor. So if you’re born middle class and you’re kind of pushed into that university channel, whether you are a writer, artist of whatever, then it is a relatively straightforward thing to make a career as an artist. But if you are born into the township, or born into an environment where you don’t have access to money or the social networks that are around, it can be extremely difficult to make money from your art. Regardless of how talented you are. And that is something that we experience all the time:

who you are, who you know and all those kind of things can define who you’ll end up being as an artist.

OSS: Is the art scene in Joburg big? Do we have a real movement?

AM: I think we do. You can split into the larger half, the formal university-oriented scene on the one hand, which is a big scene here: there are a lot of artists who are high profile and bridge into the international scene. And then we have an underground scene that’s growing fast, and for me that’s where the interesting stuff is happening. The formal university-orientated vibe is quite predictable, whereas the underground scene is edgy and vibrant, and you don’t know what you gonna get there, and there’s some very interesting stuff happening, and there’s a very interesting overlap between music, and fashion and art.

More and in the last couple of years I’ve heard advertising people and the like referring to Joburg as kind of similar to Berlin, in its intensity of art, and the stuff that’s going on here.

OSS: What do you think is the future for art, particularly underground art here in Joburg?

AM: I think we are headed the right way. I think it’s very important that as a city we get our head around how important the online world has become. For me, the bottom line is if you don’t have access to broadband high-speed internet you are severely limited in your career as an artist. So young people of an equivalent age in other countries in the world have free access to high-speed bandwidth, and we don’t have it in the city, and we certainly don’t have it in the townships.

If we don’t get that right, there’s a danger of us operating in almost our own parallel universe.

And conversely if we do get it right, I think more and more opportunities can open up for our artists to prove that they are amongst the most dynamic around in the world. But if you can’t access a line, life is hard. So that’s the one area that we need to look at as a city really carefully, to see what kind of access we are giving our artists to digital technology, and then what kind of digital training. Because people need to understand the open source movement, what software is out there on a creative level and how to use that for their careers and that’s what I see as a development point. If we can get that right I think recognised as one of the more dynamic art cities in the world – because of our cultural cross over, the kind of different references we’ve got going from the kind of whitey European thing all the way through to the kind of multicultural black setup, so the potential is there to be very dynamic.

OSS: Tell us about the Prince of Newtown.

AM: He makes jewellery out of knives and forks, and spoons and assorted cutlery. I think he’s one of the most important people around Newtown, people call him Prince of Newtown, he’s an interesting figure because wherever he goes in Newtown people know him and welcome him. He can walk anywhere into any restaurant, big or small, and people give him love, and maybe a bit of food, and then buy his jewellery, and he brings a lot of light and a lot of laughter with him. He’s a very eccentric guy. For me, the important thing about Prince is that when everyone left the city and ran away, you know that time it was about 10–15 years ago, where it was literally abandoned, it was people like Prince who were still in Newtown and kept the atmosphere of Newtown alive so that when people came back they could turn it into this quite Bougey artsy-fartsy scene that there is now, so it’s important that someone like Prince is recognised and represented. So he’s not considered to be a street artist, but what he does is given a higher value, and that value is always manifested through PR, through magazines and interviews. So in our work what we tried to do was to get him exposure in the media and to ensure that he has a place as an important member of Newtown art community. That he has a place to work from. A formal space for a very informal person.

OSS: So what is Joburg to you?

AM: That’s a tough one. For me, Joburg’s my home, Joburg is people. I haven’t been around a lot but I’ve been around enough to know that Joburg’s got a particularly special thing, in the kind of confluence of people. That people from all over Africa and all over the world who mix it up in Joburg with such a happy heart.

You go to other places in the world and you don’t get people willing to meet and greet and share and collaborate and for me that’s what defines Joburg.

When I say that I’m talking about the city, as you head out into the burbs, it’s a completely different thing. That for me it’s just strip clubs. For me personally that’s what Joburg is – it’s people.

OSS: Looking into the future, what does Unity gallery have in store? What’s coming?

AM: We’ll get back into spoken word a bit, we used to do a lot of spoken word, and a lot of live recording and music sessions, which we haven’t done in a while. We’ll probably get back to that now that we’ve got a good space to be in. And otherwise we’re just looking to make our growth really count. I think the danger for any arts organisation – in 2008 for example – I think 6 galleries went under when the recession hit, so not only do we want to survive, but we also want to prosper for our artists. It’s important for us that artists as they grow earn more money and are able to buy houses and cars and all those kind of things. And not be caught up in that South African thing where you’re a famous artist but you’ve been broke your whole life. So I think for us that’s gonna be our focus and I think we will look at developing our shows more, having funky Saturday shows and good art during the week.

OSS: Any last words?

AM:

Act on a dream, rather than dreaming all the time, you know because it’s a big jump to make to actually act on your passion. And you will face so many failures along the way, but if you can master the art of just sticking at it and practically acting on your dream, you’ll be amazed at how successful you can be. Conversely, if you’re just sitting and letting your mind drift, it’s just gonna keep going like that, so act on it. Find people who are doing similar things to you and start earning some money.

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